Monstah Monday: One Step Closer to World Domination...

So Mommy thinks I've been causing a lot of trouble lately. It's partially her fault, she encouraged it. What is 'it' exactly? Well, here's a picture to show you:

This.

And this.

It started with me just sitting and watching her using her laptop. After a while I decided that I wanted to try it. She wasn't too happy about it. What can I say? I like chasing the cursor around the screen. The keyboard makes a good bed too. Almost as good as laying on the screen:

She tried downloading some apps for me, but I prefer Solitaire. So far it's my favorite, whether it's on the iPad or on her laptop. 

She thinks it's only a matter of time before I'm learning how to use the internet and jump starting my world domination plans. I'm a cat, what can I say? It's something we all dream about. It's a cat thing, you wouldn't understand it. 

I was also having some fun trying to open up a bag:

Again sorry for the poor quality. 

~Mommy: Uh oh. She's back. It's only a matter of time before she'll be sprawled out on my keyboard...Right now she's laying beside the laptop with her face resting on the screen. 

With the apps, one of them has like a laser pointer dot. I think that one keeps her attention pretty well. The other app has bugs crawling on the screen. She could watch it for hours. She thinks that the bugs are going under the iPad though. She's way more interested in Solitaire, though. Figures. Of course she won't play the game for cats.

And that video is why you cannot leave out a bag of cat food. She'll shred it, even if she has food in her bowl. She also steals treat bags and tries to shred them. ~

Black&White Sunday: Look!

Silly Dog Saturday: Playing with Pokemon

(Sorry it's a day late)

Mommy took a video of me playing with my favorite toy in the world! Sorry for the poor quality and the video being vertical, she took it with her iPad. She also hurt her shoulder on one of the throws. I think it's kind of funny. :P

My training is going well. Mommy hasn't taken me far with loose leash walking in a few days since she hasn't been feeling good. She might start taking me in the woods though! That's really where we need to work. There are so many different smells, I just can't focus! 

Flash Back Friday: Titan

From May 1996

By the time I had begun to love taking pictures of all my pets, Titan has been dead for a few years. The only pictures I have of him are pictures of pictures my parents took. I do have one or two of him when he was older. I had a lot of pictures of him on my computer at some point, but who knows where those files disappeared to. 

My parents got Titan a year or so before I was born. My mom instantly fell in love with him. My brother and I grew up with him. He was a sweet heart. And true to being a Brittany, he didn't stop running until his last year of life. He had gone deaf as he got older and he slept a lot, but he had his bursts of crazy youthful energy. 

He ended up getting some form of doggy vertigo(I can't remember what it's called). I remember that day like it was yesterday. I decided to take him for a walk(at that time, I thought a good walk for him was down our driveway(1000ft+) and back). He wasn't too happy about being woken up and seemed a bit off, but I didn't notice much. We got outside on the deck and when we reached the top of the stairs I noticed he was swaying. He didn't want to move either, so I brought him back inside thinking he was just being a grumpy old man. 

Later that day, someone let him outside where he just kept walking in circles and eventually fell over. He couldn't get up and was puking. My dad called the vet's and within the hour we were rushing him there. Due to my mom being in a wheel chair, we have a van that's missing the middle seats, so we let him lay on the floor as we drove him. I sat with him, wiping up his drool. 

When we got to the vet's office, my dad had to carry him inside. They looked at his eyes and saw that they were moving back and forth. The way they were moving(not necessarily up, down, or side to side) meant that it could either be a brain tumor or the doggy vertigo. They gave him some IVs and I think they gave us some medicine for him and we were on our way home or maybe he stayed the night? It's been a few years. I think he might have stayed the night. The majority of the day I can remember clearly, but after getting him to  vet, I don't remember much else.

It was a long recovery. He could barely stand and didn't want to eat much. One night I had the idea of feeding him some left over hamburg. He ate that right up! After that we started feeding him canned dog food. You know how you're supposed to gradually change a dog's food? Yeah, we didn't have any choice to do that. His farts were terrible. He spent his time in my parents' room and the whole room smelled of his farts. It was nasty, but he was eating. 

I cannot tell you how many times he peed in the house during that time. No one really minded because he was sick, there wasn't much he could do. He had to be carried outside and could barely balance.

I remember one time when he was starting to feel better, he went to go and eat out of his bowl in the kitchen. He was standing there eating and his back legs were slowly lifting of the ground. He was doing a handstand! Poor guy ended up falling over before we knew what was happening. 

Eventually he recovered, but we were told it would keep coming back. When it did come back, my parents made the decision to have him put to sleep. 


RIP Titan. We miss you. 

Thursday Update: Chasing Bumble Bees and Other Dangerous Pass Times

~Mommy: No update about the shelter today. I didn't end up going. I haven't been feeling good, so I was told to just stay home. Why haven't I been feeling good? Well the doctors THINK it's allergies. I've been having ear pain and have been dizzy since September. I've been to three different doctors about it and in June will be going to an ear/nose/throat specialist. First two doctors told I have fluid in my ears and it could be allergies. They told me to try an allergy medicine. I've taken Zyrtec, Allegra, Allegra-D, and now I'm back on Allegra. No improvement. I went to a third doctor Friday and finally got some prescription medicine for this! She said it is allergies. The only thing she did differently than the other doctors was look in my nose. If it was really that simple, then I am seriously pissed off about this whole thing. 

It'll take a few weeks for the medicine to start working. I'm not feeling any better yet, but I'm not necessarily feeling worse. For the past few days my ears have been in incredible pain(main reason we went to the doctor again) and today I just felt like I was going to pass out. Anyway, enough about my pain and what not. I could go on and on forever about my medical issues that have affected me in the past year. 

So haven't done much yet today. I took Woody out for some loose leash training this morning. He's doing AMAZING. We've graduated from only walking in the yard to walking down the driveway(1000ft+ and shared with neighbors) with dogs barking and chasing us and making it all the way to the road. We could have gone for longer, but he had had way too many treats. 

Cherry's been causing trouble a lot today. Earlier she kept running at me all stiff legged wanting to play. Crazy girl. She was running all over the house, meowing. She does this funny thing where she runs across the room and slams her paws on the door to stop herself. All you hear is claws scraping on the floor and then BAM! Sometimes she meows too. It's adorable. 

Then she climbed under the cloth on our coffee table and just sat there like a little pig in a blanket. I wanted to get a picture, but as soon as I got up to grab my camera, she started to follow me. 

Later I was upstairs lying down when I started to feel icky and she decided the best way to make me feel better was to stand on my stomach. Not the best when you feel like you might be sick. She's such a good nurse, isn't she? After a little while she curled up on me.

Then she spotted the bumble bee. We have giant bumble bees outside and one ended up getting the house. Now when I say giant, I mean these things are the size of a quarter. She had a blast with this new toy. It was buzzing all around and making so much noise! Of course, it then drew attention to the hornets that were crawling around on the windows too. She probably spent a good 15 minutes chasing the bee. My dad ruined the fun when he came up and killed it. 

Right now she's stalking a hornet. Dumb cat. I'm surprised she hasn't been stung yet.

Poking the bee. Ignore the dirty windows...

The stare down.

Sorry for the brightness...It's hard to adjust when below the windows is dark as heck.

"HEY GET BACK HERE! I JUST WANT TO EAT YOU!"

Poking again. Note the hornet next to her.

Wordless Wednesday

Monstah Monday: Stealing from Homeless Kitties

Mommy wasn't very happy with me the other day. She was trying to make some more catnip toys for the shelter cats and I kept "getting in the way." What does she expect? She took out my catnip! Of course I'll want some!

~Mommy: Cherry was being a little brat about this whole thing. I put the catnip on the table while I rolled up the toys (Watch toy tutorial here). She then jumped onto the table and started tearing into the catnip bag almost spilling catnip everywhere. I gave her some and that kept her occupied for about a second. Then she was back again. After a while she gave up and started rolling around on the floor. Who knows what that was about. 

She left me alone after that. I had a bunch of scrap fabric in a bin and hid the toys and the catnip bag in the bin under the fabric. Later I came back to find this:

Little brat had taken out one of the toys and was playing with it. Thing is, I had even given her one before! That one was on the other side of the room, untouched. I took the one I had given her and placed it with the others. Then I took the one she stole back. 

I came back later to find she had taken out both toys AND the bag of catnip. She's lucky she didn't rip open the bag or she would be in big trouble. I had to hide the bin in my room. Such a heartless kitty. Stealing toys that were going to go to homeless cats. ~

Trying to steal the catnip bag.

Rolling around...

Still rolling...

Lurking.

Black and White Sunday

I seriously need a better schedule for this

~Mommy here. I've decided to do different "theme" days as we really don't do anything that interesting every few days. As you've seen, we're going to be doing 'Wordless Wednesday'. Too bad it's not another day, then we could have 'Woody Wednesday'. Oh well. 

Here are the themes I was thinking of:

-Monstah Monday
-Wordless Wednesday
-Thursday Update
-Flash Back Friday
-Woody's Weekend


Monstah Monday: This day will feature something about Cherry. She is known as my 'Little Monster' (Well, 'Monstah' with my slight Boston accent lol). Who knows what it will be about? Maybe a new toy she has or what she's been up to all week? 

Wordless Wednesday: What is a Blog Hop?

Thursday Update: May or may not happen every week. This will be a day for me to just update what I've been up to all week. Usually it will talk about my volunteering if I end up going that week. Soon I plan on finding either an internship or some other volunteer work, so there might be more to talk about.

Flash Back Friday: This day will include a picture of either Casie or Titan(the dog I grew up with). May include a little story about them or whatever. 

Silly Dog Saturday: An update from Woody.

Black and White Sunday: What is a blog hop?

This will all start Monday. 
Keep in mind, Cherry may take over any day if she so pleases. 

You know, I actually don't know if any reads this blog. If you do, take today to introduce yourself to us! We'd love to hear that people are actually reading! 

Wordless Wednesday

Decided to try this out. Shhh...we totally aren't doing two posts in one day.

A Fluff Bug No Longer

Woody here again! Today I spent the day at the groomer's. I wasn't very happy when Mommy left me there. I was trying to claw my way back in front of the counter. They finally came back for me around 2:30ish. I was barking when they got there...I could hear Mommy saying that she heard me. I just wanted to get home so badly! 

Anyway, here are some pictures:

Before

After

After

After

After(Mommy's favorite picture of the day)

After

After

After

After...

I think you've got the point by now.

We didn't do much else for the past few days. Mommy's been working out in the gardens and somehow both her eyes are swollen. They think it's from the hedges...She's not very happy about it. I think she still looks fine. 

She also didn't work at the shelter today. There weren't enough cats for her to be needed. I think she was alright with that. She's been wanting to get yard work done for a while. She's also been considering finding either an internship at a vet's office or some other form of volunteer work with animals. 

The Fluff Bug

Woody here! Mommy's letting me write a post, so that you don't have to have a somber post from her(see end of this post). She's calmed down quite a bit after finding out her cousins are safe and since the whole ordeal is calming down a little bit.

Mommy has recently been doing a lot of work with me since joining Dog Forum. They promote positive reinforcement training and I am thriving on it! I highly recommend you look into it if you have a dog(or even a cat! Cat's can be trained too, just don't tell Cherry I said that). 

Since the weather has been nicer and the majority of the snow is gone( :( I liked the snow...), Mommy and her dad have been taking me on long walks in the morning! We go roughly four miles through the trails in the woods around here. Every day we go a different route! It's a lot of fun! I've met a few dogs while there. I just love walks!

Now with the training, Mommy has been working on getting me to not pull on the leash, to come when called, and to lie down. I'm kind of getting it, but it's tough. 

Here are some pictures from today. We were working on recall:

And tomorrow, I'm going to get groomed! All my fluff will be gone, but I'll feel so much better. I keep getting everything caught in my fluff. Mommy also gets freaked out with my shedding. My fur sheds in tiny puffs. She says they're like little invaders. They're everywhere!

~Mommy: You may have seen the post before this. I deleted it, but I'm going to briefly repeat what it said. We live in Massachusetts and are safe from the explosions at the Boston Marathon. I was debating whether to go to the marathon, but didn't end up going. I have heard from three out of four of my cousins who live there. All three are safe. Two were not even in the city and the other(who I am the closest to) was a mile away from the finish line. Normally she goes and watches at the finish, but didn't this year. ~

So guess who sucks at staying on schedule?

MOMMY DOES! She wouldn't let me on the computer for days! Well, I guess there wasn't much to write anyway. We haven't been doing all that much. Mommy had some friends over last week and she went to the shelter again on Wednesday.

~Mommy: I was going to go back last week, but the person who is supposed to be with me wasn't there. I got told I had to go home because I couldn't work alone. When I went on Wednesday, the shelter had gone from two cats to ten and down to three outdoor ones! YIKES! The cuddly one Smudge and one of the black cats Sammy got adopted. The new cats' names are Toby, Spring, Sampson, Timmy, Pokie, Freddie, Sonny, and Boo. Ming and Rusty were still there too. Sonny is getting adopted soon. 

I think Ming and Boo are my favorites. Ming is like a little monkey. He's so outgoing. He's always hogging all the attention. Boo was really sweet. He meowed every time you said his name. It was adorable! He was so soft too...I gave him a catnip toy and he just cuddled with it. Ming, on the other hand, went wild when I gave him one. 

If my parents would let me have another cat, I would probably want to take home Boo or Ming. I've seriously fallen in love with them. 

The other cats were nice too. When I got to the shelter Spring was wandering around the room while her and Toby's cage was being cleaned. Toby didn't seem to keen on moving. He played a bit when I gave him a catnip toy, though. Then Spring was put back in her cage. 

I was trying to get some good pictures of Boo, too. It's so hard to get a picture of a black cat! Luckily I had been playing around with camera settings and it was nice to be able to figure out a setting that worked. 

My favorite one of Boo.

Once we got a few pictures we went back to cleaning cages. I washed dishes while the cages were being cleaned. Sonny was let out while his cage was being cleaned and he ended up smelling the catnip toys in my bag. I looked over and he was rolling all over it. He's a sweetie too. 

Freddie was sleeping the whole time and Pokie, who's blind, didn't pay much attention to me. Timmy is really shy, so he didn't come over to me. Sampson wanted attention, but I'm not allowed to touch him due to his injured paw. I ended up spending most of my time petting Ming and Boo. I didn't get to see any of the outdoors cats, though. The weather was nice, so they were probably off doing cat stuff.~

There isn't much for me to say, so I think I'll let Mommy post some pictures of me!

Some from when I was younger:

First picture Mommy ever took of me. I was still hiding then.

Casie in the same spot years before. 

Being a cat is tough work. 

If you want to see Mommy's photography, check out her DeviantArt account! http://snaparific.deviantart.com/