Wrapping Presents

If you have a pet, you know how impossible it is to wrap presents with them around. Cherry and Woody are no exception to this. Today, I set out to wrap presents for my cousins' kids. Woody, like always, was glued to my side, but I easily got him out of the way by having him sit off to the side. And within minutes of rolling out the wrapping paper, Cherry was lying on top of it. She was not happy to be moved from that. She spent the rest of the time messing with paper scraps and the ribbons.

So for presents, we got a few Fur Real Friends. I loved them as a kid, so we figured they would like them too. One of them was a kitten that paws at you. I made the mistake of pressing the "Try Me!" button and that set off hours of 'MEOW MEOW PURRR PURRR BRRRROW'. It's bad enough when it's a real cat doing that to you, but this thing would not shut up. Eventually, I found the off switch, but before that Woody spent his time investigating. "What is this thing?" You could almost hear him thinking. Cherry was equally freaked out. It was pretty comical.

For most of the wrapping, the toy was in the box and Woody kept going over and moving the flaps so it would start meowing again. We had to run some errands and when we came back, I let him out of the car and he burst through the front door and straight to the box to turn the toy back on.

Fish Tank Updates

The fish tanks have been doing well the past few weeks.The 10 gallon also seems to have cycled. It's been months since I started it and I'm so glad it's finally safe for the fish. The 29 gallon is still working on cycling. Last I checked (Wednesday), the ammonia was high, nitrites 0, and nitrates high.

So for right now the tank occupants are:
10 gallon:
-1 male guppy
-1 otocinclus
-3-4 baby pond snails

I finally found a new home for Houdini the mystery snail and now I'm able to use my tap water in the 10 gallon again! So much easier than lugging around 5 gallon jugs of water.I'm not exactly sure what happened to all of the baby snails. I've only found one dead  body and that's from one that I accidentally dropped while transferring them and didn't notice until I found the dried out shell. :(

The plants in the 29 gallon are doing well. The plants I got from Petco are really taking off with the proper care. My plan is to keep all the leafy plants in the 29 gallon and eventually move all the stem plants into the 10 gallon.

Now for some pictures! I only have good pictures of the 29 gallon tank. I'll have to get some new pictures of the 10 gallon when I get home.

Puff the dragon, our newest addition to the tank.

Moonlight setting

Puff is supposed to have an air stone in his mouth and I did have it going for a while until I cut the tubing on the tank hood. Next time I clean the tank up, I'll be replacing that. Right now I don't want to deal with replanting the stem plants. They are a huge pain.

A Trip to Petsmart

Woody is really not a friendly dog. He's really nervous around strangers, especially when they're in our house. But recently he has improved a lot. We've had a lot of people in and out of the house for the past few months and I think he's just gotten more used to it (and Cherry has too and has now started to investigate people who come to do work on the house).

So yesterday, I had to run down to the mall to pick up a blanket I ordered from JCPenney (the blanket is awesome, but ordering online from them is a huge pain in the ass). I decided to stop over at Petsmart to get some stuff for Cherry. Woody normally goes with me in the car if I'm running in to a store quickly and it's not hot out. I figured since we were heading to Petsmart an hour after it opened on a week day, I could try bringing Woody in if it wasn't crowded. He did well at the vet's office, so I figured he'd be fine in the store as long as we avoided the majority of the people.

He did amazing in the store. I had him on a short leash and he pulled quite a bit, but I expected that. New place, new smells. He's never been in a store before. He actually behaved way better than I expected though. He really was only interested in sniffing the treat bags and people. He even went up to people on his own and let them pet him. I was so surprised. Of course, I was watching him very carefully and was ready to pull him away if I had to.

I'm so proud of him. I bought him a cute toy for being a good boy. I'll have to get some pictures of him when I get home. We're currently in Maine for the weekend and couldn't bring Woody.

Black and White Sunday

 

 

A New Style

Hello everyone! The fish tanks have been going well. The 29 gallon is halfway through cycling and I think the 10 gallon is now cycled. Not much other news with those.

Woody also went to the vet two days ago and Cherry goes Monday. The lump on Woody's leg is nothing to worry about right now. They want us to just watch it and bring him in when it's bigger so they can stick a needle in it and see what comes out. Cherry is just going in for a check up.

But today Woody's new collar came. I ordered it from Hilltop Leather. It is beautiful!

He thought I was asking him to do his 'stand' trick.

 

 Now in other news we've had some more kittens around. Yesterday I was looking out the window and saw a black thing at the bottom of the field. I figured I'd go check it out and turns out it was a kitten! That one ran off a little ways and a little tabby one came out. They were older kittens, but still kittens. I got within two feet of the tabby before it started walking off. I (stupidly) decided to run back inside to get some treats and the cat carrier and when I got back they were both gone. We searched until it got dark, but we couldn't find them. The area they were in is full of tangled trees, vines, and prickers. It was not fun looking in that. I'm hoping they'll be back around so I can catch them. I don't think they're anyone's pets and I think they were dumped. There's been quite a few older kittens roaming around, but these are the first to not bolt when they saw me (the black one ran initially, but stayed and watched).

Adventures and Tricks

Well, Woody and I have been off exploring quite a bit, but I only got pictures one of the days. I meant to get more pictures Saturday, but I was half way down the road when I realized I left the SD card in my laptop.

This is my favorite. I was trying to get a picture of the bridge and he had other ideas.

There have been some other new things though. I've been working on clicker training Woody for maybe a year or two now. It hasn't been regular training by any means, but he has picked up some new tricks. So far his list of tricks is:

• Sit (which he was learning before we got him)
• Down (I taught this)
• Stay 
• Come
• Back Up (he picked this up on his own)
• Stand (one of our employees has been teaching it for a while, so he picked up the hand signal quickly)
• Go inside/Go in the house (I drop the leash and he'll run up the steps and wait at the door)

A lot of these aren't totally foolproof. We've got a lot of work to do with training outside, but I'm really happy with this for now.

He was a bit excited about the cheese I was using for treats, so this isn't his best performance.

Right now we've started working on 'crawl'. He's also picking that up quickly. We also plan on teaching 'spin' and 'target'.

And last bit of news with him is that I ordered him a new collar. This one is a leather one from Hilltop Leather. It's going to have red padding. I can't wait till it comes!

I also figure I should update you on the fish situation. Bloo and Orange have died. I really don't know what happened, but I'm assuming the cycling process finally got to them. Yellow seems to be doing alright and I think the tank is just about cycled. Some days it seems perfect and other days it's not. I also had baby snails in my 29 gallon. They were in the plants and hatched a little while ago. So far I have moved 17 to the 10 gallon and I think there's a few more in the 29. At this point I am sick of transferring them, so those ones are on their own.

And I finally got pure ammonia for cycling the 29 gallon. I started that yesterday. Hopefully it goes well!

New Arrivals and Some Updates

Well, it's been awhile since I updated. Quite a bit has happened since then. School has just been a train wreck for me. I ended up dropping 3 classes and I'm still stressed with the work load (probably because my motivation is at like -20). But this is a pet blog and you probably don't care much about my school rants. :P

Cherry's been her normal self. Not much new with her. She's been having a blast with our new arrivals and she's becoming a lot more outgoing with strangers in the house. In the past few months we've had a few new employees and also some construction going on. With all that, both her and Woody are being more social. Well in Woody's case becoming less noisy about it.

Ah yes, so normal.

"You can't see me!"

This is seriously how she sleeps during the day.

That's cool. I didn't want to study anyway.

We made her a new scratching post. So far this was the only day she sat on it.

"Get me a tuna sandwich. Hold the bread."

"What do you mean this isn't a new bed?"

Woody's been good too. He's been helping me out with the wood stacking. I am a little worried about him though. I found a lump under his front leg last week. He's not acting weird and it doesn't seem to hurt him. The lump is also movable. I'm thinking it's a cyst. Hopefully we can get him to the vet this week to get it checked out.

So helpful with the gardening.

"PLEASE LET ME BE NEXT TO YOU!"

So helpful...

Oh look there was a mouse nest.

Now I've been mentioning some new arrivals. As much as I'd love to say it's a bunch of kittens, I just can't. They're fish. I'm a little ashamed at how this whole fish thing started, but I've learned from it so I'll share what happened. I decided I wanted a fish again. I did some research and discovered the nitrogen cycle. I'd had fish before, but no one ever told me about cycling tanks. This is probably because my dad believes it to be BS, but that's another story. So I set my tank up and tried doing a fishless cycle. I really didn't have any sort of grasp on how to cycle. I tried the adding fish food thing and definitely did it wrong. After a month, I decided to get a snail and an otocinclus.

Meet Houdini..

...and Frederick.

These guys are still alive. Houdini had some issues with the water I was originally using, but that's been resolved now.

And after 2 weeks of having these guys I decided to get some guppies. I bought 4 male guppies. Their names were Dominic, Francis, Charles, and Frankenstein. One died the next day and within 2 days, they all were dead. Houdini and Frederick were still alive though (this was still before the water source change). I was sure it was because of the cycling. My dad ended up taking the dead fish back and getting me four more. I really didn't want any more, but he doesn't believe in cycling, so he went and got them. One died that night, but the other three are still alive now. These guys are way more alert and fun. They explore and they like to come up to you. Their names are Bloo, Yellow, and Orange. I originally wasn't going to name them until they lived a week and was just calling them by their colors, but the names stuck. Orange is my favorite. Bloo and Yellow like to hang out together.

We ended having a bought of ich with them. Bloo had it first and then Yellow. Orange didn't have it until the very end of treatment. Everybody's healthy now.

So the tank is almost done cycling. I now have someone helping me with that. I also have a better grasp of cycling and other fish care. I feel really bad about the five fish dying, but I promise I'm not going to let any more die like that.

Currently, I'm working on setting up a new tank. They are in a 10 gallon right now and I wanted to switch the gravel to sand. I had my dad order 10 lbs of sand using his Amazon Prime. Turns out it didn't count for free shipping, so he canceled it and went to Petco and bought me 20lbs of sand. Then they still shipped the other 10lbs. So I decided to use the 30lbs of sand and set up our 30 gallon tank. We already had a filter for one, so right now I'm waiting on the heater and the hood. I also order 25 plants which should be here this week. I'm doing a fishless cycle with this tank and then once it is cycled, I'm moving all fish into it. Once the 10 gallon is cycled I plan to get two more otos. I recently found out that they like to live in groups. After the fish are moved to the 30 gallon, I'm going to get 6 more guppies and quarantine them in the 10 gallon. After that's done I'm going to move them to the 30 gallon and get 6 more and repeat. My plan is end up with 15 male guppies, 3 otos, and a snail. I may leave the 10g set up and get something else, or I may just take it down and use it another time. Setting up this 30 gallon is using up a lot of my money.

Her favorite place to sit before I bought the hood. (No fish in it)

She likes to stick her paws in the water I leave out for heating up. One day she decided she would drop a bunch of things in it.

The 30 gallon in its current set up. The heater is an old one in there just to see what it'd do. There's also one lonely amazon sword in there.

The Escape

The other day we had a little scare with Cherry. I'm going to start this off by explaining how I can always know when she's missing. She normally will come and find me every hour or so for some petting and she ALWAYS greets me when I get home. Sometimes it's in the living room and other times it's at the top of the stairs. It is very strange when you can't find her even while calling her name or crinkling a toy.

Anyway, on Tuesday I hadn't seen Cherry for a little while, but I figured she was just sleeping because it was so hot out. I had to leave for an appointment, so I didn't get to look for her. When I got home I still couldn't find her. I decided to check the cellar because she likes to follow my dad down there and he'll accidentally shut her down there. I opened the door expecting to see her spider web covered face looking at me, but she wasn't down there. Ok, there's two other rooms to search down there. And of course, the garage door leading outside is wide open. I still couldn't find her. At this point I was really panicking. I hadn't seen her for two hours and we had just had a huge thunderstorm roll through. Who knows where she could have run off to.

My brother and I spent a while wandering around the yard looking for her. After a while he went inside for dinner, but I refused to eat until I found Cherry. I was in tears looking for her. We live in the middle of the woods and there are lots of coyotes and foxes around. I was so afraid that she had been spooked by the storm and ran off into the woods.

Finally, after an hour of searching, I walked out of the garage and glanced up at the back deck to see her relaxing behind some boards. I called her name and she mewed at me. I ran over and practically had to drag her out from under the boards.

I still have no idea how she got out. She either got out through the back door(sometimes it opens in the wind) or out through the garage. I'm thinking it was out the back door because now she comes running when it's open. I also have no idea where she could have gone. She seemed pretty freaked out when I was carrying her inside, so I don't think she explored too much.

I'm just glad she was alright. She definitely gave me a huge scare.

Name Game

Hey everyone! Sorry for the sporadic posts. I'm finally feeling better, so I've been out trying to make up for missing out on the majority of the summer. I also start school Wednesday, so I'm not sure what that'll mean for updates.

Anyway, I figured I would make a post explaining Cherry's name. Recently I had someone ask me about it and I was able to dig up the inspiration for it. So here goes:

Before we even got Cherry, I had TONS of names picked out. I don't have the list anymore, but I was looking for a nature themed name. Lots of them were herbs and such. Mint was probably one of them.

When we got Cherry, I don't think I decided to think up names for a few hours. I was too excited about having a new pet. Her shelter name was 'Happy' and I definitely knew that name would have to go. I went through my list of names and none of them fit. My mom wanted me to name her 'Popcorn' so that we could call her 'Poppy', but that didn't fit either.

Later on I was looking around online and came across this beautiful picture. The name 'Cherry' immediately popped into my head. In that instant I knew that it was perfect for her. It's hard to explain, but the name just fit with her.

I mean how could that name not fit?

Black and White Sunday

(Sorry for the crappy quality. It's from my phone.)

Playtime

For some reason she really liked playing with the wrinkles in my sheets or on my comforter. I have no idea why though.


Also a little note, I recently noticed the listings on my Etsy had expired. They are now back up if anyone is interested.

Lazy Summer Days

My Two Little Nurses

I had nose surgery on Friday and have been feeling pretty awful. But I've got Woody and Cherry looking after me. Woody has barely left my side all weekend and Cherry has been lurking around and laying with me at night. It's really funny because Woody isn't that cuddly of a dog. Sure, he likes attention from me, but he doesn't really enjoy cuddling. I really never noticed before how much he actually watched me when I was
sick, but over the weekend I realized that he doesn't like to be more than 5 feet away from me at all times. He's following me everywhere and watching me.

On Saturday my mom's hairdresser came to the house(she does home visits for my mom). Woody got up and barked at her until she came inside. Once she was inside I got him back over to me. My mom wanted him put outside, but when someone went to grab him, he wouldn't leave my side. He kept leaning towards
me and refused to move. Usually he'll go without too much fuss. I told my mom that I'd hold on to him and he jumped up beside me and stayed there the whole time. This is a big deal because he HATES lying on people or being that close. He'll sit beside you, but he isn't big on being on top of you.

Later at dinner time, he didn't even get up to eat right away. Normally when my mom heads over to the table, he starts jumping around and begging to be fed. Nope. He just sat beside me until my brother came over to get him his food.

Yesterday he stayed beside me all day and kept me company. Currently he is lying at me feet.

I think he and Cherry have a little agreement. He takes the day shift and she takes the night shift. I've been downstairs all weekend and Woody has been chasing Cherry away from me. She still makes her way over to me, but she's pretty cautious around him. He doesn't hurt her, she just doesn't like being chased. So she's been watching me from the stairs and following me around when I go upstairs. She's also been staying with me while I sleep. At night she'll come downstairs and meow at me until I go up to my room. Once I'm up there she doesn't leave me alone. She follows me and lies on my bed until I've settled in.

There's really nothing better than being taken care of by your pets.

Lying beside me Saturday morning while I was asleep.

Ready for Take Off

This look means that you are either getting pounced on or she's ready to dash. Sometimes I just see this face staring out at me from behind a chair or under a box and that is when I know I have just thwarted her plans of an ambush. If you don't see her first, be prepared for an attack of soft paws. I am so relieved that she doesn't use her claws.

She Found a Bug

I don't know how she does it, but she always manages to find bugs. It doesn't matter how small they are, there is no escaping the monster.

Curiosity Killed the Cat

Fetch!

One of Cherry's favorite games is fetch. At first it was only with her crinkly toy, but now it's with any object she can find. I've played with yarn, fabric, those plastic things that clothing tags are attached with, and feather toys. She's also starting to figure out that if she brings it to me(and not just onto my bed), I'll throw it. She hasn't figured out that I need to be awake for this to happen though. Some mornings I wake up covered in toys. One morning I woke up tangled in yarn.

So here's a quick video I got of her. She had been playing a bit before, so it didn't last long. Also she knows when I have my phone out to take a video. In this video she's playing with a plastic tag thing.

Play Time

Sorry for the bad quality and for the fact that I didn't turn my phone...

KITTENS!

Today was my first day working at the cat shelter where we adopted Cherry. It was awesome. It didn't start out very good. First, my GPS decided to freeze about 10 seconds into my drive. Seriously, we didn't even get off my street before it stopped. Luckily, my mom used to live on the street the shelter is on and I was able to get directions. I found the street fine, but finding the actual shelter was another story. It really looks nothing like a shelter and they don't have a sign. I did make it on time though.

My first thought about the place was how welcoming they were. I tentatively walked into what I figured was the main entrance (after sadly deciding to leave the shelter "mascot" that I was petting) and right away they knew who I was. My first day at the last shelter I worked at was full of questions like 'What are you doing here?' Don't get me wrong, the other shelter was fine. I just didn't feel very welcomed there. The person I worked with was nice, but everyone else seemed to give me a cold shoulder. At this new shelter they were very quick to introduce me to everyone.

Anyway, they have me working in the isolation room. So basically I got to play with kittens today. A lot had ringworm, so we couldn't cuddle them much, but the healthy ones were so much fun! It was crazy to watch them all bouncing around.

I think my favorite part today was cleaning a cage with five kittens (don't worry, they're big cages and temporary). The cleaning wasn't much fun, but the kittens sure made me laugh. This particular cage had healthy kittens, so I could cuddle them all I wanted.

For cleaning the cages, we have to take all the kittens out and put them in a cat carrier on top of the cage. Do you have any idea how hard it is to transfer five kittens into a carrier? Especially when one is blind? It is definitely a challenge. Luckily I didn't get the cage with ten ringworm kittens. They were going everywhere. Two were pretty shy and didn't like being held, so I quickly put them up in the carrier. The other two "normal" ones were pretty indifferent. I mainly focused on holding the blind one. It was such a cutie and really adventurous. I cuddled it for a bit before placing it with its siblings and going to cleaning.

The cleaning was not much fun. Kitten diarrhea is not much fun to clean up. Just take my word for it. And as much as getting the kittens into the carrier, getting them back into the cage was even worse. I opened the little carrier door and almost had the blind kitten(long haired orange tabby) walk right off the edge of the cage. I grabbed that one first and placed it on the bedding. The little cutie just rolled around. Who knows what the tiny kitten was imagining. The two indifferent ones(long haired, light orange&white tabby and darker orange&white tabby) were easy to get into the crate, but then they wanted back out. I easily grabbed one of the shy kittens(black&white kitten) and got it back in the cage, but the other one(black kitten) wouldn't come out. I really didn't want to just reach in and grab it, but that's what I ended up doing. The two shy kittens went off exploring their cage while I was occupied with the long haired light orange&white tabby. This one was really begging for attention! It was rolling all around and letting me pet its belly. It didn't want to be held, but it definitely wanted love.

I seriously wish I knew the genders of these kittens. They don't have names either. My understanding is that they're new to the shelter and I don't think the kittens are really told apart by gender until they're fixed. The fixed ones get paper collars that are color coded by gender. Usually they get a name and their age is written on the collar too.

So yeah, that was my first day. I cleaned some cages and played with some kittens. I enjoyed it a lot. I've never really played with a kitten before and it was a lot of fun being in rooms full of them. It was like a dream come true.

Haha...yeah

Wow, I suck at keeping things updated. Not much has happened since my last post. I'm out of school now and my summer class starts Monday. I also somehow ended up volunteering again. I'm going to be working at the shelter we got Cherry from. I've wanted to work at this shelter for years. I tried to volunteer there last year, but that never worked out. So I think I'm starting there on Tuesday. Wish me luck!

Anyway, Cherry and Woody have been the same. Woody got shaved. Cherry's invented new ways of being a little pain in the ass. Her newest thing is sleeping in my office chair. It was a slow take over. She started with sitting in my lap while I was at my computer. Then she moved on to sleeping on the back of the chair. Then it was sleeping behind me. Now she just takes over the whole chair. Little bitch.

Taking over my lap.

I don't even know what she's doing here.

Back of the chair...

Complete take over. Little bitch.

And here's Woody shaved. He was so damn soft.