Pagan

My mother-in-law's dog passed away today.




Pagan was an old, sweet gal. I petted her for the last time on Sunday night at family dinner.

Big hugs and lots of healing thoughts are going out to my mother-in-law and her family tonight. Join me, won't you?

Sing it with me now.

Our lovely little Mao is one year old today. There's no better way to celebrate than to pull out some pictures from the ol' archives (and to sing a little birthday song).



Happy birthday to yoooooooooooooou



Happy birthday to yoooooooooooooou



Happy birthday, dear Maozers



Happy birthday to you!

Our Other Three Babies

Reading my blog lately you'd think that our three cats just fell off the face of the planet once Charlie was born. Let me assure you, that's so not the case. They're still around, causing trouble and being insanely cute.

I thought for sure that bringing Charlie home would cause mass hysteria amongst the cats, but they seemed to just go about their normal business instead of being all dramatic and hiding under the bed for days. Mao has been curious since the beginning; I caught her licking Charlie's head the other day. Kerwin and Woogas are just kind of "meh" about Charlie, like "Oh, it's you again."

Here are some recent photos of our fuzzy ones.

Mao inspects Charlie once he arrives home from the hospital.



Mao inspects Charlie as he sleeps.



Mao attacks Kerwin.



Mao watches her back.



Mao, Woogas, and Kerwin hide in the shower at Mandy and Paul's house. (We had to take them there when our house was being exterminated.)



Woogas gets pissed. (This one cracks me up - it's just begging for a caption!)



Mao and Woogas decide that it's not fair for Charlie to get all my attention.





I miss spending tons of time petting and holding the cats. I feel pretty guilty sometimes for not giving them more attention. (Damn, is there anything I don't feel guilty about?) The other day Angelina came over and watched Charlie for a few hours so I could take a nap. All three of the cats piled onto the bed with me. It was awesome waking up with all of them there - a nice throwback to the pre-Charlie days.

Ten Things I Love About Mao

I'm sure most of you remember when we got Mao.

She started off as this little fearful puffball who kept pooping on the carpet because she was too scared to come out from behind the chair, and all it took was a little bit of salad dressing on my fingers to get her to bond with me. Now we are best of friends, and she is pretty damn fearless.



She's only been in our lives since October, but there are already so many things I love about her. Here are ten of them:

1) She loves chewing on things. She's like a dog or teething baby; she will chew on whatever you give her. I have bite marks on my phone from her attacking it.

2) She purrs extraordinarily loudly - and often for no reason at all. Sometimes we'll let her sleep with us, and I'll wake up in the middle of the night and hear her purring. She's just happy.

3) She still has the cutest little kitten tummy ever.

4) She loves to charge at both Woogas and Kerwin. She'll get down really low and even wiggle her butt back and forth to gain some more speed. It is hilarious to watch.

5) She has no idea how small she is. I've seen her try to make jumps and end up on the floor. She attacks Woogas and Kerwin with all her might, and they take her down with one swipe of her paw.

6) Her nose is tiny, pink, and adorable. I could look at it all day.

7) She loves to hang out with me. If I'm anywhere doing whatever, chances are she'll be the first to get up to where I am and either lay on me or next to me (purring, of course).

8) She wants to be just like Kerwin. She follows him everywhere and does what he does.

9) She doesn't meow. The only time I've heard her meow is the first couple of nights we had her when she was scared.

10) She gets her claws stuck in everything. It's not uncommon to see her unable to move because her claws are stuck in the carpet, for example. (See picture below.)

Ten Things I Love About Kerwin

Kerwin is our amazing and huge black male cat. When I discovered him stuck up in a tree back in August 2006, we certainly were not in the market for another cat. We already had Woogas, you see. But there was no way we could have left that tiny, frantic, strange-looking, black kitten stuck up in a tree, so Roy climbed up and got him down. We left him on our apartment patio with some food and let him decide what he wanted to do. He chose to stay with us. So we brought him inside, introduced him to Woogas, and watched the hilarity unfold. And we have never regretted it for a moment.



Here are some of the things that I absolutely love about Kerwin:

1) He acts like he's all cool, but when sometimes when he is alone in a room, he cries because he is lonely.

2) He loves water. It is not uncommon for him to walk around the edge of the bathtub (we have a claw-footed bathtub) while I am showering or taking a bath. He's even gotten in the shower with me before (but has always hidden himself behind the shower curtain). And he loves to have water dripped on him. He has spent hours and hours hanging out in the bathroom.

3) He has tufts of hair sticking up between his toes.

4) He loves to burrow, especially under the covers on our bed.

5) He stretches out all nice and long when I start petting him, making sure that I don't miss scratching his tummy.

6) He has bald (well, thinning) patches over his eyes (see the picture below).

7) He has a big nose. This was one of the things I first noticed about him: the hugeness of his schnoz. Not only is it huge, it's also as wet as a dog's. Given his burrowing tendencies, it's not uncommon to feel a wet nose on my leg under the covers at times. (As he has gotten older, his nose doesn't seem as big. I think he just had to grow into it.)

8) He has a million nicknames (Little Man, Little Guy, Baby K, Good Kid, etc.) and takes them all like a man. He probably even enjoys them.

9) He can't be bothered with wearing a collar. If I put it on him, he takes it off. He's a smart one.

10) From the start, he trusted me. As soon as he came out of the tree that we found him in, he let me hold him close to me, and he automatically began purring. I think all he needed was someone to love him, and we certainly do. We've received nothing but love in return. (Okay, to be fair, I'm leaving out all the times he's pooped in front of the litter box, as well as his other overly aggressive habits.)

Ten Things I Loved (and Miss) About Sasha

One year ago, one of the best dogs I have ever known passed away. You can read about it here. She came into my life when I was 13 years old and has never left my heart since. I still think of her and miss her every day.

Here's my Sasha list:

1) She grunted and groaned when she moved because she was overweight. I loved all her little noises.

2) She had soulful brown eyes. I remember the times when I would look into them as I cried, and it was like she could feel my pain.

3) Her "eyebrows" were also very expressive. She could look pensive or worried or happy depending on what those eyebrows were doing.

4) She ate whatever she could get away with. This included other dog poo, cat poo, her own poo (probably), dead things, all of my mom's cats' food, etc. Her eating was totally out of control, and obviously she had some nasty habits. But when I think back on these things, I can't help but smile.

5) Whenever she wagged her tail, her whole body moved with it. She was just entirely too excited all the time.

6) She had such a sweet disposition and got along well with my mom's cats. I would watch her clean and chew on them and let them chew on and clean her. So cute.

7) She would roll onto her back when you walked up to her. It was her standard "look at me, I'm cute" pose.

8) She looked so damn cute once she'd been groomed and had her fur trimmed. I remember someone referring to her as a creampuff. Yep, that sounds right to me. Sasha the creampuff.

9) No matter how long it had been since I'd been home to visit, she always remembered me. Always.

10) She was never a sleek and perfect purebred dog, but she was always beautiful to me.

Love you, Firf, and miss you tons and tons. I hope there's nothing but happiness (and food) where you are.

Ten Things I Love About Woogas

To kick off Love Week...

You'd think that I'd devote Love Week solely to human beings, but no, our pets are absolutely part of our family. We have three lovely little furball kitties, and I adore them.

Woogas was our first cat. She has been with us since New Year's Eve 2005, when we walked into Petsmart to buy some fish and walked out with her instead. She was a tiny little kitten then. Funny thing, the Humane Society (who actually sold her to us) said she was a boy. We didn't find out she was actually a girl until several months later when we took her in to get her fixed.

Woogas' real name is actually Ashe, but somewhere along the way she became Woogas (pronounced "Woo-guhz"). Don't ask me when or how this happened. I only know that it happened, and to hear her referred to as "Ashe" really throws me off sometimes.



Here are ten things that I adore about Woogas:

1) She's the best communicator of all three cats. She has no problem letting us know what she wants or when she wants it. As a result, she comes across as being a little needy and high maintenance. But she absolutely "talks" to me, I swear.

2) She loves for me to pick her up and hold her and carry her around like she's a baby. We do this every single day, sometimes multiple times a day, and it makes her so happy that she rubs her head all over my head, getting god-knows-what all over my hair.

3) And speaking of god-knows-what, she has a leaky eye. She had it when we first got her, and it has stuck around. It's a virus that flares up from time to time, and I guess it's kind of nasty, but it's one of those things that's undeniably Woogas.

4) She tends to just plop down on the ground and stretch out so that she can't be missed.

5) Every morning she is sitting on the kitchen counter waiting for one of us to open the door and let her into the other part of the house. Meowing like crazy, of course.

6) She is a beautiful grey tabby with lovely markings and huge yellow-green eyes and a tiny pink nose. Oh, and she smells good. Really good.

7) Her stomach is all loose and wiggly from when she was fixed; I love jiggling it back and forth.

8) She kneads my head when I'm sleeping and she wants my attention. It's very annoying when she does it, but it's very endearing at the same time.

9) She will not eat food that's been sitting in the bowl for awhile. Nope, it's gotta be fresh from the cat chow container.

10) She likes to knock things off of a surface one thing at a time. She will take several minutes to scoot one thing off a table. She's very methodical when she's being annoying - another quintessential Woogas quirk that is both irritating and endearing.

To counteract all that Monday negativity....

Here's something cuter.





Can you believe that Mao is seven months old now and yet she only weighs about six pounds? What a shrimp.

Shrimp or not, she's getting fixed very soon.

(PS - Thanks. You know why.)

A Mother's Grace

My mom called me last night and wearily told me that she'd had to put one of our family cats, Riley, to sleep earlier in the day. He was sixteen years old, and his age had finally caught up with him.

Riley and I were not close. My brother referred to him as "intense," and that's probably a good word choice - we never formed a close bond, but still, this was sad for me to hear. My mom's house will be a little more empty without our black and white buddy. I wish Riley the most perfect peace.

Here's to you, Riley. Your slobbering was top-notch, and you were annoying as all hell. You look a little crazy in the picture below, and I wish I could blame it entirely on the flash. But you were one of a kind, and I'm going to miss you. RIP, ol' buddy.



These phone calls I receive from my mom are the ones that I dread; they are reminders of what I had, what's been lost, and the time that's passed. When I moved to California back in 2001, my mom had four dogs and 10+ cats, remnants of our growing up and our addiction to taking in strays - that's a whole lot of pets, but living in the country on a large plot of land, we always had plenty of space for them to roam and be happy. They've all had lives full of fields, food, and love, and that is the only comfort I know when one of them passes away. When I come back to my mom's house, the place where I grew up, there's that feeling of emptiness - all four dogs are gone now, and most of the cats have died as well. I will never see any of my favorites again. (I know you're not supposed to have favorites, but there were those that I was really attached to. I still get that telltale lump in my throat any time I think of any of them.)

Every time we lose a family pet, there's my own sadness to deal with, but there's also the acknowledgment that my mom is a quiet hero. She accompanies our pets as they take their final breaths; she is there as they slip away. She calls me when it's over and listens to me cry. Sometimes she shares in the tears with me, but most of the time, it's about her comforting me. She's the one who does the hard, dirty work, and she does it with grace.

As I prepare for my own journey to motherhood, I know that this is one of those really difficult things that I'm eventually going to have to deal with. Some day I'm going to have to tell our kids that their favorite kitty or puppy is very sick and needs to be put to sleep. I'm going to have to explain the fact of death, that most unexplainable thing, and I'm going to have to watch my children experience heartbreak.

How will I do this? Will I cry with them? Will I wait until they've gone to bed and then let it all out? How do you balance a mother's grace with that sorrow? How do you put aside your own pain while shouldering the sadness of your children?

I do not have the answers to those questions. But one thing I do know is that my mom will always be my hero, because even though I'm pushing 30 and my brother is 33, all she still wants to do is protect us from the pain of the world. It's a hard, selfless job that I'm taking on, and I sometimes wonder if I have it in me to be that kind of a hero (or a hero at all, really).

And then there's the knowledge that I would do anything to protect this little life inside me. I know this, because every time I see Bunlet moving and wiggling away on the ultrasound screen, all the crappy pregnancy side effects are totally worth it. I'll take more insomnia, more dry-heaving, and more leakage if it means that Bunlet will thrive. You can even throw in some vomiting and constipation for good measure.

Bunlet seems to have unlocked some strength inside me that I didn't know I had. So I guess you could say that Bunlet is my hero, too. I'm proud to be my kiddo's mom, and I'm proud to be my mom's kiddo. Without them, I wouldn't know grace, and I sure as hell wouldn't know this kind of love.

bite me

So I've been a really horrible blogger and blog commenter. Things have been off-the-wall insane, and they're going to get worse (busier) before they get better. All I have to say is, "What the hell was I thinking when I signed up for NaBloPoMo this year?" I had a million great ideas for posts, and I have several that I've written in my head. And that's where they'll stay for now.

Anyway, I thought I'd share some pictures of Mao doing what she does best: biting everything...





...and then sleeping:




Ahh, the life of a cat. I need that life.

November begins.

November is a problematic month for me, because it marks the anniversary of two major life-changing events. It's impossible for me to enter into this month and not think about how these things have shaped the person I am today. However, I'm pretty proud of the person I've become, and I've learned that past events don't have to dictate my future.

That said, I am really excited about this November. I'm cautiously excited about the results of the election, but more than anything, I'm ready for the election roller coaster ride to be over. It has been a troubling and emotional time for us. I'm ready for things to settle down a bit, although I have a feeling that there will continue to be a major uproar even after Election Day. I feel strangely honored to be a part of such an important election, though. And having a sense of humor about things goes a long way!



I'm also thrilled about our new house. We got the keys last weekend and moved in most of our books and half of our storage unit. This weekend is devoted to moving the other half of our storage unit and most everything in our office at our current place. The big move will take place next weekend, but hopefully we'll only have to worry about getting our furniture over there. I'm ready to get in and get all settled.

I'm also very pleased to announce that we finally have a name for our little orange ball of adorableness. It's a name we thought of before we even met her, and we weren't sure if it was the right fit. One week later, we've decided that if anyone can take on this name, it's her.

She's not overly complicated, so she needed (something that could be shortened to) a one-syllable name. She's orange, so that needed to be taken into consideration. She's sneaky, another characteristic that she had to have in order to be christened....

Miss Agent Orange

Or Mao for short.



Another thing about our Mao: she farts. all. the. time. I have never met a kitten that farted as much as she does. Actually, to be honest, I really didn't think cats farted. But apparently Mao is half cat, half warfare tactic - so Agent Orange makes a whole lot of sense. (And then there are the obvious political references, but make of that what you will.)

So yeah, she can stink up a room like it's nobody's business, but she has really stolen our hearts with her never-ending cuteness. The other two cats are finally beginning to warm up to her; tonight will be the first night they all sleep together in the bathroom.

Here are some pictures of our little fartastic wonder playing with Roy this morning:













Obviously, when you've got something this cute to reckon with, flatulence doesn't seem like such a deal-breaker.

Lastly, it's NaBloPoMo! Let the posting frenzy begin!

Breakthrough!

Last night, our little orange goddess finally came out of her shell. She'd spent most of her time hiding behind a chair or in a magazine rack or under our clawfoot bathtub. (Sometimes she'd reluctantly let us hold her, but only if we could catch her.) I guess yesterday she'd had enough of that hiding game, so she was out and about when I got home from class. I sat down to eat a salad and pita bread, and the next thing I knew, I saw her staring up at me.



I held out my hand to her, and she immediately began licking my fingers. (Apparently she liked the salad dressing quite a bit!) I then picked her up and was delighted to hear her purring. She didn't leave my side all night. We watched TV together, and we let her sleep with us. (We won't be making a habit out of letting her sleep with us at night. As soon as the other two are more comfortable with her, she'll be staying with them in the bathroom every night.)

It was very strange sleeping with such a small creature. I woke up probably at least once an hour to make sure she was still breathing. I have to admit that it was so wonderful waking up to that little orange face. She's pretty dang cute. I had forgotten how much I love kittens.

We still haven't named her, but I know it will come to us.

Crazy Cat Day

Back when I met Ernie the cat, I realized that I really wanted another fuzzy creature around the house. A couple of weeks ago, we were in Petsmart and ran into a lady who was fostering this little orange kitty. He was really sweet and terribly cute. Turns out he had giardia but was being treated for it. We got the foster mother's number with the intent of taking him off her hands when he got better.

As it turns out, he still wasn't better when I talked to her last week, and she had decided to take him back to Petsmart to continue to be treated, as his treatment was costing her too much money. We were unwilling to take in a sick kitten, since we already have two cats who are healthy.

Melinda recently got a kitten of her own, and so today she took us to her friend's house so that we could pick one out as well. We met Bart, Melinda's new terror, for the first time:



And we met this tiny and sweet little girl:





We brought her home, and she has been incredibly mellow but very standoffish. I don't think she's really used to being around people, but we're hoping to bring her out of her shell. Woogas and Kerwin have been skulking around being pissy since she showed up, but I'm sure they will end up being best of friends.

We still don't have a name for her. We have lots of cute ones picked out (one in particular that I love), but I'm not sure which ones, if any, fit her yet. If you have any suggestions, leave them in the comments!

Products of Insomnia

I've always been an insomniac. It flares up from time to time, usually when I have a lot on my mind. So I find myself on the computer at odd hours reading blogs and editing photos. I thought I'd share a few recent pictures of the non-human life in our household these days.

Roy has been obsessed with buying new fish lately.




And I've been obsessed with getting good pictures of our cats. This is not an easy task, as they tend to move really quickly. They don't like posing for me for some reason.




Kerwin (below) looks pissed, but let me assure you: he's a really good-natured cat. I'm pretty sure I woke him up to take this picture.

Human's Best Friend

Mandy and Paul found a lost dog in the neighborhood a couple of nights ago. She is probably less than a year old and is honestly one of the sweetest dogs I've ever met. They would love to keep her, but their dog doesn't get along with other dogs. We would love to take her, but we just don't have the space for her. Any Southern California people looking for a very sweet and beautiful puppy? We would love to find her a good home.

If you are interested, send me an email at leslie@bugweb.net.

Cerby's taking over the world!

Back when I took Mandy and Paul's engagement pictures, I also took pictures of their dog Cerby for their table numbers at their wedding. I finally got around to editing them this evening. I had to do some creative cropping, but I still think the finished product is really cute. Here are some of my favorites: