Catching up on Cats

Kitten season is in full swing. These guys should find homes, it's the older ones that I hope will also go. The sociable adult cats can move into the community room, which houses about ten in peaceable comfort with climbing trees and cubby holes to nap in. Of course, I have always gone for kittens but as I get older it is only right that if I adopt any more cats (No!, says Ramona) they should be adults.
Someone dropped fourteen cats and kittens off at the shelter either at night or just without warning. One is a Himalayan I haven't seen yet.


Tootsie

Simon

Raul, an elegant House Panther if I ever saw one.

Oscar, obviously a real character here.

Mai

Leo

Felix

Cameron

In the Garden

Hello friends who have not given up on me since my lack of posts for over a month. Here for you is a tour of the garden on a rare sunny day in June. It has been raining for over six weeks here and we are all waterlogged and somewhat gloomy but in our Yankee way, resolute. The rain is pouring on the roof this morning and the felines are only opening one eye to say "what a fricking drag and jezzes christ." The garden has been growing, it is on a hill and well drained but what the sun loving tomatoes will do is anyone's guess. We do have onions, garlic greens, lettuce, peas, chard with beautiful stalks of pink and yellow and the last of the strawberries to gather before they rot. We did mulch them with straw but this summer, they should have had more. Any lying on the ground are grey and gone. The strawberry farm down the road is probably a disaster this year and the corn fields by the river are sodden with stalks only a few inches high. But here is a tour on a lovely, hopeful day in June. Everything has grown a lot since these photos.

The raised onion bed. Good thing it's raised and drains well. The purple flowers are Olof's beloved patch of chives.

The potato field with the squash just beginning. The elder's home below with their summer gazebo on the deck. The felines hide in the tall grasses behind the potatoes and keep watch. They also have catnip bushes to lie in and dream away the summer days. When it is not raining.

The path by the onions, well mulched this year. A good thing or the weeds would be knee high. They like lots of rain.

Another view, our house below.

The upper terrace above the terraces for strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. Potatoes can be seen and small broccoli, radishes and chard.

Olof lived in Brussels once and never forgot The Little Pisser.

The Tea House. Below it is a lovely ravine where the brook is rushing waterfalls this year. Olof built this one summer when I was away for a week. I should go away more often, eh?

Our beloved Brendan lies here by the upper pond with his brother Finnegan (known as Innigan Outigan Finnegan) and Silas the Faithful. Fergus is in an urn on the shelf, waiting for when we shall meet again at the Rainbow Bridge.

My favorite room in my home. We have dinner with friends here on summer evenings. When it is not pouring rain.

Hello to all, how's your summer? 

Billie the Kid

This little guy is in the group of four kittens in their own private room. He's not related to them. I don't remember the details of his story but he was injured and he might be deaf. He has a purr loud enough to make your heart vibrate.

He's the first kitten I've come across with a grade A Fergus personality. He climbed up on my shoulders and head while I was trying to get his photo, purring all the time and then he happily wanted to play play play.

He's a funny little thing with those extra toes. I'm sure he won't be at the shelter long, if any cat lover with the eyes to see how wonderful he is meets him.

Yes, I'd take him home in a blink of a kitty eye. And just think of the havoc it would create around here.

They steal your heart and break it into little kitty bits, don't they?

Atlas and Ollie

These guys are too much. If I remember the story correctly, Ollie is the kitten found at a dumpster who survived being poisoned. A trap was set to catch him and huge Atlas was the surprise catch. It seems these two are bonded buddies and they are currently sharing a nice large condo with a screen porch at the shelter while they wait for someone who connects with them as a pair.

They're pretty darn nice if you ask me.

Instant family!

To the Shelter

It's been ages since I had any time at all to run down to the shelter and get some photos. Nothing but a long list of video projects to get through. And now it's garden time. Harper and Ramona are seizing every second of the days in their fenced in yard. They wait for us to do boarder patrol in the morning (the bears are coming over the fence almost every night) and they know 6PM is dinner time and they (usually) come when I call them. By then they are ready to eat and run for a sleeping spot. They'll be crashed out until morning when they are ready to do it again.

I really believe cats need to be able to be outdoors in a safe way. They just come alive with the smells and sounds of the outside. 

Little Lady waits for someone. When I entered the kitten room where there were four, the soft sound of purring rose to my ears. These guys are sweet.

And passes the time.
This is Janis, she is five and was found as a stray.

And Ziggy, who is ten.
And Priscilla whol had just arrived with siblings.

Dancer has moved into the community room, which gives him room to move around and be sociable with the other cats in there. When I was there he was sound asleep. It is a good place for him to be at this time.

Ramona

Fooling around with my Canon this morning

Spring Comes and Everybody Wakes Up

Spring finally begins to arrive up here in the Frozen North and we emerge into the light. Of course, we've been outside most of the winter skiing but now we can actually sit somedays with our summer chairs embedded in the receding snow. Olof gets out the camera and catches some of the action. There was a flock of turkeys too, to keep things lively, but the bear seems to have chased them off. We've all warned to take in the bird feeders in early spring, because once a bear learns to associate people with food they are in trouble. There's a large campground across the river. So no sympathy for hungry bears.

Cats for Obama Unite!

Ok so this isn't about cats except it is about someone we think is a pretty cool cat, our President. This morning the NY Times posted two photos, one where his hair is black and one showing it as rapidly turning grey under the job stresses. Below is a link to the story on the Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/us/politics/05gray.html

Well. Olof knows a bit about photography, yanno. He looked at the two photos and saw that the exposure on the greyish one was way off for the skin tone. So he corrected the grey one and voila, no grey hair.




Above is the NY Times photo showing Obama with grey hair/



This is Olof's corrected photo matching the skin tone, voila, no grey hair.

What do all you cool cats think?

Shelter Photos

Shooting with my new camera, a Canon 5D MK II. Things are quiet at the shelter before the coming storm of kitten season. Two pregnant moms currently in foster care. I hope the spay/neuter program has made a difference in the numbers this spring.  Don't miss the story of Atlas and Ollie posted on the shelter's new blog

Vince

Phinneas

Ollie

Margret

Hemingway (the toes of course)

What February Brought

This was taken a few days after we all arrived home from the thousand mile journey. Three years ago. They are grown up lovely, loving cats now. Ramona is still sweet and mysterious and wants to be with us. Harper is the huggiest boy cat I ever had. His favorite sleeping place is next to me with my arm around him. You can forgive a cat like that anything. Good thing, since when he is upset he sometimes poops on the rug. Yeah, I caught him doing it so I know it is not Ramona. As if Ramona would ever do anything so undignified.

I am just working my way through a pile of projects. I will be writing a full length video on steam trains. Should be fun. That is after I edit the German and French recordings.

The sun is higher now and it is the good time of winter. The buds on the trees are just starting to swell and the turkeys in the yard and figuring out who gets to keep the ladies. We have light from about 6:45 to after 5. It's nice. I got out the packets of seeds and I am trying to see which ones I think will germinate and which ones I really should buy fresh. I'm being thrifty, well as much as I can be.

We've been slogging through our winter routine here but it will end soon with the first day you can open the windows. That will probably be in March.

And then we'll fix the fence and everyone will stumble out into the sunlight. ahh spring is on the way out there somewhere.

Winter

Harper and Ramona are raising heck this morning. How can two cats make such thundering paws? And there is a lot of mrrr mrrrs and floofy tails going on. I think it is spring fever since we saw a robin yesterday though the snow is way up over my knees.

Not a whole lot of news here, we're just working away and watching the snow pile up. I'll be editing the translation of my audio tour in German and French and then I have a large writing project that will take me to spring. And we are dealing with those tedious internet issues when you have a bunch of domain names and web sites.

The felines have adjusted fairly well to being indoors, though it drove Harper nuts at first. Sometimes we take him over to visit next door. He likes that.

I'll catch up with blogging when I have something that resembles free time.

Meow to all

Shelter VisitS

  Things are fairly quiet at the shelter right now. Kitten season is over and there are empty cages. Dancer was  pretty speakative, he is living in a ground floor condo and was lively when I was there, chirping and chortling. He is still having occasional seizures, sadly, and his urine is too dark. I hope he will get out of the shelter and be able to have some kind of a good life. Remember, he has been in the shelter since he was a young kitten. If any of you out there know how I can get enough money to build a sanctuary, let me know. The organization I work with (The Rozzie May Animal Alliance) really wants to do it. We can probably get land, bought or donated. I would like to have a place where cats like Dancer, who don't have good chances of being adopted, could have a decent life with room to roam and people to spend time with them. This would be a different set up from a shelter, with long term living arrangements for the felines.

Speaking of cats whose adoption chances aren't great, this is Abby, who has been returned. I hate to see cats coming back. Personally, I like cats with attitude, it shows they have pride and self respect. Every cat is an individual and if you want a relationship with them you have to understand them. A cat is not a dog! Abby can come to my sanctuary too.

There is one little room with six orange cats in it, all very scared, since they were rescued from a hoarding situation. Even though I would love to have more cats, it is better to understand how they get along and how they can get stressed if there are too many in a living place. Just like people! So all six of these beautiful cats have those big scared eyes. This is Tootsie.

It is a challenge as a photographer to go into a room (with pink walls) and try to get a decent photo of a frightened cat. You can't really do them justice, you just have to try to get something that shows their beauty and help them get adopted over Petfinder. Her name is Juniper.

This little girl cat should get adopted pretty quickly. Her chances are good. Sweet Josephine.

And another scared cheese kitty named Saffron. (I'm just mad about Saffron) If you know who sang that song then you are my age.

And another. Sage.

The biggest challenge for me is getting decent photos of the black cats. The light isn't good, the cats are in motion and I am not a good enough photographer to deal with it well. I just bought some books on photography and I am going to work at it and maybe redo all my black cat portraits. This one came out the best that day at 1/60 shutter speed. ISO 1600 and f5.6. It did not look good in my camera but looked better when I got it in the computer. I end up using a high ISO because of the lighting but I try to go lower in the shelter when it will work. This is Odessa and she has wonderful soft fur that doesn't translate to this photo.

Another from the cheese group, named Curry.

And Tonka. Boy, if you want a nice big cat this boy is a twenty pounder and its not fat. With personality to boot.

And my favorite and the one in my I'd take you home in a second list. Victor is a kitten, he and his mom were found wild and he is thinking about how he is going to deal with this new situation. Look at those eyes. There is a feline person there.