So, last night Tony and Melfi were returned. It turned out that someone in the family had worse allergies than he realized, and so back they came.
I’m sad for Tony and Melfi, but I am also a little bit glad that I’ll be able to see them again! (That is, of course, if they don’t get themselves adopted again before Friday, which is always a possibility!)
Edited to add (and I’ll repeat it in tomorrow’s post, for those who’ve already read today’s post) : Meadow was adopted last night!
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Crooked Acres Wednesday.
We’ve had a crazy number of bright red male Cardinals around here lately. They’re so bright and pretty!
Bluejay is all “I’ma take care of this acorn for you. YOU’RE WELCOME.”
The squirrels have been all OVER the bird feeders lately, and give me the stinkeye if I wait too long to refill them.
Chickadee!
Female Cardinal. So pretty!
Male Cardinal on the left, female Cardinal in the middle, and White-Crowned Sparrow on the right.
Look at all those Cardinals! And there were more out there, I just couldn’t fit them all in one picture.
Om nom NOM.
Pretty rooster.
BB, showing off her pretty, glossy feathers.
For the most part, these past few days, the chickens have stayed in the coop. Fred opens the big door when the sun comes up, and they like to line up across the doorway and warm their feathers in the sun.
Gracie’s all “What cold?” It got down to 4ºF the night before last, and the dogs slept out in the middle of the back forty. This is the weather they LOVE – they wouldn’t mind a few feet of snow, too, please.
Fred came inside yesterday morning and said “We have a problem.”
“What’s that?” I said.
“The pond is frozen over,” he said. “Except for a small part in the middle, where the ducks are.”
“Are they stuck?” I asked. “They can’t get out?”
“I don’t think they can get out,” he said. So we bundled up and he got a few ice-breaking tools, and we went out to the pond.
“What?” said the ducks.
They swam casually around their small patch of open water.
They dove and flapped their wings and swam around some more. Fred stood at the shore and used an 8-pound maul to break ice. He leaned out as far as he could, and I was SO SURE he was going to fall in. But he didn’t.
Gracie watched carefully, in case her life-saving skills were needed (they weren’t.)
Fred wasn’t able to break the ice all the way out to where the ducks were. So he headed off to find a few heavy rocks that he could toss onto the ice, that would hopefully do the job. When he came back, I said “Are you positive they can’t get out of there if they want to?”
“Well,” he said. “Not POSITIVE. But I think they’re stuck.”
I got some catfish food out of the barrel nearby, and tossed it onto the ice.
And then they went back into the water. They looked at us and said “We never SAID we were stuck. You just assumed!”
“Silly humans!”
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This is how John Smith keeps warm when it’s cold outside.
When Fred sees big feathers in the back forty, he picks them up and brings them inside. I found a small pile of duck feathers on a shelf the other day, and took one upstairs to the kittens. They found it pretty amazing.
Bunnie licked it.
John Smith got some chomps in.
Tricki kept a close eye on that feather and its whereabouts.
::CRONCH::
That is one fascinatin’ feather.
See, Tricki? You just have to be patient, and good things will come to you!
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Warmest room in the house, and always chock-full of cats on cold days. Alice is atop the cat tree, Tommy’s on the window bed, and Stefan, Loony Jake, and Sugarbutt are on the bed.
If you’d like to send happy thoughts this way, Alice is having surgery today for bladder stones. She was not a happy camper on the way to the vet yesterday (this is the third trip she’d made in that carrier, in less than a week), but hopefully she’ll recover from surgery quickly and feel much better. We weren’t expecting to leave her at the vet last night, but our vet is awesome and was pretty sure he would be able to get her surgery done today (and if not today, then very first thing tomorrow).
Fred and I are in complete agreement that we LOVE our vet. The funny thing is that I was just kind of making a stab at finding a vet relatively close by, when I made the first appointment with him last year, and totally struck gold with this guy. They’re only 10 minutes from here, we like him, we like his staff, they know us – and in fact, last Friday morning when we were leaving the grocery store (which is next door to the vet’s office – usually when we have a routine appointment for a cat, Fred takes the cat in to the appointment and I run over and get groceries) one of the vet techs stuck her head out the door and asked Fred why he wasn’t wearing shorts (Fred wears shorts year-round. Often, in the late Fall, we’ll go somewhere and he’ll be in shorts and a t-shirt, and I’ll be in jeans, boots, a heavy jacket, and gloves.) So anyway, yes – Alice is in the best of hands, and I’m sure surgery will go smoothly and well, but your good thoughts certainly couldn’t hurt!
(Fred says that now that Miz Poo has hit old age, she’s passing the Money Pit torch to Alice!)
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Previously
2013: “What can I say? I’m lubbable.”
2012: No entry.
2011: No entry.
2010: They sure are kissable, these kittens.
2009: No entry.
2008: No entry.
2007: Moonman has seriously come out of his shell. (Note: “Moonman” is now “Joe Bob”!)
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.