Naughty kitty Merlin loves prosciutto ham so very much — and he’s completely unconcerned about my unwillingness to let him assault me and me my plate — that I have to eat it standing in the middle of the room while holding my plate in my hand. Even then, he begs and wiggles and wiggles and begs from the nearest perch, with eyes as wide as saucers, like this:
All cats are weird… just in different ways. Here are our three cats on cuddling, in a nutshell:
Kitty Oliver
Cuddle? Never! That’s just another of your secret plots to kill me! I will satisfy my need to cuddle by sleeping on your chest when you are not a threat — namely, while you sleep.
Kitty Elliot
I have an intense desire to cuddle you for the next five minutes, and you are required pay full attention to me and only me. After that, I will treat you with the scorn you so richly deserve… until I desperately need another cuddle, that is.
Kitty Merlin
OMG, I missed you while you were gone for five minutes! Can we please cuddle on the sofa for… um… two hours? Yup, just flop me into whatever position you prefer. Of course, I’ll purr the whole time!
Alas, Merlin is often too busy being naughty for such delightful cuddling!
Back in November, I snapped a few pictures of my super-awesome farrier, Chad Tuttle, at work shaping Lila’s shoes. By such “hot shoeing,” the farrier gets a better fit than he would otherwise.
I vastly prefer to allow a horse to go barefoot if possible. The horse’s hoof still needs to be trimmed by the farrier every eight weeks, but that’s a much faster and much cheaper process than shoeing. Plus, if the unshod horse kicks man or beast, that might hurt, but it’s not likely to do any serious damage. When the shod horse kicks man or beast, that’s likely to require medical attention.
However, sometimes the horses do require shoes to protect their feet, despite those downsides. Last summer, Lila’s soles were sore. The moment that we put on shoes, she became a vastly better horse — far more forward and free in her movements than she’d ever been. I put shoes on Elsie then too because she’d worn her feet down and gotten quite sore. We just pulled Elsie’s shoes off last week: her feet had grown out, the ground is reasonably soft now, and I’m not riding her much. Still, if she wears her feet down too much, she’ll be back in shoes when the farrier returns at the end of May!
Just as a reminder… I won’t be broadcasting a new episode of Philosophy in Action Radio on Wednesday evening. I’m playing hookie!
Meanwhile, amuse yourself with this photo of our pony Simon in our kitchen in 1985. For some unknown reason, we brought him inside, just for the fun of it.
As I’ve blogged before, my horse Lila really wants to see what our barn (a.k.a. the house) is like… but she’s far too big for a tour!
A few weeks ago, when I was frantically re-assembling the house to prepare for SnowCon 2013, I hung up our various works of art. Most were just simple jobs, and Merlin “helped” with those by batting around nails and being his usual naughty self.
However, a few hangings required the laser sight level. Silly me, I’ve never played with the laser with Merlin. It was a bit too much fun… as you can see from this fully accurate pie chart that I made:
Now I just need to find our laser pointer…
Huge Bear Surprises Crew on EcoBubble Photo Shoot in BC
Yes, that was a true surprise!
This video is undoubtedly the best of “precious moment ruined by dog” videos ever.
When I got to the last bit, I was laughing so hard that I couldn’t breathe… or tell Paul what the heck was so funny.
Oh, poor doggie:
Our own doggie Mae is very attached to toys, and last week, she secretly brought home a tennis ball from the dog park. I’ve required it to be an outside-only toy, so that she doesn’t compulsively chew it, as she would in the house. Hence, we’ve had multiple “conversations” of like the following:
Me: “Mae, drop. That’s an outside toy.” Mae: “NO! YOU CAN’T POSSIBLY EXPECT ME TO LEAVE MY BEST FRIEND OUT IN THE COLD!” Me: “No Mae, drop.” Mae: “PLEASE! PRETTY PLEASE! PRETTY PRETTY PLEASE!” Me: “No Mae, drop.” Mae: “HAVE MERCY, WOMAN! I NEED MY BALL! IT’S MY BEST FRIEND!” Me: “No Mae. It’ll be here when you go outside again.” Mae: “Fine, but (*sniffle*) I don’t know how I’ll bear it.”
Her joy upon reuniting with that tennis ball is extreme!
This article — The Boat He’ll Never Have: Funny Things The Non-Horsey Say — has a pretty hysterical collection of stuff that non-horse people say to horse people. My inner paleo loves this one:
I was in the middle of one of my horsey filibusters, and my boyfriend felt like trying to add to the one-sided conversation. He put on a semi-snooty voice and in all seriousness said, “We’ll be entering in the amateur hunter-gatherer division.”
He paused, frowned and realized that wasn’t quite right. He’ll catch on soon enough.
But this anecdote was the best, by far:
We were expecting a semen delivery but had to go out, so I left a note for FedEx on the front door. As we were getting into the car, my husband read the note and raised an eyebrow. “Are you really going to leave that note?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I responded, wondering what the problem was. We got in the car, drove off, and every once in a while he exploded laughing.
Here’s what I’d written: “Dear FedEx Man, If I am not here, please leave semen on doorstep.”
It took me some time to figure out why my husband kept laughing.
“What I found out later was that the FedEx driver took my note back to the depot, and it was stuck up on the bulletin board!” Rogers added.
It takes a special kind of person to realize that such a note isn’t quite appropriate… it takes a farm gal!
What kills me is that the cat doesn’t seem to notice that he’s jumping a few feet into the air periodically; he just keeps going about his business.
