boolie

Fleabitis

About a month ago, Scout’s normal herky-jerky grooming moves suddenly got too aggressive and she started pulling out her fur in clumps. A quick trip to the vet revealed that she had gotten a couple of flea bites during her outdoor playtime, and apparently Scout is extremely allergic to the bites. She got a flea treatment and a steroid injection (and can now lift a car over her head), it took about a week but she did return to normal. The hair has started to grow back on her belly and tail, but it will be a little thin for a while yet.

NOTE: If you’re looking for info on the medical condition fleabitis and not a joke about my cat’s flea allergy, it’s actually spelled phlebitis, and you can find more info on it at places like the Mayo Clinic or any other source of medical info on the web.

A Familiar Conversation

Whenever I’m editing pictures of Templeton and he walks by, we always have a similar conversation. As he casually saunters by, he’ll stop and stare at the monitor. “Oh my goodness, that cat is gorgeous!”

I say nothing.

He turns and says, “I mean all cats are good looking, but this one is just beautiful — did you take this picture?”

“You know that it’s you!”

Templeton squints at the monitor. “It is me!”

“Pride comes before a fall, little one.”

“A falling cat always lands on its feet.”

“Touché.”

Fitful Sleep

There were several aspects I wanted to capture in this picture of an elk in Yellowstone National Park. There’s a slightly comical aspect in that the sleeping bull is almost invisible save for his antlers which stick up out of the tall grass and completely betray his presence. The bull isn’t really trying to hide, but I wondered if he wouldn’t have preferred at that moment to be able to just take the antlers off while he slept, if only so he could lay his head wherever and however he liked.

I also wanted to convey the exhaustion the bulls feel at the end of the rut. He slept most of the time I watched him, but couldn’t resist raising his head and answering the call whenever another bull bugled in the distance. Fortunately all of the people watching him kept their distance so he was able to rest in the quiet periods. A couple of weeks before I visited, one of the bulls had its neck snapped while it was sparring with one of the other bulls. These fights usually aren’t fatal, but add in disease, predators, and the long winter, and I do wonder how many of the animals I see will still be around come spring.

This Year’s Contribution To The World of Modern Art

My whiteboard before I left for this year’s trip to Yellowstone and the Tetons.

Cut To The Quick

I came across this male pronghorn and a few of his females at the end of the day at Yellowstone’s north entrance in Gardiner, Montana. They were browsing in the meadows near the side of the road, a location I’ve seen pronghorn a number of times. The male had some strange rectagular patches of missing fur on his right side, which reminded me of the shaved patch our cat Templeton got when he went in for surgery.

A Dog and a Bone

As I make my plans for this year’s trip to Wyoming, here’s a picture from last year. During my first few hours in Yellowstone, I had stopped to watch some bighorn sheep ambling down a steep hillside when this black bear came up the road and walked over to work on an old carcass that was just skin and bones. It drug the carcass off a ways and then took this large bone and settled down under the tree, lackadaisically gnawing on it like a dog with a bone.

Look Out Bellow

I’ve been working a lot of extra hours the past couple of weeks, often getting home later than usual, which might be why Templeton has now wanted to curl up with me in the evenings as well as the mornings. One night I as I got home late and started to heat up dinner in the microwave, I heard him bellowing from my office. Now Templeton’s always been a little vocal when he wants something, but this was louder and more insistent than normal. I ran into my office and he just sat there at the base of my chair, waiting for me to sit down.

I went back to the kitchen and the bellowing started again. This time I picked him up and carried him back with me, he seemed content to watch the microwave turntable spin around. When those long few minutes finally were up and the food was ready, I put him down and he ran back to my office where he circled my chair, murmuring quietly.

When my wife called later to tell me she was coming home, I had to let the phone ring, as it was back on my desk and there was no way I was moving Templeton after finally getting him quieted down. He was madly purring by then anyway, and who am I to disrupt a purring kitten?

Me & T

After a lifetime of being a night owl, am I becoming a morning person?

Despite going to bed and getting up earlier these last few months, I wouldn’t go that far. But mornings have become one of my favorite times of the day. Templeton has been hanging out in my office all summer, sleeping in my chair at night and often cuddling up with me in the evenings. But then he started curling up with me in the mornings while I’m having breakfast, often circling my chair and murmuring to himself while he waits impatiently for me to get settled.

After I finally sit down, he hops up into my lap and softly purrs for the next half hour, one of those beautiful little slices of nirvana that you hope will never end. Those moments do end, it’s off to work and my time with the cats has to wait until I get home, when Templeton sticks his little gray head around the door as soon as it opens and Scout comes running downstairs to welcome me home.

Comma, Comma, Comma, Comma, Comma Chameleon

I complained before about Jane Austen’s generous use of commas at the start of Sense & Sensibility, but she’s really outdone herself at the start of Persuasion. There are twelve commas in the first sentence alone.
Not to mention a colon, three semi-colons, and two dashes. I’ll be generous and not include the commas in the citation that completes the sentence since some of the commas are associated with dates.

I’m not sure that such wanton use of punctuation caused global warming, but it can’t have helped.

Hurricane Boolie

Right after I posted the picture of Scout in my previous post, I took my headphones off and headed towards the dining room to close the windows and then go to bed. I stopped in the living room when I heard the sound of rushing water. It would have been a pleasing sound to lull me off to sleep had I been camping near a mountain stream, but it’s not the kind of thing you want to hear when you are standing in your house.

I went outside and water was gushing out of the faucet in front of the house. I turned the water off but there was already a pool of water outside the basement window. I grabbed a bucket and scooped out as much water as I could, then ran down to the basement where water was everywhere. I put towels down and spent the next couple of hours soaking up water from a couple of rooms, and then the next couple of hours soaking up water from the one carpeted room. I had a couple of fans running to try and dry out what I couldn’t soak up.

I eventually was so tired I couldn’t even stand and fell asleep right on the carpet. My wife woke me a few minutes later and I went upstairs for an hour of sleep before having to get up for work. I had a conference call with one of our partners in the morning so I couldn’t come in late.

Unfortunately, this sad tale doesn’t end there. My wife discovered this morning that another section of the carpet had gotten soaked, which meant it had been wet for over three days. I blotted up as much water as I could during the day but it may be a lost cause, it may have mildewed already. There are times I have a love-hate relationship with plumbing, but I’d have a hard timing giving it up. I enjoy my hot showers a little too much, not to mention laundry machines and dishwashers.

I suppose it’s home ownership that I really have a love-hate relationship with. The thing I hated about apartment living is hearing the TV of your neighbor because of the shared walls, hearing them walk around their apartment. Just hearing them — I like my quiet. And pet restrictions are a bother too. On the other hand, I hate the amount of time you spend in upkeep inside and outside a house, and would much prefer to spend more time on the trails and less time on the house. It is nice to let the cats run around in the fenced backyard, and perhaps one day I’ll be able to attract a decent variety of birds, so maybe I just need to replace our living plants with carefree plastic ones 😉

As for the cause of Hurricane Boolie, it turns out when I had attempted to power wash the front steps a week or so ago, I had left the spigot turned on — it was connected to a hose and nozzle so I wasn’t too worried about it. But the hose literally just fell apart and that’s when the water started pouring out.

Lesson learned.