Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
It’s not uncommon to see hawks perched at close range on the many signposts around the auto tour at Ridgefield — what I like to call hawks on a stick. I loved the pose when this preening redtail stretched its neck out to an unusually tall height. Young birds like this one often have pale brown eyes that will darken with age.
When I woke up this morning, pressed up to my side were Sam, Scout, and Emma. As I scratched the heads of Sam and Scout (Emma was out of reach), a cacophony of purrs reached my ears. As I rolled onto my back, Sam curled up between my knees and Scout lay down on my chest. I had only a few minutes before the alarm was set to go off, but it was a lovely few minutes. Sam is growing like a weed — a long skinny weed with sharp claws. I trimmed his nails tonight and got a nice cut on my finger for my efforts, this one can’t be blamed on invisible wolverines. I probably shouldn’t have done it right after I got him all riled up by playing with him, a lesson for next time.
Emma is also growing like a weed, but since she’s full grown we’ll need to cut back on the wet food she likes so much. She did need to put on weight when we first brought her home as she was too thin, but she’s filled out nicely now and we’d like to keep her that way. Her bumps have mostly disappeared so she won’t have to wear the bib any longer. She only had to wear the bib for short durations at the end, and she’d tolerate it just fine for a while but when she decided it needed to come off, she got it off. I’ll have to take a picture of it some day, it’s badly shredded and on its last legs. Some of that is Sam’s fault for when they roughhouse, but Emma certainly knew how to get out of it when the time came.
Saturday afternoon as soon as I got to Ridgefield, I cut my finger getting the big lens out of its case. There isn’t anything sharp in there so I’m not sure how I did it, but fortunately I keep a bag of band-aids in the front of my camera bag. It wasn’t a deep cut but was bleeding bright red blood, so I cleaned myself up before bleeding all over the lens.
I learned to keep the bandages in my camera bag a few years ago during my first visit to Yellowstone. On my first day on the first trail, as I got out of the car I reached into my camera bag and cut my finger. There wasn’t anything sharp in there so I’m not sure how I did it, but I had some band-aids in my first aid kit in my backpack. That night I bought a box of band-aids and have kept some in my camera bag ever since.
The thing is, I’ve not been able to figure out how I keep slicing my finger when there are no sharp objects to be seen. But on the way home from the refuge, it suddenly dawned on me. It’s so obvious I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.
Invisible wolverines.
Wolverines!
Emma’s black fur throws my camera’s autofocus for a loop — something I expected given how many mis-focused bear pictures I’ve taken in Wyoming. I certainly don’t expect the camera to be able to lock on dark fur, but I thought it would be able to pick up the line between her dark pupils and her green eyes. In strong light it seems to do okay, but in low light it does poorly, even with the focus assist light of the flash.
In this shot, I preset the focus on the chair and waited for her to pop up after the string. She caught the string and stayed for several seconds with the string hanging from her mouth, but the camera couldn’t find focus. Emma’s eyes are out of focus, which is the part of the image I really wanted in focus. In the image below, her eyes are in decent focus, but that’s because she moved and her eyes are near the plane of focus along the chair’s edge.
I’m going to end up with a lot of out-of-focus shots of Emma, on top of the number I’ve deleted already.
I suspect Canon’s pro line of cameras would do a better job here (not perfect, but better). I’ve long thought about upgrading, but to my dismay Canon has only put their pro autofocus in large, heavy bodies. I’ve been trying to lighten my load on long hikes, so perhaps I’ll end up with a heavy body for normal use and a lightweight camera like the new Rebel for hiking.
Nikon makes a body I like but switching would be expensive. Still, watching the bald eagles last week in low light and seeing how many pictures were not sharply focused, it makes me wonder just how much better the pro bodies would be.
Sam and Emma have been with us for six weeks now. It’s been fun to get to know their personalities as they get more and more adjusted to their new home, I think we really lucked out with these two. And I say that even though I have a cut across my forehead thanks to waking up this morning to Sam chewing on my head. Normally Emma has been the target of his head biting, hopefully this phase will pass quickly. I seem to recall it not lasting long with Scout, but then again that’s easy for me to say since I wasn’t the target of her affections.
Hopefully Emma’s bib will come off on Monday, she does okay with it most of the time but it does drive her crazy when she wants to clean herself. She manages to get out of it on her own at times — I told you she was an escape artist — but even when she does, she doesn’t seem to go after her shaved patch, so that’s a good sign. We should know more about what was causing the bumps on her skin early in the week.
Both she and Scout are recovered from their respiratory infections and don’t need oral antibiotics any more, to the relief of everyone. My wife handled the majority of medicine time. Scout was pretty easy to medicate actually, she never went to the Templeton School Of How To Not Take Your Medicine. Emma wasn’t too bad either, although the first time I ended up with more medicine on me than down her throat. Sam is getting his last dose of ear medicine, we think his ears are all cleared up so this is just to be sure.
The three cats are getting along well, Sam and Emma play well together (which is fortunate, as they burn off a lot of energy chasing each other all over the house). Sam and Scout sleep together at times, and lately they’ve all been joining us in bed. Every time I shift my position I hear murmurs from the peanut gallery, Sam and Scout are usually on or next to me and Emma’s usually at the foot of the bed, so I have to carefully adjust my legs to avoid kicking anyone.
Today’s picture of Sam is from a couple of weeks ago, it was the first time he used the window perch on his own. I took a really cute picture of him looking down at me, but it was hopelessly blurred since the camera missed the focus in the low light, but I’ve ranted about that enough for one evening.
If this picture seems a little familiar, or even very familiar, it’s not by accident. Little Sam has joined Scout and Templeton in loving to sleep in the heated bed beside my desk.
Scout hasn’t wanted to sleep there since we brought the new kittens home, but Sam has been happy to take over her spot. We’ve got two beds now so Scout will have one available if she wants. Emma has been positively indifferent to them so far so we probably won’t need one for her.
Emma had a scheduled visit to the vet today for shots which she didn’t end up getting. We had noticed some bumps under her fur so they shaved the area and are going to run some tests to see what might be causing them. In the meantime, Emma gets an ointment rubbed into the area, antibiotics, and this lovely bib. Scout, who still has one more week of antibiotics her own self, came over to commiserate. Emma may not look too thrilled to have her moment of indignity posted to the web, but she joins some mighty fine company.
She did manage to get out of the bib earlier tonight, I heard a loud thump in the litter box room, then Emma came running out sans bib and I found the bib rubbed into some fresh droppings in the litter box.
She knows how to make a point, I’ll give her that.
Templeton had a drinking problem. Not that he’d get loaded up on hooch while scatting about town, more that he didn’t drink as much water as he should.
He didn’t like wet food, so encouraging him to drink more water was the only way to keep him properly hydrated. We tried several approaches, starting with a drinking fountain that kept the water circulated and aerated, but he wasn’t too impressed. We started keeping a water bowl on each floor and that certainly helped.
There were two approaches that worked really well once I realized that Templeton liked to drink water from just about anywhere but where he thought he was supposed to, and that he liked really fresh water. One was to fill his water bowl and hold it out for him near the sink, he’d hop up away from Scout’s affections and drink heartily. Sometimes instead of a bowl, I’d cup my hands in the sink and he’d drink quickly before the water seeped through my fingers.
My master stroke, however, was getting him to drink during his supervised outdoor visits. I brought out a bowl of water with me but he’d drink the water I left out for the birds in an old flower pot base. After fruitless efforts to get him to drink out of his water bowl, I cleaned out a flower pot base and started filling it with fresh water. He was aware of the ruse but willing to live with it.
While I sat in my chair and watched the NFL playoffs, Sam played on my legs, curled up in the blanket over my knees. He animatedly played with his beloved string and needed little encouragement from me, apart from the time he got so worked up that he rolled right off my legs onto the floor. It was this play session that convinced me that all world leaders should be required to have kittens in their laps while they negotiate — even generational hatred cannot stand in the face of a kitten’s charms.
Make love, not war. And bring plenty of string.
If you’re not a football fan, today’s title is a reference to Jim Mora’s classic postgame speech while coach of the Indianapolis Colts.
Today was a good day. I got up before sunrise to spend a few hours at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge. It was very foggy (typical for the winter) and I’m not sure the pictures will be all that special, but I saw up close a coyote, an American bittern, a red-tailed hawk, and a great blue heron snaring a Townsend’s vole. It was also nice to hear the waterfowl, even the ones I couldn’t see, as I hadn’t been to the refuge in months and many of the ducks are here for the winter.
I came home and watched the football playoff games, one of which was already in progress. At one point, Emma climbed up onto my chest and lay under my chin, I rubbed her belly and under her chin and she was visibly delighted. Then the purring stopped and I realized she had fallen asleep. Emma is very affectionate and often underfoot but hasn’t been much of a lap cat, so I’m not sure if today was an aberration or the start of something new, but she slept on me for quite a while, her arms wrapped around mine. I wanted to encourage the behavior, so I didn’t move for the duration of her nap and we stayed curled up together the entire time.
Today’s picture is not of that event since I couldn’t get to my camera but of her first week here when she was kept in the spare bedroom. One of the first things I liked about her when I saw her with the other cats at the Oregon Humane Society was how she was sprawled out as she slept, something Templeton did that I loved.
Boolie 