cat – Page 59

Beat the Heat (and Smoke)

An unusually hot and dry summer in the Pacific Northwest has led to many troublesome wildfires, and the winds shifted this weekend bringing smoke from fires far to the east into Portland. We kept the windows closed to minimize the smoke coming into the house, and spent the entire weekend in our bedroom with the portable air conditioner keeping things nice and cool.

I took a quick picture of Ellie in her dog bed and Boo behind her in the cat bed, Sam was with my wife on the bed and Trixie I think was playing elsewhere in the house. We keep the bedroom door mostly closed to keep the cool air in, but open enough that the cats can come and go as they please. When Ellie walks in she swings the door wide open with a dramatic swoop of her head. It makes me laugh every time, our sweet-natured goofball making such a grand entrance.

Gamera vs. Emma

Emma was sitting on my love seat and I put her favorite toy beside her so I’d have a portrait of the two of them. She loved this turtle and would sometimes carry it with her around the house. Sometimes she’d run with it, murmuring as she went, I suppose pretending she was on a great hunt.

Or maybe she was just a big Gamera fan.

I didn’t sleep well for months after she died, having recurring bad dreams. Not nightmares in the traditional sense, but the one that occurred most often was me visiting my favorite refuge in my car and I’d end up accidentally driving into the water. The car would slowly fill with water as I drove it around trying to find a place to get back onto solid ground, but I wasn’t worried about drowning, and my steering wheel could somehow direct the car even when floating, but I was worried about ruining both the car and the refuge yet didn’t know what to do. Being in an unfamiliar and deteriorating situation was the common refrain to all the dreams.

It’s not too surprising that I was haunted by such dreams, given that she slowly slipped through our fingers even though no tests identified why she was sick, and she died even though we tried everything we could. The nightmares slowly faded as I came to grips with her death.

I haven’t been out hiking since she died apart from a quick trip to Ridgefield right afterwards, initially from a mix of not feeling up to it emotionally or physically. But as I began to get more sleep, and as time healed wounds, the desire to get back out on the trails slowly returned. Unfortunately some chronic stomach problems also returned, and I even stayed home from work today, but hopefully with the return of cooler weather things will return to normal (it’s been a blistering summer here in Portland and heat is one of the things that can trigger it).

I’ll start planning my fall hiking trip this weekend, so the Tom Bihn travel bag I ordered in December will finally get to come out of its box and be put to good use.

Trixie Finds a Loophole in the ‘No Cats on the Counter’ Rule

Clever girl.

Decision Time

Back in June I pre-ordered Sony’s just announced A7R II mirrorless camera, guessing that its ground-breaking features might otherwise make it hard to come by in the early days, but also knowing that I had plenty of time to cancel before it shipped in August. I got an email from Amazon that the camera is going to ship in the middle of the week, the first date they are available in the US, so it’s time to decide if I should cancel or not.

I expected there would be plenty of reviews by now to help me make up my mind (the camera is already shipping in the UK for crying out loud) but the non-disclosure agreements must not be up until later in the week because there has been little information available since the initial announcement. I think Sony is even holding a press event here in Portland on Wednesday but reclusive cat bloggers must not have been high on their invite list.

I’ll sleep on it but I’m leaning towards canceling the order given the expense (I’d switch all of my non-wildlife shooting to Sony’s system). But I’ve been flip-flopping all over the place the past week as while there is much I like about my little Canon M, there is much I don’t, and the Sony solves some of my biggest complaints with the M.

For example, I grabbed the M this afternoon when I saw Boo stretched out and about to fall asleep on top of the cat tree, as it nicely contrasted how differently he sleeps than tidy little Scout who preceded him, but I had to stand scrunched in the corner of the room with the camera near my heart, snapping pictures before he changed his pose. The camera’s buffer fills quickly so I couldn’t take a shot when he yawned, not that the slow autofocus could have tracked him, but without image stabilization even this static shot yielded a bunch of unsharp pictures and thankfully one sharp one.

The Sony has built-in image stabilization, a high-res full frame sensor that would allow faster shutter speeds, is more responsive, and has a much better autofocus system. It can also do nice video (4K even).

But that price tag …

Little Lover

Trixie is probably a little over a year old now and weighs in at about 7 pounds. She’ll fill out a bit more with time but the vet’s prediction when we adopted her is proving itself true, she’s going to be a pretty small cat. She’s our first tortoiseshell, some claim that torties have a lot of attitude but so far our little lover has been sweet and affectionate and particularly enjoys rubbing noses. Fair warning, biting them too.

Revelry

Sam is slowly — slowly — beginning to accept Trixie. She’s learned, much like Scout with Templeton years ago, that if she comes up to Sam when he’s fast asleep, he might let her curl up next to him. On this occasion she started off in my lap (he’s on my legs) and inched closer and closer. When he didn’t budge, she eased over on her back and stretched her head up onto his body and just reveled in the moment.

Bless her heart she is relentless in trying to win his affection, and it’s starting to work.

Ask Me Your Questions, Mortal

Sam on a higher plane of existence

First Scout

In honor of my 500th picture posted to Flickr, this is the first picture I took of my beloved Scout after we adopted her. It was just a quick snapshot, and of course at the time I had no way of knowing that a remarkable bond would develop between us and she would be my constant companion for almost 12 years until spleen cancer would end her life far too soon.

Exterminate! Exterminate!

Doctor Who fans will understand the title, but our “Dalek” is a recently purchased portable air conditioner. Our long term goal is to have central air but in the meantime, with an unusual and extended heat wave gripping Portland, we picked up a portable unit so at least one of the rooms in the house would be tolerable. Especially so for the 4th of July, our least favorite day of the year, as we keep the windows closed even at night to minimize the noise from fireworks that freak out the pets. And especially so for our aging dog Ellie, who when the first hot days hit was panting just sitting still in my office and is tiring quickly on her walks.

My wife and I brought up our MacBooks and iPads into our little bedroom and all the pets have been hanging out with us, although the cats come and go. This is Sam enjoying the cool air, at first the cats weren’t too sure about the noise of the thing but they came to see it as more friend than foe.

Trixie Beats the Heat

The window nook in the kitchen has become one of Trixie’s favorite hangouts, especially in the midst of an unusual heatwave where the cool kitchen counter provides some welcome relief. By the middle of next week we’re in for a brutal week of hot weather so I’ve ordered a portable air conditioner so we’ll have at least one comfortable room we can all hang out in.