Bucky got into some kind of trouble last Saturday or Saturday night, possibly a bad fight. He was acting a little odd at evening feeding that night and then didn't show up all day on Sunday. We found him hunkering down in a nearby storm drain Monday evening and dropped some food and water into it. I saw him the next morning (Tuesday) walking stiffly across the street, where he went into the storm drain on our side of the street.
Bucky was putting weight on all of his legs, but he was moving with some difficulty. He had no visible or obvious wounds or external injuries that I could see, but a bite wound is hard to see unless you can get real close or they lose hair around the injured area.
We've been putting food and water in the storm drain where we first saw him and the food is gone each day. It could be raccoons or other cats eating the food, but Bucky could be eating it if he is still hiding the drain while he heals (hopefully he's healing). We haven't found him anywhere else yet and have looked just about everywhere he could be.
Mandarin, Little Brother, Rosenquist, Nico, Fuji, Trinidad, Honey Bunny, Felix and Horsey ate this morning. Bucky didn't show and he may be laying low until it dries up a bit or until he gets hungrier. He doesn't like cold, wet weather. He was present along with everyone else yesterday evening.
Speaking of cold, wet weather, it snowed briefly this morning. Big flakes too. It's too warm to stick now, but we may get more later today. Everyone's ready to freak out about it.
Gerard Cosloy and Matador Records recently organized a big event in Austin that took place at my second home Beerland, Casual Victim Pile. The showcases featured mostly local (but not exclusively Austin) bands that he and they think are interesting and worthy of attention. "Casual Victim Pile" is an anagram of the phrase "live music capital" that is sometimes used in conjunction with mentions about ATX.
Here's a couple of clips from nights #1 and #3 of the CVP shows, Follow That Bird! (Austin) and Bad Sports (Denton/Austin):
Follow That Bird! is doing some great stuff these days - more clips of them on the way.
Oh my friggin' gawd! These guys tear the shit up! More outrageous vids from this show and another BS did this past Friday (2/19) coming soon.
Mandarin, Little Brother, Rosenquist, Nico, Bucky, Fuji, Honey Bunny, Trinidad, Horsey and Felix ate this morning. Felix is new to the group. He actually belongs to a friend who lives around the corner but eats at our house twice a day. Our other new guy, Cyrus was found to have a bad injury from earlier in his life. It couldn't be fixed and we had to euthanize him last month, poor guy. I'm still heartbroken about it. Rest in peace Cyrus, I love you pretty boy.
Here's a clip of some of the guys hanging out:
Rosy and Nico (curly tail) hanging out in our back yard, Simon and Tiger lounging in the house. Tiger Boy isn't black but he wanted to be included. Max and Aleksei also appear briefly in the background of the closing scene.
Mosquitoes are always bad in September when the outside clip was shot (recorded 9/20/09).
We think Rosenquist and Nico may be brothers from different litters. They started showing up together a couple of years ago and were inseparable while Nico was an adolescent cat. He was about half of Rosy’s size when we first saw them and initially, we thought Nico was Rosy’s kitten. We soon found out Rosy was a male and changed his formal name to Rosenquist after the painter James Rosenquist. We can still call him Rosy when we want to.
Nico is a lot more independent now that hes an adult, but they still hang out together on a regular basis and sleep in the same general area during cold nights. They do have quite different personalities. Rosy is pretty comfortable with our attention (he doesn’t like the camera though) and loves to get a good petting. Nico on the other hand is very skittish with us or other people and will take off if he senses that we’re focused on him and we get too close. I don’t think Ive ever touched him. You can walk close by sometimes as long as you don’t make eye contact.
Nico gets into fights with other cats semi-regularly and every few months he turns up with an injured foot or leg. Fortunately, he's been able to recover from these on his own since we're not able to administer medicine to him very easily. As he gets older, we hope he'll get more laid back like Rosenquist who almost never gets into trouble.
I haven't had a chance to do any posts in the last couple weeks - life is INSANE recently. The holidays and work are conspiring to drive me nuts, but they won't completely succeed I believe. We adopted (for the moment at least) a new kitty, Cyrus. He's really cute, Tabby with a fair amount of white in his coat, and about 10-15 months old I think. He's kind of a mess though and adding a good deal of extra work to our lives (mainly Anne's schedule). He's not familiar with litter boxes and he's not picking up the litter box routine. Oh shit (literally)! There may be some improvement in the last couple of days, hopefully. I'll try to get some pics up soon - he's pretty shy.
Here's a vid from a recent show we went to at Beerland, Digital Leather, from Omaha, Nebraska (they used to be from Phoenix, Arizona). Their shows are always a blast!
Anne and I love these guys, or Shawn, specifically. He's pretty much a 1-man band in the studio, or that was his approach in the past, not sure if he still takes that approach with their/his new album "Warm Brother" but he always tours with a killer band. This song is not from the new album but there's another vid up on YouTube that includes an excellent cut from it, Photo Lie, coupled with a DL classic, Styrofoam (a great sing-a-long tune). You should be able to link to it from this one. Oh what the hell, here it is too:
Mandarin, Little Brother, Rosenquist, Nico, Bucky, Fuji, Trinidad, Honey Bunny and Horsey ate this morning.
Little by little, Bucky and Mandarin are getting more comfortable with me being nearby. I don't know if we'll ever be able to handle or pet them but we need to keep trying that so we can get them to the vet once a year or at least once every couple of years. Nico remains very wild and won't let us get near him. His big brother Rosenquist is almost the opposite. It's funny how much look like each other and how different their personalities are.
Mandarin, Little Brother, Rosenquist, Nico, Bucky, Trinidad, Fuji, Honey Bunny and Horsey ate this morning.
Bucky from a couple of years ago - he's a big boy!
Today is the anniversary of my father-in-law's passing, Homer Mendez. Super nice and very interesting man. We miss him a lot!
Mandarin, Little Brother, Rosenquist, Nico, Bucky, Trinidad, Fuji, Honey Bunny and Horsey ate this morning.
Mandarin and Horsey got into what sounded like a nasty fight yesterday evening, apparently over "hanging out" territory. Mandarin had Horsey cowering and retreating which is kind of a surprise. Horsey is almost always the aggressor when there's a disagreement with the other cats and Mandarin generally goes out of his way to avoid conflict. I guess Mandarin really wanted his spot and wasn't going to be pushed out of it. They both seemed fine this morning and there weren't any obvious signs of injury or continued hostility. Crazy cats.
Mandarin, Little Brother, Rosenquist, Nico, Bucky, Trinidad, Fuji, Honey Bunny and Horsey ate this morning.
We love the inside crew too, although I don't mention them very often. Here's Aleksei hanging out a few months ago: He is a very, very sweet cat. Handsome too!
Mandarin, Little Brother, Rosenquist, Nico, Bucky, Trinidad, Honey Bunny and Horsey ate this morning.
All the inside crew are doing well. Sammy wrestles regularly with some of the boys, especially Simon, Elio and, to a slightly lesser degree, Rocky (Rocky's such a good sport!). For an older kitty, Rocky runs and jumps almost with the best of them and he never gets grumpy about it. We adopted him in 1999, so I think he's about 9 1/2 years old. He's a real sweetheart!!
Mandarin, Little Brother, Rosenquist, Nico, Bucky, Trinidad, Fuji, Honey Bunny and Horsey ate this morning. Rosenquist & Nico, 2006
Anne saw what she describes as a young Raccoon yesterday evening. It was eating some of the leftover cat food that was outside. She chased it off by banging two pan lids together. This is probably the same Raccoon we've seen in the yard a couple of times in the last two weeks.
Super show this past Sunday (10/25) - Underground Railroad To Candyland, Ghost Knife and Cruddy at Beerland. URTC was awesome, quirky and epic - it was over too soon. Ghost Knife is getting really sharp, both in their great songs and the witty repartee (is that redundant?) they engage in between songs - "It's all about Sepultura" - you'd never guess how they arrived at that observation. Cruddy was a blast although they were missing their bassist Dustin who at the last minute couldn't do the show.
And holy shit! We're back at Beerland for a GREAT show tonight - Digital Leather, Love Collector, the Dead Space, Flesh Lights and Literature. It will be a loud, cathartic, drunken, dance party. Man oh man oh man oh man oh man!
Mandarin, Little Brother, Rosenquist, Nico, Bucky, Trinidad, Fuji and Honey Bunny ate this morning. Fuji hadn't been around for a couple of days, probably because of the rain - had some BIG rain this week!
Cool this morning, but getting warmer during the day. Should be pleasant this evening. Big show tonight!
A casual record of the things that make up our days and nights. These things generally involve living with a bunch of cats and checking out a bunch of rock n roll bands.
