Mandarin, Rosenquist, Nico, Lloyd Trinidad, Honey Bunny, Horsey, Felix and Pickles were present for feeding this morning.
We're officially in summer now and it continues to be very hot each day. Surprisingly, we got a good rain storm last week that may have given us more than one inch of rain. I thought we might not see any rain until October - glad to be wrong about that.
Mandarin after breakfast.
Mandarin, Rosenquist, Nico, Trinidad, Honey Bunny, Horsey, Felix and Pickles ate this morning.
Rosy went to the Vet today for an exam and vaccinations. He checked out OK, yay!! Negative for FIV, FeLV and heartworm. He got rabies and FeLV vaccinations and a check of his blood cell count. His gums were kind of pale & Dr. B. wanted to make sure he wasn't anemic.
Chaos in Tejas started today, actually it sort of started last night. I didn't go out last night much as I wanted to see Women In Prison. It was going to be a hard day at work today and the bands playing last night are playing later this week. At my advanced age, I gotta manage my fun to stay outta trouble at home and work. Women In Prison play Saturday afternoon. Should be a riot.
Women In Prison - "Suicidal Exit" and "Strange Waves"
Mandarin, Rosenquist, Nico, Trinidad, Honey Bunny, Horsey, Felix and Pickles ate this morning. It has been hot in the recent days, hot. And dry . . . water hauling season has begun I guess. I don't anticipate any rain happening until next October or November.
The outdoor gang is fully into their Summer routine, lounging or sleeping wherever they can find shade and a cool surface. We freshen their water a few times a day and try to make sure it stays in the shade which is always moving.
Chaos In Tejas this week, rock n roll overdose approaching.
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Mandarin, Rosenquist, Nico, Trinidad, Honey Bunny, Horsey, Felix and Pickles ate this morning.
The heat and humidity are building. There is only a very brief period of time in the morning that is what I'd call comfortable, and I'm comfortable with that. It's sticky and that's how it's supposed to be this time of year. Summer is pretty much here already even though the Solstice is about a month away.
And we have a bee hive, apparently. A large unused flower/plant pot was left upside down in the back yard after some Spring yard cleaning weekend before last, and it looks like a colony of Honeybees has moved into it. Hopefully, these are not Africanized Honeybees. We’re cool with them being there but are a little concerned about the outside cats being attacked or possibly the neighbors’ dogs. Both our next door neighbors and the neighbors in the house adjacent to our back yard have dogs. This may be the same hive that lived under a nearby storm drain cover last year who have relocated to a space more conducive for their needs. It’s a larger space and is in the shade. We’ll see what happens.
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Mandarin, Rosenquist, Nico, Lloyd Trinidad, Honey Bunny, Horsey, Felix and Pickles showed up to eat this morning. Summer is fast approaching but it's still relatively nice for a few hours in the morning.
Aleksei and Little Brother died since I last wrote. Aleksei suddenly got very sick in early March and ultimately was diagnosed with leukemia. We escorted him across the day after we got the news, March 16. He could barely move by that time, his energy was so depleted. He’d always been the robust picture of health until these weird subcutaneous bumps started appearing all over his body in December or January. We always get our guys tested when we adopt them but somehow the FeLV virus was hidden or missed when he first joined our gang.
Little Brother crossed a few weeks later, April 7, we believe of a cancerous tumor he had in or around his small intestine. Little Brother was an older kitty, at least thirteen years based on the information we had from his former humans (or subhumans) Melissa and Dean, former neighbors who’d pretty much abandoned him for a few years after they had their first child. He’d had a large tumor on his shoulder that was untreated for a couple of years before we adopted him. I don’t know if this melanoma was related to his intestinal tumor. Little Brother had a good long life for a street kitty, spending many days in our yard and cruising up and down our block before we brought him inside full-time.
Several of the other indoor cats have been tested since Aleksei passed and everyone is negative for FeLV so far (yea!). Everyone will get tested over the next year or sooner during their regular exams.
We're still heartbroken about Aleksei and Little Brother leaving and miss them both dearly. I am thankful they came into our lives though, and feel blessed to have been able to commune with a couple of the sweetest boys we've ever known.
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Mandarin, Rosenquist, Nico, Fuji, Trinidad, Felix, Honey Bunny, Horsey and Pickles ate this morning.
Pickles is a new cat that is actually not a street cat. She lives across the street with some new neighbors, but I guess she likes the food we put out. She's a pretty cat - a Manx with a silver-gray coat and a pleasant and playful disposition. I think she's pretty young, less than two years I'd say.
And Buster came to eat yesterday evening. He was waiting under a neighbor's truck when I got home from work. I don't know if he's been back at our house to eat for several weeks. He's been eating regularly at Pat's house around the corner and we hadn't seen him at our house. It was nice seeing Buster again. He looked good!
Mandarin, Little Brother, Rosenquist, Nico, Fuji, Trinidad, Honey Bunny, Horsey and Bronx ate this morning. It was good to see Bronx again - we hadn't seen him since we released him from our care last Wednesday evening after his vaccinations and neutering. Brooklyn also came by at some point as I saw him walking off from our driveway and yard.
Still no sign of Bucky. The food in the storm drains was gone, which is good.
Still no sign of Bucky Boy. We'll continue putting food and water in the storm drains where he would go and are still hopeful he's alive somewhere. The food is getting eaten, but this could be raccoons, possums or other cats. We're trying to stay optimistic, but I have resigned myself to the possibility that we might not see him again - and I'm heartbroken about it.
But I'm still hopeful . . .
What happened to you big boy?
♥♥♥♥ forever, Sweetie.
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.
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.
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.
