Yes, we had to move out and then move back in. RVs are not, by law, considered to be permanent dwellings. To remain on the right side of this law, we have to move out for a day once every six months. It’s actually two nights and one full day. We moved Tuesday evening and moved back on Thursday morning. This is all fine except that it requires a fair amount of preparation such as making sure the fresh water tank is clean and filled along with disconnecting everything. Then the slide has to be brought in and heavy items pulled out of cupboards,etc. It’s a lot of work. On top of that, we had to manage without deploying the slide while we were out, so it was more than a bit cramped. We survived.
On the day we moved back in, Lastech had to go to a meeting in the morning and work in the afternoon as he’s now on swing shift. He didn’t have time to come home in between. He felt bad about not helping me to set the trailer up again, but it’s ok. I did fine, though the neighbors probably still haven’t recovered from their exposure to plumber’s crack.
Tito in a sunbeamMiss Jenny looking happyTito and Miss Jenny the day after we moved back in.Pepi having some snuggle time with Lastech
It’s Caturday in April and the hills are green and the wildflowers are blooming. It’s warming a bit and rattlesnakes have been spotted on the trails. We’re being extra careful and Pepi isn’t permitted off leash. There were a couple of really warm days that required the use of the air conditioner, but now it’s cooler and we’ve collected almost an inch of rain since last night,a very welcome surprise. April hasn’t been boring so far. 🙂
And now, for the stars of our show…
Miss Jenny has such big blue eyesTitanescu beat the heck out of the curtain and stands on it in victory. Yes, he won. I removed it permanently.
Tito gets two pics. Three if you count Pepi’s pic.
Sunbeams make Tito want to…SING! La la la la la!Pepi getting a big hug from Tito.
Just to show that our world is still a fascinating and beautiful place…
Spring? It was nice while it lasted. Oh, it’s not over yet and but the temps are going for a roller coaster ride this week. The highs are supposed to go from 75 to 87 and back down to 69. Joy. At least we have A/C. I don’t mind the temps, but the trailer gets a bit warm and that’s hard on the pointy eared people and floppy eared one. Fur coats are no fun when it’s hot.
Our hills will start going from an unreal, but vivid Spring green to the summer tans and it will start this week. I’ll miss it. On the other hand, the mulberry trees are branching out, so we’ll have afternoon shade soon.
And now, the stars of our show
Tito looks like he’s debating an escapeTitanescu looking suspiciously mellow.
Miss Jenny? She gets her own vid this week. 🙂
Pepi still hoping for accidental noms
Earlier in the week we ran off to the Martinez Regional Shoreline. We like to visit the marsh and check to see what birds are there. They were tall birds, sort of.
Tall EgretTall Runner duckTall? No wait, it’s the elusive, and rarely seen, Marsh onion.
Caturday finds us enjoying Spring, but missing the rains already. I really wasn’t ready for this much sunshine. I don’t know if we’ll get any more rain this season or not. Sadly, we didn’t get enough. California is in better shape than it was, but it’s still parched in places.
With the Spring come the birdies and the pointy eared people are thrilled. They spend hours on the back of the couch and dinette watching them. There’s an oleander shrub right outside one of the windows and it fills up with birds every morning and evening. It’s better than television.
Tito watching the Spring birdiesMiss Jenny also watching those Spring birdiesI can haz hotdog?
As for Titanescu… He wasn’t watching birdies. He was dreaming of water and a diving competition.
Titanescu perfecting his pike position
Speaking of water, Lastech took some nice pics at the canal the other day.
I’ve heard that online friendships just aren’t real and all kinds of other malarkey. Lastech was an online friend and we’ve been married for twelve years as of today. Our anniversary aside, I lost a friend on March 5th. I found Tricia at a political website. As everyone knows, politics can be vicious. She had a love of cats and she posted what came to be called “The Pootie Diaries”. “Pootie” was the name of someone’s kitty. The name stuck and Tricia became known as The Pootie Queen. Her posts were a safe haven from the political fights. The fights had to be left outside. Inside was a mass of Cheezburger posts and pictures of pets posted in the comments. The posts weren’t limited to cats and included any and all animals. That safe haven provided people with a place to share the joys of their pets and to also share their grief on losing them. When we lost The Boober to lymphoma she did a memorial post for him. She did the same when we lost Kitsy. Her funeral is today, so we are dedicating our Caturday post to The Pootie Queen. I’m sure she was greeted by a throng of critters at the Rainbow Bridge. Orange flowers were her favorites. Rest in peace my friend.
Tricia Wyse Lefevre September 8th, 1970 – March 5th ,2016
As for our anniversary, we celebrated that on Lastech’s day off (Wednesday) We relaxed and grilled some good food and had a glass of champagne. It was good.
Titanescu basking in a sunbeamMiss Jenny: help!Poor Tito looking nervousPepi hoping to hoover something good from the grill.
The pointy-eared people have been gazing out the window wondering if we’re going to need a boat. It has been raining off and on for days. There’s a new storm headed this way as I type. None of us are complaining. California needs the rain desperately and the kitties can watch from inside where it’s warm and dry. Pepi doesn’t care about the rain. She’s happy to walk in it and so am I.
Before I get to our kitties, I want to give an update on Renfield. We mentioned his ataxia in a prior post.
To quote his housemate Nofur:
Went to town to start Captain Darling’s allergy shots today, and then we went shopping for some fresh “crinkle balls” for Renfield! He is still improving and started running today. Which is a bad idea with the occasional falling over, but Renfield is unstoppable. He is still smart enough to use the chair to get on the bed & countertops though.
YES! He’s getting better. We are so happy to see this news. I’m sure he’ll be catching those sky raisins (flies) again soon.
Here is Renfield wearing his black turtleneck and shopping for crinkle balls.
And now, back to our pointy eared people
Tito has the prettiest green eyesMiss JennyEven Titan managed to pose without giving us the stinkeye
Here is the little stinker who had us in a state of near panic last week.
No mom, I’m NOT chewing the blanket.
This is what put her in the ER. It was raining that night and very dark out. I didn’t find it for a day or two. She had hoarked it up at home, but it had already set of the chain of events that led to the veterinary ER.
And now for a unique musical video. I love things like this.
No matter how much you watch them, if your dog is the type to eat anything, you may be in for the occasional rough night. Pepita’s a hoover-dog, meaning she’ll ingest virtually anything, given the chance, and a couple days ago now, she ate a piece of blanket she’d torn off. This was bad news. That piece of cloth created a gastric obstruction, which she tried to dislodge as dogs do, by eating grass and drinking lots of water. She managed to hoark up the cloth, but was still in distress.
The grass she ate went nowhere and sat in her gut, compacting in her stomach. We hauled her to the local emergency vet clinic, where she stayed well into the next day. Now as some of you know, Rudha-an is a great dog (and cat) mom, with awesome friends who aren’t just supportive but extremely helpful in dire situations The A-team. From actionable advice to offers of financial assistance, these women were a lot of help getting through this patch. Thanks to many people, but especially Rudha-an, Pepi is now recovering at home. The amount of texts, emails and phone calls to individuals and card companies was even more amazing since Rudha-an is recovering slowly from an ear infection triggered by the flu (it has been a trying month and a half for the crew of the Endurance and friends).
In the waiting roomPoor Pepi in the exam room looking a bit scaredThat funky mass at the end of the arrow is her stomach full of grass. The black stuff to the right was gas.And here is just part of what they removed. No wonder she was in distress
While she was gone overnight, even Titanescu seemed to be looking for Pepi, and Tito came to our bed for comfort.
We spent part of the day waiting at the Markham Arboretum in Concord, walking off some tension, hoping to get Pepi out there again soon, but we weren’t sure how the endoscopy would turn out.
MagnoliasDark-eyed junco (male)BlossomsIvy and rootsMagnoliaWild turkey
Later that afternoon,when the nurse brought her out to come home with us, the look of relief on Pepi’s little worried face and her attempts to leap from the nurse’s arms were worth everything, and we were happy to submit to ten minutes of frantic licking.
Are we REALLY going home?Pepi and her flatulent hedgehog
This is from yesterday.
The kitties will return next week, provided a piano doesn’t fall out of the sky and land on us.
We’re sitting around worried about a little nakie named Renfield. He’s a housemate to our friend Nofuratu and came down with sudden onset ataxia, which means he’s dizzy and falling over a lot. His humans took him for testing but they still aren’t certain what the cause is. We’re sending all our healing thoughts and lots of love to Renfield and his family.
Titanescu’s message for Renfield: оставаться сильным мало одногоRenfield, who’s amazing talent is catching the elusive sky raisins (flies). He does try to live up to his name. Photo used by permissionMiss Jenny sharing a sunbeam with TitanescuTito contemplating the sunbeamPepita is happy. We got her a new farty sounding hedgehog toy.
As we wait anxiously for news of Renfield, this Caturday rolls on with Titanescu and his “food rules”. After however many years spent in prison, getting food in certain amounts and at fixed times, old “Iron Beans” enjoys his freedom by laying claim to whatever’s edible inside the Endurance.
Which means the dog’s bowl as of late…
Poor Pepi gives him a wide berth, even as he ambles slowly but purposefully towards her dish. He’ll dig in, look up at her, then us, and dig in again. That old gangster would stare down that wall, Mister Reagan…
Yes, it’s really a Caturday post…on Caturday, no less. 🙂 Maybe things will start to calm down now. As you know, mom fell and broke her hip. She wound up with ICU psychosis which caused a few problems. Then she finally got home from rehab only to wind up right back in the hospital with an evil case of enteritis. She is back home again and doing better. Lastech’s face is much better now, but in the middle of all that we came down with the dreaded mocos (flu). We survived that and Pepi is fully back to normal after her spay.
In the midst of all this excitement, we ran out of Feliway. That meant that Miss Jenny went into hiding. It has been replaced and we managed pics of everyone except Titanescu. His pic is slightly older and may be a repeat, but there’s not much to be done about it. 🙂
Lastech made a little video of the places we’ve been to in our area. The various places are Lime Ridge, The canal walks, the arboretum, and Redwood Regional Park. The cemetary, wetlands, and shoreline are in Martinez.
Pardon the mess of Pepi’s blankets and toys, but here is a cute vid of her and Tito
Rudha-an here: Yes, rainy days are back! We had a doozy on Sunday with heavy rain and wind. It didn’t last long, but it was good. Thanks to the rain, we’re having to take Pepi for her walks along the canal instead of on Lime Ridge (too muddy). We don’t mind and she doesn’t either. These rainy days are turning the ridge green again.
The canal trail runs parallel to Lime Ridge and is paved.
And now, back to Lastech
As we learned during our semi-annual “move out”, the feline crew of the Endurance doesn’t cotton to being in a moving vehicle. Titanescu is disturbed the least, while Jenny will remain in hiding, or crap on the bed. Tito is somewhere in between, but doesn’t like it either. Some catonauts…
On the plus side, they’re all doing rather well in our collective cramped quarters, with Tito continuing to socialize Pepita, Titanescu lazing his days away in bed, and Jenny occasionally romping with Tito for some needed exercise. Pepi is still too rambunctious and puppy-rough to be completely let loose just yet.
Tough though he is, Titanescu’s getting frail in his old age, and Jenny is still a bit freaked out by the yipping yodeler. Two things will help in the near future: getting Pepi spayed and following that with more training and gradual socialization with other dogs, which we can’t really allow for the time being. Pepi is shedding her puppy fat, what with her being about four months older than when we found her, and getting some outdoor exercise. The parks and open spaces are so exciting! So many scents to read! She has no issues riding in the car, although she gets squirmy when she needs to go take care of business, or if there’s a lot of movement outside, from pedestrians to birds and anything in between.
Jenny’s fur is now soft as Tito’s, which feels like silk. Looking at photos of her as a kitten, it’s amazing how her colors changed. From almost completely white to mottled gray/brown, sable and black. Poor old Titanescu’s fur clumps, so he just pulls at them and spits them out…
Tito being calm, as usualMiss Jenny posing with a new refrigerator magnet that we got from our friend Nofuratu The Naked Cat.Titanescu catching some zzzzzzzsPepi playing tug of war with the strap we used to extend her leash. She spends time outside with us when we’re grilling. It’s long enough for her to explore the porch.
Here’s a little vid that Google+ made from pics of the nearby arboretum
As for Pepita,she welcomes me from work every morning with a frantic tongue bath which sounds, well, really NOT SAFE FOR WORK. Be warned. But laugh…
