Another Caturday rolls around and life is beginning to smooth out a bit. Titan is still in his safe room but he’s adjusting well. We’re getting him started on kitty introductions. The day before yesterday, he saw Tito at the door (across the room) and he hissed. Yesterday, Tito was allowed to spend about 2 minutes exploring the room while Titan watched from the bed. He didn’t hiss. This morning, I cracked open the door and Titan came over and stopped about two feet away from Tito. He hissed once, but didn’t run away. He studied Tito for a moment and went back to his human pillow (aka Lastech). We’re advancing slowly. 🙂
As for the theme of today’s photos…
The GoodThe Mad (as in stark raving)The Mad… againThe Bored
And now for something completely different. WARNING!! Cute overdose is imminent!
There is a new addition to the JBoD household. Recently, we found ourselves looking at our local shelters online. We weren’t in a hurry, but we wanted a rescue kitty. Last weekend, Lastech found one. His name was Titan and his picture showed him sporting a pair of bat wings. It was adorable.
Titan gazing out of his room at the shelter.
Yesterday, we went to visit him. He’s ten years old and, born without a tail, he sports a very cute little nubbin instead.  🙂 From what we know of his story, he was adopted and returned to the shelter twice. The second time, it appears that he wasn’t introduced to the household properly and he was scared and hiding most of the time. Poor baby. We’ll take our time and introduce him slowly. We have a safe room all set up. There’s a futon, so Lastech and I can take turns staying with him. He and the other kitties can sniff at each other with a door between them for a while.
These are pics I took at the shelter when we met him.
Titan immediately climbed onto Lastech’s lapAs you can see, Titan has one white whiskerHe settled right in and promptly fell asleep
These pics were all taken yesterday.
Oh yes, about Tito and Miss Jenny? Well, we came home with the smell of strange cat on our persons. Tito and Miss Jenny were not amused.
Lastech glanced over and saw Tito and Miss Jenny giving us the stink eye
Today we brought him home. He’s currently hiding under the futon and I figure he’s nervous enough without me chasing him around with the camera. I’ll let him settle a bit before I do that. I would do anything if I could remove the trauma that any animal feels when they meet a new environment. All I can do is be patient and quiet. 🙂 He’s worth it.
Happy Caturday to all. Hopefully all of our friends who are enduring the blizzard are doing well. To make this official, I will NOT call a winter storm by a stupid name. Our National Weather Service doesn’t name them. The Weather Channel and affiliates have done so and it’s nothing more than a marketing ploy. When NOAA decides to name a storm, I’ll be on board.
Lastech is finally recovering from the cold in his dode, so hopefully we’ll have another adventure soon. In the meantime, here are the stars of the show.
I haz clawz! Let me show you themI’ve been taunting the birdies. Now I’m going to harass Tito.There’s nothing better than warm snuggles
For a change of pace, here is a bit of humor starring Ricky Gervais.
My apologies for not having posted much. Sometimes life gets in the way. Lastech has a cold in his dode and I had a fall. The first is miserable and the second was downright stupid (and preventable). Lucky for me, aside from a few bruises, the only thing broken was my pride.
Now for the furkids as it really is their day to shine.
Hubby was in the kitchen when he felt eyes watching him.
Miss Jenny
Speaking of hubby… He was taking pics of Tito and took his glasses off. Oops!
There are things they hide from us, or at least do when we’re not looking. They have secrets, which some people hate, but when you finally get to shed light on a cat mystery, the satisfaction is second to none.
Item one: the tufts of white hair we found lying about were Tito’s. I know this because one morning in the last few days, I opened my eyes to see Jenny pin Tito down Greco-Roman wrestling style with a lock and a throw. Tito tried getting up, but his attempt ended up with him hitting the ground again. In between throws, Jenny turned nervously towards the bed to see whether I witnessed anything, her head surrounded by fluttering tufts off Tito’s back.
Is she gone? Is it safe?
The second mystery, while not quite amounting to one, was how could half pound potatoes find their way across our kitchen floor?!?
Run the spud, an event rendering any argument invalid
We still haven’t caught her doing it, But Jenny has precedents with smaller taters, and can be seen here practicing the wide-open jaw-lock necessary to “lug a spud”…
We’re gonna need a bigger boat…
What it is with her and potatoes we have no clue. But she sure does like bringing them to bed…
Yes, evidently the fur flew. I don’t know when or how. It was done in stealth mode or I would have heard it. I awoke to a cold apartment and got up to turn the heater on and when I got to the hall there were a  bunch of tufts of white hair lying about. It was white hair, but it wasn’t Miss Jenny’s. You see, Tito’s hair is only charcoal at the tips. He’s white underneath. I also saw tufts sticking out of his fur that had not hit the floor yet, so it was clear that Miss Jenny was the offending party.
What was she doing?
I’m sure Miss Jenny was plotting evil. Oh, what is that behind her?Feets!Tito is wondering what she is plotting
Was she creating a wig? Did she think she might look like this? (Our thanks to shironekoshiro at Youtube)
Sadly, she would have probably looked like this instead. (thanks to Cheezeburger).
Whatever happened, it was during playtime as I’ve seen no evidence of malice. They are nestled together on the cushion as I type.
When I was young, I made a lot of blanket forts. I built them so I could hide with a flashlight at night and read. Mom wanted me to sleep and I wanted to READ darn it!
Our furkids are pretty fond of blanket forts. Tito likes the one we make when we sit in bed and read or watch tv. He stands on us and paws at the blanket until it’s lifted and then he scoots under to sleep under our knees.
Tito is happily ensconced in his fort made by papa.
Jenny isn’t so fond of sleeping that close to a human. The only time she spends a lot of time close to us is when she is in zombie mode. Then she stands by daddy’s head and nibbles on his eyebrows and bald head. I’m sure she just wants to get at those brainzzzzzzz. Instead, she makes her fort on the cushion using the sheets we have hung up over the window to make it darker.
My first Caturday in quite a while is dedicated to Miss Jenny, the fabulous kittoon… I’ve not been able to sit and type about our pointy eared folk since Mazuzu passed, partly because the whole experience was so puzzling, like some sort of s****y real life cliffhanger.
For Mazuzu Whang
There was the possibility that Jenny introduced the virus which ultimately took over Maz after we adopted her. We don’t know and never will since there is no test for FIP. Rudha-an read up on this more than I and it may be that this disease may be a growing threat, affecting many more pets. At this point my understanding of it is largely empirical and will require a lot more reading. Be that as it may, both Jenny and Tito have been coming out of their shells ever so slowly these past few months.
Moi?
Tito now spends time on our bed, sometimes under covers when he’s not playing with Jenny. He coos and trills happily, greets me home from work with a game of ‘fetch’ and is generally more relaxed than I’ve ever seen him. As to Jenny, she likes to rove around on the bed, once in a while stopping by to nibble an eyebrow, lick my skull or lightly ‘bite’ it while purring up a storm.
Sugar and spice and a touch of evil
And still, despite better diet, she’ll ‘grace’ me with a fart, in her completely innocent, matter-of-fact way. Her way of putting a spell on us is to fart in our general direction…
Now is the time to take a minute and look back on this past year, and the ways it affected the JBoD microcosm.
We spent much of 2012 watching sunsets and wildlife (fins!) from local beaches, but in April, we chose to visit the neighboring hill known as Bernalwood where stunning California poppies in full bloom awaited. On another more recent trip, amazing clouds treated us to an ‘air show’…
California poppies on Bernal Hill
In May, we finally managed a trip to see the California Academy of Sciences. The albino alligator named Claude is a real beauty.
Claude on his warming rock. He’s quite a handsome devil. Photo by Ron DeCloux.
I took a lot of photos, so it’s in four parts. One, two, three and four.
In June, a contractor working a few doors down from our home base cut into a gas line, resulting in a gas explosion and fire. Purely by chance, prevailing winds minimized the spread of the damage, a very good thing considering how long it took to shut off the gas. The kind of scene best left in movies, not real life. The Pointy Eared people weren’t amused…
Firefighters in action. The tan and brown building on the far left is where the construction was. The dentist office was in the white building.
Then in July, we lost our sweet, comical tyrannical food thief Kitsy to FIP. It was sudden and awful and I still haven’t been able to write a proper post for him. As for Lastech, he is still coming to terms with the possibility that the virus which took him might have been introduced by Miss Jenny. So little is known about FIP and no test being available, it remains a painful mystery.
The hawk was sitting in the tree just above eye level and only ten feet from the path.
A week or so later, we went exploring the Coastal Trail near the Golden Gate Bridge. We encountered another hawk, a couple of hummingbirds, a slug and a wonderful sunset.
Did I mention that hummingbirds like the pretty purple flowers?
We finished off the year by exploring the cliffs around Battery Mendell, a coastal battery that was built before WWI.
Photo by Rudha-an
That was our 2012 for the most part. Some was good and some was bad. Hopefully, 2013 will be an even better year.
Happy New Year from JBoD
Rudha-an, Lastech, Tito, and Miss Nightshade Jenny
It’s not raining right now. It’s an amazing thing. While we were safe enough, there were floods and rock slides and trees falling all over. It was a mess, to say the least. We had horizontal rain and hail thanks to high winds. Tito was NOT amused and spent a lot of time hiding as a result. He’s happier now.
Tito lurked nervously after the last stormMeanwhile, Miss Jenny got over her fear and settled in to watch the seagulls that were taunting her.
