the Guamaso » Animals

May 2010

JuanO — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 00:33:19 +0000

May was ok. Izzy is getting her “little girl face” as Jonas gets his “toddler face” too. Kittens are getting huge as well. Overall, good stuff.

Total pics taken for May: ~120 (this looks to be the average now…)

For Chrome

JuanO — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:45:56 +0000

There once lived many of your kind in this home. They too were saved from the unthinkable fate that awaited too many of your kind. We did everything we could to make them feel loved and wanted.

There lives one of us that possesses a special gift for your kind. She loved your kind like no other. She broke the rules of the home to keep you all happy. She used every resource to make sure you were all safe and healthy. Yet, she loved you especially.

For some reason, your small size and fuzzy fur melted her heart more than any of your kind. For some reason, she took special care of you, more than any of your kind. She did everything she could for you, more than any of your kind.

But you had to leave too early anyway.

She hopes that you won’t fear for your sisters fate. She works hard everyday and night, like she did with you, to make certain of her place within our home and this world.

So, good luck little Chrome and thank you.

The Evil Cat from Hell.

JuanO — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 03:48:16 +0000

So. One of our cats is crazy. I gave her no reason to fear me, nor any other human. She’s a beautiful long haired cat and we recently had to bring her inside to shave her mats off. Ciri gave her some Benadryl that day to help calm her down while we shaved her down.

Well, she might be getting a little bit of cabin fever because I noticed that she’s been leaving me nice piles of stinky urine around the house. After I found out she peed on the couch, we decided that her new home would be the garage.

Round ‘em Up.

Corralling a cat is difficult.

I left the garage door open and tried to chase her into the garage, but she wasn’t having it.

I started running after her but that didn’t work either.

Finally I decided to try and catch her. Bad idea.

She was dumb enough to try and run by my legs so I reached out and grabbed her… Jeez. Just typing this is making my heart rate go up… As I grabbed her she hissed and growled then immediately followed up with scratching and clawing of my hands. When that didn’t work she dug her teeth into my finger.

She did not let go.

After what seemed like an eternity she released her grip on my finger and I immediately pinned her down. It was about a minute total from grabbing her to actually being able to scruff her and throw her in the garage, but man, it felt like forever.

MEDIC!

I rinsed my hands in hot water and peroxide as soon as I could. My middle finger is swollen to almost twice its size – making typing a chore…

Anyway, Ciri always tells me stories about cats that scratch her up and are just evil. In the end, she prevails, but not without a good dose of adrenaline and scratches. I think I finally understand what she goes through after tonight.

P.S. The pictures don’t do my battle wounds justice. My hands are ten times worse than the photos. Plus, I was still shaking from the excitement when I took them.

On Animal Lovers

JuanO — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 05:31:54 +0000

Ciri is a veterinary technician and a total bleeding heart. I have a house full of cats to prove it. She’s done well in the past year, until now – um… sort of. Meet the new “addition:”

She’s sort of a new addition. I say sort of because the conditions that we agreed to makes the “addition” actually a “fosteree.” Ciri is supposed to go out and find her real family or a at the very, least, a new family.

The only reason the dog is even being allowed here is this:

We think she was hit by a car, receiving some hip fractures along with the nasty wounds. She’s a very mellow and friendly dog; it’s really sad to see animals this way, but I’m glad we could offer her something more than a concrete run.

Luckily, Ciri’s coworkers found the owners and the dog went back to her family earlier this evening. I hope she heals well and lives a long life.

I don’t think they would have found each other if not for the microchip implant. Love those things. Anyway, thought that would give some insight into my “twit” from last night.

Something I Need to Vent.

JuanO — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 03:13:39 +0000

I don’t like confrontations. I feel that real men should be able work things out calmly and civilized. Confrontations just bring out the worst in people.

My neighbor came over today to speak about his garden and our cats. The cats apparently poop in his yard, in his plants, and in his vegetable garden. Worse still is the fact that they are digging up his vegetables.

I admit that our cats are completely capable of every single one of his accusations, and I genuinely feel responsible for his garden. That is until I give the situation some thought. His garden is surrounded by an 8 foot high fence, he lives across the street from us and cats don’t have any reason to dig up vegetables. Ok, maybe they could jump his fence and maybe they would take a crap in his yard, but why? Why would they go through all that? Our cats are lazy and dumb. They have a garden in our back yard with a four foot fence. They have 50 feet of wetland behind our yard to leave their droppings. And, not only that but I have seen our cats dig a hole in our yard to poop. When they are done, they promptly cover the whole back up. It just doesn’t make any sense. Yes, they can do it, but would they?

Our neighbor is interesting. Before the house next to his was sold, he would drive his truck in the vacant home’s driveway and drive over the vacant home’s grass so that he can pull into his backyard with supplies. I thought it was funny that he felt it was OK to do that, but it also gave me a small clue of this guy’s character.

So, yesterday he comes up to me and says (this is the first time we have spoken, by the way), “I know that this isn’t the best way to start, but you need to keep your cats from shitting in my garden. They can shit on my yard, they can shit on my plants, but you need to keep them out of my garden.” the entire time hes talking, he looks at my face maybe twice. (Oh yea: we have five cats that live outside, but we’ve seen at least four other cats in our neighborhood.)

What the hell do you say to something like that? I can’t guarantee the cats will stop and I can’t watch his fence 24 hours a day. I sure as hell can’t just get rid of them either. And, no, that wasn’t the best way to start, dude. Admitting you’re wrong does not release you of the consequences. I told him I would do my best to keep them out of his yard, but really there isn’t much I can do.

I understand his anger and I want to resolve this without bad neighbor blood. But there is only one way this will resolve in his mind, and it’s an impossible resolution.

Now it’s just a matter of time before he comes over again with the same complaint. I am not the person that responds to anger with anger, but something tells me this hole situation is going to get worse. I’m troubled that this old man felt the only way he could confront us was with aggression; people like that don’t listen well.

Wordless Wednesday

JuanO — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:00:09 +0000

"You're Funny Looking."

Family trip to NC Aquarium – Pine Knoll Shores

JuanO — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:00:32 +0000

Sea Turtle

Visiting aquariums is the best way to get me out of the house. We’ve visited the Monterrey Bay aquarium numerous times, in Spain we travelled to Barcelona’s L’Aquarium, and now in North Carolina, we finally visited the largest of the three aquariums in Pine Knoll Shores.

There are aquariums billed as the largest in the world, but I’ve realized that all aquariums, so far, are amazing in their own way. Monterrey Bay is one of the few that grows seaweed in captivity with their advanced wave generators. L’Aquarium is the aquarium for Mediterranean sealife. Pine Knoll is situated near the Outer Banks and is a great resource for North Carolina aqua-life.

When Mark, my father-in-law, invited us to go to Pine Knolls Aquarium, Ciri immediately said of course. She knew that I have been wanting to visit one of the aquariums all year. The trip was Friday morning and it was about a three hour drive from Raleigh.

We made the usual preperations for Izzy; diapers, food, blankets, extra clothes, etc.. We were mainly worried about the long drive for Izzy. She’d been on a plane for longer than that, but we were able to remove her from the car seat. In this case, safety dictated we keep her buttoned up at all times. We did have to pull over once each way to change her diaper, which gave her the chance to stretch. We also tried to get her to sleep on the way there, but she fought it until the last 30 minutes of the drive, even though it was her nap time. Needles to say, she was one tired baby during our visit at the aquarium.

Daddy Izzy and the shark

The funniest bit about our entire trip, was Izzy and her interest levels. I had her attached to me with a baby carrier, facing outward. Everytime we would come up to a tank and I would show her the fish, or the shark, or the otters, I would also pull out my camera. Instead of her interest directing toward the curious water life, she would stare at my camera and reach for it – not giving any attention to the otters doing tricks in the water for her. Yes, the force is strong with this one.

Speaking of pictures. I find it funny watching other visitors look into an aquarium straight on and take a picture with their flash. The best practice is to turn off your flash or shoot from a 45 degree angle. Most of my pictures are shot straight on without my flash. Sometimes there isn’t enough light, so I need to play around with the aperature and shutter speed. The awesome thing about my old Canon digital camera (Powershot S30) is that it allows for a full manual mode. Ciri’s Panasonic doesn’t have a manual mode at all. Go Canon!

I took tons of photos, as did Ciri, and most of them are on my Flickr. Ciri has her own account as well.

After the aquarium we headed for dinner. After some discussing, we decided on Hooters. At home I realized that we are some horrible parents to take our 9 month old daughter to that type of restaurant. Then, I realized that they had high chairs, so we can’t be the only parents who feel that Hooters can provide good wholesome family food.

The trip was also the last time Ciriana would be together with her brothers as a family for a long time. This summer the older of the two is graduating and will head to West Point soon afterwards. The younger has his plans, but starts his senior year next fall.

Wordless Wednesday: 10DEC08

JuanO — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:47:15 +0000

Pup in the wind

Meet the kitties: Yoyo Issue

JuanO — Tue, 20 May 2008 13:00:21 +0000

I’ve said before that I didn’t know I was a cat person until Ciri and I married and moved to Germany. They are a pain in the butt, but they are fun as heck too. It’s very much a love-hate relationship. Yoyo was my first cat, I didn’t get to pick him, but I still love him as if I did pick him… well sometimes. Ever since we moved back to the states, he has become a pisser; I don’t think he likes other cats, except for Tigger. He is now strictly an outside cat. Even though he’s been on my bad side lately, I still feel bad for him sometimes. Since Tigger ran away, he really hasn’t warmed up to the other cats, and he is always outside, he just seems so lonely. Well, except for the other day when he was chasing the other cats around the front yard. I think they were playing tag or something. Anywho, Yoyo is a real dork, he was never very smart or courageous, as a matter of fact, he is quite the pansy. He is too lazy to push doors open, he is afraid of heights, and he can’t stand other cats. He actually used to freak out so much, that he would squirt his anal glands, most of the time this would happen when I picked him up with his stinky butt pointing in my general direction. Yea, he is SO an outside cat.

I am not sure what he has been up to lately without Tigger around, sometimes he hangs out on the front porch all day, and sometimes he disappears for a couple days. He might another family on the side. Oh well.

Here are some pictures of the little white and black turd.

The Jefe-kitty

JuanO — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 18:40:57 +0000

So way back in June of last year, I was in my office at the Vet clinic when I heard there was some minor medical emergency downstairs with some kitty that got hit by a car. At first I thought, “Poor cat, I hope he doesn’t die…” Then I wised up and thought, “Oh man, I hope Ciri doesn’t decide to save the cat… cause I can’t say no to cats…” About an hour later, I heard Ciriana and Amy giggling up the stairs. Crap, I thought. They came into my office with the sad puppy eyes. They asked how I was doing and if I did something different with my hair, cause I look good… right. Well, after swimming through their vocalized manure, they explain that this poor unwanted little kitty got hit by a big mean car while it was trying to survive the scary streets of Kaiserslautern. Then, as I was using every ounce of stregth I could muster to say NO, they bust out this small tabby kitten… sitting nicely in the palm of Ciriana’s hand. He looked at me and I knew he was going to be a new member of our kitty clan. Sigh. Funny to find out in your twenties that cats are your kryptonite. It could be worse, I could be allergic to them too.

Well, after they patched him up, he actually did not get hit by the car, but probably got really close, they let him roam my office. First thing the little turd did, was steal my chair. After I scooped him up he stole my keyboard, then my mouse, then any paperwork I was working on. Finally, I placed a blanket that he came with (I guess the person that brought him in, brought a blanket with him too) on my desk for him to sleep in. He clawed at it then decided that he wanted to play in my box of unused wires…

So for a couple of weeks, he would come to work with me and bother me all day while I tried to work. I say bother, but really, he kept me company. And he was fun to watch too. The video below is of him playing with Tigger. You can see why we named him Jefe. Not only becauseof his antics at work, but because of the way he growled at Tigger and Yoyo during feeding time…

the Guamaso » Animals

May 2010

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For Chrome

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The Evil Cat from Hell.

Round ‘em Up.

MEDIC!

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On Animal Lovers

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Something I Need to Vent.

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Wordless Wednesday

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Family trip to NC Aquarium – Pine Knoll Shores

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Wordless Wednesday: 10DEC08

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Meet the kitties: Yoyo Issue

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