Guest Post: Nova Dog and Bones the Cat.

(L) Nova Dog. (R) Bones the Cat.

We have adopted a new cat who was living in a bad situation. Called Bones (since she was sooo very thin and malnourished), she is slowly learning to trust us all and since she’s been having a healthier diet, she seems to be feeling much better and is starting to canter around the house and coming for regular snuggles. (Medically speaking, it was rather touch-and-go with Bones for a week or two. But phew. She’s pulling through now.)

Nova Dog (still bouncy at aged 3) is learning to respect boundaries (kitty claws and teeth along with hissing can be effective teaching tools), and as you can see above, Bones has laid claim to the large dog bed, leaving the floor for Nova Dog. Nova is not that upset by this turn of events, since she rarely uses the dog bed, but I think the principle of the thing is interesting. The tiny cat has the biggest bed. Seems rather Queen Victoria-ish to me. 🙂

(Cowboy Cat prefers to stay out of the squabbles. She’s snoozing in the other room.)

Guest Post: Nova Dog sticking her head out of the sun roof as we travel at 75 mph.

(Look at that upper lip!) 🙂

Random Vancouver pics…

Fairmont Vancouver Hotel (with green roof). The old and the new co-exist happily in Vancouver.

A very sweet hotel dog who hangs out by the concierge desk at the hotel.

Example of aboriginal art at the UBC Museum of Anthropology.

Great place for a lunchtime break at the VPL (in their rooftop garden).

Example of some First Nations art style…

Sign of the inclusive times in Vancouver: welcoming all at the VPL bathrooms.

The lady taking her duck for a walk on the streets of downtown Vancouver. Because why not? 🙂

Things on Cowboy’s Head

Here’s Cowboy doing her summer nap schedule…

Here’s Nova Dog waiting to go outside whilst Superhero mows the back lawn. She’s locked inside as she’s not very helpful with the lawnmower…. 🙂

Things on Cowboy’s Head: Guest Post

Guest Post: Nova Dog (above) just turned two, and she’s still very much a puppy at heart. Additionally, she is an enormous help making the bed (as you can tell from the photo above).

General Catch-Up…

Every now and then, I like to do a general round-up post about what’s going on in my life. It’s a nice break to write about something else other than books and reading, and it helps me keep my life on track when I can see it as an overview. So – this post is one of those posts.

The weekend was so RAINY. I know, rain may be more common in your part of the world, but I happen to live in a semi-arid environment (almost a desert/scrub-land sort of world), and so rain does not come often. It tends to be rainy in May, but apart from that month, there’s not much precipitation coming from the sky.

So, guess what? It rained for almost a full two days over the weekend. It must have been a couple of inches, and it was pretty steady throughout, with occasional minutes of heavier rain. Normally, I love and adore rain, but since we have brought Nova (a young German Shepherd) home, we’ve learned that she is one of the biggest fans of rain and mud in the entire canine world. If there’s mud or filthy water or puddles, you can almost double-dog* guarantee that she will be in with all four paws for most of the time. I’m all for having a good time, but Nova? You need to wipe your paws when you come in the house. Muddy footprints *everywhere* and on our clothes from when she jumps up to say hi, and so the house has been FILTHY. Sigh.

This isn’t Nova, but it well could be.

This rainy weather also meant that there were some good reading moments at my usual hangouts, and this was great. Got to get some reading and writing done (no ‘rithmatic though :-)), and I found this to be really satisfying. The past weekend had been spent completely re-organizing my bathroom cabinets and some of my bedroom drawers which has meant that some of this weekend was spent walking around admiring my now really tidy storage. (Am I the only person who does this?) The reorganization was one of the more satisfying ways to spend my time, and I managed to get rid of two shopping bags of bathroom junk which has freed up a ton of space now. Aaaah. Bliss to open the cabinets and see lots of empty space and what has remained now corralled in storage containers…

(One thing I’ve learned about organizing is that those canvas over-the-door shoe hangers are magnificent for storing bits and pieces apart from shoes.)

Reading has been happening as well. I finished Boyle’s Tortilla Curtain the other day. Incredible read and highly recommend any of Boyle’s work. (He is one of the more prolific writers so quality can vary, but most of his stuff is great.) That’s led to me prowling the TBR shelves (as you do) to find my next read which ended up being Mary Norris’ wonderful memoir/grammatical manifesto called From Me to You. Norris has worked at The New Yorker for years and is known as the Comma Queen (gotta love that title), and this is a fun read to experience. It’s good to hang with your own tribe every now and then.

Then I’ve been missing reading a classic of some kind, so I’ve picked up Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. Love it completely, but Hardy is so good anyway.

Watching: We’re riveted to the new Masterpiece show about Queen Victoria, and now I’m curious just how accurate the narrative is. (Cue reading Victorian biography I have sitting in my shelves…  In a minute…)

Saw a French movie called Elle which took some awards at the recent Golden Globes. (My recommendation is that you don’t pay money and time to see this film. So much violence against women that didn’t contribute to the forward movement of the plot…) One movie that more than makes up for that yucky experience is Hidden Figures which spotlights the contributions that a small group of African-American female mathematicians made to NASA’s early space flight program. (Really good film.)

And then we’re in the process of researching new furniture for the living room and now narrowing down the choices to “really comfortable” combined with “not bad looking”… It’s not as easy as it sounds, let me tell you, but I think we have it narrowed down to a manageable number of pieces. The next step is to measure… We’re looking for a settee/couch set-up which sort of “hugs” you when you sit in it (as opposed to “bouncing you out” when you first sit down). It’s a lot of sitting down in furniture shops right now, but as I mentioned, we’re getting there. Hopefully something by the end of the month, which means that we’ll also need to sell the current furniture to make room for the new purchase!….

Know anyone? 🙂

• See what I did there?…

Nova Dog is getting a taste for reading…

Nova Dog (who is now almost a year old and who has been in our family since July or so) has been developing a taste for reading cf:

And here….

(I’m expecting a bill from the library very soon. 😦 )

ETA: And here (below) is the bill from the library for the top book:

One more bill to come, I think… :-]

Cowboy Post (on vacation)

Hi there. I’ve been a little too occupado to upload and edit some photos this week – that work stuff does get in the way at times, doesn’t it?

So, in the meantime, here’s a cat cartoon for you. Normal service will be resumed soon. Thank you for your patience.

It’s been a while.

Avi Dog having a rare moment of stillness during his puppyhood. His energy switch was only on or off, and mostly on. One of the busiest dogs we’ve ever known. He will be missed.

Sorry for that unexpected absence. Life and work intervened with full force for a few weeks, and suddenly we’re almost at the end of August.

One of the saddest decisions that we had to make was to put our five-year old Australian Shepherd to sleep as he had what’s called dropjaw. This is a rare neurological disorder that affects the muscles in the head, particularly the bottom jaw, and makes it so the dog can’t eat food or drink water as his jaw muscles have been paralyzed. (Similar to a stroke in humans in some ways.)

After driving Avi Dog to several vets (including one six hours away), he ended up with the diagnosis of trigeminal neuralgia (or dropjaw), a condition which usually resolves itself in 3-4 weeks (according to the few reputable websites which talk about this condition).

So we all soldiered on with Avi:  hand-feeding him (still hungry) and hand-watering him (still thirsty), giving him IV drips to help fluid intake, and going for short walks.

However, as time went on, his condition didn’t seem to improve and he lost his ability to swallow. (So not only could he not eat or drink anything, but even if we put this in his mouth behind his tongue, he would choke on it.) It was heart-breaking and after numerous emergency trips to the vet, it became obvious that although Avi’s spirit was willing, his body wasn’t.

So – here’s to Avi Dog. Our house seems very empty without the Black and White Tornado (which was a description of how much energy Avi had all the time), but he fills our hearts.

Fridays are More Fun with This…