Qatteri Cat Enjoys Winter Sunlight
Nothing like a snooze in the winter sunlight for the Qatteri Cat. He keeps track of everything going on in the neighborhood until the sleep waves overcome him, and then he just kicks back a little. It’s a great life, being an indoor cat.
A Man and His Dog
A good friend sent me this today – I think you have to be a pet lover to get the full effect, and I totally love it.
A man and his dog were walking along a road. The man was enjoying the scenery, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was dead.
He remembered dying, and that the dog walking beside him had been dead for years. He wondered where the road was leading them.
After a while, they came to a high, white stone wall along one side of the road. It looked like fine marble. At the top of a long hill, it was broken by a tall arch that glowed in the sunlight.
When he was standing before it he saw a magnificent gate in the arch that looked like mother-of-pearl, and the street that led to the gate looked like pure gold. He and the dog walked toward the gate, and as
he got closer, he saw a man at a desk to one side.
When he was close enough, he called out, ‘Excuse me, where are we?’
‘This is Heaven, sir,’ the man answered.
‘Wow! Would you happen to have some water?’ the man asked.
‘Of course, sir. Come right in, and I’ll have some ice water brought right up.’
The man gestured, and the gate began to open.
‘Can my friend,’ gesturing toward his dog, ‘come in, too?’ the traveler asked.
‘I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t accept pets.’
The man thought a moment and then turned back toward the road and continued the way he had been going with his dog.
After another long walk, and at the top of another long hill, he came to a dirt road leading through a farm gate that looked as if it had never been closed. There was no fence.
As he approached the gate, he saw a man inside, leaning against a tree and reading a book.
‘Excuse me!’ he called to the man. ‘Do you have any water?’
‘Yeah, sure, there’s a pump over there, come on in.’
‘How about my friend here?’ the traveler gestured to the dog.
‘There should be a bowl by the pump.’
They went through the gate, and sure enough, there was an old-fashioned hand pump with a bowl beside it.
The traveler filled the water bowl and took a long drink himself, then he gave some to the dog.
When they were full, he and the dog walked back toward the man who was standing by the tree.
‘What do you call this place?’ the traveler asked.
‘This is Heaven,’ he answered.
‘Well, that’s confusing,’ the traveler said. ‘The man down the road said that was Heaven, too.’
‘Oh, you mean the place with the gold street and pearly gates? Nope. That’s hell.’
‘Doesn’t it make you mad for them to use your name like that?’
‘No, we’re just happy that they screen out the folks who would leave their best friends behind.’
The Qatteri Cat Sleeps Through Winter
You’ve been asking about QC. There isn’t much to tell you. He decided it was too cold, and all he does is sleep. Occasionally, he will wake up, take a walk to the food bowl and water dish, make a visit to the kitty litter, but then it’s back to sleep – waiting for warmer weather.
Yesterday, as I was working, he was following me around, “miaow, miaow” which meant “please sit down and provide a warm place for me to fall asleep” so I made him a little bed in the work room, and it wasn’t his first choice, but he made do, keeping me company while he sleeps through winter.
The Door Into Summer
We had a cat, a street cat from Tunisia, named Cinnamon. I had taken our son to see a movie and when I got home, my husband looked funny. You know, a wife can tell. I said “what’s up?” and he gave me those big innocent Bambi eyes that tell you for SURE something is fishy, and he said “Nothing!”
Just then, we could hear loud loud miowing at the back door, the kind only a kitten can make, the kind that attracts attention. We went to the back door and there was this tiny little kitten, barely old enough to be away from her family, and she is stuck between the screen door and the back door.
“How very strange!” I said, looking accusingly at AdventureMan, who continued to try to look innocent.
“She looks cold!” he said. “Maybe we had better bring her in!”
Later he confessed, he has found her wandering around alone, wet and miowing in our backyard and had been feeding her while we were at the movie, then put her in the back door so we could “discover” her. He wanted to keep her. We already had one big cat, but we had wanted another, and here she was.
She was my Door into Summer cat. She still had all her wild instincts, even though we adopted her at such a young age. Once, in Germany, I found a dead hare on my steps, with it’s throat torn out, an offering from Cinnamon – but the hare was at least twice her size! She was always bringing us offerings of a dead nature; she was a born huntress. One time when AdventureMan got out of bed, he stepped on what he thought was a rolled up sock, but it moved! It was a badly wounded mouse!
Cinnamon hated winter. We lived in a house with a lot of doors, and when it would snow, she would go from door to door, asking us to open so she could go out. When the bitter cold with the biting wind would hit her face, she would back into the house and head for the next door – always looking for the door she remembered, the one which led out into summer.
moar funny pictures
I used to read a lot of Robert Heinlein. His books are SO politically incorrect, so sexist, he was an old engineer, but man, could he write. His writing takes you WAAAYYY out of the here and now, and makes you stretch to think in new ways.
He wrote a book called Door into Summer, in which he wrote about another cat:
“…While still a kitten, all fluff and buzzes, Pete had worked out a simple philosophy. I was in charge of quarters, rations, and weather; he was in charge of everything else. But he held me especially responsible for weather. Connecticut winters are good only for Christmas cards; regularly that winter Pete would check his own door, refuse to go out it because of that unpleasant white stuff beyond it (he was no fool), then badger me to open a people door. He had a fixed conviction that at least one of them must lead into summer weather.”
The Door into Summer – Robert A. Heinlein
You can read about Robert Heinlein on Wikipedia and you can find many of his books still in publication on amazon.com.
Cat Scuba Diver
Today after my bath, I tossed (gently) the Qatteri Cat in the nice warm tub. I’ve done this before – it’s not his favorite thing, but neither does he completely freak out when I do it. I wish I could get him used to it so I could give his coat a nice cleaning once every now and then. I think it’s going to take some time.
But I remember a video I saw a long long time ago about a woman who taught cats to swim, so I looked it up online. There were no videos of the original woman I remember from many years ago (the film was pretty horrifying; her philosophy was to just throw them in the bathtub as kittens and they would get used to it) but there are a lot of new videos out there, people teaching their cats how to survive a fall in the water, particularly people with pools.
And I found this hilarious video about a cat whose owner made her a scuba-diving suit and taught her to dive! Hilarious and hard to believe, but the cat seems to like it!
What True Love Looks Like to Me
Here are three of my very favorite presents given to me by AdventureMan. I like diamonds just fine, and at the same time, I really am not a diamonds kind of girl. I worry about losing things like that. I’m hard on watches, I do things with my hands and I break things. Better for me are gifts I don’t have to worry too much about breaking, losing, burning, misplacing . . . all the things that break my heart about earthly treasures.
Every time I look at these things, I see love. These are presents that protect me, that might help me help someone else at just the right time. You probably recognize two of the items, the third is a wind-up flashlight, so that I never need to worry about batteries failing – when the light begins to dim, you just crank away.
Actually, I am going to share two photos, because while the first one is the one I had planned:
This is the one that happened first, and it made me laugh because it also is about true love:
AdventureMan knows what will make me feel safe. It may not look romantic to you, but it looks like true love to me.
Here is today’s challenge. Grab your camera – or your keyboard – and show us / tell us what true love looks like to you?
Big Diamond’s Bat-about
Oh Big Diamond, you can’t imagine. You have an eye for the very best gifts.
I’m sorry the shot is not clear. We can’t get the Qatteri Cat to stay still when he has the bat-about toy. This was the best of all the photos – most, the bat-about disappeared just as I was shooting. *dying laughing* He loved it from the minute it came out of the suitcase.
When we all woke up – around 3 this morning, it was the first thing the Qatteri Cat went for, even before his food. He loves the bat-about, and AdventureMan and I are rolling with laughter, watching him play with it. It is great exercise, and such fun for him – and for us.
It is one of the BEST Christmas gifts ever. Thank you!
Mom, Please Don’t Leave Me!
I am taking care of my sister’s cats while she and her husband are on a short vacation trip. As they were leaving, Wally, the diabetic cat, begged her not to leave him with me:
He is one of the easiest cats in the world to take care of. He knows when he needs his shot and he doesn’t run and hide like my own sweet little cat used to do when it was time for her shot. Wally hangs out around the refrigerator, where his insulin is kept, around time for his shot, and purrs when you give it to him. What a sweetheart.
Once my sister was gone, he got along with me just fine. 🙂
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