A “Clowder” of Purrr-sonalities

Posted on January 14, 2014January 14, 2014 by Dusty Roads

Definition: Clowder : a group of cats

I’ve been around cats all my life. I haven’t always understood how to be gentle and kind. There are many family stories of me dressing the family cat in baby clothes and pushing her in a baby carriage.. or the best/ worse story is when I was holding the cat while she desperately tried to escape me, the toddling baby terror. As the cat scratched me mercilessly I hung on and screamed for my mother to “help me”!

(Selfish little brat wasn’t I?) My mother’s response was to tell me to put the cat down and she wouldn’t scratch me. But I was stubborn and refused, crying all the time. I don’t remember this , of course, but it’s one of those standard holiday stories that always gets pulled out when the clan gets together to reminisce.

Over the years I always seemed to have a cat, usually just one. I never thought about cats being social animals. I always thought they were quite independent. As my life evolved and my knowledge and empathy matured I decided that maybe cats left alone all day should have a companion.

I worked long hours and didn’t pay a lot of attention to my pets. I fed them and kept the kitty litter clean but playtime was short. My favorite times were the end of the night when we had “cuddle time”.

I’d had a series of solo kitties over the years but when I first thought about adding an extra cat it really wasn’t my choice.

At the time I had a Persian named “Little Joe”. Little Joe had “issues”. He was the original “grumpy cat”.

Introducing him to other cats was futile. He wanted nothing to do with a companion. As he was getting older I rescued a tiny kitten from an abusive neighbor kid.

My plan was to take the kitten to the vet, get a clean bill of health and then surrender it to a shelter. Things didn’t quite turn out that way. To my surprise my grumpy, old Persian liked the kitten and the kitten liked Little Joe. So began my experiences with a multi cat household. That kitten was Rocky.

As grumpy as Little Joe was, Rocky was irrepressible. He was so full of life and joie de vivre he literally bounced off walls.

At the time Rocky joined the household he only weighed in at 1.2 lbs. Little Joe, on the other hand was a whopping 12 lbs. A real David and Goliath match up.

When Little Joe had had enough of Rocky’s antics he’d try to carry Rocky around like a mother cat, by his ruff, except he seemed to always miss the ruff and get Rocky’s whole head in his mouth. I’d hear muffled mews and go check and there was Little Joe dragging poor Rocky along the floor with the head completely in his mouth.

It never deterred Rocky. He’s be right back after Little Joe or racing around the apartment.

Photo of the Week~ Week 2

Posted on January 13, 2014January 13, 2014 by Dusty Roads

Well folks, I made it through another week! Yes I managed to take a picture everyday this week and now I will try to do it all again.

I was surprised again. Tallying up the likes, shares, and hits; the photo with the most points is Buddy 2014.

The runner up was not the one I expected. It was Foggy Woods.

I wonder if being the first picture posted for the week had anything to do with that?

Housework , if you do it right, will kill you

Posted on January 13, 2014January 13, 2014 by Dusty Roads

Housework , if you do it right, will kill you. This is a quote from Erma Bombeck. Do you remember her? She was a very funny writer. February 21, 1927 – April 22, 1996. She would take a look around her and see the humor in everyday lives. In the course of her career she wrote over 4000 newspaper columns about the life of a midwestern suburban housewife. Her columns appeared twice weekly and were read by 30 MILLION readers in 900 newspapers! She was also the author of 15 bestselling books, most collections of short stories about life in the suburbs.

What made me think about Mrs. Bombeck? Quite frankly, envy. I loved her writings. They always made me laugh. I remember one titled “The Grass is always greener over the Septic Tank”. You know, that’s true. We had a regular jungle of healthy green plants growing over ours behind our house. If only the lawn had looked half as lush.

Her stories were short, humorous and contained a kernel of truth. I never would have given that green grass a thought if she hadn’t pointed it out.

And what about those big holiday meals? For years I’ve been saying I cook all day and the meal is over in 30 minutes! Well Erma beat me to it. Her quote was :Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.

So here I am staring at the blank computer screen with a major case of writers block. I haven’t been anywhere lately, the weather has been horrible, (it’s raining cats and dogs and pitch black as I write this) and I just couldn’t think of a thing to say. In desperation I thought I could gain inspiration like another blogger friend did from the alphabet.

She wrote a blog post for each letter of the alphabet. Author Sue Grafton is wring a whole series of fictional crime novels known as the Alphabet Series (A is for Alibi, etc. ) so it seemed like a good idea but the only thing that I could think of that started with “A” was Arthritis. Unless you’re a doctor I would think that would be a very painful subject.

That’s when I thought of Erma Bombeck. How did she do it? How could she look around and see something not only worth writing about her everyday surroundings but write it with such humor. She could take everyday events and routines and have wonderful observations. Another example: My theory on housework is, if the item doesn’t multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?

My hat’s off to you Erma Bombeck. If I can be only half as original and funny as you in my feeble writing attempts I will consider myself a success!

Happy Anniversary Aroundustyroads

Posted on January 12, 2014January 12, 2014 by Dusty Roads

Happy Anniversary to me! I’m glad WordPress keeps good records.

Today marked 3 years since I started blogging on WordPress. I was at BlogSpot before that. Aroundustyroads didn’t become a .com until I came to WordPress. Wow, hard to believe it’s been that long.

Thanks for being with me through all the good and Bad posts 🙂

Spamalot

Posted on January 12, 2014January 12, 2014 by Dusty Roads

The Spam issue revisited. I can’t help it. I just want to know how my little blog that is of no major significance, could become the target of so much spam. I think I have it pretty much under control now (watch it blow up on me for saying that) but I just wonder why or maybe how, I became such a target.

I have another blog, www.dustroadsphotos.com and it gets minimal spam. I don’t know about my 2 other online locations. Spam just doesn’t seem to be an issue at either www.dustyroadsphotos.zenfolio.com or www.dustyroadsphotos.etsy.com. I am truly stumped.

I’ve really tightened up the spam filters here so much so that I’m sure I am catching legitimate postings too so for that I apologize but I was getting hit with over 100 spam comments a day!. According to WordPress, Akismet has protected this site from 300,369 spam comments already! I wish I had half that much legitimate traffic!

A friend who recently started a new Blog was complaining about the volume of spam his site was generating.

Everyone knows what email spam is but I really didn’t see how most of these blog spammers were getting anything out of it. Posting a bunch of gibberish as a comment doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to me but then I researched it a bit and good old Akismet, my guardian at the gate for blog spam, posted a short but interesting explanation. You can read it here if you’re interested: http://akismet.com/how/ It’s called 5 things every blogger should know about spam. In simple easy language it explains that these spammers want to get their hooks into your blog so they can advertise or lead your readers to their own sites where they are selling things.

If you inadvertently approve a spam comment you can open the flood gates! I am sure I have approved such comments. I now make it a policy to mark as spam any comments I get on “old posts”. I’ve found on my blog most legitimate comments are made within a week of the post. If I start getting comments on a post from a year ago red flags go up.