Spoiled Rotten Kitties Live Here

Posted on December 19, 2013December 19, 2013 by Dusty Roads

You think children are bad at Christmas? They are in the stores and they want, want want. They get excited and over tired and pout. I don’t care what the song says about not pouting or crying it happens. They are just overstimulated.

Well my 3 cats would put any child to shame. Hard to believe it when they look so innocent.

You heard about Rocky’s attack on the Christmas tree

and Buddy’s destruction of my winter wonderland but wait till I tell you the rest of the story.

I have been thinking about getting one of those toys they advertise on the late night infomercials called Cat’s Meow.

Its supposed to entertain all cats. I was hesitating because they already have a similar toy and they have no interest in it. But I was wandering through the “As Seen on TV” section at CVS and low and behold…there was the Cat’s Meow and they were 2 for $19.00. Same price as TV but no shipping this way. So in a moment of weakness I bought them.

Cat’s can’t read so I brought them in the house and set them on the table. I figured I’d open them up on Christmas. What I want to know is how do those 3 cats know that it was something for them in the boxes? They zeroed in on them immediately. It didn’t take long before the plop, plop of the boxes landing on the floor came to my ears. Sure enough, the boxes weren’t just on the floor, one was being pushed around while the other one had a cat perched on top of it. (I didn’t give in. They still have to wait.)

Rocky has had a heat lamp for about a year now. He is the only one of the 3 cats that ever paid much attention to it. He lounges the day away basking like a sun lover at the beach. There’s a story behind the heat lamp but I won’t bore you with it now. Suffice it to say that I got the result I was looking for so it was a good investment.

The problem now is that Smokey has started trying it out. The first time, about a month ago , was only for a couple of minutes and then he moved on. But about a week later he was under it again and Rocky wasn’t happy about it. Now as soon as Rocky gets down, whether to get a drink of water, or something to eat or use the litter box, Smokey is right there to take over and he isn’t giving it up when Rocky comes back. This is causing Rocky to become very distressed but he shares his annoyance with me instead of Smokey. Rocky follows me around meowing and getting underfoot until Smokey gets down and relinquishes the sunlamp lit perch. Tonight the only way Smokey got down was for a handful of kitty treats.

Does this mean I need to get another sunlamp now for Smokey? And what a coincidence that he’s doing this right before Christmas. (I want, I want, I want)

Who says cats aren’t smart?!

Reindeer Games

Posted on December 18, 2013December 18, 2013 by Dusty Roads

Race you!

I’ll count , you go hide.

See You Later Alligator

Posted on November 7, 2013November 7, 2013 by Dusty Roads

Recently alligators have been making the news and not just on Animal Planet’s Gator Boys show.

I told you about the gator that went shopping at a Walmart in Apopka, Florida.

Well now we get word that one turned up in Chicago, in the airport no less. It must have missed it’s flight and gotten lost in the terminal. A maintenance worker discovered the alligator, which is about a foot long, on Friday in Terminal 3.

With all this attention to the scaly reptiles I thought I’d see just how often they turn up in the news. Quite a lot it seems and going back a number of years.

A couple of really interesting articles that caught my eye were a bit older. This first one concerns a 66 year old retiree that may have a new career as an alligator wrestler.

In some crazy alternate universe called “Florida,” a mild-mannered retiree dived into a pond and fought a 7-foot gator that was making off with his terrier—and the retiree won. Seems 66-year-old Steve Gustafson was trimming an oak tree at his home in a retirement community when he heard what the Orlando Sentinel calls a “blood curdling yelp.” He turned and saw the gator snatch his dog from the shore of a nearby pond. Gustafson then kind of wigged out.

“For whatever reason, I don’t know, I just yelled, ‘You’re not going to get her!’ and just leaped on the gator—just like you do some silly belly flop in a pool,” he recalls. “The only difference was I landed on top of a gator.” They wrestled, and Gustafson won. At one point, he tossed the gator deeper into the pond to enable him and little Bounce to make it to shore. Both are fine. The gator, however, was later trapped and is bound for Gustafson’s mantel.

For years it’s been said that there are alligators in the sewer in New York City. It’s debunked periodically as Urban Myth but in searching for interesting Alligator stories I found this blurb–
Hold the phone: it’s not a croc; there are alligators in the New York City sewer
system—at least in Queens. The alleged urban legend turned out to be the real
thing when Joyce Hackett pulled over to find a group of passers-by and a cop
staring, agog, at a 2-foot-long young alligator tucked beneath a car at an
intersection curb. “It was like the urban legend washes up from the sewer and
says, ‘What the heck am I doing here?’ and hides under a Datsun,” Hackett
quipped to the New York Times.

So is it “Fact or Fiction”? The Gator’s aren’t telling.

Bath Time

Posted on October 2, 2013October 2, 2013 by Dusty Roads

Do Ostriches have External Ears?

Posted on August 30, 2013August 30, 2013 by Dusty Roads

I like birds, big, small and in-between. They are fun to watch and challenging to take pictures of, at least good pictures. A friend said “why do you photograph birds?”. My reply…because they are there. 🙂

Anyway we were at the Franklin Park Zoo and the female ostrich was right up close to the fence. She seemed to be trying to catch little bugs that were landing on the wire fencing so we got a good up close look at her and I saw something but I’m not sure what.

It looks like she has ears! Other birds have smooth heads. I’ve never noticed ears before. I tried looking it up online and got lots of scientific papers about they way birds hear but nothing about a real, external ear flap.