Vyxxan's Virtual Venture

Archive for the ‘Pet News’ Category

We got a mild frost a little while back.  I was surprised, actually… usually we are totally safe when they say we are going to get a frost.

Not this time, actual visible damage to the tomato plants.   We’d picked the only 2 tomatoes close to being ripe, just in case.  The plants got a little damage, but not a lot, and they’ve since recovered.  They are also covered with green tomatoes.  Dang it.  I doubt any of those will get ripe, but you never know, so we are leaving em out there.  I don’t have anything I want to do with green tomatoes, nothing at all.

Anyhow.  I sold my muscadine grapes.  Crazy, huh?  I offered them on Craigslist and someone snapped up the offer… come pick them for a dollar a pound.  I told them I was considering pulling the plant out… and they said they’d come back next year for grapes, too.  So, I may keep the vine.  We will see.   I know I spent more on water than I got for the grapes.  Wasn’t expecting the dang things to smell like diesel fuel when getting ripe.  Still, a pretty good harvest for a first year vine, altogether about 30 lbs!  Sold 18 lbs for the price of 15, gave away about 12 lbs but said it was 10.  Picked a pound or so and juiced em… gave that container to the folks that came and picked and paid for the ripe grapes.  Heck, maybe I should just dig up the vine and give it to them!

I also sold my citrus tree.  I don’t know if I’ve ever talked about it on the blog, but I grew it from a seed.  Every winter I haul it in the house and try to kill it, and every spring I haul it outside and neglect it some more.  I’d never got it to bloom, and it probably should.  I advertised it on Craigslist a while back, got a couple emails, no follow up.  This time I got someone local super interested… bam, she was at our house ready to take it home.  Funny, I think she lives just across the little valley from me, on the next ridge.  I asked that if she got it to bloom that could I please have a photo?  I was happy my tree was going to a good home… it was like trying to place a puppy almost.

The neighbor guy that likes to hunt has been walking through our yard.  We give him access to the woods.  As far as I know he’s never actually killed anything… hunting is just a hobby that gets him out of his house.  He always starts off with bow season, then switches to guns when he can.  I doubt that gun he’s carrying now is legal, but I doubt he actually shoots anything anyhow.  He’s got 6 kids… he probably just wants some peace and quiet in the evening.  He’ll go all winter, as long as hunting seasons last…  and when I walk my dogs at least one dog will haul off into the woods and find him every once in a while, hah!  Hey, he =knows= I walk the dogs off leash.  BuddyMack has come home with the guys gloves… go way damn dog, have a glove…   and then here comes Buddy so proud and happy with his glove he hunted.  :)

I bought a bunch of  fall  bulbs and planted them…  lots and lots  of pink tulips, some red oxblood lilies and some yellow species tulips and my favorite fall blooming spider lilies.  I still haven’t found the bag of narcissus that my friend Jan gave me a year or so ago…  it’s like it grew legs and walked off.  Wasn’t the right time to plant them right then…  poor bulbs are probably dead now, but I still can’t find the dang bag.  She’ll probably never give me anything like that again… what, you just go and lose it?  One thing about planting this year…  I did the major digging and getting the weeds/grass out…  but when it came time to put the bulbs in, Ron came to lift the dirt out so I could have trenches to plant in.   I have to not just plant stuff everywhere I feel like it…  Ron likes to mow stuff down.  He’s mowed down a bunch of my iris because the grass grew up…  I think I’m going to move those iris so he can keep mowing that bit next year.

Oh, and I bought concrete block edging for some flower beds.  Not like building blocks… decorative.  When they mark down the blocks is the time to buy them… if there are any left.  I found one I could live with at 1/2 price, so eventually I’ll have wider beds in front of the house and they will have concrete footing and edging and maybe I’ll be able to keep more of the bermuda  grass out.  Plus pile in more dirt for the plants to grow.  We have plenty of dirt for raised beds…  and I may just go the way my Mom does, and do building concrete block raised beds.  Plant enough flowers and you can’t see em, so what the heck…  it’s another we will see thing…   I can’t go piling a foot of dirt on some of my other flower beds unless I want to go dig up my pink stargazer lilies…. I doubt they will survive if I pile half a foot of dirt on em.

The trees are really beautiful this year, but of course I’m not posting a photo.  Yeah, they are pretty, but to me that’s a sad thing… going towards winter.  I don’t like winter.  Just get rid of the leaves and be done with it, without giving me pretty colors that won’t help.  Blargh, not looking forward to winter.  Never am.  Changing of seasons is nice, but see… I want to go from spring to summer to fall and back to spring.  Let someone else have winter, thank you very much.  :)

Still not smoking, health still giving me fits here and there.  It’s like, you do something good for your body and your body repays you by breaking down somewhere else.    Eventually it’ll be better…  I hope!

I guess I’m almost caught up now…

hugs,

Vyx

Gotta have a kitty photo once in a while.  Stubby likes to come in the house every so often, and because we know he won’t spray, we let him.  He tends to pester Rita a bit, but mostly he just wants to nap on something soft like carpet.  :)

I think he has really grown up to be a handsome cat.  Beautiful blue color, with a cream tinted chin.  For some reason he reminds me of an otter… I think it’s partly the short tail, and partly the teeth I can see when he’s sleeping.

We are finally out of the kitten business.  All the adult females are spayed, so we won’t be having any more kittens here.  Have one adult male to neuter, and 3 boy kittens.    The adult male is Tonic, who has to be one of the wimpiest male cats I’ve ever known… but from his point of view I’m sure it was just a survival tactic.  If your own momma runs you off, backed up by 3 other momma cats… I guess you run away and hide.  We have finally coaxed him back into the herd, and he actually comes up on the porch again.  Just don’t try to pick him up.  Gonna be hard to get him to the vet.

Finished my purse with the twill I dyed while on vacation.  All the sewing machine work was done before vacation was over… and when I got sick midweek and ended up staying home I did the hand sewing one afternoon when I was feeling slightly better.   Still don’t know what is wrong with me, but at least the doctor I saw on Wednesday didn’t say heartburn and not listen to me.   He gave me something else to take, and set up a ct scan for today.  Got to take my new purse out and about to be admired.  :)

I love how this fabric came out, and changed up the purse quite a bit for it…  no quilting, for one thing.  I put some sturdy fusible interfacing on the insides to give it a bit more stiffness,  plus made the outside pocket big enough to take over one whole side instead of that wimpy little pocket that the pattern has.  Oh, and longer handles.  It still has the whole lining with built in pockets…  I do like this purse pattern for the most part.  Takes quite a bit of work, for something that should be fairly simple.

Of course I didn’t realize when I enlarged that pocket so much just how much of the side it would be taking up…  and forgot to leave room for handles to be sewn on.  Plus, I covered up some really nice fabric, darn it!  It also isn’t sitting straight… but neither are the pockets on the inside.  I was lazy and not using a lot of pins.

But as you can see, that double pocket is quite useful now… deep enough for reading glasses and deep enough that stuff won’t fall out.  Not sure I need the whole side in pockets like that, but for sure it’s more useful than the previous version.  I mostly carry my little reading glasses in that case in the left pocket… but I have to dig in my purse for them.  Now they are out and handy.  Heck, I can carry a few pairs now…  in case I forget I’ve got some stuck in my shirt and need more.  :)

The pocketless side of the purse.  Click on that and look at it… isn’t that fabric absolutely lovely?  I never would have thought that those two colors went together if it wasn’t for my friend Rabbit.  She wanted a shirt with those 2 colors and one other… and I thought ugh, mud.  But it came out so lovely I actually did another for myself and then decided that I wouldn’t mind the purse in those colors, either.

Ron and I are both on day five of no smoking now.  I’m using the patch.  Ron is using nothing but will power.  He seems less bothered by not smoking than I feel… I get that 2 min craving but I don’t see Ron doing =anything=.  I’m sucking down lots of cinnamon and coffee candies… Ron isn’t even chewing nicotine gum.  Heck, even with the patch I want nicotine gum.  (but I know not to)  I think we’ll both be fine…    I know I needed him to quit because I am easily tempted if there are cigs around.  He knows he needs to quit because it’s a dang money drain he can’t afford.  Me, I’ve been wanting to quit again for years, so I just really needed Ron to get on board.  Together we can back each other up, and it’s working out well.  Yay for us!  (and thanks for all the encouragement from my friends!)

Got a bit of cooler weather again and rain today, so I got out my knitting.  Instead of finishing the fingerless glove I was working on and got tired of last winter….  (after making one pair) I decided that I needed to knit my grandbaby  a little hat.  So, that’s what I’m doing, a blueberry blue hat in acrylic yarn.   Just sort of winging it without a pattern, sort of like the last acrylic hat I did.  I cannot do ribbing any more for some reason.  That switching back and forth from knit to purl just makes me crazy with having to pull the yarn this way and that.  I’m sure part of that is that I totally forgot how to knit continental again… my hands just automatically do it the way I learned when I was 5 or so.   Having something to do with my hands is nice when I’m quitting smoking though…  so I’ll work through this hat and then probably go back to something simple where it won’t matter so much about the knitting/purling thing… because it will be felted.  Hmm, that’s a thought, maybe I should just knit the baby a big wool hat to felt up.   :)

Well, this is all the news I can think of now….

hugs,

Vyx

Libby had some kittens a while back… we don’t know where or how many. Instead of having them here at the house she goes somewhere where she feels safer. I don’t blame her, the last time she had kittens at the house one of our other momma cats took over Libby’s babies. Stole them from her, basically.

So, Libby has them and keeps them somewhere else. I suspect the barn, but Ron looked and looked in the barn for them and didn’t find them. But then… she brings them home. These have been home on the porch for about a week now. They are already old enough to be playing with each other and stuff like that, not too shy either, considering! (Ron says that Libby told them people are okay, lol)  I am guessing these kits are 4 or 5 weeks old.  They have teeth.  Tiny cute teeth.

Anyhow, on to the photos… and it’s HARD to take good photos of little kittens.  I put them into a chair instead of me laying on the cold concrete porch.

Cheddar colored ears! And fluffy grey ears!  They both have blue eyes at this point, don’t know if they will change or not.  All kittens seem to have blue eyes up until they start eating solid food, and then the eyes start changing color (although not usually the brilliant blue these kits have).

Photobombed by Frankie, lol!

We want down, this is no fun.

My hand, trying to get faces again.

Okay, this is the best way… hold em up in the air and get mad looks.  But look at that sweet face!  This guy has cheddar colored ears but a cheddar and ashes tail.  :)

My face needs washing.  Where is my Mom?  Kitten is more cafe au lait colored, where his bro is pure white except for points.

And finally… a photo of Libby with baby cheddar ears. His name is Snowball, Ron named him… I don’t usually name them until they are a bit older.

I didn’t put her up there… she got up herself after I’d put the kittens back down.  So I put one back up for one last photo.  :)

Enjoy….

hugs,
Vyx

It was bound to happen… but you’d think it would have happened years ago. I’ve been living in the country for a long while.

Little dog Rita, who is 9 or 10… got skunked last weekend. Her first time. (not mine, at least not with dogs)

We got home from fishing about 10:15 pm. Probably our last fishing trip of the year. Let little dog Rita run around in the yard while we are chilling out and unloading the boat. It’s dark, it’s nice out, and little dog likes to run around in the dark but stays pretty close.

Ron and I were both sitting on the porch and here comes Rita up on the porch. She gets to the rug I have out there and starts rubbing her face on it, just about the time the smell caught up with us. Oh NO! Skunked!

Stinky little dog, but I know what to do about that. We have peroxide and plenty of soap or shampoo. So I let Rita in, catch her up and put her in the bath tub. Glass doors, so she can’t get out of there and go roll around anywhere in the house.

Gather up what I need, and get to bathing the doglet. Wet her down, soap her up, and then pour peroxide on her and rub that in, too.

It worked pretty well. I couldn’t soap up her face where most of the smell seemed to be, but I rinsed that with the sprayer a lot. Rita got a wet face, and was NOT happy, but hey, skunk smell has to go.

Rita slept on the couch that night. Still too stinky to sleep in bed with us which is where she usually sleeps.

The whole house smelled like skunk, too. But I have some Febreze air freshener. Guess what? It works! Yes, it left a perfume smell around the house for a little while, but it totally knocked out the skunk smell. I can live with perfume for a short while. After 30 min or so you couldn’t smell either the skunk or the perfume, so that to me is something that actually works.

However, the bathtub still smelled like skunk. Only place in the house with the smell, I finally got rid of that by giving it a good spray with tub cleaner and washing it out. No hurry… it’s wasn’t bad at all considering how Rita smelled when she came back from meeting the skunk.

Now for the hopeful bits: I hope that Rita never gets so curious again about a skunk. Skunks are a lot like cats… and pretty oblivious to dogs running around I think. But some dog comes up sniffing at you… whammo. I always figured that the dogs think they are just some strange sort of cat. Cats let the family dogs sniff… who is this, a stranger cat? Yes, a very strange cat indeed… :)

I don’t know if I have a photo of Rita here on the blog, so I’m gonna take one to upload here…. elderly brat terrier… and she’s asleep on the floor behind me. Ignore the color weirdness of the carpet, it’s because of horrible CF lightbulbs.

She doesn’t look any the worse for being skunked. Has been cleared to sleep on the bed since Sunday. Mom’s dog, though, and that’s why she’s sleeping right behind my chair now. If I say Bedtime, she’s in there like she’s been shot. :) (or as Ron would say… runs like a scalded dog)

If we do ever do this again, I will get out the tomato juice for the face stuff. I know it’s the acid in the tomato juice that is supposed to neutralize the skunk odor…. and I’m thinking that dogs would be happier with tomato juice being slopped on their face. I can see Rita trying to lick that off… :) I wonder if V8 would work as well as straight tomato juice? heh….

Glad to not be skunky….

hugs,
Vyx

I really really really wish I carried a camera around all the time. But I don’t, I don’t even carry my cell phone everywhere like some people do. Missed a great photo today, oh well!

Back in August, when it was so hot… the beagle dogs started sitting in a large pan that we keep filled with water for the cats after walkies. Okay, so only 2 of the dogs were sitting, Sadie would only wade a bit. They also like to jump in the pond once in a while, but not too much. I discourage Mud Dogs.

When I was visiting my friend Jan, there was a yard sale on her street that had a little hard plastic swimmy pool, the kind you’d get for toddlers. Those had been sold out locally for a while, so I was happy to pay $1 for a used one for my dogs. Shoved it in the back of my car and brought it on home. BunBun and BuddyMack would go wading in it, and I saw BunBun lay down in it once. But mostly it’s wading.

Today, even though it wasn’t all that hot, both BuddyMack and BunBun laid down in it after walkies. Side by side. Buddy got up again pretty quick, but BunBun just stayed there on her belly, hind legs stretched out behind her. Cooling off, Mom!

Me getting the treats out didn’t even make her get out. The younger dogs had done some serious running on walkies and that pool came in real handy for them to cool off.

Sadie thinks her kids are nuts for wanting a swimmy pool, but I think the younger dogs are the smart ones. :)

Anyhow. It was one of those Kodak moments, but I didn’t have a camera with me. So, you get to imagine for yourself some beagles, not known for their love of water, having a lay down in a little swimmy pool. :)

Hugs,
Vyx