Muh-muh-muh Molly and the Catssssssssss....

I don't understand. I brought him my chewy bone, and then my pig's ear, and he still didn't do anything but make that awful noise at me. Maybe if I get up here and wag my tail really, really hard, he'll understand that all I want to do is PLAYPLAYPLAYPLAY!

Hm. Well, *that* didn't work. He still hasn't moved. At least he hasn't broken out the pointy things on the ends of his paws.

No harm, no foul, Molly-Loo.

Atomic Batteries to power; Turbines to Speed!

Max has a Youthful Ward this week.

Her name is Molly, aka Good Golly, Miss Molly! Molly-Loo, Mollycoddles, and Mollywubbles.

Molly is eight months old and part border collie. The rest of her is either Corgi (judging by her ears) or speed freak (judging by her behavior). She has no clue how to be a dog, having lived her life to this point in the company of humans, specifically Nurse Ames and Her Lovely And Charming Husband.

Nurse Ames and LaCH are on one of those schwanky sailboat cruises through the Bahamas at the moment. Molly got here last night, right before they left.

This is Max being awesome. His youthful ward is just visible behind the big tree stump.

Molly, in full flight.

Max, wondering what the hell I've done here.

This is how awesome Max is: I gave both him and Molly pig's ears (thanks, Mom!) to chew on.
Molly had no clue what to do with the pig's ear. She sniffed it and was uninterested, so I gave Max his and dropped hers on the deck. She immediately went to see what Max was doing, and saw that he was chewing his pig's ear.

She ran back to hers, looked at it curiously, and ran back to Max. He didn't even lift a lip at her, and he's normally very posessive about food. Back to her pig's ear she went, then back to him. The lightbulb finally went on, and I left them on either side of the doghouse, both peacefully chewing their pig's ears.

She's already filthy muddy and covered with tree debris and she hasn't even been here twenty-four hours. Nurse Ames won't recognize her.

Brother has the sunny spot, so I shall cover my face with my hind foot.

Click to encuten.

For sale, cheap: (and an addendum to the DMV)

Two feline juvenile delinquents.

I returned from the DMV/grocery shopping/etcetera to find that Notamus and Flashes had opened a three-foot by three-foot by eighteen-inch box full of packing peanuts and spread them all over the house.

Nine hundred square feet doesn't seem like a lot until it's covered with fine drifts of packing peanuts.

I cannot *wait* until the weather stays stable enough that I can build them their outdoor kitty-cat run. (Yes, I am a crazy cat lady. Crazy because that's what they're making me.) With cat-killing dogs in front of and behind us, I don't feel safe letting them out. Instead, I'm going to build an eight-by-eight cube of 2 x 4's and screening that will allow them to climb, run, leap, and generally raise hell. It'll be accessible through a cat flap in my bedroom window (what, incidentally, that box contained).

Oh, and the DMV?

The website is wrong. The local office accepts only cash and checks. Personal checks. Not cashier's checks, not money orders.

Head, meet desk.

Why you should never lean on a counter at Jo's house:

Courtesy of Sister Rat, via her Crackberry.

Why I am blogging at 12:45 am, not snoring.

Faithful Minions will recall that I have two cats.

This is Flashes, doing what he does best, which is being sweet. (Yes, it's an old picture.)

And this is Notamus, cute little fuzzy forked tail and horns not shown.

I ate pancakes for dinner, then took my vitamins and went to bed. About ten minutes after I snuggled down into my comforter, Notamus started yowling.

I do not know why.

He made noises like a bandersnatch with bowel trouble, stopping only when I called and chirruped to him from the bed.

He came into the bedroom but did not settle down. Instead, he made those adorable chirping, half-purr, half-meow noises that kitties make when they're feeling curious about something.

Then he started in on the closet door. Now, Notamus's favorite sport is to yank the closet door open if I don't shut it completely and pull all my scrubs down of their hangers, onto the floor, and roll on them. So I keep the closet door shut tight.

But it's an old house, and "tight" in an old house doesn't really mean "tight".

"Chrrrr? Chrrrr? Row? Chrrrr?"

*rattlerattlerattlerattlerattlerattlerattle*

"Mrow? Chrrr? Chrrrrrr? Mrow?"

*rattlerattlerattlerattlerattlerattle*

Flashes got off my leg, looked over at his brother, wondered aloud why brother Notamus was trying to take the closet door off the hinges, shrugged, and laid back down.

At which point Notamus decided that the ten-yard-dash from bedroom down hallway through kitchen and into storage room was the correct way to blow off frustrations.

Over and over and over.

I have an old house. It's pretty tight, but "tight" in an old house isn't *tight*. The wooden floors make noises when you walk on them. When a speeding twelve-pound cat puts his feet down as hard as he possibly can while running on them, they sound like a badly-tuned xylophone.

So I got up, wandered into the kitchen to have a glass of water and a cracker (the vitamins were making me queasy)--just in time to see the Notamus Acrobatic Show start. Thankfully, that only lasted until he fell off the kitchen windowsill and into the sink.

You're probably wondering at this point why I didn't lock him up in the utility room with the catboxes and the food and water. It's because I also have open shelves in there, and didn't want to awaken in the morning to hideous distruction. But, to continue:

After he fell off the kitchen windowsill, I went back to bed. Notamus went into the bathroom.

I have one of those nonslip mats in the bathtub. It's the kind you buy at Target that looks like little clear pebbles of various sizes, with spaces between. It sticks to the bathtub with teeny suction cups that make a pleasant POP when a cat gets his paw in a space and pulls up.

Notamus was enchanted.

"Chrrrr? Chrrrr? Mrow?"

POP POP POP POP POP POP scrabble scrabble POP POP POP

...aaaaand repeat.

Flashes is still asleep on my bed. Notamus just went to lie down on Max's bed. I'm going to go try to get some sleep now.

If I don't, I might have a new fur hat in time for Christmas.

He doesn't like you. I don't like you either.

Max went batshit insane today, just as there was a nice big storm blowing in. Normally, Max does not go batshit insane with storms; he instead scratches apologetically at the door and asks to be let in.

Not today, though. Today was growling, snarling, barking, howling insanity in the back yard.

Now, I have to set this up for you:

Imagine the biggest German Shepherd you've ever seen.

Cross that with something that's mostly blonde, much stockier than a G.Shep, and equally as furry.

Add a healthy dose of Mellow.

Toss in some love for kitty-cats.

Slap on a couple of pounds of happy, add a schmear of totally unflappable, and take out all the ditzy, weird, spooky behavior that overbred dogs can have.

You'll end up with a mutt who, like Max, is normally the calmest, most Zen being on the planet. He barks, yes, but it's understood that he's not really barking at the postman; it's a formality on both their parts. The postman regularly comes over to the fence to scratch Max's ears. Likewise, he'll bark at dogs wandering past (and bay at his girlfriend the basset hound), but he would never growl at or bite your average dog that comes right up in his grill. He's mellow, you see. He's kind of a Southern-California type dog, taking each day as it comes and chilling out.

So, when he went absofrigginglutely batshit insane, I let him in. I figured there was something out there that I needed to be aware of, and better he's in the house than out of it.

Sure enough, the doorbell rang.

Max went straight to the door, ignoring my "back" and "sit-stay". He stood at the door, looking interested. This is normal. Ignoring "back" and "sit-stay" is not. I opened the door.

On the doorstep stood a clean-cut young man who was obviously there to sell me an alarm system, or offer one for free for a limited time only! or beg me to put his company's sign up in my front window.

Max stalked forward, ears up, hackles rising, legs stiff, normally-curly tail straight out behind him. There was a low, almost-sub-audible growl that I could feel but not quite hear coming out of his chest. The guy on the porch said nervously, "Uh...nevermindseeyoulatersorrytodisturbyou" and left as quickly as I've ever seen a person leave who was not actively being pursued by an unholy combination of fire ants, cicaida killers, and door-to-door evangelicals.

Max got some cheese. ("Cheese? I LOVE cheese! How 'bout some bay-cun too?") He's now lying calmly under a tree in the back yard, grooming his hind feet. All the doors and windows are locked.

Let it never be said that I don't know how to take a hint.

Saturday Silliness.

Music to rewire switches by: here. (Sadly, embedding is disabled.)

Music to plumb the kitchen sink by:

Music to consider hanging ceiling fans by:

Music to scrub the bathroom by:

Music to say "What the hell" to:

Random thoughts, inspired by this virus.

I just finished a lovely hour reading Can't Spell, DVM's blog. Contrary to her title, she can indeed spell, mostly. And the stories are definitely worth a look.

Which reminds me: one thing that people always say to me, when I start talking about critters (especially dogs), is "Why didn't you become a vet?" The answer is very simple: I can't stand to see an animal in pain or afraid. People don't bother me a bit, because people can mostly understand words--or, if they can't, because of a stroke or brain tumor or whatall, they still retain basic human understanding of things like touch and smiles and singing. Critters in pain flip me right the hell out. I have no clue what to do and react badly. 

Once, manymany years ago, Evvie-cat got her front leg stuck in the crack of a staircase and hung up on an old twenty-penny nail. I was in hysterics as I called the mobile vet (thank Frog for mobile vets!). Dr. Mobile came, dropped a towel over her head, unhooked The Flannelcat from the nail, shot her up with antibiotics and maybe a tetanus shot (I may be remembering that wrong; somebody please tell me if cats can get tetanus), and earned my undying gratitude for two minutes' work.

The point here is that I have no trouble at all dealing with a generalized tonic-clonic seizure, a bleeding arterial puncture (which is more like a fountain than a bleed), a patient who's fallen and is unconscious, a code, or even a traumatic amputation. One injured animal, though, would send me over the frigging edge.

*** *** *** *** ***

Speaking of vets, mine has a pet kangaroo that somebody abandoned at the clinic. 

Now, we're in Texas. Texas is a long way from Australia, which is where kangaroos are, as far as I know, from. I suppose you could import a kangaroo, but let's be serious: what would you then do with said kangaroo?

Apparently the kangaroo loves the vet and hates everybody else.

*** *** *** *** ***

I think I've come up with Nurse Jo's Perfect Formula for Surviving A Nasty Cold: Delsym (grape flavor is actually not so bad!) ibuprofen, Mucinex (plain, please; don't overdose on dextromethorphan or go with unnecessary decongestants), soup, and Vick's Vaporub.

A happy puppy and a plate of cheese sticks go a long way, too. So does a glass of wine.

Wups! Happy Puppy is asking to be let in. Hang on...

*** *** *** *** ***

...so. The Cat Thing. 

This house feels terribly empty without a cat.

I think my birthday gift to myself will be a cat. The birthday is two months from now; I figure that's time enough to get over the bleak feeling of having done a cat-avoidance shuffle-step when there is no need, or of checking the couch before I sit down.

I'm going to get a cat that doesn't rush the door. It doesn't have to be a kitten, though the first crop of them will probably be showing up in the shelters in late February. It *does* have to be a shelter cat. And it will be spayed or neutered and NOT declawed. Furniture is temporary; cut-off finger-ends are forever. Future Cat and Max will learn to deal with one another.

*** *** *** *** ***

And speaking of Max, he's a wonder. Does anybody else have a Bullfrog Dog who goes "MMMMMmmmmmmMMMMMMM" when you rub his ears? His nickname these days is Mister Hayes.

*** *** *** *** ***

And, finally, a link I found at Can't Spell, DVM that is totally worth reading: LPN with an M16.

Be well, Army LPN. Come back to us in one piece. Bridge to an RN. I would be more than proud to work with you.

And thank you.