Sunday, September 30, 2007

the wee hours

Cute…and sad

Frank & Carlo cuddling, with Frank’s paw on Leigh-Ann’s shoulder.  The picture doesn’t capture how fabulously cute it was.

  Dobby is currently on the lam. :(

Dobby escaped out the doggie door sometime Friday night or Saturday morning.  Cricket found her hiding in the yard in the morning, and we got the dogs put away, so they wouldn’t scare Dobby.  She was hiding behind a board behind the air conditioner and when Leigh-Ann tried to give her food, she bolted.  We found her in our neighbor’s yard, but she was cowering in a corner and wouldn’t eat any of my kibble bribes.  She always ate my kibble bribes.  She’s a feral kitten who’s approximately three months old (she’s been here for a month), and we were really starting to make progress with her in the past few days.  She was letting us pet her without running away, and she was even liking it.  Now, she’s back in the big bad world, where we found her in the first place.  At least she’s well-fed this time.  Hopefully she’ll let us catch her in the trap again.  She’s definitely a cat’s cat (she adores the other cats), but we’re really fond of her.  She’s cute and she has attitude.  I’ve never lost a pet in my whole life, and it would sure be awful to lose little Dobby.  We had no idea that she’d ever try to go out the doggie door (Frank is our troublemaker who tries to escape out the door…but he always comes back) - she’s never shown an iota of interest in the door, but it was really windy Friday night, so the door flap was probably opening by itself.  We can only guess at what happened…she got curious, the big dogs scared her and she ran the wrong way, she was looking for the food on the front porch because she’s always looking for another meal?  Whatever happened, I hope she’s in the trap by the time we wake up in the morning.  The house is missing its feral ‘tude, man.  I miss trying to pet her all the time, and bribing her with kibble to be my friend.  I miss her little squeaky song & dance when it’s feeding time.  Dobbykins, it’s time to come home! 

the wee hours

I used to love fantasy football, but it’s hard to totally suck

I can thank Larry Johnson and his zero touchdowns for my fantastic 0-3 (soon to be 0-4, and I’ll demonstrate why) start.  Also, the supposedly good San Diego defense has been terrible too.  In fact, my only prize, Rudi Johnson, is OUT!  Figures.  In fantasy baseball, I was in first place the whole season…and now, in the playoffs, I’m duking it out for a third place trophy.  It’s kind of sad that I can’t even have a good fantasy year.  Okay, here’s my visual proof of my laughably bad WEEK 4.

If you can’t read it, don’t worry about it, you’re not missing anything but fantasy sulking.  If that’s a can’t miss kind of thing for you, then click on the picture for a larger version.

Monday, September 24, 2007

late evening

It’s Fall & The Weather Here Changed Instantly

It’s weird how the first day of Fall was greeted by Las Vegas with wind & rain.  It’s now 68 outside and I’m fuh-reezing.  Leigh-Ann is hot, and I’m wearing shorts with Disney slipper socks because my feets is cold.  I’m not sure what my deal is because it certainly isn’t really cold here yet.  As a matter of fact, I just checked the temperature in the bedroom and it’s 80 degrees, which, on other days, I think is too warm.  Maybe it’s the pain that’s making me cold.  I still haven’t recovered from SuperZoo and every time I sit down for a moment or two, it’s takes much moaning and groaning to get back up again.  You would’ve thought I’d done a triathalon or something, not spent five hours walking/ambling at a convention, then two days later spent six hours walking/ambling/carrying heavy frozen (and FREE!) pet food to the car.  Because we live here, we get lucky when companies don’t want to (or can’t) take some of their products home because they’ll spoil (frozen foods) or are too heavy (cat litter, dog kibble).  My personal haul was a box full of flea collars and flea & tick treatments; a bunch of bags of Ripples natural dog treats (they have mint & spinach and the big dogs really like them); a bag of PaPurr litter (made out of recycled paper); a spray bottle of Feliway and a spray bottle of Comfort Zone (those and the flea & tick products were from the Farnam Pet Products distributors, not from the Farnam booth - very very nice people!); Bright Bites Daily Dental Treats (most of his samples were gone, but he let me have all that was left, and then he was nice enough to look through his boxes to find two giant ones for Eli & Dante, because the big dog samples were gone - the dogs really liked the Bright Bites, and I think they were sad that of the samples left, none of them were cinnamon); Yippee Sticks (Cricket actually barked at me to get me to hurry up and give a piece to her after I’d opened the package, because they smell like Slim-Jims, so these were a big hit too, and I believe it was Bandit’s mom that I met, so Phoenix & Cricket want to personally thank her for the awesome treats)....and more, but I have pictures to remind me of the other products/booths I wanted to write about in the next few days.

We so totally scored at SuperZoo that we won’t have to buy any pet food for at least a month.  Thank you, Stella and Chewy’s (not only did we get tons of great frozen dog & cat food, but Doug also helped us carry some of it to the convention center door, which was very very nice of him), Wild Kitty Cat Food (we love them, and their food…as do our cats!), Primal Pet Food (the little dogs are especially fond of Primal), Evanger’s (we got canned food from them), and Wellness from Old Mother Hubbard.  We definitely got enough cans to herniate a disk or two.  Ha, you think I kid, but I’m pretty sure that SuperZoo ‘05 was the last straw for my L4-L5.  I tried to be very careful though, and we had one cart and one very very useful box on wheels (it looks like a box added to carry-on luggage wheels w/ a handle) from Urine-Off.  It was super useful and I’m very grateful that I finally got one this year.  The previous two years they’d run out of boxes really early.  I’m looking forward to trying some of their products.  We don’t have much trouble with anyone peeing on the floor, except for Jackson who occasionally pees over the edge of the litterbox in the bathroom.  However, they have a new product that doesn’t seem to be listed anywhere yet that would be great for our little problem of cats eating too quickly and vomiting.  It’s a powder that you sprinkle on wine, soda, vomit, urine, etc., and after you sprinkle it on, it solidifies, so you can easily pick up whatever it was that shouldn’t have been on the floor in the first place.  It even pulls the moisture out of the carpet.  It’s called Spill-B-Gone, and I finally found a link, thanks to Yahoo, and no thanks to Google.

Saturday, September 22, 2007

mid-afternoon

SuperZoo ‘07 was lots of fun!

Too sore & tired to go through our amazing haul, so I’ll tide you over with cute pictures.  This Bulldog had decided that s/he wasn’t going to move, nor was s/he going to put his/her tongue away.  It’s too bad the full body picture is a little blurry, because you could see the curled up tongue perfectly.  Alas, the camera isn’t always perfect - and, of course, it was the camera’s fault, not mine.

 

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

evening

Gone Fishin’...at SuperZoo ‘07

Should you feel the need to purchase a lovely spiked collar, check out Auburn Leathercrafters at Auburn Direct.  They had lots of great collars and leashes, even special ones for Christmas and Hanukkah.  Plus a whole line dedicated to a popular blogger’s children, Madison and Maxwell.  I suppose that maybe, perhaps, it’s just a coincidence.  I’m sure the children were named after the delicious collars that are studded with Swarovski crystals.

We’ve had a long week (for us), and we have one day left of five hours of stalking pet food/toy/apparel/etc. vendors and then we’ll need weeks to recover from it.  Yesterday, after five hours of walking/ambling, we were in so much pain that we had to stop at the Starbucks just outside the Mandalay Bay Convention Center to get drinks, snacks, and to take pain meds.  Once we sat down, we had a lot of trouble getting up, we were in so much pain.  It’s been quite a while since I’ve hit that lovely 9 on the pain scale.  We had to wait until the meds kicked in before we could continue our journey to the parking structure.  It’s okay, there are worse places to hang out than a Starbucks where you stand in line with people from all over the world.  I heard numerous foreign accents in the short time that we were there.

The pain was awful, but the convention has been fabulous.  We’ve met lots of really really nice people, and they have given us many many great things.  Toys for the cats, snacks for the dogs & cats, food for the dogs & cats.  Plus, Leigh-Ann finally got to meet the Wild Kitty Cat Food people.  They’re all really nice, and the cat food has literally been a lifesaver (for Carlo - he was born with terrible irritable bowel problems…he would cry loudly when he got cramps, and we thought he was going to die because of his terrible diarrhea & inability to get any nutrition from his food, but he’s been a perfectly normal kitten since he was switched to Wild Kitty) and a nose saver.  The worst smelling cat poop is when the cats eat kibble, but closely nipping at its smelly heels is canned food.  However, when the cats are eating Wild Kitty, their sh*t literally does not stink.  Plus, the cats all look nicer too - shiny coats, no pot bellies, etc.  It’s nice that they’re healthy, and it’s fabulous that when they’re eating Wild Kitty, you cannot smell a single cat poop in our house.  You wouldn’t ever know we had any cats, except for, you know, the house being littered with cat toys and cat trees.

Speaking of cat toys, we met a really nice guy from Vo-Toys, who let us pick out all kinds of great cat toys, so we had their UPC codes handy for ordering.  He let us choose any of the toys that we wanted, and there were SO many that our cats already love from Vo-Toys.  Tie loves the crinkly mylar balls, they all love the rabbit fur balls, Scampi & Carlo love the sparkly balls, etc.  Their prices for buckets of toys are so good that we’re going to order some to resell.  We also met a very nice Canadian man, eh, who grows catnip.  He has a program where he sends 5lbs of catnip free (FREE!) to rescues & shelters, so they can make toys with them and sell them to raise money.  We have some good marketing plans in mind for a new little side business to go along with our new pet vendor contacts.  This catnip is so good that all of our cats went nuts for it.  It’s super stinky, so you know it’s gotta be good.  And it looks so much like other BC Budz (is it real or is it catnip?) that their owners will buy the stuff just so they can dream it was something else - at least their cats will get high.

 

One more person that I have to mention, and she didn’t even have a booth there.  We met a nice young lady/woman/girl/chick (in her early twenties, what label would she get?) who does mobile pet grooming in the San Fernando Valley.  She was so nice that I’d have her come over to groom our dogs tomorrow if she lived in Las Vegas.  However, she doesn’t.  Color us and our dogs sad. :(  Nonetheless, our loss is California’s gain.  So, if you want a super nice & friendly groomer coming to your home in the Valley, call Crystal’s Mobile Grooming.  Since I’m not sure if her number is correct online (Crystal, next time, don’t leave your business cards at home!), I’ll just tell you to look her up in the phone book.  Or, if you know Crystal, tell her to send me her work number and I’ll post it.

Today, we had to deal with regular errands, like seeing the pain management doctor.  We almost had a whole LOT more pain to manage, as a stupid woman ran a red light on N. Town Center Drive and almost hit us.  We got off the freeway, waited a minute or two for the green arrow to make a left turn.  I started my turn and was halfway into the intersection when I noticed to my right, a woman in a black (Acura maybe) was coming directly at Leigh-Ann’s passenger door and she wasn’t planning on stopping.  I guess her conversation with her passenger was way more important than the silly red light.  Anyway, I slammed on the brakes, angled the car away from her and learned that my horn works.  I must’ve really jammed my hand on the horn hard because my shoulder is killing me and I can barely lift my elbow up.  It’s too bad we didn’t get her plate number, as I’d like her to pay for my pain meds for a while.  Unfortunately, she was too close to our car (a couple feet, maybe) for us to be able to see her plate.  We’re lucky that the cars behind us must’ve seen it happening because no one rear-ended me after I slammed on the brakes.  It’s the closest I’ve ever been to an accident, without actually being in one.  If I hadn’t been taught by my parents to drive defensively (because, clearly, other people are idiots), Leigh-Ann might have a few broken limbs right now.  The idiot was going pretty fast. 

By the way, the title of this entry was going to make sense, but I didn’t feel like finishing my Gone Fishin’ sign.  So, let’s just pretend I did, okay?  Okay!

 

She’s sleeping on top of a stroller.  I’m not sure if it was a doggie stroller or a baby stroller, there were lots of both at SuperZoo.