Saturday, January 24, 2009

mid-morning

Female elephants rescuing a baby elephant from drowning

An amazing video that will have you on the edge of your seat, even though I promise you that it has a happy ending.  It’s just awful that people have been separately these elephant families for circuses when you can see how much family means to them.  They’re definitely better parents than a whole lot of people I’ve seen.

Monday, January 19, 2009

early afternoon

Cute Calendar Contest - Enter Now! (January 31st deadline)

I’m giving away a second calendar that I ordered from the amazing Stacey & Yoshi at UrbanBeast.ca.  I’m keeping one and I bought one for you, whomever you are.  If you like cats and iconic women, you’ll love the calendar.  Stacey even made all of the costumes.  Since it’s a calendar and we’ve already missed most of January, this is going to be a short contest, and I’ll pick the winner on February 1st and mail it out right away.  Send me an email or post a comment and I’ll enter you to win.  And hey, my readership is down right now (funny how that happens when you blog inconsistently), so your odds are excellent.  And, even if you don’t win, the calendars are on sale right now and Stacey donates a portion of the proceeds to animal rescue groups, so you should buy one, okay?

Here’s the cover of the calendar, if you’re too lazy to go look at the whole calendar right now.

Friday, January 16, 2009

evening

Help Best Friends Get Donations & Help Neko Case’s Music Get Listeners (win/win)

While Leigh-Ann and I are recovering from the exhausting 48 hours of cats & their vaccines (plus I had to go to the DMV on Monday to register the car), enjoy some music and a nice story from Best Friends.  Really, we’re so exhausted and sore that it’s going to take days for us to recover.  I stayed up all night last night partially because TJ had a bad reaction to the vaccines and I wanted to keep an eye on him, and partially because as a caffeine wuss, I had too much caffeine.  He obviously felt awful - he was running a temperature, felt nauseous (wouldn’t eat anything until late tonight), and was in lots of pain from one of the shots in particular, possibly the rabies vaccine.  He could barely walk, couldn’t jump over the baby gates (which he normally clears with lots of space), and had trouble getting in/out of the litterbox.  We use those extra high Rubbermaid containers because Jackson has bad aim, and usually everyone gets in & out of them without a problem.  TJ was such a sad boy last night, so I lifted him in and out of the box, opened the baby gate for him to get in/out of the bedroom, and lifted him onto the bed so he could rest in the physical/emotional comfort of Leigh-Ann’s armpit.  We know that whenever TJ is cozying up in bed with us, he’s sick.  It’s both sweet and sad at the same time.  Anyway, he’s feeling quite a bit better tonight.  We gave him some kibble snacks and we were greatly relieved to see him eat.  He only weighs a little less than 8lbs, so he can’t afford to miss too many meals.

Every time a blog reposts “People Got A Lotta Nerve” by Neko Case, she and her record label will donate five dollars to the Best Friends Animal Society.  You can watch the PSA below that she recorded while she was volunteering at Best Friends for several days, and you can listen to her song that’s below it.  The promotion will run from January 13 to February 3, 2009. Five dollars will be donated for every blog post and one dollar for every user of iLike that adds the song to his/her profile. (a maximum of $4,000 will be donated - and as an SEO, it’s certainly money well-spent in a whole host of ways)  Here’s the story of Neko Case’s visit to Best Friends, which is just about every pet lover’s dream weekend.

Click here to download “People Got a Lotta Nerve” and if you’d like pre-order the cd from Amazon.com (it’s released on March 3rd), click here:

Thursday, January 15, 2009

terribly early in the morning

Interview with a Vet

As longtime clients of our vet’s office, we got to help “interview” a new vet at the office by bringing in our cat brood and having them vaccinated in a two day ordeal.  Because we were there to judge the vet, our cats were vaccinated for free, which saved us close to a thousand bucks.  We took the older cats in yesterday (and Kevin, the stray) and the youngsters in today.  Well, except for Bing, who refused to allow herself to be caught.  She hid under the bed, except for when she was bloodying Leigh-Ann.  Dobby (the former feral, yet mostly still feral cat), who barely lets us pet her, and then only on the back and only when she’s upstairs, also stayed home.  Everyone did well and there was little fallout from the vaccines from yesterday, except that Derek was extra sleepy last night and today.

The good news from today was that Kevin (the stray) is neutered and his feline leukemia tests came back negative.  So, if anyone would like to adopt a very very sweet (and healthy) young cat, who also happens to be very good looking, Kevin is ready for a new home.  He doesn’t want to be out on the streets.  He would like to stay inside someone’s house and watch tv with them.  He didn’t specifically say that he wanted to watch tv, but he does like to cozy up.

More good news from today - the vet couldn’t hear that Bunny had any sort of heart problem, much less that she had Feline Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy.  She’s been doing really well since she was diagnosed a little over a year ago (when she was in heart failure) and except for requiring her heart meds (cheap, thankfully), she’s been fine.  She’s very active, loves to play, and is great about taking her meds.  I don’t know if she could outgrow HCM, but I know they can outgrow heart murmurs, so if she’s fine now, that would be great.  She’s scheduled for an ECG in a couple of weeks, so we’ll know for sure what’s up soon.

The bad news is that Scampi has some weird gum disease that is common in Siamese cats.  He’s going to have to learn to put up with us brushing his teeth, so he doesn’t end having to have them all pulled.  There seems to be quite the run on gunky teeth in our gang - I guess street cats don’t have the best genes.  Otherwise, they all seem happy & healthy…although none of them were thrilled with going to the vet, not even Tie, who loves strangers.  Once we got there, they all handled it really well.  Bunny & Carlo tried to hide their heads in the corner of the couch (we were in the big room that has a leather couch), so they could pretend they weren’t really there.  Plus, they were shedding like it was going out of style.  Fear makes them shed, and it looked like they shed pounds’ worth of fear.  My shirt turned into a carpet.

As for the new vet - we really liked her.  She was friendly, knowledgeable (she diagnosed Scampi with something we’d never heard of), and good with the pets.  We would have no problem seeing her as a regular vet…and we’re kind of picky.

Here’s Kevin - take him home with you.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

lunch time

Our Library Opens Today!

We’ve only been waiting EIGHT years to get a library near us, and in just 7.5 hours, our library dream comes true.  There aren’t any good pictures online of it yet, so we’ll have to take a camera.  The place is huge and it looks like a shopping center.  It’s a big box with gigantic windows.

CENTENNIAL HILLS LIBRARY 6711 N. Buffalo Dr. Las Vegas, NV 89131 Date opened: Opening January 10, 2009   Architect:  JMA Architecture Studios   Interior square feet:  Library: 32,431; Operations Center: 13,124   Parcel size:  7 acres   Parking spaces:  248 total: 9 ADA, 20 hybrid (cool, hybrid parking spaces!)

About the Library: The new 32,431 SF Centennial Hills Library is located on a seven-acre site at N. Buffalo Drive at the intersection of Deer Springs Way, on a campus that includes the Centennial Hills Park and the Centennial Hills Community Center. This state-of-the-art library offers a collection of books, music, movies and other resources for adults and children of all ages, as well as a computer lab for adults, a Homework Help Center and adjoining computer lab for kids, an art gallery, storyroom and used bookstore/café. It has been designed to achieve a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold certification, meaning it is constructed to reduce negative environmental impacts and improve occupant health and well-being. It also offers free wireless Internet access (Wi-Fi). Meeting Rooms: Multipurpose room, Storytime room, gallery, Used Bookstore/Café (so that means it’ll smell good!)