It's a dog's life...

Meet Cooper.

He's 2 months old, a Border Collie/Black Lab mix.

AND HE'S ALL MINE!!!  *squeeeeeee!!!*

He moved right when I took the photo.  Hence the blurriness.

A Tale of Two Cats

Woo!  I LOVE CATS!  (Sorry. I had to.  This song gets stuck in my head frequently.)

So I have four of the furry beasts and two of them have very interesting stories about how they came to live at Casa Skye.  Small Cat, who turned 9 last Sunday, came to us when we were out buying plants at a local nursery.  After I'd picked out what I was going to plant that year (veggies and herbs, mostly, although I believe there were some pansies in the mix), we were standing at the check-out and Girl Child said, "Lookit, Mama!  Kittens!  Can we get one?"  I paid for my plants, loaded them in the car, and then went to look at these kittens.

They were in a wire cage with their Mama and they were all so tiny and cute!  There were three or four of them, and in a rainbow of kitteh colours--white, silver tabby, ginger.  Apparently, they'd been brought up from Mexico earlier that day and were free to good homes.  We had two cats already at the time, a Flame-point Siamese and a wee calico, but decided that these little guys were far too cute to pass up.  We selected the silver tabby, who was the only boy amongst the bunch and brought him home.  He's been with us ever since.

Small Cat's beautiful green eyes

Small Cat sitting with The Man

Large Cat, who will be either 6 or 7 in June, came to us in a similar situation.  We were out getting snails for our large aquarium at PetCo, and there was a local animal shelter holding an adoption event.  I lost the battle with the kids not to go and look at the animals--we had two cats, nine fish, two rats, and soon a snail or two, and quite frankly didn't need any more.  So very reluctantly, I trundled over to a large wire cage with Boy Child, and discovered a large, fluffy brown tabby kitten.  I picked him up and he immediately started purring.  He even purred loudly when Boy Child petted him.  I knew at that moment that he had to be ours.  I found out from the shelter lady that he was a Maine Coon and would be enormous when fully grown.  They told me that he was a year or so, but I think he was more like 6 or 7 months; they were fooled by his large size.  I plunked down $160 and walked out of the store with two snails and a cat.  And that cat became Boy Child's that very night, spending every evening curled up on Boy Child's bed and talking quite animatedly to him when being ignored.

Large Cat in all of his glory

Large Cat on a nest of blankets

Head on over to My Grandmotherly Ways to see more Caturday posts, and if you've a cat (or four of your own) post about 'em and add them to her Linky list!

Post crossings

I found this website, Postcrossing, last night and was immediately hooked.

What you do is send a postcard and get one in return.  Then you scan the postcard into your computer (or take a photo with your handy-dandy digital camera) and add it to the website.  The project is world-wide and I'm sending postcards out to Russia, Scotland, and Germany this week-end.  I hand-made my postcards, but obviously you don't have to do that.  Glancing through their database, it seems as though most people simply buy them.  But honestly, whichever kind I receive, I'll be just as happy. I've always loved this sort of thing.  I enjoy learning about other cultures, travelling, seeing how people in different cities and countries live, and getting a simple postcard in the post has always been a thrill.

Postcard to Russia.  The recipient said she likes flowers.

I also discovered two other sites that have to do with the post.  One is A Month of Letters Challenge, and the other is 52 Weeks of Mail.  I'd like to participate in both of them, but I haven't enough people (or enough money for postage!) to commit to sending something out every day for a month, so I'm going to opt in for the once a week for a year deal.  A friend of mine in Australia is going to help out, but perhaps some of my regular readers might want to participate, too.

I was thinking maybe we could get a list going and rotate through it.  One week would see the first person on the list receiving things from everyone else, and then the next person would be inundated with letters and cards the next week, and so on and so forth.  It would be kind of neat if we could arrange it so that people got things on or near their birthdays and maybe the letters or cards or whatever featured their favourite colours, or animals, or holiday spot, or dream vacation destination.

Postcard to Scotland.

Anyway, if you're interested in signing up, just send me a quick email and we'll get the list started.  We can start in May.

Holiday Edition

Hoppy Easter, Every Bunny!

from your Future Masters and Overlords,

the Bunny Army

(pattern to create your own Bunny Army found here)

Good Things

Inspired by this post from Pip at Meet Me At Mike's, I've decided to make a wee list of Good Things that I've experienced today.  Maybe I'll make this a regular Sunday thing.

• Lunch outside on the front patio with The Man and The Children
• Getting over 200 pages in my 700-page manuscript edited
• Seeing pictures of my friends' babies on Facebook
• Girl Child volunteering to sweep the patio and the walk
• The sweet, unguarded sound of Boy Child's singing when he doesn't know I'm listening
• Digging in the earth and planting things

What are your Sunday Good Things?



Send Hannah to OM World Finals!

Springtime Symphony

Late March in Southern Arizona is pretty heavenly.

The skies are filled with scores of birds--woodpeckers, doves, warblers, wrens, finches, sparrows, and the more exotic curved-bill thrashers--who fill the trees with their feathery little bodies and sing their hearts out.  There's the slow, lazy, almost soporific din of bees buzzing about the early flowers.  It's sunny and warm, and the flagstones of my patio soak up the heat and give back just a little taste of what's to come in only a few short months.

Curve Billed Thrasher

Red Breasted House Finch

Cactus Wren

I enjoy sitting on my front patio, watching the birds in our cedar, or the cat's claw acacia, or the mesquite tree.  Sometimes The Man puts orange halves in the branches of the cedar tree and within half an hour, one or both of a mated pair of Gila woodpeckers are there, feasting on a rare treat.  We call them Pedro and Lupe and they've been coming to visit our house for the entire three and a half years we've lived here.  I think they nest in a hollowed out saguaro cactus in the garden of the house opposite us.

There are teeny-tiny lizards playing tag and doing press-ups in the branches of the enormous cedar tree in my front garden.  And the air is heavy, positively redolent with the perfume of orange blossoms and sand verbena.

Sand Verbena

Orange blossoms and ripening fruit

This morning, I went to sit and read on the front patio for an hour or so and I spent more time watching the birds and the lizards than I did actually reading.  The wildlife around here is far more interesting than the book I'm currently reading.  At one point, our neighbour's cat came to drink at our bird bath and then she slipped away into a particularly scruffy portion of the garden.  I made a mental note to ask The Man to have a go at it with the weed whacker tomorrow morning and the realisation that I was taking away the kitty's personal jungle made me sad.  Maybe I'll let the weeds go an extra day or two.

Eventually, though, that nagging little voice in the back of my head, the one that doesn't let me sit idling for too long, reminded me that my books are never going to get edited unless I work on them, so I reluctantly left my comfy, warm, beautifully fragrant spot on the patio and came inside, where I found my own kitties sacked out in a sunbeam.  I'd loved to have joined them, but edits don't get done unless I do them, so I went into my office and sat down to...write this post.  And now I have to quit mucking about and get down to serious business.

Small Cat in the sun

Even though I'd much rather be outside with the birds and the bees, the lizards and the orange blossoms.


Send Hannah to OM World Finals!

Tucson Sunrise

I was abruptly awoken this morning at 4:30 by a certain cat who shall not be named (Fat Cat), who decided that it would be a lovely idea to play with a pipe cleaner on my bed.  He tossed it up in the air and then pounced on it with all four feet, and unfortunately for me, the pipe cleaner more often than not landed on my legs or my feet, and in one unfortunate moment that ended in me cursing at him and tossing him off the bed, my stomach.  The Cat Who Shall Not Be Named (Fat Cat) is not a lightweight, either.  He's a big, fluffy fattie who must weigh at least 15 pounds.  It's a good thing he's so remarkably beautiful; he mightn't have had breakfast this morning otherwise!

So, since I was awake and not likely to fall asleep again any time soon, I dragged my weary bones from bed and decided to photograph the sunrise this morning.  The colours were amazing, the air was still and crisp, and the world around me was hushed.  It was a beautiful time to be awake and alone with the mountains and the cactus and the morning star.