Was walking Lily this morning, and she shot into a bush next to a neighbor’s porch, I heard a horrible yelp, and she ran straight back out the way she came in, tail between legs, with a very pissed off mama cat in tow. Turns out there are some stray kittens underneath the porch (the neighbor is out of town). Not much I can do, but I did drop off some water and food for mom.
Watching Lily run out with her tail between her legs was pretty damned hysterical, though.
*** Update ***
And she has moved them already.
Rosalita
You’re not going to adopt a little buddy for Tunch?
Dork
A leash perhaps? It’s the law where I live.
You’re damn lucky it was a cat and not a skunk.
Mudge
Clawed animals present unique challenges to a dog (especially small ones). May Lily never meet a raccoon.
PeakVT
Is anyone having problems with the right sidebar? The main column is okay, but the right column content appears below the this textbox. I think it’s the change.org content that is breaking things for me.
Comrade Jake
I assume you’ve not been catching I Am Legend on TNT these days.
Der Blindschtiller
Had three dogs growing up (desperately want one now, but it’s just too hard in the city where I live) and spent many a night at the vet removing porcupine quills from their snouts. Actually, I only ever had to do it repeated times for one of the dogs. The two others learned their lesson the first time around.
Of course, that dog was a masochist and absolutely love eating bees and wasps. She’d chase them around like mad trying get ’em. I guess that was her version of REALLY spicy curry.
stuckinred
We had folks around the corner that had the “were-cat”. Dude would come off the porch and attack dogs when they walked by. It was pretty funny to see dogs haul ass.
Comrade Jake
I do appreciate the Jaguar ads Cole. Not that I’m planning to buy one anytime soon, mind you. No, I’m just impressed they appear on the site.
You’ve come a long way from ads for Pamela Anderson’s breasts, baby.
Kryptik
Lily’s a lover, not a fighter?
jeffreyw
Saw a bird on a wire over the driveway yesterday that didn’t look familiar. Pointed it out to Mrs J, she said it was a Kingbird-one of a pair that was hanging around. I grabbed the camera and walked towards it hoping to get close enough for a good picture. I snapped a few as it sat there but it flew off before I could get very close. I mashed the shutter button as it flew away hoping the autofocus would do it’s job as the shutter whirred away. Later as I looked over the take on the LCD screen I was pleased and surprised to see that the bird was after a bug.I had supposed that the bird had become nervous at my approach.
Guess I could weave this anecdote into a larger narrative-“It’s not always about you”, or “Dig a little deeper and you’ll find that facile answers are often simple but wrong”. I’ll just leave it at “pleased and surprised”.
Butch
The guy who owns the property just west of us likes to collect, um, stuff. Last night he parked a wreck of a 1970 Mustang on the one flat spot on his property, and although it isn’t especially close, it’s the view we get from the kitchen window. This car has been driving all four dogs nuts since he stuck it there. Alien Mustang, I guess.
FoxinSocks
Can you contact a local rescue group to TNR (trap-neuter/spay-return) the cats? The kittens may even be adoptable. You just don’t want a situation where the kittens get old enough to start breeding themselves and before you know it, there’s hungry, malnourished cats everywhere.
4tehlulz
Did BoB get banned? He’s posting on Wonkette.
burnspbesq
Well, the California primary election is tomorrow, so we should get a respite from the attack ads for a while beginning on Wednesday.
It’s tempting to cross over and vote on the R side. I wouldn’t mind another five months of Fiorina’s bizarre ads, and she’s got no chance of knocking off Boxer. And a Whitman vs. Jerry Brown race for Guvernator … well, the comic possibilities are endless. Rose Bird Redux! Woo-hoo!
Keith
@Dork:
Heh, my dog’s been blasted by a skunk on 4 separate occasions (which makes my house smell terrible for 2 weeks). He’s also scared to death of possums in addition to hostile cats.
Woodrowfan
if it’s a stray cat contact Alley Cat Allies. http://www.alleycat.org/
They’re a very helpful group..
Punchy
So…..is the whole world (i.e., mass media) going to pretend like the oil leak is fixed? Are they really going to pretend that BP is getting “a vast majority” of the oil, as Cap’n Tony says, even though there’s pretty clear video that says otherwise?
BarbF
I had a 120 lb half chow half lab that used to avert her eyes and scurry past the basement door because momma cat was sitting there.
There is nothing nastier than a mother protecting her young, in almost any species. Including humans.
Dork
@Punchy: Watching the CNN feed, it looks like they’re capturing none of it. Just shit billowing everywhere. Absurd to think they’re even capturing 25%, IMO.
Comrade Jake
@Punchy:
What percentage of the stuff they’re missing is gas? I think it’s actually fairly difficult to ascertain just how much they’re capturing vs. what’s being missed.
As to your question, though, I think the key thing in understanding the mass media is to have exceptionally low expectations.
stuckinred
@BarbF: Yea, ever been to a little league game?
Laertes
Since Obama told me to read right-wing websites, I check out the Corner every now and then. Here’s what I see this morning:
– Jonah Goldberg takes a grade-school level shot at Tom Friedman.
– A good and short bit about the VA-11 election.
– Helen Thomas.
– Goldberg on Friedman again, with what can only be a hostile paraphrase, but he doesn’t link the piece he’s paraphrasing and I don’t feel like chasing it down.
– Helen Thomas.
– Helen Thomas.
– Helen Thomas.
– Andy McCarthy will be on Television.
– Helen Thomas.
– New Jersey Terror Arrests. Someone’s got a bug up about the terrorists not being terrorristy enough, or something. I don’t know.
– Helen Thomas.
In a word: Jesus.
bemused
Whoa, Lily had a close call. She could have gotten ripped to shreds. Momma cats are nothing to mess with as many dogs have found out the hard way.
Phil
@burnspbesq: In Gullyvornia, your primary vote only counts if you are a member of the party.
If you are democrat and you vote in the republican primary, your vote will be ‘noted’, but not counted.
Der Blindschtiller
Too lazy to insert the actual image, but this spill is so depressing, I’m happy at least the Onion managed to find some very dark humor in it:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/gulf-of-mexico-inducted-into-opec,17546/
The Onion has declined in recent years, but every now and then they still have a good one.
bemused
@stuckinred:
Lots of out of control parents at kid’s games. Someone here mentioned the other day being shaken after being at a game where a dad took after an 11 yr old player & cops had to be called. I didn’t catch if there was an update to that story or even who wrote about it. I’d like to know the rest of the story & if that dad is getting properly penalized for his behavior.
Incertus (Brian)
I discovered this morning that a former student of mine died about 3 weeks ago. He was a good kid, and he died from complications from the brain cancer he’d fought as an infant. Still sucks.
stuckinred
@bemused: I spent 20+ years running sports municipal programs and the morons finally drove me out of it.
Randy P
@4tehlulz: Apparently so. I haven’t seen him since his “Arbeit macht Frei” comment.
maya
@Phil:
I live in Schwartzelvania and that is one of the propositions up for vote – open primaries. It was Ahnold’s idea backed by his Repo minions. The idea being that the two top vote getters in the primary, regardless of party, will face off in Nov.
However, the Repos have now rethought their pro-open position and realize that they could be shut out altogether with the emergence of Tea Baggers, Greeens, whathaveyou. So, their new not-so-open position, since the proposition itself is not loophole free, is that their Repo candidate will be chosen ahead of time by, you guessed it, their own Repo convention/caucus, thus insuring that only the bestest Repo candidate is entered in the new open primary.
Demos are still tossing and turning but are mainly against the whole thing.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@4tehlulz:
The Jane Hamster’s of the Left deserve BoB.
Is he as obnoxious over there as he was here?
RedKitten
@BarbF:
No kidding. On our way home from the hospital, we stopped at a bakery to get some bread. Husband was in the bakery, and I was in the back seat with 2-day-old SamKitten. The car windows were down, as it was a warm day. This car pulled up in the space beside ours, the driver rolled down her windows, and she lit up a cigarette. I could immediately smell smoke in our car. I flung myself into the front seat and rolled up all the windows, giving her the death stare the entire time.
It took superhuman effort to do that, instead of what I really WANTED to do, which was to march over to her car, drag her out of it, and start beating the living shit out of her.
And John, you ARE damn lucky that it wasn’t a skunk. Or that those kittens weren’t on the other side of the road. I’d hate to see anything happen to the sweet little girl, so you might want to consider using a leash unless you’re somewhere where you know she can’t get into anything that could hurt her.
bemused
@stuckinred:
I hear you. Four couples including spouse & I were friends for a long time until all our kids were on same sports teams. One dad’s jealous behavior if our other kids ever performed better than his own & his ego driven pressure on his own poor kids finally hit a tipping point. End of friendship with that couple for all the rest of us.
I remember one dad who was coaching a baseball team with both his boys on it. They were great athletes & played their little hearts out but it was never good enough for dad. One of his boys was a fantastic pitcher. He also had this obvious nervous eye tick that really went into high gear when he was pitching & every other parent there felt his dad was to blame.
Jennifer
Kitties aren’t the only things that fight back.
A few weeks ago, I’m here at the computer; it’s a cool day so the windows are open, and I hear this shrieking coming from the back yard. So I go to see what the kitty has caught this time. I look out the back door, and I see her down at the side of the raised patio – it’s clear that she’s got something pinned down, but I can’t see what it is. But she has this stunned, surprised look on her face. As I watch, the bunny she had caught gets up and bounds away. Kitty half-heartedly chases it halfway around the house but gives up; I call her inside and notice that her chin looks kind of pink. By the next day, her lower lip was swollen up as if she’d been in a prizefight. I said to her, “Eartha, sometimes the bunnies bite back.”
Hopefully this will put an end to the bunny-stalking.
Randy P
@BarbF: As the dad of 2 kids I can definitely confirm that. Mom is pretty scary when she’s defending her kids. We call it “Mother Wolf” in our house.
@Jennifer: Guess nobody remembers Watership Down. That gave me a whole different outlook on cute little bunnies.
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: Out of curiosity I clicked on a couple of stories till I found one with some BoB comments. Something about how women prefer Teabaggers as lovers. Based on a boast by a FoBoB (friend of BoB) about how many times he “nailed” his “girl”.
slag
@Laertes: It’s all about priorities.
El Cid
The animal insurgency against human occupation of their territories has begun.
If the elephants start using mud and leaves as camo, get ready.
tavella
There’s an amazing video on Youtube somewhere, of a bunny kicking the shit out of a snake a great deal larger than it is.
Laertes
@Jennifer:
Wait.
Do you have a cat named “Eartha Kitty?”
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@RedKitten:
The nerve of that person smoking in their own car while parked in a parking lot. The nerve.
The exhaust fumes from the cars moving in and out of the parking lot are probably more harmful than one person’s cigarette, but hey, if you can’t be a complete asshole to a dirty smoker then who can you be a complete asshole to?
Sarah Palin should just Twitter that Joe McGinniss is smoking in the backyard of the rental property next door.
David
It’s best to introduce kittens to humans in the first week (assuming the mother is stray not feral). If she’s a feral cat you have to unfortunately remove the kittens before they’re a week old and hand raise them or they’ll never make a pets.
Svensker
Depressing story from my husband’s commute this morning:
He was sitting on the train next to a well-dressed middle-aged guy on a cell phone. Guy on cell phone was saying things like “yeah, fucking Muslims should all be killed. Someone should blow up every mosque in America. Let’s just nuke the entire Middle East. I hate those fucking ragheads” etc etc etc. My husband restrained himself from socking the guy but finally turned to the man and said, “excuse me but your bigotry is really offensive.” The guy started screaming that my hub was a terrorist loving anti-semite, he should be killed along with the Muslims, etc., etc. etc.
Something is really wrong with us. If the economy gets worse, I am very afraid of what could happen.
4tehlulz
@Jennifer: General Woundwart is still alive, and he just kicked your cat’s ass.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Randy P:
I’ll keep an eye for him over there. I’m a Wonkette peeping tom.
Btw, I have no idea why my wires crossed and I mistook Wonkette for Jane’s House of Crazy but I’m blaming it on the herbal enhancements from the weekend.
BenA
@bemused:
I’m constantly amazed at the expectations people put on their kids… and my kids are 6 and 8. Some of these coaches really have issues.
My dad coached my baseball team and I wasn’t exactly gifted. I had a couple of flashes of pretty good… but nothing spectacular. I must have been insanely frustrating to coach… but I don’t ever remember him going nuts or being overbearing… and he had a temper… heh.. Having my own kids in sports has given me a much greater appriciation for how well he handled everything.
Alice Blue
Our kittehs make life pretty miserable for the chipmunks that show up in our yard. One day I looked out the kitchen window and saw Hester stalking one of them. The chipmunk sat up on its hind feet facing her. That stunned her enough, but then the chipmunk jumped on her back. After a couple of seconds, it jumped off her back and scurried up a tree. The look on Hester’s face was priceless.
catclub
@Laertes:
Actually the word seems to be hellentomas.
Jesus is the word on alternate TUESDAYS.
Svensker
@catclub:
Classic diversion, eh? The Israelis (or Americans, whatever) did something bad? Look, over there! Helen Thomas!
stuckinred
@bemused: I coached with a parent who was a professor in Phys Ed and he was so abusive to his son that I told him one of us had to go. He went.
Keith G
Okay, live in the big city (Houston) a lil while and you see stuff. As I sip coffee on a cafe patio overlooking Westheimer Rd, an old man walks by. His right hand holds several small white shopping bags full of something. Slipped around his left arm and resting on his shoulder is a white inflated “donut” ring. He’s not going swimming. At least he is not smoking. Although, he does look like he might have once did three packs a day.
stuckinred
@Svensker: IMHO if you are going to confront someone like that you need to go hard and fast. Telling someone like that he’s “offensive” might make you feel better but chances are it will escalate.
stuckinred
Was it something I said or do you just no like Peter Sellers?
Bad Horse's Filly
Taking in a momma kitty (she was only 7mos old) and her 5, one day old kittens, was truly an adventure. My female Dane wanted nothing more than to raise the kittens herself, Momma tolerated it – to a point. She could stick her nose in the litter but was not allowed to lick them. She’d stand there all day, looking at those kittens and occasionally whine.
One day Momma kitty decided she wanted her litter in my office, which was at the opposite end of the house and up 14 stairs. I went downstairs to refill my coffee and looked over and saw NO kittens. I’m panicked, looking everywhere for them, go up to my office, there they all are. She had moved all of them while I was sitting in my office and I never even noticed. I guess she was lonely.
My favorite moment was when my Dane was lying in the office, the now 3 week old kittens using her as playground equipment, she stood up and there was a kitten attached to each foot and her tail.
growingdaisies
Just wanted to second the trap-neuter-return suggestion if they’re strays or feral … otherwise you might end up with an insane number of feral cats wandering around in just a couple seasons.
Where I live in there are groups who show you how to do it, lend the traps, and low-cost weekend clinics where vets perform the surgeries. You may have something similar local.
Angela
@David:
That is the dumbest thing I’ve read/heard in a long time.
ABSOLUTELY not true.
Angela
Oops meant to post his post 11:09 a.m.:
It’s best to introduce kittens to humans in the first week (assuming the mother is stray not feral). If she’s a feral cat you have to unfortunately remove the kittens before they’re a week old and hand raise them or they’ll never make a pets
* * *
Not. True. Please don’t repeat this idiocy again; you’ll do more harm than good.
RedKitten
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
Hey, I never said I was right or logical to think that way. My example was just to show that when it comes to protecting baby against real (or imagined) threats, momma bears can get fierce.
Besides, I wasn’t a complete asshole to her. All I did was roll up my windows. So you can stop being a complete asshole to me, thank you very much.
Woodrowfan
@growingdaisies:
Same here, now we have a small feral cat colony living in our yard. They seem to feel safe on our deck. But, since they’re fixed, no more kittens will be on their way. I’ve grown kind of attached to them. (and no more squirrels getting into our bird feeder)
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@RedKitten:
You only rolled up the windows?
Do you know who else is a “momma bear” that omits info to make herself sound better? Sarah Palin.
There, now I’ve been a complete asshole to you.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@FoxinSocks:
Please try to TNR that brood. It works and the kittens might themselves be adoptable. We done this numerous times.
Anne Laurie
@Keith G:
Yep, the hemmerhoid cushion. The older you get, the more your own comfort outweighs the fear of what other people will think…
RedKitten
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
The death stare would have been more effective if she’d actually looked at me. Which she didn’t. So I highly doubt her fee-fees were wounded by overhearing the low hum of my windows rolling up.
Jennifer
To whoever asked, hours ago, upthread, yes. Yes, I have a cat named Eartha, after the fabulous Ms. Kitt – who you will recall was also Catwoman.