Been a shitty couple of days (except for that big win last night), so I think we all need a mid-day bit of kitty porn:
I’ve never met another cat who makes relaxing look so natural. He wasn’t born to hunt and prey, he was born to laze.
This post is in: Cat Blogging, Open Threads
Been a shitty couple of days (except for that big win last night), so I think we all need a mid-day bit of kitty porn:
I’ve never met another cat who makes relaxing look so natural. He wasn’t born to hunt and prey, he was born to laze.
This post is in: Cat Blogging, Dog Blogging, Open Threads, Pet Rescue
From commentor BD in MN:
Guinness is the latest in the BD household menagerie, currently down to one dog; Bruno, and two cats; Guinness and Tigger. All of our dogs have been Humane Society rescues, and all of the cats just sort of found their way to our house. Guinness just showed up meowing at the door early one very cold MN morning. When we went to see what all the commotion was, he walked right in the door, took a look at the pair of 100lb dogs, jumped up and batted Bruno on the nose… We led him to food, water, and litter boxes and he hasn’t left since… After treatment for frostbit paws and an admittedly half-hearted attempt to find his previous owner, he’s been happily sharing space with the rest of the crew for five years now… We only rarely subject him to such trauma as the pics indicate…
Tigger outweighs Guinness almost 3-1, he’s an almost Tunch-sized 22lbs, but they wrestle and play like siblings. Tigger came to us because he’s such a snuggler that he was jealous of Mrs. BD’s coworker’s new baby, so we sort of volunteered to take him in “for a little while”, that was eight years ago… As an accomplished snuggler, I can’t sit down for more than 30 seconds before he’s crawled up on top of my lap…
Bruno is the elder statesman of the family, he’s a 12 year old HS rescue, as far as we’ve been able to determine, a Newfoundland/Setter mix… The adoption paperwork said he flunked out of service dog training for being too obstinate and headstrong. Unfortunately, this will be Bruno’s last Christmas as he has an inoperable nerve sheath tumor on his front leg, and being a 12 year old, now 90lb dog, his hips are not strong enough to support a front leg amputation. He’s currently on a pain med regimen, but he’s still managing stairs, begging for treats, and acting like a happy dog… We struggle daily with the ongoing decision of how much pain is too much, but he’s still happy, so we’ll keep buying him pain meds…
by John Cole| 84 Comments
This post is in: Cat Blogging, Dog Blogging, Pet Rescue
I just got word from Beth S. that she has completed the Balloon Juice 2012 calendar, and it is now available for purchase. I hope each and every one of you takes a moment to than Beth S. for all the hard work she did putting this together for us, as she picked up where Laura W. left off last year. Also, take a moment to thank Laura W. and Ahab for really getting this started and allowing us to help all those wonderful animals. All three of them have given up a great amount of time to make this possible, and I thank them.
As a reminder, every penny from sales of all Balloon Juice store items and the 2012 Calendar will go to support Charlie’s Angels Animal Rescue, a truly wonderful charity that helps a ton of needy animals.
BTW- we did something different and have a Where’s Waldo sort of thing going, with a picture of Tunch in every month. Why? Because he said so.
This post is in: Cat Blogging, Dog Blogging, Readership Capture
I was sitting here in the lazyboy, enjoying the solace, and my guilty conscience kicked in. You’ve been begging for pics for days, so I got up and took some:
Speak and Whisper are hiding in the basement, and Rosie is guarding/chewing a chew toy underneath the spare bedroom bed and won’t come out.
This post is in: Cat Blogging, Open Threads
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More calendar pics. From commentor Teemu (Turku, Finland):
These two Sphynx brothers, Bounty and Boss, belong to my wife. She first got the Bounty (the fat pink one) six years ago, when he was just a tiny little kitten. Boss (grey-pink) came a couple of years later, and me soon thereafter. I’ve always wanted a cat, but I’ve always been severely allergic to them. These, to my surprise, did not cause me any trouble.
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Bounty has been in love with my wife for all of his life, so it was only natural that Boss adopted me when I came along. Every evening, when I return from work, he’s waiting by the door to welcome me home, and rest of the evening he follows me around like a shadow, meowing and purring and jumping on my shoulder from shelftop or back of a chair (usually 5-10 times a day). When I cook, he’s often sitting on my shoulder like a parrot. What I sit down, he’s always curled on my lap and purring in under ten seconds.
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I found out a few months ago that Boss has a heart defect, and I’m waiting for heart attack or similar to come in a matter of few weeks, or few months max. So here’s my dream cat I’ve been asking for for 30 years, who loves me so much, and my heart is breaking every night when I’m giving him his meds. I can feel and hear his little heart racing when he’s on my shoulder, and there’s nothing I can do, except feeding him more fresh liver and pork’s heart and shrimps, and otherwise making sure he enjoys every last moment he has to the fullest.
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(I think Bounty is a bit more picturesque in most photos due to his excellent eating-related skillset… Also, feel free to correct any ridiculous grammar mistakes, I’m not an english speaker really.)
This post is in: Cat Blogging, Pet Rescue
From commentor Starfish:
This is Casey. He has been living with me and my husband for the past 7.5 years. The trouble is that my son has been living with me, my husband, and the cat for the past 14 months.
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When my son was seven months old, the allergist told us that the sensible thing to do was to get rid of the cat because the boy was allergic. However, we are not sensible people when it comes to our pets so we decided to wait and see what happened. I asked my friends if they needed a cat, and most of them offered to take the boy after seeing the photographic evidence of Casey’s disdain for me.
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But for the past month, the boy has had a runny nose and a cough that haven’t gone away. He hasn’t been able to sleep, and he hasn’t been able to hold down a lot of food because he chokes from all the coughing.
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Casey is an alpha cat. He enjoys the company of men and opera singers, but he does not like the company of other cats. When we lived in a garden level apartment in Colorado, he was allowed outside and would frequently follow people home. We would get phone calls from people that he had followed home. The funniest was the time that he walked through an open door and perched himself atop someone’s hamster cage.
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Neighbors in that area would decorate him for Christmas.
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Since we moved to Maryland, he has been an indoor cat. Occasionally, we open the window, and he tells the world how tormented he is with his free access to food, his electric water fountain, a little box that is cleaned twice a day, and a variety of snacks.
Anyone interested, contact me at [email protected] (or click on my name near the top of the right-hand column) and I’ll forward your email.
This post is in: Cat Blogging, Open Threads, Pet Rescue
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I have, to the best of my meagre ability, sent a one-line “Received – thanks!” reply to every pet-pic emailed to me or the Calendar 2012 address. Some of you probably got thanked twice, because there’s a total of more than 160 messages, many of them with multiple images. Beth is going to be spoilt for choice! If you sent a pic and didn’t get an email, let me know.
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Many people included stories about their beloved animal companions, some of which I’m planning use here on future mornings, because they’re too good not to share. From commentor Schrodinger’s Cat:
These are my kittehs Yogi and Inji. Yogi is the brown tabby and Inji is the orange one.
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Yogi is the first cat I ever had. He is my handsome boy. He is also known as Boss Tweed, since he is bossy, he clearly thinks he is the part of 1% and the rest of us exist only to cater to his every whim. He is very flexible and can contort himself in the weirdest configuration, hence his name Yogi, since he is a master at Yoga. For all his bossiness and cattitude, he is a lover boy, he sleeps on my shoulder every night and is a big lap kitteh. We have had him since was six months old. My neighbor in the married student campus housing was giving him away, since he was tormenting her geriatric cat. He has been with us through three moves and I cannot imagine my life without him. He has been with me through good times and bad for almost 9 years now.
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We got Inji, our ginger cat about a year after we got Yogi, Yogi needed a buddy to play with, he was lonely, when my husband I would be gone for the whole day. Inji is ginger in Tamil, that’s where the word ginger comes from. If Yogi is our boss kitteh, Inji is our Buddha kitteh, she never bites or scratches and is very loving. She does not have a mean bone in her entire body. I adopted Inji from a woman who worked at the grad school offices when I was student. We have had Inji since she was 8 weeks old, and fit in the palm of my hand, now she rivals Tunch in size. She is not a lap cat but she loves to sit next to you and purr. She also takes good care of me when I am sick.
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I can’t imagine my life without these furballs.