For A Goat, She is a Love.

13. February 2010 by admin.

I must, at this point, tell you of my first encounter with a goat. And no, not one of those old goats (we all know at least one), but this was a very young one. Love was her name. And I’ll tell you about her name, too.

 

Pat gave the spanish hornless doe her name. She was mostly white, with a black splash of color on her forehead which could have been taken for a heart. Hence her name. And, as with all other beasts that have been in our care, it fit her.

 

Love was a character from day one. She had been weaned a couple of months when we bought her at a flea market we frequented at that time. She rode home in my lap, screaming bloody murder all the way home. All 45 miles of the trip. I became grateful she was so young and that she didn’t have horns. If she had horns I surely would have literally wound up with my eyes poked out (yeah, sure, mom always warned me about that kind of thing…but she never ever told me not to put a goat in my lap!). It was bad enough I practically had whiplash three times over on the trip home. Not to mention a ringing ear from“baa, baa, baa” during the entire ride. That girl had an impressive, healthy set of lungs.

 

When we finally got her home, of course we had to build her a proper pen since, as was so often the case, we weren’t prepared for her. In those early days on the farm we never planned on bringing anyone home. It just kind of impulse farming.

 

When Love first came home we put her in the chicken pen we had. It was replete with two roosting areas that can only jokingly be referred to as coops. It was all temporary, and it worked for the few chickens we had at that time. But even the larger of the “coops” was never designed for a goat. But Love didn’t care. As I said, she was young. But she was still a goat.

 

You must visualize here. The “coop” was about 3 1/2 feet tall, with a wood shelf about halfway up between the ground and the top of the shelter. It was maybe 1 ½ feet wide. All of it composed of pine and thin plywood.

 

One day we went outside and looked and looked for Love. We must have looked for and called her for a good half hour. Surely she couldn’t have escaped. I suggested to Pat we might start scouring the neighborhood for the little girl. After all, she might get hurt out there with the neighborhood dogs roaming about. We were just about to leave the back yard when we heard “baa. Baa” soft and low. Not a troubled bleating at all. In retrospect it might have been a goat’s version of a snicker.

 

We continued to search for the source of this snickering, and found love hidden in the chicken coop, on the shelf, not stuck, just comfy as an afghan hound on a plush couch and pretty as you please. When we first laid eyes on her in amazement, her only response was to look at us with her vertical pupils. “Here I am dad. Looking for me?” I couldn’t decide if we were laughing so hard because of where she’d gotten into or because we were relieved.

 

We finally built her a large pen just for her. She became daddy’s girl. She loved to play hide and seek and tag with me. I would run around a shelter we’d built for her and she would run around the same structure going the opposite way. When she and I would encounter each other I would slap my knees to the fronts of my thighs and make a silly noise. She would rear up on her hind legs, standing a few feet away from me. If it were anyone else I would be well advised to get the hell out of there. But Love never threatened to harm me or Pat. In fact, just the opposite, at least once she actually saved me from harm.

 

We had, at one point, gotten another female goat whose name evades me at this moment. Pat, I am sure, being one with a vastly superior memory for such things, will remind me after she reads this post. But since she reads after I post it publicly, and I generally don’t revise my postings unless I catch a spelling or grammatical error after the fact, we will never know the other doe’s name unless I put it in a later dated page.

 

It’s an important thing to note that by this time Love was fully grown. And the largest goat we’d ever owned since spanish are full-sized caprines.

 

Anyway, as I recall it this other young lady didn’t especially like me. No, I don’t know why, but she didn’t. She usually just stayed away from me, but I guess this one day she felt especially ornery. I walked into the pen to feed the girls. I could see it in her eyes that she was seeing red that day (I think her name was Pretty Lady, but I couldn’t swear to it), leading me to believe that she might be part bull. Be that as it may, I started to leave the pen and she started to run at me. Now, she may have been no more of a pest were she not fully horned. And she knew full well how to hurt with those horns. Love actually got between me and the other doe, giving me time to get out with both my pride and my body fully intact.

 

I have to mention just a couple of other things in her memory, since I just know she’s looking over my shoulder. Love really, really like plums. We had two plum trees within her sight, and during spring, when those trees were loaded with the red treasures, each day when Pat and I came to pick those small fruit, Love looked on longingly. She wasn’t going to let us go back inside without making us feel guilty if we didn’t give her at least a few of the red fruits. She would especially like it when we would get a couple of windy days, cause that would mean a bumper crop for her taste-buds.

 

The other thing I want to mention is more of a caution. You folks that have raised goats know this, but for those, like me, who didn’t understand the signs, if your goat stops eating his or her usual diet for more than a couple of days, please, please, buy some worming feed. I didn’t realize the problem till it was too late to save her life. I have been wracked by guilt since we lost her, but it’s so important for you to worm your livestock susceptible to worms. Especially when you have someone in your life as special as Love was to us. That 6 years went by way too quickly. I do miss her terribly. I hope she will speak to me when I see her in Heaven.

 

I need to tell you about her and Godzilla, but I haven’t even started to skim the surface with that young man. Later for that.

 

Well, that was a long-winded posting. Until next time, dear reader, smile. It could be worse. With all this snow, be grateful it’s not doing it in July.

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My Cat Kneads Me

3. February 2010 by admin.

Scamper was our first cat. As so many felines are, Scamper was abandoned as a tyke. He not only was barely weaned, but was torn from his mother before he was completely able to eat solid food. Pat, having worked in that pet supply store (since I have nothing good to say about this major chain, as it treats its employees not quite as well as cattle on a ranch, and has as much contempt for it’s customers, though it fawns to them like a court jester, they shall remain unnamed), voted herself as most likely to take him home. And she did.

 

Being my first up-close and personal experience with a cat, I was fascinated by this little guy. And little he was; in fact, tiny would not be incorrect. He literally fit inside a beer six-pack container, which is what he came home in. I don’t know if he drank all the beer, but the case was empty aside from this “defenseless” creature. Now, you’ll notice I put the word defenseless in brackets. There is a reason for this. You cannot walk around naked with a kitten in the same house. Especially if you’re a guy. If you’ve never been in the presence of a very young cat, you’ve never known the sheer delight of their claws. And they like to bat at things with their paws. All the more so if they dangle. Gentlemen, are you starting to get the picture? I can see some of you running to get your drawers on, so I think I’ve said enough to forewarn you. A kitten is precious, but they will tenderize any meat that comes near them.

 

Another thing I noticed about cats is it takes very little to keep them entertained. If you have your clothes on (which, as indicated above, I highly recommend), all you have to do is throw a balled-up piece of paper, and they’ll be on it like sailors seeing their first woman after six-months at sea. (Okay, so I could have described that differently, but what fun would that be? I am not writing this from a priest’s perspective.)

 

During the first few days with Scamper, I continued to learn a lot about felines. For instance, when a cat plays, it’s genetically not possible for them to not attack the object of their playing. A hand gets clawed, scored and bitten, albeit gently in the case of Scamper. I began to understand why they like mice so well. His head fit into Pat’s hand, and like any cat, he loved to have his head scruffed. Being still small, we tried to be as gentle as possible with him. It would have been nice had he returned the favor. Even being gentle, Scamper still had razors in his paws, and he hadn’t yet figured out how to control them.

 

Fast-forward to his adulthood. This tiny creature grew into a domestic cat that obviously had quite a few big-cat genes. He developed a dimpled nose and a pouch on him that would make a lion envious. But despite his largess, there was not an ounce of fat that didn’t need to be there. He was active, but as we added more cats, his stature as our elder states-cat never changed. He rarely got into tiffs with the other cats, nor was he challenged by anyone else. The only one with whom he ever had an argument was Princess, our second-in-command.

 

Princess got her name because she acted like one. She was a beautifully marked ring-tail patch siamese, and she knew she was gorgeous. In fact, were she human she would be the exact kind of woman that would turn me off because I hate that attitude, even if she was the perfect eye-candy, But Princess had claimed me as her person, and all it took was her curling up in a tight little ball on my lap and I was hooked. This beautiful little kitty, who, while weaned when she came home a couple of weeks after Scamper’s triumphant arrival, was not very much larger than Scamper was when he came to live with us, had me hook, line and sinker. I absolutely fell in love with cats. I’ve been a cat person ever since. In fact, I have seen a mug in a catalogue which had the imprint “ask me about the cute thing my cat did, because I’ll tell you anyway”, or words to that effect. Truer words were never spoken. A person smitten by a cat is worse than a first-time father. I could blather on about Princess for hours. Eventually people would see me coming and remember they had an appointment in another county they had to attend to.

The last thing I’ll mention about Princess was her agility. I know all cats are agile to the nth degree, but Princess was remarkable. At one time we had a pile of boxes in the living room at 6 feet high. I could see her calculate how much distance she would have to leap to get to the top of the boxes. In my mind’s eye she was figuring out wind-speed, azimuth and translating that into effort. And all this without having to build a computer. Princess cost us nothing to bring home. How much did it cost NASA to build a calculator to figure this out? Now, who’s smarter?

 

Both Scamper and Princess have since gone on to their eternal reward, but I will forever be grateful to my Princess for teaching me that one of the most rewarding things in the world is being owned by a cat. And believe me, they own you. Just ask them.

 

Ciao for now dear reader. Until next time, may you be affectionately stared at by a cat. And yes, the cat is wondering if you’re all there. It’s what they do.

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Ay Chihuahua

27. January 2010 by admin.

 

Hershey and Taffy were their names. The only two canines to come into this house who could stand under a chair without lifting it up. Both of them were dropped off at the pet store where Pat worked; the animal equivalent of a baby left with a note “Please take care of my child.” In this case they were both of a broken home. Hershey was a male blue (blue is one of those misnomers famous in the dog world, because there wasn’t a blue hair on him – more like a grayish chocolate color), and Taffy, daddy’s little girl, was fawn.

 

Both the little ones went into the dog yard with Sam and Chevy. Now, it’s important to remember that Sam was about 70 pounds, with Chevy weighing in at about 60. But despite the heavy-weights, the dogs that ran their yard were the chihuahuas. Especially Taffy. She wasn’t about to take any crap from any of her other 4-legged yard-dwellers. There were 3 dog-houses in their pen, a world big enough for anyone to get exercise in. A small one for the chihuahuas, a medium house for Chevy and the largest one available for Sam. However, the one where the chihuahuas spent most of their time was . . . You guessed it, Sam’s domain. He would beg, cajole and make the most pitiful-sounding whimper, but the smaller dogs didn’t give up the large house unless they wanted to. This was especially painful to watch when it was raining. Then it seemed like Hershey and Taffy were being just plain mean. You might call Sam a wus, but when Taffy snarled, which she did whenever Sam or Chevy did anything to displease her, it was as ferocious as feeding-time in the lions den. I would have been intimidated, though neither she or her male counterpart, ever gave their mommy and daddy any lip.

 

We couldn’t let the small dogs into the house. Whenever they did come in, admittedly sometimes by accident, with their boundless energy and lightning-fast reflexes, the cats would scatter, barely having time to spit or sputter. Either one of the chihuahuas would pick up a ball 3-times bigger than themselves and fiercely shake it till it cried uncle. Godzilla, whom you’ll meet later, was fascinated by these rug-rats, and Cutiepie, Godzilla’s life-long companion, didn’t like these wind-up toys. Once Hershey got into the main body of the house without our realizing it, and before we were able to intervene Cutiepie grabbed the little boy by the scruff of his neck and shook him as though he were a rope toy. Hershey yelped and very convincingly played dead. It was a Sunday, so were were not able to get hold of our vet. We just put him in a dark, dry place with a blanket over him. Within hours he was back to his playful self, though he avoided the big black dog (actually black and tan, but again, more in a later posting)with all due caution.

 

I mentioned earlier that Taffy was daddy’s girl. Now, remember I am the guy that wasn’t especially fond of animals? Well, I didn’t like cats at all, nor did I want anything to do with small canines. Yeah, right. Those go under the heading of “Famous last words.” When we called the dogs in for the night, which we did almost every night in the beginning, then only on nights of really inclement weather, or on nights when birds of prey might likely swoop in and grab one of the chihuahuas, Sam and Chevy went right into their kennels, as did Hershey. But Taffy begged daddy to pick her up, which he usually did. Taffy buried her face into my neck, where I held her for a few minutes. Needless to say it didn’t take me long to warm up to small breeds.

 

After Taffy suddenly died (we never did figure out the cause of her young demise (she was only seven) called her in one night, and by next morning she was gone), Hershey mellowed to the bigger dogs, but still wouldn’t yield any ground if he really wanted something. He was one tough hombre. Tougher than almost anything. Except muscovy ducks. Those of you whom have raised ducks know that no matter what you do, muscovys are going to fly, unless you pinion them when they’re very young. Even at that I have my doubts that they will be grounded for life. More than a time or two a couple of our muscovy ducks would land in the dog yard. Now Chevy was famous for picking off anything dumb enough to fly sufficiently close to her snapping jaws. Chevy was incredibly sweet, but she was a hound dog, and a treeing walker fox hound at that. We lost a couple of guinea-fowl to her and at least a couple of quail. Now, if you know guineas you know they are not the shiniest nickels in the piggy-bank. And quail…well, quail are quail, and very difficult to control just because they are so small. However, when one of the muscovys found themselves in the chihuahuas yard, they just sat there hissing and complaining when one of the dogs got anywhere near him (or her). Nobody messed with these bundles of intimidation. I didn’t dare get too close unless I had on a pair of thick gloves. And even at that I wondered if I was going to survive with all my body-parts intact. All I can say is when they were around I was very glad I had not chosen to walk around naked (this is aside of the social ramifications, like scaring the neighbors).

 

In the words of Forrest Gump, that’s all I have to say about that. When next we meet I will tell you about . . . No, I won’t tell you. Mainly cause I don’t know. But I do know I love to see you smile.

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Is that a cat or a beach ball?

22. January 2010 by admin.

 

I must apologize for having not posted for the last couple of weeks. I wasn’t inspired at all last week, and so far this week it’s been really hectic around here. But I finally decided to use a few minutes to jot a few more words.

 

For this entry, I have to fast-forward a few years. When daddy shows a picture of Selma, the usual, and most often the only immediate response is “that’s a fat cat!” Selma is one of our older cats, though we brought her home before Butternut, who was the last one to set up his litter box here.

 

Selma is a cat. At least she’s supposed to be. And she is big. At her biggest she probably weighed something along the order of 20 pounds. She now tips the scales at about 13 or so. Her weight loss was not the result of Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers, nor of an exercise program (her legs aren’t long enough to reach the pedals on my recumbent bike). Just part of her aging.

 

The saga of Selma started at least six months before she came to live here. She was part of a home of what some call a hoarder and some call a collector. Whatever you might call this lady, she had close to a hundred cats when she became physically and mentally unable to care for them. An anonymous tip sent animal control into this woman’s home, where they found 96 cats in varying condition. Those who were still alive were very undernourished.

 

This collection of poor souls included the cat the pound would refer to as Selma. She was made healthier, fixed (ah, there’s that term again), and put up for adoption. She was skinny as a train rail when she met the other kitties here. Scrawny and scared to death of everything. We did all we could to make her feel comfortable, including a period of getting used to one room without other cats. She would come out of the room from time-to-time, warily so. And when she did it was to grab a few morsels of food and skitter back to her insular world. It was painful to watch, but we did notice progress, so the panic button was not hit. Well, not by Pat, but I had my doubts.

 

The other cats eventually learned to tolerate Selma, and when the little girl discovered she would be allowed to eat without harassment, she did just that. She ate and ate. I was beginning to wonder if she had somehow become permanently fused to the feed canister.

 

We have referred to Selma as our bullcat for some years now. In case you wonder why, picture a bulldog with it’s rolling gait, especially as it walks toward you, then you will get a snapshot of Selma.

This is Selma

The photo above was taken at Christmastime some few years ago. It’s hard to get a good look at her impressive girth, but you get an idea. Oh, and the ribbon and the reindeer atop will give you some idea how tolerant Selma is of our foibles.

 

The walk is not the only thing that makes one compare her to a canine. If you scratch her just right the hind leg starts going. And if she is laying down and wants to be petted, besides being very vocal about it, she will often turn over so you can rub her belly. What can I tell you? She is a feline-challenged cat.

 

Seeing Selma get onto a platform or a chair a couple of feet off the floor is something to marvel at. And probably cause a huge laugh, too. It’s like watching a repeating frame of film that directors will sometimes use to get a laugh. She starts to jump, runs in reverse, starts again and repeats the process three or four times. She will eventually get onto her perch, not the least bit insulted that she was laughed at. She just lays down and does whatever she does.

 

Selma has the loudest purr of nearly any cat I’ve ever known. If she’s in my lap while I’ve got the TV on I have to turn the volume on the television up. That’s almost an exaggeration, but not quite. She is loud. Her meow is more like a demand, but it does not sound like any meow I’ve knowledge of. It’s like a guttural version of “Hey!” And yes, it actually sounds like the word “Hey.”

 

As noted above, our fat cat is very tolerant. You can do almost anything to her as long as she is getting loved on. We’ve never tossed her in the air (I’m not sure she would truly appreciate that), but we have picked her up and rocked her in our arms. She just stretches out and enjoys the ride. She minds her own business but will smack any other animal that invades her space; dog, another cat, it doesn’t matter. Nor does the size of the dog at whom she takes a swipe at. She’s not nasty or mean. She just wants to be left alone in case some human wants to love on her. She wants those goodies all to herself.

 

Well, there is a ton of other things I could tell about our small bit of kittie tonnage, but suffice it to say she has given us a lot to smile about and just plain laugh about. And dear reader, that does it for this installment. I will try to be more regular and add one or two entries a week. Until next time, keep smiling. It throws people off-base.

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My Name Is Sam. Sam I am

8. January 2010 by admin.

 

The first fall after our arrival, we decided to sell stuff at a permanent flea market “in town.” Okay, now I will admit, coming from a very big city, this is not a term I would have ever thought I would use. This word is something I would hear on Bonanza or some such TV show. But, still, any store you would have to travel to for anything was “in town.” And that, as you would expect, was pretty much everything. Oh, there was this dinky little store in “downtown” Josephine, but the idea of paying $5.00 (this was in 1994, remember) for a dozen for eggs was just too much for me to bear.

 

Well, we opened up shop in a city just north of Dallas. Of course, since it’s a flea market where most folks selling are not professionals, we had a lot of competition for the same types of items. As a result, we didn’t exactly turn much profit. In fact, we often barely made our rent payment.

 

But, all was not in vain. A few doors down from our booth was a couple selling puppies. Okay, I don’t approve of puppy mills, but Pat, being a sucker for animals of all sorts (I was still not convinced I was animal person. Patience dear reader. My being sucked in will become obvious as this blog continues), had to check it out. This went on a couple of months, till one day in the spring she came back to our booth with a puppy. The dog, I will admit, was cute as a button. I noted that he had large feet. I thought that just meant he was healthy. What did I know? Pat just smiled and handed him to me. Pat said he’s a catahoula, which is a breed raised to herd wild pigs. She said he looked up at her and said “My name is Sam.” I’d been with Pat long enough by now to know she was about as close to “Dr Doolittle” as I was ever going to come, so I didn’t even raise an eyebrow. I just patted the little fella on the head and welcomed him home, since I knew it was pointless to argue.

 

We came home with Sam, not knowing exactly what catahoula’s were like. Mind you, Pat knows more about canines than anyone I know, but even she didn’t know as much about that breed as she should have. For example, Sam had his own yard to himself, a pretty good-sized section of land we’d fenced off just for him. But we didn’t realize Catahoua’s, for all their size, were scared of their own shadows. When he saw a rock in the yard that he hadn’t seen before, we had to move it out of his sight or we would not get a chance to have a decent conversation in our house. He barked and whimpered at that rock until it walked out of his line of vision.Well, the yard didn’t turn out just for him. But more about the other denizens of that yard as we go forward.

 

The first fall after Sam was spending most of his day in the yard, after many trees had fallen bared by nature, Sam started barking and barking. Sam had a very shrill bark for a 60 pound dog; the kind of shrill that tore through your bones and bored into your brain. It did to me kinda like I imagined that insect that Khan did to the crew of The Enterprise in the second Star Trek movie. At least it had much the same effect. This barking went on for what seemed like days. Then we figured it out. And it wasn’t something we could easily move from Sam’s line of sight.

 

What Sam was carrying on about was a couple of fields over there was a horse standing in a pasture. During sunny days it was keeping warm by just standing still, letting the suns rays caress him. We were more than sure that the horse did this very often, but now that there were no leaves on the trees blocking Sam’s view, he could see the horse. And it was something different. Catahoula’s don’t like anything new and different, and to him the horse was invading his territory. Hence he barked…and barked…and so forth. By early February we were praying for spring and leaves.

 

As time went on we got one more dog from the puppy-mill people, Chevy. I gave her that name since she was a treeing walker fox hound (okay, let’s just pretend these dogs are pure-bred). When she was just weaned, as all of the animals this couple were selling were, she had round markings just above each eye that, to me, a creature of the city, looked like headlights. Hey . . . You find your metaphors where you can. Hence, the dog became known as Chevy. Very sweet, and the perfect companion for Sam. She kept him in his place, even after they were both “fixed.”

 

If I may digress for a moment (did I just hear someone sarcastically say “what a novel concept?” And hey, did the words “oh, here we go again” just pass my ears?), why do they call having an animal rendered incapable of making or having little animals of their kind “fixed?” I mean, if a child removes the wheels off its new wagon, you would say the child broke it. So why not call the practice of removing an animals sex organs breaking it? Now please understand this does not in any way mean I am against cutting an animal. Ultimately it’s the best thing for all concerned; the animal is healthier, lives longer, doesn’t have babies that may wind up being euthanized through no fault of the animal’s, and most of the time a better pet for it. But still, one has to wonder about the “code words”.

 

I mentioned that Chevy was the queen of the yard Sam and her shared. Chevy would more often than not steal Sam’s toys and horde them. Not sure why she did that, other than because she could. No, Chevy didn’t play with those toys. She just took them from Sam and kept them from him.

 

Then came Hershey and Taffy, our two chihuahuas More about them in my next installment. Until then, dear reader, have a great week. And keep smiling. Makes them wonder what you’re up to.

 

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In Memory of Blue Eyes

2. January 2010 by admin.

 

The Texas triumvirate started to unravel when Herbie started spending more time at his owner’s house, mostly because as much as I was really beginning to warm up to dogs, Herbie just couldn’t behave inside our house. I have no idea what he did in his person’s house. Maybe the guy had a doggie commode (my guess is one wouldn’t have been enough. And how did Bob ever train that dog to use a commode?).  But there was no way that canine was coming back inside our new house.

 

Blue Eyes and White Boy spent most of their nights staying warm inside our place. They were both well behaved. Okay, White Boy wasn’t so much well-behaved because he was just a nice little doggie (the vet referred to his lineage as “lab mixed with something with short legs”), but he was scared of his own, or anyone else’s, shadow. And he was such a whiner. He would make such a racket when one of us drove up after working all day. No, not barking, exactly. More like a bark combined with a horrific howl that would normally attribute to a wolf in dire pain. Our guess was that Herbie’s person, who claimed White Boy was his dog, didn’t really give a damn about the white dog living in his house and just ignored him except when it was convenient. That poor dog’s spirit wasn’t so much broken as it was eaten away by neglect. As an example of this, his dry food was left outside, where White Boy was mostly relegated to. This would be okay, except here in Texas we get fire ants in abundance, and fire ants especially like meat. Of course White Boy had to eat his dinner with the uninvited dinner guests in attendance. Blue eyes suffered much the same fate, but was never affected in the same way. We think that the latter simply took care of herself more than White Boy did.

 

Blue Eyes had a ton of character, and was incredibly smart, as I alluded to in a previous posting. Her e is the best illustration of this: our newly acquired land was formerly farmland, and as such still had the irrigation terraces. Every afternoon Herbie would trot over to our place from his person’s house. At least the dog, obnoxious though he was, knew who his friends were and enjoyed their company; no, not us, but White Boy and Blue Eyes. And every day Blue Eyes would see him coming before Herbie saw her, and every day Blue Eyes would crawl on her Belly to just behind the top of one of the terraces. At just the right time Blue Eyes would jump out and terrify Herbie so dramatically I could swear I saw his ghost leap out from Herbie for just a few seconds. It was like watching a Merry Melodies cartoon. Herbie either never figured it out or enjoyed being scared out of whatever wits he had left. I’m pretty sure it was the former. Herbie was not the shiniest penny in the piggie bank..

 

Well, Blue Eyes met a very untimely fate. One Thursday evening, while dusk was fading to black, we called Blue Eyes in for the night. No response. Several calls later we finally figured since it was such a soft night out Blue Eyes had simply decided to enjoy the temperate weather. After all, despite her getting food and shelter within our humble home, she was accustomed to fending for herself.

 

The next day was rainy. I came home from work to see Pat and Barry coming from somewhere in the back of the house. I’d found out that Blue Eyes had not decided to spend the night outside, but had in fact gone for a swim. She’d gotten bitten by a snake and had tried to make it home. Our poor Blue Eyes had made it to within a couple hundred yards from the house. My wife and best friend buried her where she succumbed.

 

That was a few months after we had moved to Texas. We have never forgotten her, and she will always be remembered.

 

Herbie moved away with his person a year later. And White Boy was officially turned over to us after his previous person was nearly cited for letting the dog run wild. White Boy lived to the ripe old age of about 20, living with us to the end. He was happy, if a bit cantakerous.

 

I will tell you more as this year unfolds. Until my next posting, take care of yourself and those you care about. They may be the only people to keep you sane.

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Beginning of a new life for the completely uninformed

1. January 2010 by admin.

 

Pat ran into a very dear friend of ours here in Texas today. Barry, AKA the water terminator, encouraged me to write more. So, with a tip of the hat, Mr Edwards, the irrigation expert (he runs his own irrigation company, Barry Edwards Irrigation), I dedicate this entry to you. Now, before you go accusing me of shameless plugs, let me tell you, that is exactly what it is. But I offer that only because he is a friend. Actually, without getting all maudlin and sentimental, I will tell you never was there a person kinder to two Texas imports than Barry. But besides all that, Barry knows more about back-flow than anyone I know. Before I met Barry, I just assumed back-flow was something that happened when it was time to drain the septic. And believe me, Barry is very clear when it comes to explaining that a zone is not just a football defense. So, Barry, this, bud, is for you.

 

In my last entry I mentioned the beginning of my love affair with animals, or what might be casually called “my life of crime.” Well, this will be a recurring theme throughout this blog. Animals define, indeed, embody, the love God put on this earth. They love unconditionally (okay, okay, maybe love isn’t unconditional with cats, but if you’re a cat person, as I am, you’ll understand that, while cats are more demanding, they simply deserve as perfect an existence as they can be given. The purr, they will remind us, is nature’s perfect sound. It is neither trill nor bone-shattering. A purr is simply a cat’s way of saying thank you for loving me. Now, scratch me there just a tad harder. Oh yes! Down a little bit. And so it goes). Though a cat defines “unconditionally” a little differently than Webster does. But more about the felines in our lives later.

 

June first, 1994, a day which will live in infamy. Our arrival in Texas. It had been a wet spring. So wet, in fact, that the mobile home transport company had to be threatened with a lawsuit to finally get my house placed on the five acres we’d bought. How did I know the wet muck jokingly referred as soil around here would cause tire tracks that would make the moon proud? A Mobile home?, you ask, your right eyebrow raising questioningly. Yes, the finest in disposable housing, made by people who swear up and down they are doing you a favor by selling you $100,000 worth of house for less than half that. The truth is you get $5,000 worth of barely standard shingles slapped together with spit and roofing nails for $40,000. That is just my opinion, but it came from experience. Don’t believe it? Try getting the floor of a mobile just a tad wet.

 

The first obstacle: the incumbent energy utility had not hooked up our electrical as of yet. The aforementioned Barry, who along with his wife at that time, were our new neighbors just the other side of our road, offered us a very long extension cord so we could at least enjoy a bare bulb at night. I mean, we were newlyweds, for heaven’s sake. Who needed more than a bare bulb? We accepted the offer, but as fortune would have it, the utility crew happened to be in our area that day (a Saturday, no less), and hooked us up before the sun set. I was terribly grateful, though in retrospect it was more a move of expediency on the utility company’s part. Nobody likes to come out to our town unless absolutely necessary. It’s not a bad place; just very out of the way and, therefore, inconvenient. Even today unless you’re handy with everything from plumbing and electricity to carpentry, you’re dead in the water. And remember, I am a city boy who never had to learn any of that stuff; and I have no patience for directions. Hence, very little gets done until it’s absolutely necessary. Hence my credit card bills. But, gotta keep the economy going somehow. Washington doesn’t seem to know how.

 

Okay, okay, I have gotten way off track. Let me cast out the reel, hook myself by my pants, and ease back to the topic at hand. Which is . . . Give me an A somebody . . . Animals!

 

Earlier in this blog I mentioned the three neighborhood dogs that were the first ones to greet us on our initial visit to Texas to choose the piece of land we would call our own. Herbie, Blue Eyes and White Boy. Herbie was supposedly a spitz. If ever there was an obnoxious dog, it was Herbie. Maybe it was his way of thanking us for the hospitality of letting him get cool inside our new home, but the first thing that animal did when we let him inside was to hike up his right leg on a corner. Needless to say Herbie was no longer welcome in our house. Then there was Blue Eyes. Blue Eyes was the first dog to show me how smart animals can be. During the month of mobile home life without skirting, Blue Eyes and her friends would rest in the cooling shade of the home. Blue Eyes was the tallest of the Texas triumvirate having shepherd blood in her lineage. And without fail was our watchdog. For no matter where we were in the house, if someone just as much as drove past the front of the house we would hear the inevitable bark bark, bark, clunk; the sound of the trio rising to greet the new menace. If we missed the barks, we would definitely hear the clunk. The clunk was Blue Eyes cracking her head against the metal frame of the house. This went on the better part of the summer (yes, my dear observant reader, this means it took a lot longer than 30 days to get the skirting around the base of the house).

 

There is more to tell you about the interesting band of brothers. More in my next installment. As always, stay safe, and have a great 2010.

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How I Learned To Tolerate Animals

24. December 2009 by admin.

 

If you had known me prior to meeting Pat, you would have known I didn’t have any special affection for animals of any sort. Oh, sure one was part of the family when I was growing up. The only characteristic I really remember about her was that all my mother had to do to get her to cower was bite her hand. Mom was Irish, but she was heavily influenced by dad’s family, which was very Italian. Hence, my mother would get her wish by biting her hand.

 

I had met Pat in an online chat room before the internet was the internet. She was planning on leaving her house in Florida to move up to NY. I told her if she needed a place to crash, she could always call me. As much as I didn’t really expect it (in fact, the offer was made in the same spirit as so many such internet offers are made; I was just trying to sound heroic), when Pat showed up at my workplace on 61st St, after I composed myself into at least trying to look pleased (which I am sure I did no such thing) I was true to my word and brought her home. Well, since I had taken the train and subway in from Elizabeth, where I lived at the time, I let Pat drive us to the apartment in which we would live for the next several months. Pat, and her afghan hound, Crystal.

 

Crystal and I had an understanding. I didn’t mess with her and she mostly ignored me. Ignoring people is as easy for an afghan as it is for most cats. They’re beautiful animals, and they will constantly let you know that. And they tolerate no angry words directed at them or those whom they love. And Crystal loved Pat.

 

I found out how much she loved Pat when I hollered at Pat about something or other (no I don’t remember. I have short-term memory loss about such things). Before I knew it I was changing my pillowcase because Crystal squatted on my pillow and let go. Needless to say I never yelled in front of her again.

 

As time went on, and Pat and I grew closer, the old girl and I developed a relationship, albeit strained at times. I had yet to fully appreciate dogs, but I did begin to understand Crystal.

 

We were eventually forced to give Crystal to a friend. Shortly thereafter we walked into a pet store and met the first of several guinea pigs we would call ours. The most memorable of these was Mikie. Mike was in the bottom aquarium of a 2-level stand. When I passed the stand I couldn’t help but notice Mikie was standing on his hind legs as if to beg me to take him home, which is, of course, exactly what I did. He wasn’t our first guinea pig, but he had the most charming personality.

 

We had about seven or eight guinea pigs when we moved from NJ to TX. We had a van-line move the bigger stuff, but we were able to stuff a ton of things into the Chevy, including the cages replete with guinea pigs and one rabbit, named Midnight. And sneaking all the cages into a motel room on the way to TX was no small feat. But they enjoyed the ambiance, and the room service, as provided for by Pat and me, was beyond reproach.

 

There is so much more to tell you about how I eventually learned to not only love animals, but how they became an integral part of my life. Until next time, dear reader, enjoy yourself and your family, regardless of the number of legs they may have.

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a New Yorker Living, but lost, in TX

17. December 2009 by admin.

What was I thinking?

For the next few months (and beyond when I think of new stuff), I’m going to tell you about me, a displaced New Yorker who lived in the greater NY Metro area all of my life, my wife, who has lived in a number of places, including Guam, Maine and Colorado, not to mention the state of her birth, Florida, and a lot of assorted residents who have lived in and outside of this house over the last 15 years or so.  I will try to be linear in my presentation, but since I tend to have an abstract mind, you’ll forgive me if I jump from here and flit to there, then  at some point remind myself that someone else may be reading this, and reel myself back in.

 

On June 1st, 1994 my new wife, Pat, and I arrived in our new home. We moved from the largest city in NJ,  population well over 200,000, to a “city” in Texas. I put that word in quotes because, while, technically, the new town was incorporated as a city, that is as much a misnomer as the expectation that they keys to the city would actually unlock the door to a vault in Fort Knox. The city of Josephine had a 1990 population of 301, although I truly believe they fudged on that number by adding to the numbers a few of the town’s cows and barn cats.

 

But I am getting ahead of myself. Up until May of 1993 I was working in Manhattan, where I’d worked, in various capacities for better than 11 years. When I was let go from a company on East 61st St , I began re-evaluating my life on the east coast. Sure, home is home, but I felt like I wanted something more. Maybe some land. My girlfriend of the time, the aforementioned Pat, and I looked at various options and settled on Josephine, a town that time forgot, and so, it seems, had the rest of Texas. Well, unless you fail to pay your property taxes on time. But that is a discussion for another time.

 

During much of the time that I worked in New York City I lived in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, which is just a couple of subway stops east of downtown Manhattan. Now, Greenpoint was largely a quiet neighborhood sandwiched in between Williamsburg, in Brooklyn, and Long Island City, Queens. I haven’t been back there in many years, but as I understand it, it’s become a very gentrified area, more like a suburb of Manhattan, instead of the bastion of the working class that it was when I was there in the 80s. I should go back there. Maybe I’ll take a virtual tour of the old neighborhood and hope the photographs are at least fairly recent. Who knows, I may even see my ex-wife, who as far as I know still lives in the same apartment building. Ah, the charm of rent stabilized and rent controlled housing. I never did know the difference between control and stabilization. But then learning the vagaries of the housing situation in New York is most decidedly not on my to-do list. It’s almost as unimportant to me as figuring out why dogs sniff each other’s butts. No, no, I understand it’s a way for dogs to identify each other. But I figure after you get to know Fred that intimately when you first meet him, why do you have to continue to sniff his butt? Talk about obsessive behavior! But again, I digress. Remember, I did tell you that might happen.

 

New York, to me, was and still is the greatest place in which to spend a lot of time. Sure the city is overloaded with cliches. Broadway, AKA The Great White Way, the museums, the street and subway entertainment, the restaurants (and if you’ve spent any time listening to the street entertainment, be it on or below ground, you know it’s free (unless you toss some cash into the hat or open guitar case), and some of it as every bit worthy of being on American Idol as anyone can be). But as with all cliches, there is truth to them all. Well, maybe not the part about the crocodiles in the sewers…but every metropolis has it’s share of urban legends.

 

Almost every Friday after work, my buddy John and I would go from our workplace on West 34th St to get pizza on Bleecker Street. I remember John’s pizzeria, on Bleecker a block east of 7th Avenue, had pizza to die for. Fresh veggies and chopped whole cloves of garlic…OMG. It was so wonderful that the line to get in there on a weekend night stretched south down 7th Avenue for a good block. It was so crowded in there they’d opened another pizzeria right next door called John’s II. Okay, maybe not the height of cleverness. But then who cares when the food is the thing. Then after we’d devoured the manna from heaven, John and I would walk over to a small hole-in-wall drinking establishment called the “Peculiar Pub.” Last time I checked both John’s and the Peculiar Pub were still there. The pub had something like 200 beers from around the world. It was there I learned I loved stout (it had to be on tap. Stout any other way, even from a bottle, was barely palatable) and I despised weiss beer. weiss beer – one word…yuck. I think if my first taste of beer was weiss, or wheat beer, I would have sworn off the brew for the rest of my life, and perhaps a few lifetimes after this one. Now I drink wine almost exclusively. But more about that in the future. For now, fellow denizens of the world, I will close and bid you good life. Until next time – Thanks for reading.

 

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