Summarization

Well, it's been a hectic week and it seems as if, one thing or another, has been keeping me from blogging. Pretty much everyday life stuff.

Obviously, I've been trying to get some Christmas stuff done but with very little money, I have to rely on my creativity a lot more this year. Needless to say, I am trying to make everyone something and you would think being an artist would make that easier but it doesn't. I have a lot of, "I hope they like it's", swirling around in my head but I'm sure being my family, they would love anything I made for them.

Charlie, one of our oldest cats somehow got an impacted anal gland. (And yes, it is as painful as it sounds) The poor guy is on antibiotics and feeling pretty soar but all in all feeling much better than he started. He's napping a lot and still can't sit down very well but is on the mend.

My cell phone is really starting to act up and die on me almost every time I try to do something on it and when I try to power it back on it has a mind of it's own and sometimes takes all day to get the power back on and even then it's shaky at best. Time to switch up I think.

At some point in the last 6 or 7 days or so I also decided that on top of my favorite word "Shank" as in, "You Shank!", I also find the phrase "Nut Meat" utterly hilarious. Call me juvenile if you must but it's not only the words I find humorous but the sound the two words make together.

The way I came to this decision was, as I was eating filberts (Hazel Nuts) and almonds from the shell, our youngest cat, Munchkin Man, came over to see what all the noise was about and started sticking his nose near the bowl. I figured, what the hell, see if he wants to try it.

So I broke off a teensy little piece, then smoothed off any sharp corners and skin and offered it to him. What do you know, he likes filberts! I was going to offer him an almond but the nut meat was too hard for an animal that rarely chews their food more than three times.

There are certain "Human" foods that will poison cats, some that will make them sick and some they simply can't digest. I highly recommend that you do the research, as I have, before feeding your animals anything other than cat food and even that, I recommend you research before feeding it to them. We feed our cats all natural organic dry food.

Never feed any animal Chocolate as it is a mild poison for cats and in high enough concentrations will kill them. Never feed your pets raw meat as they are subject to the same digestive ailment we do eating raw meat. There are conflicting views on raw meat but I go with a," better safe than sorry", attitude. Pork is really hard for cats to digest and can cause stomach and intestinal ailments and upset.

Knowing these and many others, you can avoid giving your animal anything harmful. I don't give my animals much other than cat food and cat treats anymore but occasionally, if they express interest in something natural, (No junk food for kitties!) I will make sure it's clear and test them out with a very little piece. I never give them anything that isn't reasonably soft and no sharp edges, ever.

I dropped a chip on the floor one time and my cat Woogie ran over and slammed it into his mouth in seconds. (He was trapped without food for 2 weeks before we found him, so he now eats whenever opportunity arises) Well, because he doesn't chew more than three times, the chip splintered and he started choking on it. I got him through it but it was pretty rough and at one point I was sure I was gonna have to suck out the chip.

That said, we have 6 cats that all like a variety of different "safe" foods.

Roni's (Ralphie) favorites are strawberries, honeydew melon and medium cheddar.

Chewy's (Charlie) favorites are black olives, romaine lettuce and Gouda cheese.

Heady's (Bobby) favorites are cereal milk, donuts and cooked hamburger off a Kraft pizza.

Woogie's (Douglas) favorites are pretty much anything you give him.

Beeb's (Tweak) favorites are cooked meat and dry cat food and thats it.

Munkin Man's (Munchkin Man) favorites are dill Havarti and Hazel Nut Meat. giggle

Maybe I'll explain how they got their nick names in another blog...

Oh yeah, my wife, a friend and I are starting a website together. I'm not going to ruin the surprise because we don't have it built yet but we're pretty excited and it will provide an very useful service to our global community. You can be sure I'll post it here when it's ready for public consumption ;o)

Winterized

Well, it is officially winter in Nova Scotia and as far as I can tell from the weather network, all of Canada as well. It started about when I was finishing up yesterdays Blog and is still snowing as we speak. We had a brief reprieve though, long enough for the plows to do their thing.

I had a visit from my good friend Kainan a little after noon and we decided to grab some lunch at Subway. Kainan is a very intelligent guy and we have very similar outlooks on life, so as usual, we got wrapped up talking. He finally had to head out about 2 ish.

About mid afternoon, Shelagh sent me a text telling me to check my e-mail and the word YaY attached. I followed the link she provided me, which was the link to the weather network's warnings page, indicating the huge storm already in progress.

I remembered she said she was feeling down because it didn't feel much like Christmas yet, so with the impending storm, I decided to dig out the tree. It's one of those fake, natural, adjustable ones with the light's already on it, much better than hacking one down... Save the Tree's!

Anyway, neither of us is a Christian but we still throw up the tree for family and company, plus we both like little white lights lol So, I finally got the tree looking like a tree and headed off to dig out the rest of the Christmas stuff.

The cats were going nuts, tearing around the apartment, playing with anything and everything, at least 3 were trying to chew on the tree. The window to the deck was opened and they kept launching themselves out the window into the snow. This is our youngest cats first winter and he was having a blast in the snow, sniffing snorting and eating it and didn't seem to mind the coldness of it. It was really funny to look out the window and see 3 or 4 different sized cat prints intertwined in the snow. A couple of them simply weren't having it and wouldn't cross the window ledge barrier.

I wanted to get some pictures but alas my camera is toast, I'm hoping for a new one for Christmas but things are tight this year for everyone.

Anyway, when Shelagh came home from work, we lit a few candles, dimmed the lights and had some supper. We talked while watched the progressing storm and a little TV, then called it a day.

I tried to set up the humidifier before bed to counteract the fact that everyone in the building had their heat cranked up. Needless to say after 15 minutes of messing with it I decided it wasn't worth the hassle and went to bed.

The power went off once but came right back on and after that we didn't experienced any storm related problems.

Bliss

What an awesome weekend, two blissful days with Shelagh and our half dozen cats.

Saturday we went out and ran few errands, the usual exciting stuff like going to the farm market and hitting the bulk barn. We picked up a nice assortment of fresh veggies and fruit and I even scored a couple Asian pears. If you like pears that have a crisp and juicy texture of an apple, I highly suggest you get your hands on one.

Shelagh baked up some fresh oatmeal raisin cookies, while I finished putting away the days purchases. After a bite to eat and one of those tasty cookies we popped on the 4th installment of the Die Hard Series, Live Free or Die Hard.

I really liked this movie, the script stood alone and was definitely in the true Die Hard Fashion. There were lots of great action sequences, as you would expect from any Die Hard movie and a few fresh things that will most definitely impress you. I give it 3 star rating, 1 being crap, 2 being watchable but didn't blow me away and 3 being a good solid enjoyable flick.

We also watched Breach which was pretty good I guess but I only give it a 2, solid story just a bit slow for my flavor, It is based on a true story about the take down of a Russian spy living and working in America.

Thus concluding our Saturday.

Sunday was one of my all time favorite kind of days where we loafed around all day, laying in bed, playing video games and hanging out with the cats and each other. I can't describe the sense of bliss I get from being curled up under the blankets with the person I love, 4 or 5 cats spread around and interacting, touching and just being with them, I love those days so very much.

It snowed a little, we both expressed how excited it will be to finally get that unbelievably peaceful silence, that comes right after a fresh snowfall. The world seems to be a peace, everyone is hunkered down in their homes, hopefully with a hot cup of something a loved one.

After an exhausting day of napping and enjoying our time together we both expressed our enjoyment of the weekend with each other and it was off to the land of dreams and that's where I'm a viking...