Category Archives: The Legend of The TwoBigCats

Welcome Homeless Cat Network people…

I am doing a bit of maintenance on the blog and noticed the many visits from up and down the peninsula today. Glad you’re visiting and I hope the photos of Calvin and Cherry serve as a reminder (and encouragement to continue) of the good work you folks do in working to save / connects homeless cats and their caretakers-to-be.

Calvin and Cherry are settling in nicely and seem to be feeling as though they’re home. Good thing, too, because (as I tell them daily) we’re glad they’re with us 🙂

They’re both eating well and have acclimated to the house nicely. They’re both social with our friends and neighbors… in fact, when someone comes to the door, I have to keep an eye out for Calvin because he’s usually nearby and waiting to greet them with head butts and fanny/tail rubs. Everybody loves Calvin’s upfront and in-your-face friendliness, and everyone loves how sweet and friendly Cherry is with them… she’s quite a love.

That’s it for today!

Two Maines on a rug…

The other day as I was reviewing pics we’ve taken over the years, I came across these two… of Pandora and Cherry in the sunroom looking up at me with all the love you can imagine.

This pic of Pan was taken one day after I’d been playing guitar for a while. It was pretty normal for Pan to come in to wherever there was fresh music being played… she seemed to enjoy the activity level and just being with people.

I remember as I was readying to take this pic, she was turned slightly away from me so I said to her, “You know I love you, CatGirl”… and she turned back for me to take this lovely pic. What a creature was Pandora.

And this was Cherry about a week after she came to live with us. She had been out and about, exploring the house and found herself in the sunroom, just outside my office. She chirped / squeaked (it sounded like, “Little help out here, I think I’m lost.”)so I grabbed my camera on the way out to see her and this is what I found looking up at me:

Lots of pics posting later today…

Sorry for the delay… real life has intervened and I’ve been sorting through things a bit.

BUT I do have scads of pics to post later today… Calvin, Cherry, about-to-fledge baby doves, growing corn (Hey – do we live exciting lives or what? 🙂

You’ll like the pics – check in >4pm PST if you’re interested.

Overnout.

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(Today marks the two-month anniversary of Pan’s passing. We miss her more than words can express and we are deeply appreciative and grateful for the many years of love and companionship we shared with her. sigh.)

Mom-cat update: Spayed and re-homed :)

What a day.

Took mom-cat to the Humane Society of Silicon Valley early this morning. Had her spayed, chipped, lots of shots and washed’n’waxed. Just as I was leaving to go pick her up this afternoon, the phone rang – Jeanee was on the line: she wanted to try re-homing mom-cat.

Ding.Ding.Ding! We’ve got a winner.

I picked up mom-cat, reviewed her papers w/the folks @ HSS and headed off to Jeanee’s house. Jeanee has a nice – and peaceful – cat-friendly / comforting environment for the her guests. She opened the 3 story cat condo, I opened the humane trap, placed it in the doorway of the condo and angled it downward a bit and… voila, mom-cat walked in as if she owned the place. No fussing, no fighting, no E-Vil sounds… just walked right in. (Yep, I get that even though she came out of surgery @ noon, she’s still a bit fuzzy.) She checked out the place and the last time I saw her, she was doing very nicely – thank you very much 🙂

I’ll see her again tomorrow when the kittens head over to Jeanee’s house for fostering and adoption at the right time.

I love it when a plan comes together 😉

Mother and Child Reunion (Thx to Paul Simon :)

Hearing lots of kitty-cries for food @5:15 this morning, I went in and took their food / water dish for cleaning and refilling. Five minutes later I put their wet food down and Patches (black and white) and Butterscotch (you figure it out) were doing face plants in there, sucking it down as fast as could be. But Smokey was hanging back… seemingly not interested in the wet food. I took a few minutes to mix and feed Smokey some formula and then left the room. Oh, and I sat next to mom-cat and spoke in a quiet voice for a few minutes… no reaction, + or -, but I thought that was good news.

About 45 minutes later I was ready to take mom-cat to the Humane Society of Silicon Valley (more about that later today), so quietly opened the door and found this cute scene:

Joanne grabbed the camera and I took two pics – both pretty much like this one.

Mom-cat is over @ the Humane Society of Silicon Valley being spayed as we speak – what a beautiful place that is! I will pick her up later today, let her recover from her anesthesia and surgery in our garage through early tomorrow evening, then release her. According to the Humane folks (very nice people, each and every one of them), she has a better chance of returning to her food source and surviving if released in the early morning / early evening.

I’ll post more as we bring her home / xfer the kittens to their new foster mom / release mom-cat back in to the neighborhood.

Why women shouldn’t take men shopping

(sent to me by long-time female friend, Suzanne C.)

“After I retired, my wife insisted that I accompany her on her trips to Target. Unfortunately, like most men, I found shopping boring and preferred to get in and get out. Equally unfortunate, my wife is like most women – she loves to browse. Yesterday my dear wife received the following letter from the local Target.

Dear Mrs. Samuel,

Over the past six months, your husband has caused quite a commotion in our store. We cannot tolerate this behavior and have been forced to ban both
of you from the store. Our complaints against your husband, Mr. Samuel, are listed below and are documented by our video surveillance cameras.

1. June 15: Took 24 boxes of condoms and randomly put them in other
people’s carts when they weren’t looking.

2. July 2: Set all the alarm clocks in Housewares to go off at 5-minute
intervals.

3. July 7: He made a trail of tomato juice on the floor leading to the
women’s restroom.

4. July 19: Walked up to an employee and told her in an official voice,
‘Code 3 in Housewares. Get on it right away’. This caused the employee to
leave her assigned station and receive a reprimand from her Supervisor that
in turn resulted with a union grievance, causing management to lose time
and costing the company money.

5. August 4: Went to the Service Desk and tried to put a bag of M&Ms on
layaway.

6. August 14: Moved a ‘CAUTION – WET FLOOR’ sign to a carpeted area.

7. August 15: Set up a tent in the camping department and told the children
shoppers he’d invite them in if they would bring pillows and blankets from
the bedding department to which twenty children obliged.

8. August 23: When a clerk asked if they could help him he began crying and
screamed, ‘Why can’t you people just leave me alone?’ EMTs were called.

9. September 4: Looked right into the security camera and used it as a
mirror while he picked his nose.

10. September 10: While handling guns in the hunting department, he asked
the clerk where the antidepressants were.

11. October 3: Darted around the store suspiciously while loudly humming
the ‘Mission Impossible’ theme.

12. October 6: In the auto department, he practiced his ‘Madonna look’ by
using different sizes of funnels.

13.. October 18: Hid in a clothing rack and when people browsed through,
yelled ‘PICK ME! PICK ME!’

14. October 21: When an announcement came over the loud speaker, he assumed
a fetal position and screamed ‘OH NO! IT’S THOSE VOICES AGAIN!’

And last, but not least:

15. October 23: Went into a fitting room, shut the door, waited awhile,
then yelled very loudly, ‘Hey! There’s no toilet paper in here.’ One of
the clerks passed out.

If you don’t send this to 12 of your dearest friends, your property taxes
will go up, your stocks will go down, and your middle will spread. (How’s
that for a curse?!?) What? It’s already come true? Then send it
anyway–you’ve got nothin’ to lose!”

And in other TBC News…

Damn, over the past few days we seem to have become Cat Central… but, as you can imagine, there **have been** other things happening around here. For instance:

Ellen stopped by to give us some foster-kitty input – thx for that, Ellen!

And then today, Springfield Al stopped by to meet the kitties. As fate would have it, I was just suiting up in my clown, er, beek suit to do a quick inspection of Fuzzy and remove any remaining newspaper left over from combining Fuzzy’s swarm (installed last Sunday) and the existing hive, Fuzzy. Turns out they’d chewed and removed virtually all of the newspaper between the supers, so I just peeled the remainder from the edges of the hive. While I was in there, I saw the (now) much larger colony had been hard @ work building up comb for the honey… and filling / capping it pretty quickly. While I had the honey super removed, I checked the upper brood and darned if there weren’t several capped honey frames in there, too – I’m thinking maybe a gallon of processed honey is waiting in that box. There were also several frames of capped larvae and a fair amount of fresh larvae waiting to be fed and capped. I didn’t check the lower brood, but my take is *that* box has a fair amount of brood and more honey than it should, too.

I then inspected FreddieRay and found the fresh honey super has several frames of comb built out and nectar being placed. I removed the honey super and checked the upper brood and found 4 full frames of capped honey + the 2 exterior wall frames were full of capped honey, too – I believe they’re becoming honey bound in that box, so this weekend I just may pull and process them.

Aside from the kittens appearing to be settling in (they’re almost friendly to me now when I feed them), today Pepper and Calvin had a chance to get close… I mean **really close**.

I don’t recall the exact situation, but Pep was in the front room / foyer area and Calvin was in the foyer when Pepper decided to run to Joanne’s office (Joanne was on a conf call). As Pep ran by, Calvin LEAPED TO HIS FEET and began chasing her… not trotting after her, but CHASING HER. He cornered her in Joanne’s office and had her cowering by Joanne’s feet… he looked at her as if to say, “I OWN YOU, DAWG!”.

Funniest thing I’d seen in a long time. Until about an hour later, when they were apparently nose to nose out in the kitchen / foyer – Pep’s tail was wagging a million miles an hour – when something startled her… which caused her to turn and run to Joanne’s office and just as she was turning to run… yep, Calvin reached up and grabbed her back with one of his claws. VERY LOUD YELP ensued, with Calvin chasing Pepper in to Joanne’s office, eventually stopping at her door… where he began pacing back and forth, giving Pep the Evil Eye. Pep duly cowered down and Joanne and I told Calvin, “Calvin, you da man”.

All the while, Cherry was up on the bookcase in the guest room, scoping out the whole thing. After Pep and Calvin calmed down a bit, Cherry came in my office and crawled in my arms as I typed… she gave me a little lick on the cheek, looked up in my eyes, sighed and laid her head down on my right hand and was out like a light.

Too much excitement for one day, I’m betting that’s what she was thinking.

And so it has been… g’night, everyone.

(btw, Neighbor Linda and Dani stopped by to visit the kittens tonight and watch them being fed. More about that visit later, when I’m actually awake.)

Honey harvest: Welcome C & C

It had been a couple of weeks since I had inspected the hives, so yesterday afternoon in the heat of the day, a friend and I put on our bee-clown suits, fired up the smoker and headed out to the hives.

Fuzzy had a small – but busy – population coming in and out of the hive, with pollen stores on their legs. Fuzzy had a small amount of comb and capped / uncapped honey in the honey super, and a reasonable amount of fresh / capped brood and stores in the upper brood; I didn’t disturb the lower-upper brood sealing. Covered Fuzzy back up and wished them well.

Freddie-Ray was buzzing with heavy traffic, so I opened the honey super and – dayaaaammm! – they’ve been busy! Every single frame in the super was full of capped honey – bee-utiful! 🙂 Hmmm… what to do? Leave it to possibly be robbed or harvest it? Ah, what the heck – I harvested it and replaced the super with fresh frames and foundation. (I also looked in the upper brood and it, too, had a fair amount of honey in addition to brood / stores… I may go in there next week.) I buttoned Freddie-Ray up, wished my friend good-bye and went inside to begin processing.

Hours of scraping, warming (not too much!), draining / straining, bottling, capping and then, finally – clean up and off to bed ~11pm. Yep – waaaaaay past my bedtime.

The next morning we got up and, after warning Joanne to wear socks in the kitchen until the floor was properly de-honeyfied ;), Joanne made labels in keeping with what has become a tradition in our kitchen: Label name indicates a significant / special event around the property.

In this case, we bottled this honey with the label:

Welcome C & C (Calvin and Cherry)

Calvin was right in the middle of the labeling process and Cherry helped him put the finishing touches on everything, including packing them in the boxes. I’ll put pictures up soon.

Cherry (sometimes I call her, “Squeak”, because of her chirp / squeak sound) is telling me it’s time for bed… or that she’s hungry – I’m not sure I speak “Cherry” just yet.

Calvin and Cherry: 1st week update…

I’ve been away and busy since last Sunday mid-day, so haven’t posted. Here’s the latest:

They’re both doing well and seem to be settling in nicely. They have adapted to wet food a couple of times a day and continue to eat a fair amount of dry food. They continue to live in the back half of the house, including the kitchen. Good news: the weather has been very nice, so they’re enjoying the sunroom and bedroom french doors being open to watch the “bird show” throughout the day and early evening before sundown; Calvin loves to sit by our bedroom window watching under the bushes just outside… he reminds me of Dee in that regard. When the dogs are outside during the day, we open up the house so the cats have full run of the place in hopes they’ll become become comfortable.

Pepper and the cats watch one another through the kitchen door glass – Calvin gets his nose right up to the glass, while Cherry watches from the foyer / bedroom of the guest suite. Last night I placed Calvin in my arms and walked him through the front room and den w/Pep and Penny looking up @ us; Calvin got antsy, so I returned him to his comfort zone area. It’ll probably take another week or two before he, Pep and Penny settle in; I think it will take months for Cherry to feel comfortable with them… As Ringo said, “Time takes time”, so we’ll just have to take our time.

Lots of flowers and veggies growing around the place – I’ll put pics up over the next day or two. Of course, what else grows in nice weather? Yep, weeds and grasses… soooooooooooooooo much to prep after the long winter.

That’s it for now – back over the weekend w/pics.

It’s our pleasure to introduce…

(remember to click the pic – these are beautiful creatures and the detailed pics are pretty nice.)

Cherry…

and

Calvin…

Here’s Cherry sitting with me on the bed. Displayed on the TV behind her is what she wanted done with her “Return this cat to the rescue center.” bus ticket she was given. 😉

As you can see from these pics, they’re in a private room of their own with lots of climbing / hiding places, have been eating and, um, doing “natural” things right on schedule. They’re both very curious about what’s outside the door of their room, so later this evening I’ll likely open their bedroom door to let them cruise through the foyer and bathroom of that suite area. They’re settling in very nicely.

(I’ll write and post the details about them and how they BOTH came to be with us later this evening.)