Category Archives: animals

Kindly or Beastly

animals, books, children's books, home
My raccoon friend hasn’t been around lately, that I’ve seen. And most of the wandering cats have been scarce, now that Blackie has marked the back yard and comes several times a day to see if anything is in the bowl. Actually, Blackie is now only his nickname, and his real name is now Jim, after Huckleberry Finn’s fugitive friend.

I’m surprised at myself, calling that ‘coon My Friend. But when I first blogged about him, Janet at Across the Page told me about the book at left, which I promptly ordered and have received.

It tells about a lady who is generous toward a mendicant raccoon, and later is the happy recipient of an inadvertent good deed (is that an oxymoron?) performed by the beast.

I admit it made me think more kindly of the fellow I saw, though he is as big as a bear. Some people have cautioned that raccoons wandering about in daylight might carry rabies. But others have said it is a myth that raccoons are primarily night animals. They are perfectly healthy and happy foraging in the daytime.

Lately I’ve been waiting for Jim to show himself before I put anything in the bowl–mostly to avoid feeding the raccoon. Since I do live in suburbia, I suppose my neighbors would not appreciate it if I were to start encouraging woodland creatures to visit more than they already do. Raccoons are cute, but those opossums that might follow after are hideous.

This is Not a Cat!

animals, home

About 7 o’clock this morning I put out a little cat food in advance of the guests’ arrival. A few minutes later a large non-feline shape loomed into view. I’ve never seen such a big raccoon in our suburban neighborhood! And isn’t it a little late in the “night” for him to be out scavenging?

Bird Food Improved Upon

animals, food and cooking, garden, history
I am inspired by a blog on Brussels sprouts and peanuts here to prepare the recipe posted. Also to tell you my own story of birds and sprouts. Missing from my story are the peanuts.

This is what the vegetable should look like before it is harvested, but my own try at growing these impressive stalks didn’t work out as planned. At the time when little buds should be growing into big sprouts, there was nothing but  big, bare stems. Could the flocks of quail who frequented our back yard have anything to do with this? I knew they ate the leaves on top….

Eventually I took the time to examine those stems up close, and there were indeed little sprouts on them, the size of pinheads, and never able to grow larger. My plants had been so starved by the constant bird pruning that they had nothing to put toward production of fruit.

I love to cook Brussels sprouts, and even B. has overcome his off-putting childhood initiation so that now he happily eats them. Cooked, mind you. Once as a little boy he was accompanying a farmer friend of the family on a walk through the vegetable garden when the man plucked a sprout off the stalk and handed it to young B. saying, “Here, try it, it’s a Brussels sprout.” B. obediently chewed the raw sprout and found it the most horrible thing he’d eaten in his short life.

It took many years for him to get over that first taste. Sprouts are so darling and yummy, though, that simple steaming has been enough preparation to suit us most of the time. After I got married I learned to cut a deep X into the base of each sprout before dropping it into the steamer basket. That lets the inside leaves cook along with the outside, so you aren’t left with a choice between mushy outsides or crunchy centers.

Now I’m off to the market and will certainly bring home some Brussels sprouts. I’ll let the birds eat the raw, and will serve mine cooked.

Good-bye, Gus

animals, family, home,

Our first cat we had 16 years. This is his photograph when a kitten. I’m sure you are laughing at my attempt at animal photography. We named him Custard, which shows I didn’t know anything about custard pudding. My neighbor said, “He’s an eggy custard, isn’t he?” I was pregnant with our firstborn at the time.

 

 

 

 

This second photo shows how the baby and Custard got along just fine. But Custard was always in the background, and not demanding or very important to our lives. We had human children keeping us busy and happy, five of them by the time he died.

 

 

 

 

Then this cat moved in. We found out about a year later that she actually lived just down the street and only wanted to sojourn with us while giving birth.

Aren’t her kitties darling? The father was a Turkish Van. We decided to keep the fellow in the middle of this group, and named him Mackenzie. This was before all Mackenzies were girls. He reminded me of a polar bear and therefore the name of a river in snowy country seemed right for him.

 

The whole family adored Mac, but he was always skitterish, not often cuddly. The older he got, the less he liked to be petted. He stayed outside most of the time and often sat on the rabbit hutch, facing the corner of the back yard fence, where he seemed to us to be in deep contemplation. If you look carefully at left, you can see his mostly white in the center of the picture.

By the time Mackenzie died of old age, all our children were moved out of this barn of a house, and we thought a new cat or two might add a little warmth. At the feline rescue center we visited both the adult cat room and the kitten room. We sat down and waited to see if any cats would be friendly and affectionate.

 

There was one in each room that came right up to us to be petted, and they were both very pretty, so we took two cats home!

With Gus and Zoë we had five golden months. We laughed at their romping, and one of them was always happy to snuggle if we wanted.

Then when we were out of town, Zoë was hit by a car and killed. She had been our favorite, serene and attentive, so we were terribly sad to lose her, after having her so short a time. But we still had Gus, who at the loss of his friend became a little less the wayfaring adolescent and liked nothing more than to sit on a lap for hours at a time.

He was unusual in many ways, but one odd thing was that he loved to hang upside-down on/from my lap and be brushed with the wire brush. You could scratch and scrunch his fur and flesh till your arms ached, but he would want still more lovin’.

Last week Gus met the same fate as Zoë, only a block from our house. I’m ashamed to tell this; I can see in hindsight that neither of these adopted pets was ultimately suited to the minimal arrangements we’d made for them when we were traveling. It must be that they didn’t have enough sense of home, when we weren’t here.

So we lost Gus, who everyone agrees was the best cat there ever was; and we lost our confidence about owning another cat. Our grief is sharpened by a conviction of irresponsibility. There are various reasons we’ll postpone the decision about whether to get another pet. In the meantime, our drafty house is a bit colder again.