We are brining our first turkey, and it does look rather pretty (as Nigella’s Christmas cookbook said it would). I’ve never made one before, but since they were on sale, and I got a big honking roasting pan for a wedding present, I figured: why not?
In other less pleasant new, as you could tell from my tweetings, we have Christmas mice! Not as cute as it sounds, I’m afraid.
Thankfully we have a house full of (now) seasoned mouse hunters, and have caught and released all the creatures we’ve found so far.
Also thankfully, they seem to solely be living in our lower kitchen cupboards, which store mostly cookware and well sealed pantry goods.
The little buggers were smart enough to claw through the plaster in the exact right sliver of a spot on the wall, which was not covered in wood, and would give them entrance to our cupboards.
They were not, however, smart enough to choose a house wihout 3 resident cats.
We went for a walk through the neighborhood yesterday, and came back with a really good haul. We got slurpee’s, a copy of “My Aim is True” by Elvis Costello on Vinyl for eight bucks, and a little pink harness for the kitties to share.
We’re planning on spending lot’s more time outside this year, and even though we’re very big believers in having indoors cats, we don’t want to begrudge them a little bit of (highly supervised) time in the sun.
We spent the rest of the afternoon out on a fuzzy blanket in the backyard surrounded by our kitties. It was pretty much perfection.
Just like any children we may have someday we love all our kitties equally – but Flora is the cutest, and the most fun. She just is. She works for it. She’s obnoxious at it.
She turns every moment into a chance to either play a game, or be admired for her adorability. She deserves it as a title – Kitten Princess of Cuteness and Fun!
Some mornings she does this thing, where she gets up on our headboard and goes backwards and forwards above us, under the quilt we have on the wall. She peeks out at us from under it, gently swatting at our fingers if they poke her from underneath. She literally goes backwards, her little butt first, her little paws frantically reaching behind her for the next foothold.
Have I also ever mentioned that constantly forces you to kiss her on the top of the head? Or that she snuggles by force?
This cat is ridiculous.
I grew catnip in my little deck-top herb garden this summer, and though it is long dead, it still attracts kitties from across the neighborhood.
Our little ones are very territorial though. They hate all other kitty visitors. I am usually alerted to a friend at the back door by crying, screaming, or even occasionally a hiss.
This just makes the whole thing more entertaining for me, of course.
If our small, furry guest looks friendly, I go out to give it a few pats, and maybe even let everyone share a treat (which definitely helps to calm the kitty anxiety – I think this tactic works well for small, furry children as well).
This might just become a thing.
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A friendly little tutorial for shooting “Through The Viewfinder”
Which is a method of getting really neat, old-fashioned, artfully flawed images using a digital camera – along with a old twin lens reflex cameras’ viewfinder. I’ve always loved the way these shots looked, I had no idea producing them was so easy. If this works with my little Canon point and shoot (which it should – it has a pretty awesome macro setting), I’m totally gonna start searching for an old twin lens camera when I thrift.
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Booty Juggler
I may or may not have wasted a good half an hour on this cute little game.
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Black Eiffel
Just a new blog find filled with pretty-pretty things of all varieties. The kind of pretty that inspires rampant and uncontrollable urges to be materialist. But so do many of the pretty-pretty blogs I read. Sigh. It might be time take a break from reading those for a little while. Just until I stop hemorrhaging money.
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Carnivale Lune Bleue
A retro-revival nineteen-thirties-style carnival – complete with concessions, candy apples, carousel, ferris wheel, and circus show. I was very sad when I found out I missed this entirely this summer. There’s always next summer though.
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Buddha Dogs
We had some on the weekend. They were delicious – totally the best hot-dogs I’ve ever had (although, it should be said that they don’t really resemble traditional hot dogs all that closely, so consider yourself forewarned). They are little artisinal sausages (that taste a bit like teensy fresh salamis) accompanied by one of four (locally sourced) cheeses and a one of a dozen sauces (cooked up individually by the best chefs in the city using fresh, local ingredients). A lot of internet types seem to be upset that portions are small, and the concept pretentious. I would tell them that if they want street meat, it’s readily available. This is not street meat, it’s a culinary novelty (and a cheap one at that – certainly the cheapest way to have lunch made by Jamie Kennedy – via his 25 cent sauce offering). If you’re a foodie, you’ll love it. If you’re more of a steak and potatoes kinda person, feel free to steer clear. I, for one, found it delicious and delightful.
I haven’t posted a picture of the cuties in a while.
Having a Christmas tree is a bit of a challenge with three young cats around.
Ornaments are batted at, jingle bells are jingled at inappropriate times (like while sleeping) and trees are invariably climbed and subsequently toppled.
Last week we had to run out and switch our lights from gorgeous, over-sized, specialty orbs (not so environmentally friendly, but Christmas is a time of indulgence) to boring, old, white LEDs (environmentally friendly, but kinda hurt my eyes to look directly at).
We also picked up some more plastic ornaments. I love glass ones to bits, and I covet my mothers collection of antique ornaments (passed on from her grandmother and mother), and I’m sure they’re about a zillion times better for the environment, but they are just so impractical.
Finding plastic ornaments that aren’t tacky (in other words: look like glass) is strangely difficult, requiring an across town search for them. All because I can’t have glass ornaments around the house until my kitties get old enough to know better than to break open a glass ornament and eat it.
For future reference to me: having three kittens in one apartment is not the best idea ever. Try to pace yourself next time. Maybe adopt one cat at a time, next time?
Sometimes I feel weird that all I post is cat pictures anymore (crazy cat lady=me).
But I think my kitties have more fans than I do – it seems even our Vet’s office checks up on them via the web.
Plus this is the internet. I think it would be inappropriate if I didn’t post pictures of my cats.
Well, the kitties are still quite happy. When it snowed last week (which was super-pretty, and I’m very sad I didn’t get pictures of it, but I was in a lot of toothy pain) they were in love with the little flakes, watching them fall.
It’s definitely a four seasons kind of house. The ginormous maples scattered throughout the neighbourhood had just dropped their leaves a couple weeks ago – all at once. Everything on the street was covered in a good foot of orange leaves overnight.
Living in the old apartment was kind of isolating from nature. You couldn’t hear the rain fall, or sleet hit the windows like you can here. You couldn’t even just step outside to check the weather, because the windows didn’t open very well and you had to go out into the hall, down the stairs, through another hall, through the lobby, and out the front entrance. If we were parked in the parking garage, you didn’t know what it was like outside at all.
Here, I’m wondering if we keep the windows open in the spring, whether we’ll be able to hear birds singing in the mornings. It’s been a long time since I’ve been awoken by that.
Being stuck inside with gaping wounds in your mouth makes you notice these things I guess.
But being stuck in, means I’ve been cooking up a storm. Liam made me pancakes on Sunday morning, yum, and in the past week, I’ve made bacon and potato soup, re-fried beans and Spanish rice, macaroni and cheese, spaghetti carbonara and futomaki roll sushi (with egg, pickled turnip, japanese cucumber, and crab sticks).
We took advantage of the amazing, carnival like, local, Asian grocery store for the sushi. If you live in Toronto, and you’ve never been, you need to go. We also found shelled edamame, pickled ginger, and chocolate mochi there to go with our meal (along with a pink bottle of sake I had bought, well, for it’s bottle).
We’re going to make sushi more often now, I think. It gets easier the more you do it, and then Liam can take leftovers for lunch and stop buying questionable mall sushi.
So, yeah, things are pretty good,
And my head is almost healed,
And we’re almost unpacked,
And there are little kitties in the windows,
And they’re watching the last leaves blow out of the eaves.
I promised photographic proof of happy kitties, and here it is:
Three cats sleeping on one (unmade) bed. This occurred last Sunday – on our first morning waking up here. We had to capture it quick before they noticed us noticing them, so sorry about the messy bed.
This is also get a sneak peak of the bedroom. It’s not quite finished, but you get the idea. Cosy, bright, light, cheery. I’m calling the look: ‘Scandinavian Country Cottage’. I’ve still got furniture to re-finish and I’m not sure about that quilt (I love it, but I’m not sure it’s working in this particular spot – possibly hanging too high?). I’m also probably going to do something with that headboard so it isn’t so obviously ‘the-cheapest-bed-they-had-at-ikea’.
And, of course, it would help if the bed was actually made…
They like to clean Liam on Weekend mornings. It is both adorable and disgusting
So, in all my garden planning and moving preperation and decorating fervor and well, cat related sadness… I have been neglecting to update the internet on the state of my multi-kittened household.
I mean, you guys don’t even know how they got here, do you?
We were spending a lot of time at the vet with Kaylee, and our amazing, wonderful Queen West Animal Clinic had started putting out little, teensy, adorable kitties with little, teensy, adorable sob-stories.
These particular kittens had been found playing all by themselves on a country road. They were very closely bonded and played together all day (I’ve seen them pass a ball back and forth between them like little kids) and slept huddled together in one little ball of fluff at night.
So, the vet did not want them to be separated.
They had almost been adopted – and even spent the day with a young family – but had been sadly sent back to their cage at the vets office.
So we took them home.
I mean, how can you say no to a story like that?
This one with little spots on her nose is Piglet. We were going to call her Dorothy (after Dorothy Parker), but they had already named her Piglet at the vet’s office, and it stuck as she’s clingy, and sweet, and just a little bit chubby, and… piggy.
She’s got short, little legs, and sometimes when she’s been running around like crazy (which happens quite a lot, actually) and it’s hot out, she pants and snorffles exactly like a little puppy. She’s built like a little puppy too.
She loves to cuddle as much as she likes to run, and she growls at you if you come near her when she’s got her favourite toy (a little squishy pink ball she’s nearly destroyed).
Actually I think she might be a puppy in disguise.
She has a crush on Maeby and follows her around (which Maeby is totally not into).
This one’s Flora. She’s quieter and gentler and prefers things that make noise to things that move.
I think she might be slightly older than Piglet because she often takes care of her. Flora makes sure Piglet cleans her box properly, and eats first and always knows where she is, and if she’s sleeping lies down next to her and snuggles.
Flora demands more attention from us than Piglet, meowing for us to wake up in the morning, greeting us cheerfully, rubbing on our legs and hopping into our laps. This sorta confirms my theory about her being older and having to take care of her sister, because I think she’s really happy to have someone to take care of the both of them, and that they’re not alone and locked in a cage or out in the wilderness anymore.
Our cat has been cheezburgered!
…
Without our permission…
Or credit…
Which is kinda less cool…
Still pretty cool though!
Meet Flora (foreground) and Dorothy (background).
There are more (squirming, wriggling, blurry) photos on flickr.
All right!
I’m finally feeling not soooooooo sick!
Man, that was a loooooong cold. Long and especially unpleasant. The kind of overwhelming illness where your brain ceases to exist and your body aches with every movement and your nose refuses to be used for breathing.
And by the way, by saying I’m feeling not so sick, I mean that I still have a nagging deep and unpleasant sounding hacking cough, and a voice low enough to tackle the men’s parts of my classic rock songs in their proper key.
But I can think straight! And take a walk to the corner store without blacking out! So I’m proclaiming myself better!
Thankfully, I got better in time for this glorious weekend we just had. I think I may have to have some words with the weather again, because, really, it’s only April, and they don’t turn the air on in this building till June 21st – that’s a long, long way off. It’s all pleasant and everything to have this nice summery weekend, but if it keeps up… Well, I am not looking forward to it. So let’s hold off with the heat waves, ok? Got that weather?
My weekend was especially delightful. Especially after being stuck inside all week.
I enjoyed the following:
- wearing my new short pants (slim cut and black – very Audrey Hepburn).
- taking a walk outside in the newly sunny morning
- getting up early enough to get a heavenly cinnamon and suger croissant from my perenially favourite pastry shop
- washing my croissant down with a wonderful bannana green tea smoothie from my new favourite beverage spot
- finding the perfect, cheap (if in slightly rough condition) vintage, modernist, thonet chairs (they look a lot like the eames plywood chairs – but with a padded seat)
- finding locally made root beer lip balm
- driving through the (relative) countryside to arrive at a little hakka (a combination of indian and chinese cuisines) restaurant for their beautiful sweet and salty orange beef
Good stuff, eh?
Ok, maybe NOW I’ll get back to a routine…
* knocks on wood*
* crosses fingers*
Kaylee’s sick.
She has fluid in her lungs. They don’t know what caused it, and since she’s a cat, they probably won’t ever know. The fluid they found was white, not clear, which means she has a rare disease (chylothorax) that is largely incurable.
We spent all Friday at the vet. They drained her lungs. She has little fuzzy shaved patches on her sides. Maybe we should start calling her Britney (it would raise our spirits, if not hers).
They will probably have to drain her lungs again. And again. And again.
We’re trying this herbal remedy (rutin) right now that is the only thing that may help, but again, they don’t really know.
She’s breathing fairly normally at the moment, and she’s been running around and playing a bit. No choking noises (which I now know mean she is drowning on the inside – not just a hairball). Which is a good sign. She’s skinny though.
She’s been a brave little girl. All the vets talked about how sweet she was.
I have not been posting nearly enough pictures of my cats being adorable in recent weeks.
Hope this rectifys that.
I am pretty much obsessed with making Mii’s (little customizable characters on the Nintendo Wii). I’m pretty good at it too.
Me and Liam. Self-explanatory
My cats. In Mii form. Yep. I’m that girl.
Hiro (from Heroes) and Bjork. Some how they both just seemed to lend themselves really thoroughly to being Mii-ized.
This little cat shaped tent for cats was the kitties Christmas present. They enjoy sitting in things (as kitties are wont to do) and this cosy little hovel makes their habit a little more legitimate than the cardboard boxes, or draped winter coats they usually hide under. Plus I don’t feel guilty when I have to get rid of/move/use their hiding spot.
Oh, and yes, we include the cats in our holiday celebrations. They truly enjoy it though (really, they do). They get to sleep under the tree; bat at shiny, dangly ornaments; pounce and play in mazes made of crumpled up wrapping paper; and most wonderful of all: turkey treats for dinner. We call them our Christmas cats.
So I’m not completely a crazy cat lady. Nope. Not at all. Not at all…
Seriously!
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