so, we rescued our little Tuna at the beginning of the year.

after a few visits to the vet to be de-wormed, de-uterused and de-filthified, she’s finally up and running.

and by running, i mean running AS FAST AS SHE CAN up and down the hallway and living room.

unfortunately for the Tune, she’s not super coordinated, as she is still kittenish in most ways.

that means that as she rounds the cabinet near our front door she freshly realizes that there’s a big desk about 3 feet in front of her.

she then skids across our hard wood floor and slams into the desk chair.

like…every time.

it’s great.

anyway, i snapped this picture the other day and am thoroughly weirded out by it. she looks like a tim burton drawing.

despite this new creepiness, i think i will give her some tuna today as a special ‘we-love-you’ treat.

no, we don’t give it to her everyday, reasons being various. mostly because A) we don’t want her to be a big, fat, unhealthy laze-bucket (ok, so we actually DO want that, but our responsible ownership values are winning out over our desires for a giant, freak-cat), and B) after we give her tuna she doesn’t want to eat ‘regular’ cat food.

yep. our cat’s a foodie snob.

needless to say, Tuna/Tune/Cat/Kittie/Bitty/Wierdie McBeardie is doing well, in case you were wondering.

…an adoable Tauntaun Sleeping Bag, complete with built-in head pillow and lightsaber zipper pull
via DVICE

ok, so this product was an april fool’s joke…but, considering all the star wars garbage merchandise out there…

(it’s a golf club cover)

…i’m amazed that no one has produced this hilarious and fluffy sleeping bag.

but for the folks over @ ThinkGeek, well played.

a few weeks ago we got Tuna (the cat we rescued earlier this year) fixed proper.

that’s right…no feline proliferation will be happening at our house.

hope as we may, Tuna did not take to the stitches too well…which meant we had to do what i love doing: get a medical cone for my pets.

i’m not sure if it was because of her youth or her inexperience with plastic prosthesis, but our sweet little kitten had a real rough time getting around, to our comedic enjoyment.

most often, she’d pause what she was doing and assume that she was in some sort of box, so, she’d just start backing up…and keep backing up, as if trying to get out of the small, yellow-translucent room she found herself in.

after that ran it’s course, she would walk against the wall, scraping the cone as she went.

try, if you will, to imagine the sound of cat paws on hard wood, a clean & clear bell ringing from her collar, and the distinct, low rumble of plastic dragged across plaster all over the house. very entertaining.

our best scientific guess was that the cone mashed up her whiskers, causing a topsy-turvy sort of equilibrium for the week that she wore it.

needless to say, she misjudged everything. depth, distance, clearance. it was great!

well, great for us. much of the time she’s get pretty disheartened and we’d see a scene like this:

our cat.

sitting alone.

hanging her head while mom and dad do the laundry.

luckily for the Tunester, the recovery period is over and she no longer needs the cone.

…though sometimes i do want to pop it back on to see the show…it’s better than a French circus.

blessings.

it’s tuesday.

today’s positive post is for kingsburg veterinary clinic.

as you may recall, the mrs. and i recently rescued a small cat.

yesterday, kelly took said cat to the vet for some vaccinations and to be de-wormed (blech).

now, Tuna didn’t do too well on the way to the vet. in fact, Tuna sort of made a mess all over herself.

apparently she didn’t know that her cowardice would be cataloged on the wide, wide world of web.

now, despite any animalian crankiness/paranoia, the wonderful folks @ kingsburg veterinary clinic have always been great and are truly caring toward your family’s furry little friends.

they took Tuna, gave her a bath, cleaned the cat-carrier for us, and then proceeded to administer the shots that she needed.

shots are a drag. they hurt kittens just as much as they hurt people.

so afterward, the staff gave Tuna some love and nurturing, just as if she was their own pet…worms and all.

so, thanks kingsburg veterinary clinic. it’s pretty rare to hear about a business going the extra mile like you did yesterday.

and, if you live in the northernish part of the san joaquin valley, take your pets here.

so maybe we have a cat now.

how did it happen?

the mrs. has a better description than i could do, because she’s a much better writer than i am.

what i’d like to highlight is an apparent skill our little Tuna has:

that’s right…getting behind our library-shelved dvds.

on the bottom shelf.

surveying her options from the top shelf.

at one point Tuna tried turning around and heading the other way…that yielded little results. perhaps she was hoping that the land of narnia was hidden behind dvd’s #-A.

do you have any pets? and, if so, what are their quirks?

–

it’s monday night and i am with my wife.

kelly is amazing. amazing for lots of reasons. today she went to winco foods supermarket in visalia to stock up our pantry and refrigerator. i love when kelly goes to winco because she always comes home so pleased with the deals we got, and she never fails to regale me with tales of frugality. i also love when kelly goes to winco because there are always tasties in the bags when she gets back.

for example, a couple of weeks ago, on kelly’s previous winco visit, she came back with some canada dry ginger ale for me. all for me. wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles…elation supreme. we don’t drink soda much…hardly ever really…but then again, canada dry isn’t soda…it is sweet, heavenly nectar.

we like to spend all our evenings together…we like to spend all our days together too, but the fact that we work separate jobs limits our daytime togetherness to an extent.

tonight we prepared a dinner of salad with vinagrette and almonds, rigatoni, ciabatta bread with dipping sauce, strawberries (for kelly) and pomegranate (for me). it was good. it was very good.

here are some pictures:

:: our oil and vinegar ::

:: our strawberries ::
after dinner we quickly tidied up and then took a vigorous constitutional, where we met a new friend, and an old friend…an old friend that used to stalk my dad. he didn’t recognize us, which was an added blessing to our walk.

now we’re sitting on the couch enjoying the rest of our evening.

i love my wife. she’s fantastic. you should visit her blog.

blessings.

this is my dream. right here. an elephant in my living room. truly, what could be better in the realm of pet ownership? in fact, i wish i could shepherd a whole herd of elephants. plus, they’d never leave their bones lying around.

ok…i have to pause from my post to say that i am terribly disappointed to discover that elephant graveyards aren’t actual places…and all this time i thought it was true. that’s lame. apparently elephant reality is lame.
ANYWHO…back to our zooventure.

kelly and i went to the zoo on friday as you can read about here.

but, as i said, i do wish i had some (even just one!) elephants to tote me around and smell me with their fun, leathery trunks. proceeded of course by picking me up with said trunk and placing me squarely on their neck for supreme riding position. unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like our apartment complex is going to relax their pet policy, so for now i’ll just have to admire my pachyderm friends from afar. and admire i did.

is he eating some food? no. in fact just before i snapped this shot he had taken some time to make an aromatic survey of the elephant leavings there on the ground in front of him. perhaps he was wondering what the actual source of these intestinal deposits was…was it him, or was it his bunkmate? though we’ve all been told that ‘elephants never forget,’ let’s not forget that we were ALSO told that elephants have graveyards. elephant graveyards. but they don’t. and that breaks my heart.

we stayed as long as i desired and then moved on to the other animals. no, they aren’t as cool as elephants, but they were still a lot of fun. highlights included: the bear (no longer the sad, mentally disturbed, neurotic grizzly that used to be at the chaffee zoo…yes, the pre-Measure Z bear), stingray bay, the bird aviary (always a favorite), the prairie dog exhibit (for the first time ever, actually yielded a real prairie hog for us to see), and the orangutan, seen here:

hello there.

now, i will admit that when Measure Z was on the ballot, i was not in favor of it. not because i don’t like zoos, but because the chaffee zoo had become so run down and the animals were all very sad whenever i went. but, despite my non-involvement, measure z passed and now i get to enjoy the zoo with my wife. a lot of the cages seem nicer, a lot less animals seem crazed and, though Nosey the famous fresnan elephant died, the 2 new(er?) elephants did not disappoint.

a bath!

hide all you want, but you can’t escape the hose of cleanliness.

they may seem like friends…but we were pretty convinced that they weren’t.

i was going to try to do a little animatic of the elephants shaking or swaying being that we borrowed Kelly’s parent’s SLR camera that can take rapid shots in succession (we literally took over 500 photos)…but it’s 9.16pm…and i forget how to do it in ImageReady…sorry.

so i close with two central decorations of the chaffee zoological gardens…in case you hadn’t been creeped out today.

ps – neither hugging or riding of the animals is allowed at the fresno zoo. boo.