Battle: Rye vs Fry

Today I went to my chiropractor, the fabric store, the grocery store, and drove through at Arby’s to pick up lunch. This probably doesn’t seem like much, but I’m recovering from some mild food poisoning and feeling a bit wiped out.

But the kittens were almost out of food.

Note the relief on their faces. And the planning. What can will they open first?

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Side note: dear lady giving me the side eye in the grocery store for picking around the dented cans, have you ever opened a can of cat food completely filled with mold because you didn’t notice the dent had actually caused a hole? No? Then don’t judge me.

Bonus: that can was in a box, so the mold had also spread around other cans, through the cardboard and onto my floor. My life for the win!
***

Anyway, I got home and put away the refrigerated items. The rest is still on the floor in the kitchen. Oliver is administering Purr Therapy and trying to convince me he’s a good boy.

I don’t know about that. For one thing, I must have let Kitten Thunder’s manners out the back door when I came in with the Arby’s bag. Obi licked my sandwich wrapper, in my lap, while I was eating.

Both of them bit my finger because I wasn’t putting down that roast beef fast enough (yes, Oli is allergic, but a tiny bit of roast beef is just one more zit on his already acne-ridden chin).

Then this happened.

That’s right. My tall grey kitten stood up and jammed his head into the bag and stole a curly fry.

Then this happened.

I was done with them, but kittens with bad manners don’t get rewarded for such behavior.

So this happened.

It’s a squirrel food battle between rye bread and curly fries. I’d pretend like I don’t know which will win, but I put out six slices of wheat bread at the same time as that slice of rye last night. They were gone for me to put out the fries today.

From where I am on the couch I can see a squirrel hauling a chunk of fry up the tree.

No fair, says Oliver.

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Battle: Bread

We’ve got a new program on OutTV. We’ve all placed bets on which the squirrels will like better: rye or wheat bread? Or graham crackers?

Place your bets.

In other news, Obi is mad at me for letting his pet wasp it off the house. He played with it all morning and it was still alive. This is a special trait for one of his pets.

Unfortunately, his Girl doesn’t have the thick fur that surely was protecting him from stings – because this wall was NOT happy.

And now the kitten is NOT happy.

Hot on the Trail

It has been about a year since I figured out that cranberries were the cause of a lot of the health issues I was having. This makes me sad because I love cranberries. If I could, I’d eat them in everything. I DID eat them in everything: cranberry pork, cranberry oatmeal, cranberry trail mix, washed down with some cranberry juice.

But no more.

A bag of opened trail mix with cranberries has been sitting on our counter in the kitchen for a year and a half. This week, I decided to feed it to the squirrels and birds.

Obi hates when I decide to store food outside on the window sill!

Whenever the squirrel jumped up onto the roof of the garage, Obi would lunge at the window so hard he was working the shelf away from the wall.

I moved the director’s chair, where Oliver sleeps when I’m working, up against the shelf.

Oliver for not approve.

Obi does not approve either.

Of squirrels.

A Very Special OutTV Crossover Episode

As you know, I put our leftover bread on the window sills to attract OutTV programming for Kitten Thunder. The one bad thing about bread during the spring, though, is that squirrels tend to take their meals and run. I’ve always assumed they were taking it home to their kittens.

This week, at least, I was wrong.

Obi and I were in the breakfast nook, watching a squirrel hang upside down from a branch to eat seeds out of the bird feeder. The birds were landing, looking ticked off, then noticing the copious amount of seed on the ground then would shrug and chow down. Since I had bread to give…I gave.

“Would you like some bread?” I asked the squirrel. He was hanging upside down still, looking worried that he was going to have to get away. But I tore up some bread and left it on the porch for him.

Inside, Obi and I watched. The squirrel approached the bread. He grabbed two pieces, jammed them into his mouth, and climbed up the side of the house onto the roof out of sight. Obi and I made eye contact. We did not approve.

A while later, I was straightening the cat shelf blankets up in the reading nook and talking to Oliver. I heard the pitter patter of feet on the roof. They pittered up one side and pattered down the other. Outside, the squirrel came into view with a mouth full of bread. He ran to the end of the garage and hopped into a tree. And there…he ate the bread.

Then he went back to the porch.

Then he came back to the tree.

And I heard the pitter patter of bigger feet. Obi was on to this special OutTV program. He came running up the stairs and flew up to the cat shelf. When the squirrel returned to the porch, the brown kitten tore down to the dining room to watch.

Oliver and I approved.

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In actual television news this week, The Boy and I decided to get rid of cable and start streaming our screen entertainment. I hear there are special channels for cats.

The screen saver seems to work for now.

Inroads

It was state hockey weekend again and that meant lots of visitors for Kitten Thunder. My parents, along with Cousin Jigger, stayed at our house. And, since my nephew’s games were at way-too-early a.m., my niece also stayed with us.

The biggest issue Oliver and Obi has is that Lexi didn’t bring Barbi with her. What good is a little girl without a doll? So she bought one on Saturday – both cats helped get her out of the packaging and tried out her hands for chin scritching.

Meanwhile, on the dog front, things went a little more smoothly. No one got punched in the nose. Kitten Thunder spent most of their time in the living room with us…watching. It started out a little tense. But as the weekend went by, everyone calmed down.

Then, everyone discovered they have an interest in common.

Who doesn’t like squirrel watching?

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An hour after everyone left yesterday, the squirrel came to the window sill and looked in at me on the couch. He wanted to know where his audience was.

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This morning, I was glad that the audience was gone: spring has arrived an OutTV is a tiny bit pornographic. I’m thinking about piping mood music out to the front porch.

Not that they seem to need music.

 

Squirrels on Rye

The Boy and I don’t eat the same kind of bread. Being the only people in our house, we hardly ever finish a loaf of bread before it gets stale or molds or I just buy another loaf because I forgot to see what we had before I went to the store. This leads to a lot of extra bread.

Squirrel bait.

The same happens with tortillas, though not as often. When it was -20 degrees, I wasn’t putting out food because squirrels aren’t crazy. That is the exact type of weather that they store nuts or whatever for. So we had a surplus.

A giant stacks of the ends of breads and tortilla dregs. I did what anyone would do in this circumstance: I set up a taste test.

The results: Squirrels prefer rye bread over tortillas. But they’ll eat them both.

Next week we’ll be testing to see if they like my wheat bread over rye. Seriously…who wouldn’t?

Hawk Eyed

Oliver has a bag. This is his new favorite place to lay and a spot for which he has forsaken the post-breakfast snuggle. Once in a while Obi comes in to remind him that Tail knocked the bag off the coffee table, so Tail’s attached kitten should be allowed to lay on the bag. The grey kitten sees the reason in this…but he doesn’t get off the bag.

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This week, we have two new programs on OutTV. First off, there is a little black kitteh wandering around. He looks pretty healthy so he obviously belongs to someone. But he is claiming a lot of territory in the neighborhood.

Yesterday, Black Kitteh had a squirrel up a light post. The squirrel was hanging out about ten feet off the ground, trash talking the kitten. Eventually the kitten gave up and walked away. Except he didn’t give up. He hid around the corner and waited for the squirrel to come down. Unfortunately for him, the squirrel (and I) was not fooled. The squirrel came down the pole and crossed the street to our house. Obi and I watched as Black Kitteh chased the squirrel from one channel of OutTV to the next and the next until they were on the Jeff Channel.

Obi doesn’t go outside but he did not want another kitten in his Out.

The more exciting programming is a sharp-shinned hawk that has moved into the neighborhood. She is very talkative and, though we hardly see her, we hear her cry all the time.

Yesterday, Obi was napping on the back of the couch while I worked. He was enjoying some Smell-O-Vision from the Jeff Channel and he was stretched out very flat. As flat, I thought, as he could get.

Until the hawk swooped down between our house and Jeff’s house and screamed just outside our window. She was so close I could hear her wings. The hair stood on the back of my neck.

And the cat? Got flatter.

Saint Patty Snapshots

No one in the house is wearing green today. No one is getting pinched because if The Boy pinches me I will pinch him back. And Kitten Thunder has no apposable thumbs.

***

Oliver and I stayed in bed today, reading, until 1:30 this afternoon. Then I got up and made lunch. Then I started reading again on the couch. Obi supervised from the quilt pod for an hour. Then he decided intensive supervision was needed so he moved up to lay on my chest. He stayed like that for an hour before his brother showed up.

I told Obi to be brave. I told Oliver not to run Obi off. In his defense, Oliver plunked down behind Obi and seemed perfectly content to share. He even gave Obi a bath. But Obi felt pressured and went to watch some OutTV. He’d oversnuggled anyway.

The book, by the way was excellent. It is a little weird. A little supernatural. But it left my heart pounding and my nerves on edge. If you like unusual books, check out The Mercy Of Thin Air by Ronlyn Domingue.

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We had super veggie spaghetti tonight. Oliver did not approve. But he licked both plates spotlessly clean – just to survive, though, not because it tasted good.

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The basement flat mousie is upstairs.

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Yesterday, a squirrel was hanging upside down, eating out of our squirrel-proof bird feeder. Obi looked at me helplessly. He did not approve. I didn’t care until the end of the day when I looked out and saw an empty birdfeeder. A week’s worth of food, gone in a day. I do not approve.

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Look closely at the picture above. That’s two, two cats in one.

Tasty Ears

As you know, Oliver had a doctor appointment on Monday for his out of control allergies. They are now, officially, under control. His eyes are not goopy. His lungs are not wheezy. His chin acne is clearing up.

And those ears…

The one ear was infected so Oli is getting ear drops. They are much harder to give because I have to put the dropper into his ear and try to tell if anything has dropped in while my grey kitten tries to get the dropper out of his ear. At least eye drops you can see if medicine is coming out. At least pills are a solid.

Evidently, ear drops are tasty. This afternoon, Kitten Thunder was in the condo. A bath started. There is really nothing cuter than the two kittehs washing each others’ faces. With their faces clean, Obi moved on to the top on Oliver’s head. That would include his ears.

Tasty, tasty ears.

Ears so tasty, it seems, that Obi really got into the cleaning. It required putting Oliver in a headlock. Then standing on top of him. And shoving his face all the way into the grey kitten’s big bunny ears.

I don’t know if his ears were really tasty. There’s a possibility that Obi was just taking care of his brother. He does that.

But the ears are sparkling clean.

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For Christmas, my aunt gave me this squirrel feeder. It is hilarious. And hard to photograph from inside the house.

Merry Christmas, Tubbo

The other day I was at a local coffee shop and the girl there gave me some expired muffins to take home for the neighborhood squirrels. I asked Kitten Thunder where we should put them.

Out the front window, said Oliver.

Out the front door, said Obi.

And so we did.

Tubbo watched from the tree.

It didn’t take him long to come down and try out the blueberry muffin.

Obi and I were thrilled to see him enjoy the Christmas treat. Soon after, though, he decided to take the muffin home with him. He carried an entire muffin up the side of the house.

Then he came back for the other one.

Someone needs to re-explain the term “taking the bait.”

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Merry Christmas from around Wyoming!