Sunday it started snowing and it wasn’t until that night that it (finally!) really started to stick. By Monday morning the northwest was enveloped in a winter wonder land which caused headaches come nighttime and mass chaos all around.

Again, have I mentioned I love the company I work at?

Without further ado: a few shots from our snowpocalypse!

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I’ve been told this needs a caption and all I can think of is what I posted on facebook: “Scholar Kitty is perturbed by your illogical argument.” I challenge you to think of something better! I dare you!

Bucky looks so much like Jabba the Hut in this photo it’s not even funny.

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clearly I know a thing or two about fat animals…

The other part? Mack has been out of town for the past two weeks and it’s been kind of lonely around the house. Yes, I’m actually leaving the house now that I have a job (be still my beating heart!) but it’s kind of depressing to come home to just cats who half the time can’t be bothered to wake up when I come home. I thought it would be nice to have a canine companion to hang out with this weekend and go on long walks and, you know, at least hide the fact as they only think of me as the provider of food.

Now Maggie is a… special dog. I don’t know how else to put it. A few months before I moved down to Phoenix our family dog Sierra (who I briefly talked about when Midnight had to be put down) had to put down too. Naturally we were all devastated by the loss of our dog and I made it my goal before I moved to find my parents another dog. Not to replace Sierra but rather to give another dog a chance of a happy, loving home.

Enter Maggie.

This dog has all sorts of weird personality quirks. I don’t know how much of them are from her background before she came into our lives but seriously you have to wonder about this dog and what goes on in her head. Take, for example, if she’s in a car she likes to bark at every. single. fucking. car. that goes by. It was cute for the first 5 minutes until you realize I live about an hour away from my parents.

Communicating with the shadow people is a favorite pastime of Maggie…

Some other weird personality quirks? She has a strange fascination with shadows and shiny objects. If your silverware accidentally catches the light when you’re eating and reflects onto the ceiling be prepared for the barking and whining and dear God really dog?! My family has kind of made it into a big joke that the Mother Ship is trying to contact her and send messages.

Mark and I try to help where we can.

Overall having Maggie over was an experience that someday, when I’m recovered and not home alone, I hope to relive. When the cats weren’t panicking (or peeing in shoe boxes since the litter-box was near THE DOG!) and Maggie wasn’t barking at shadows and/or terrorizing my neurotic cats it was a lot of fun. I hope, in time, to have Maggie come down more often (and her barking in the car to minimize) so that we can take long walks where I don’t fear her keeling over.

Oh Maggie, you tank of a dog. Don’t look now but I think the mother ship is calling.

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I thank my lucky stars they did!

I’ll write more on a day I didn’t get another job rejection and am thus depressed (I’ll write more on the job hunt as well! Lucky!). I’ll instead direct you to something positive and the product of everyone’s hard work:

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They now reside in our backyard.

I’ll go into more details later as to the building of the coop and adjusting to life with chickens (and all those tasty “farm fresh” eggs) but instead I want to talk about a topic near and dear to my heart: how uncooperative chickens are to photograph.

I mean, I get it since I know what a giant pain photographing our cats is but seriously? Probably nine times out of ten I end up with shots of chicken butts.

I secretly think they take pleasure is showing me their behinds and knowing that I fear them almost as much as they fear me.

I grudgingly text Emily last week and admitted that chicken butts are, in their own way, kind of cute.

That is until I see what a mess they’ve made in our backyard.

While showing their rears for photos.

There is, I guess, a reason why I named them after Hades’ sisters.

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On one of our visits down to Oregon visiting Mack’s parents something inside me changed (or snapped) and suddenly I wanted chickens. This in itself was really odd since I’m scared of chickens. Or at least I was more so then I am now. Something about their beady eyes and sharp talons was a major turn off to me. Until I had farm fresh eggs. After that? Suddenly chickens weren’t all that bad in my book.

As we prepare to get some chickens for our backyard I decided it was high-time I do some research and learn more about these predators (joking) who will soon be making our lives a whole lot more chaotic.

1. More than 50 billion chickens are reared annually as a source of food, for both their meat and their eggs.
2. The vast majority of poultry are raised using intensive farming techniques. According to the Worldwatch Institute, 74 percent of the world’s poultry meat, and 68 percent of eggs are produced this way.
3. The broody hen will stop laying and instead will focus on the incubation of the eggs (a full clutch (all the eggs produced by birds or reptiles at a single time) is usually about 12 eggs).
4. Incubation for eggs is about 21 days (if the egg has been fertilized).
5. Chickens may live for five to eleven years, depending on the breed.
6. Meat chicken generally lives six weeks before slaughter.
7. Chickens can sense fear. This excites them.**
8. A chicken is 75% water.
9. A chicken once had its head cut off and survived for over eighteen months, headless.
10. There are more chickens on Earth than there are humans.
11. There are four cities in the United States that have the word “chicken” in their name: Chicken, Alaska; Chicken Bristle, Illinois; Chicken Bristle, Kentucky; and Chicken Town, Pennsylvania.
12. The chicken is the closest living relative of the tyrannosaurus-rex.
13. Hens will try to lay in nests that already contain eggs, and have been known to move eggs from neighboring nests into their own. Hens can also be extremely stubborn about always laying in the same location.
14. The fear of chickens is called ‘Alektorophobia’.
15. On average, a hen layouts 300 eggs per year.

* emphasis on “I didn’t know”.
** citation needed.

my sources: Amazing Chicken Facts, Wikipedia: Chicken, and 20 Little Known Facts about Chickens

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Thought I’d try another I Heart Photography challenge since the theme this week is “Pets“. We all know I am crazy cat lady, after-all.

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I know I can’t say this enough but I hate moving. From living in boxes to not knowing where anything is to hauling heavy objects between point A and point B it just gets old. Mack and I are “frequent movers” in that we’ve moved at least once a year since we started dating in 2007. Fortunately I think we’ve settled in our current place in the sense that we want to stay here for a few years.

Look at us, being all adult like.

Optimistically I want to say that we’ve moved about half of our stuff over to the new place. I want to believe this estimate since I might just burst into tears and hug one of my not-so-willing cats if it is more. Yesterday we hauled over the heavy furniture and I have a whole new awareness of all the muscles in my forearms.

Through all the moving and relocating we decided, for simplicity sake, to have the sugar glider over at my brothers house while we move boxes into the new place. That coupled with the fact we couldn’t “officially” move in until the carpet was cleaned.

Sugar gliders fairly easy to handle critter in that it stays in its cage and is active at night since they’re nocturnal. Overall it wouldn’t be too much of a brain stretch for me to take care of it at night while I was there (since we hadn’t moved the co-dependent cats over yet, either). I have, of course, taken care of sugar gliders many times before but still, they’re such easy creatures it was one less thing for me to worry about.

Now, I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before but my brother Mark likes to keep his house at about sub-zero. He would point out that it’s in the 60s and it’s “comfortable.” I say he’s in a state of delusion and why are Mom and I the only ones in the family who can’t maintain a normal body temperature?

Damn you genetics.

Anyway, for those of you who don’t know much about sugar gliders they originate in Australia. This means that they tend to like warmer temperatures.

I think you can see where I am going with this.

Last week I get back to my brothers house and go to feed the sugar glider and notice that he’s curled up trying to maintain body heat. Or at least that is what I eventually figured out since he wasn’t really moving much and I thought DEAR GOD I killed the sugar glider! But no, “fortunately”, he was just cold. My heart instantly bled for him since I understand so well the feeling of being cold.

I’d like to lie and say I kept a cool head about this but there are people who read this who know I like to panic sometimes. Especially at 12:30am. I instantly called Mack and was like “The sugar glider is cold and stuff happened and I’m afraid he’ll DIE.” Mack, bless his heart, went about trying to calm me down as I informed him I’d be driving the sugar glider over there and warm up the house since he needs heat, STAT.

The ensuing chaos would do sitcoms proud. Now, I’m slightly ashamed to admit that that night was the first time I’d actually really held a sugar glider. Something about animals that randomly relieve themselves on you isn’t really appealing to me. That night the wellbeing of the glider outweighed my fear of poop on my hand so I grabbed a wash cloth and wrapped the glider up and held him against my torso. It was for the gliders own benefit to go into the wash cloth since at that point my hands were icy cold (my body temperature drops when I’m stressed/upset). Running upstairs I surprised my brother by bursting forth from the basement while begging him to hold the sugar glider (or “The Freak” as Mark calls him) while I ran downstairs to get the cage to take over to our new house.

Perhaps now would be a good time to remind you that I drive a Toyota Corolla? Which has enough space inside to fit a postage stamp at best?

So here I am, 12:40am, standing outside trying to fit this tall cage in and not finding a way to make it work. I call Mack back and told him that I’d have to take the glider over and hand it over to him, grab his car, go get the cage, and come back. A magical came of delivering objects one by one during the night. Not suspicious at all.

Fortunately after the initial freak out with the cage the rest of my taxi service went off without much of a hitch. It was a little difficult holding the glider in one hand while steering with the other but it was well worth it. By the time I came back with the cage the sugar glider was happy, warm, and relieving himself down Mack’s back.

Ah pets, how you like to keep us humble.

Technorati Tags: sugar gliders, pets, animals, boyfriend, stress, moving, travel, traveling with pets

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Oh boy was he thrilled.

Our first order of business was separating the cats so Brutus and Bucky wouldn’t be able to continue licking the wound and making it worse. At first I was worried that Blue would be really sad without his partners in crime around him.

But I’m starting to think he really likes not having them around…

I mean, he gets undivided attention from both of us.

And generally being a ham.

I think all in all he’s happy to have some R&R while he recovers and is storing up his energy for when he’ll next see his partners in crime.

But for now he’s got some sleeping to do and I keep interrupting.

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Two of our cats have feet fetishes. Bucky likes to chew on feet while Brutus is all about shoes. Especially really girly ones. Go figure.

(yes, I know I’m slacking on posting daily photos. I’ve been taking the pictures but just need to post them… Blame my laziness hectic life).

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