The cats, dogs and horses that share our lives
Our cat Pie (Magpie) has been under the weather for a few days. He was hiding and a couple of the times we saw him try to eat he hissed and ran away from what we were feeding him at the time.
The ‘food’ he ran away from was a treat- a little quarter-sized dollop of milk. We decided to get him to the vet pronto given his reaction and the fact that this happened twice on two days. It was a bit of an adventure and we learned a few things in the process
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Irene had to move her horse, Spirit, to a new stable recently. The new place is actually closer: theoretically, close enough to walk to, or a three minute drive if you dislike that theory as I do. Irene insisted for several days that I had to come see the new boarding situation. I, on the other hand, have been quite happy just to know that Irene is happy with things: why spoil it by having to go somewhere? But she insisted, and yesterday I finally went.
The most important part of the new boarding place, at least in our dog Finn’s opinion, is the fact that Finn has two dog-buddies there to play with. Banjo and Timber are close enough to Finn’s size, age, and temperament that he always has a good time playing with them. So our visit was really more about Finn than about the horses.
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We live in a forest on the side of a small mountain. But our house is also just five minutes or so from the Castlegar’s downtown, so sharing our acreage with wildlife still seems rather surprising to me.
Recently we’ve been visited by a few reminders of where we live.
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Our sweet cat Pippin passed away unexpectedly on Thursday, June 20, while Irene and I were away. She died in her sleep of uncertain causes, and I miss her in ways that are difficult to describe.
I’m writing this in the hope that a few notes about Pippin will help me rationalize my feelings.
Irene and I adopted Finn at the end of 2022. He was about 11 weeks old when we got him, born at the end of August (August 29). At the time he was about 6 or 7 kilos. His adoption was not really planned, but it worked out.
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Say hello to our newest family member: Finn, a dog, or more accurately a puppy. This picture is from when we first got him: he was about 11 weeks old at the time.
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Irene bugs me now and then regarding the fact that I don’t post many pictures of our animal family members here on this blog. She is right, and my rationale is thus: I post those pictures mostly on Facebook.
Why Facebook? I guess mainly because I try to use Facebook for short-form posts, and the most common of these for me is some cute pictures of our cats.
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Yesterday was our last day with Nimbus. He wasn’t feeling or looking ‘right’ for some time, with obvious signs of abdominal abnormality as well as reduced activity.
Nimbus’ last day
My wife and I love our critters, in particular our feline family. It has been the norm during our 27 years together for us to have something like six or seven cats sharing our household. This isn’t ‘by design’, but it seems to work out that way.
For the first time in a while, however, we are down to five cats in our house. And it is a hard change to accept.
There has been a great deal of coverage lately regarding the killing of a single particular lion in Zimbabwe by an American trophy hunter. I’m angry, and wish no good will upon the pathetic excuse for a human being who ‘hunted’ this lion- but that isn’t what I want to talk about here.
