Feline Friday - Nin is so loud

Nin's meowing is so loud that when I am standing outside in the driveway or front lawn, I can hear him!

Nin resting after all that meowing

Phody and his addiction and answers to questions

Zaphod has become a fetch-o-holic. As soon as it looks like we are going to go outside this is what he does:

Lady, we are forgetting something

I know the ball is in here. Let's get it. 

Because he is spoiled, the ball goes out with us almost every time we go. The only exceptions are walk time (which he knows because he goes on leash) and if we are going to the beach and sometimes with the Man.  I, the Lady, am too soft and takes it with them, even in the dark.

What is good about Phody, is even with the ball he will go and do his business.  With the me he is getting to play ball 4 or 5 times per day. All this extra exercise has him losing a little too much weight, so we have had to increase his food consumption!

Answers to some questions that have shown up in our comments:

We live in rural Quebec, Canada. We live just north of Canada's Capital Ottawa in the Gatineau Hills (if you want to look on a map we are about 30 km or 18 miles north of the city).
We have 2 acres of land.
We have lived here since August 2012.
We are very lucky that the dogs can eat that close. Phody does need to watch Hailey because she is always done first and does try and steal his food. If, on rare occasion, he steps away or lifts his head up, she will get in it and the gentleman that Phody is will just stand their with sad eyes.

Have as great a day you can because it is Thursday (I do not like a Thursday)!

Wordless Wednesday - Feeding Time

Gardening

We spent some time on Saturday helping our Lady in the garden while the man was trying to fix the lawn mower. Our Lady does not have a green thumb, but she is going to try this out. We think with our help she will do great.

We thought we would give you a tour of our backyard. We don't go there much. The pictures of us playing outside are usually in the front yard.

 Here is Lee checking out the hill behind garden. The Lady has planted 2 tomatoes, 2 strawberries, 2 cabbages and 2 red peppers. This will probably be it for this year. We want to see if she can keep those alive!

Here is the back of the house. The people are so excited that they will be staining that 69 foot deck soon. The part that is wider is off the dining room.

Note: The picture from Sunday's post was taken just after this one. Phody was so happy because he and Hailey got to wrestle and he thinks he won.

Our house has 2 garages. There is one to the side of the house and this one in the basement. If you look at the picture above this is between the 2 pillars on the far right of the shot. It is also messy. There are empty boxes from our move, the Christmas decorations, the patio furniture, which the people don't want to put up until they get the staining done and the wood for our fireplace (this enters on to the living room too so good location for the wood!)

This is some of the trees behind our place.  You can see the hill is steep and why we don't play back here as much. 

If you are standing behind the house facing it this is on the right. it is the septic field. Our Lady has done a great job at growing dandelions here! Here dream is to put a low maintenance flower garden here eventually. She may pick up a few plants to get this started as the spring goes on. 

You can see our Man's car peaking out on the left. He was parked in the driveway, hoping it would rains and clean his car!

 This is to the left of the house. Here Phod is looking to see if the grass the Man planted has started to grow. We aren't allowed to play on this right now.

Thanks for coming on our tour with us! Have a great day. 

A little bit of Mischief for Monday

While we have been relatively good this past week (we are just waiting for Emma to come on Saturday, then the mischief will begin), we have had a few moments of it (but none of it was us)!

The birds continue to cause mischief by pooping on Hailey's head. She was pooped on 2 times last week!

Goldby- our resident groundhog - caused mischief by moving in between our house and the neighbours house. There are 3 dogs who would love to get to know him better.

Otto von Bismark - our local otter - caused mischief by not letting Zaphod catch him when we went for a swim. 

Lady cause mischief by playing ball with Phod when it was dark and they kept losing the ball.

PS find out tomorrow why Zaphod was so happy yesterday!

Black and White Sunday - Zaphod

Nin and the Dogs

Picture taken March 2010 - Gemini, Loki (both who are at the rainbow bridge) and Nin

The above picture is not a posed picture, it is how they were all lying on the couch. Nin has always been the more tolerant cat with the dogs. Baggy HATED Loki and lived in the basement when he was alive. [In fairness Loki always tried to chase him and hump him. Baggy has become more tolerant of the dogs as the years have gone by].

Nin has always looked for ways to get along with the dogs, even if he has always been humped by them. First it was Loki who humped him (in fairness Loki would have humped anything - he was a really humpy dog - which makes us really laugh as he ended up with hepatitis). When Loki died Gemi started humping him (Gemi was nasty and violent and it was disturbing), and when Gemi died Hailey took over the job. 

It is usually after a humping that Lee will play with him as shown in yesterday's post. We don't worry about Nin clawing eyes out because he doesn't have front claws. Yes Blogville, we are the evil people who had our cats declawed. It wasn't our plan to do this. We tried everything we could think of (it was 17 years ago, we didn't have the internet to help us) and Nin continued to scratch everything. He scratched the couch down to the wood. He scratched the carpet. He would scratch your bag if you left it on the floor. My favourite - he would scratch the mirror (that is a horrible sound by the way). 

After he had destroyed everything but the scratching post, we talked to our vet and decided declawing was the only way to go. Because we were declawing him, we also declawed Baggy (who was not such a scratcher). I would like to say that declawing never stopped Nin from scratching. Up until old age caught up with him, he scratched and scratched and scratched. The day after he was declawed, he was scratching (and then he would look at his paw like "this isn't right" and scratch some more). He clear is/was an obsessive scratcher. So he is a clawless obsessive scratcher. 

Nin's obsessive behaviour has been a blessing in some ways, because it forced us to get him declawed. Because he is declawed we have to worry less about him and the dogs. So it has all worked out and they have lived together fairly peacefully for 13 years. 

Have a great Saturday!