chateau aux deux chats

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Lovely autumn

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It was a long, slow, golden fall.

I mentioned in the previous post the unusual density of apple blossom last spring. Sure enough, we ate apples until we couldn't stand them any more, and explored many variations on crumbles and pies. But it was an unusually fecund summer all round.

photo by dmg

The English oak was no exception. It produced millions of acorns, like nothing we had ever seen before. Or heard - all through August and September these things were coming down, hitting the ladders leaned up against the woodshed ping ping thwack all night long.

The phenomenon drew lots of visitors. The squirrels gave jaw-dropping displays of aerobatics. The raccoons were clumsier but no less determined. Mama deer began to spend more and more time simply hanging out.

And we have a new neighbour.

Monday, May 23, 2016

Long time no post...Happy Birthday Harriet

Click on any of these photos to get bigger, nicer versions.

I guess I've been busy. I've certainly been taking photos, I just haven't found the time to actually put together a post. We have just come through yet another glorious spring, though, so I thought I should at least show you the apple blossom and the clematis from a month ago.

The apple was absolutely loaded this year, and now I can see a ton of little apples, so as long as we get no horrific windstorms, there may be a lot of crumble happening come September. Here's a particularly spring-sky-in-Victoria shot:

And here's the clematis doing its thing:

I put the birdhouse up there because a house wren was trying to nest in our little tool cupboard next to the deck. It seemed like a dangerous proposition, given the traffic in the tool cupboard, and I was still haunted by the disastrous outcome of the hummingbird nesting down low in the cotoneaster last year. (Pretty sure the raccoon got it, but my setting up the sprinkler right next to it did not help, I am sure.) I left the tool cupboard door open for a few days, which seemed to send the right message. I don't think the wren decided to use the birdhouse, though - haven't seen any activity.

Good news on the hummingbird front this year: I just discovered the nest, much higher up in the viburnum at the back corner of the yard. Look at the cute little teacup! And it's got ugly little beaks in it too!

Yesterday was bright and sunny enough that Miss H joined me outside for a little sunning on the warm stone.

It's tough being almost 18 when you're a cat. H's back legs are starting to let her down. But breakfast and dinner still taste good! And the personality shines through - she loves me even though she looks grumpy.

I let her relax while I admired the roses:

And then she got bored, and headed toward the door...

to get to her preferred lounge chair.

Aahhh.

Happy birthday, princess.

Sunday, May 10, 2015

So long Oz

Ozzie May 24, 1998 - May 8, 2015

Ozzie's gone - the spirit was very willing but that tough little fluffy noisy bod had just had enough. We sure miss him tons already.

Cat of many names: Oz, Ozzifer, Ozzychuck (when we lived in Winnipeg), Ozmatoz, Tiger, Pumpkin, and unabashedly determined Bottomless-Love-Bucket.

May 2011.

Just last fall, when the geek hosted a party of about forty other geeks in town for a conference, Harriet was AWOL upstairs, but Oz was working the room, extracting pats with motor on full volume. Nothing aloof about my Pumpkin.

He was challenging to photograph, because he was usually moving. Usually moving toward you if you crouched down with a camera pointed at him.

July 2000. Classic: Oz eyes me while H eyes his chow dish. "You done with that?"

September 2008.

May 2011

February 2009

Oz was an amazing athlete. When I went to pick them both up from the pet food store where the Humane Society put cats for adoption, he bolted as soon as they opened the cage. The store clerk and I spent about 20 minutes chasing him around amongst the shelves of big chow bags. No one could jump higher or twist more elegantly mid-air when chasing the bungee-bird. And he became a ratter extraordinaire, sometimes depositing corpses longer than he was from whiskers to tail...right where someone (most memorably Mum, during a visit a couple of years ago) was going to step on them unawares in the middle of the night.

June 2003. Love to eat them ratties...

September 2013. Sorry, but you gotta admire the skill and style.

Cleansing action shots:

February 2009

June 2012

November 2008

Oz liked to explore and find hidey holes. When we moved house in December 2002, he went missing for a few days. I put posters everywhere, met all the neighbours ("have you seen a fluffy tuxedo in your yard?"), and spent hours and hours wandering around calling. Tragic. At 2am Christmas morning, I was woken by a signature yowl on the front step - there was Oz, wet and tired and very hungry. I feel certain he had gotten trapped in someone's garage while he was checking out his new turf. That did seem to rein him in a little. Nevertheless, a few years later, here at the Chateau, he did not show up for dinner one night. I went out looking, and just by fluke heard another signature yell (vide infra) coming from inside the basement door of the hospital next door. I guess some workmen had left the door open that afternoon for a while, and himself had gone in to check it out. It took a long time to find the night supervisor with a key.

May 2013

The boy had a set of pipes, and a vocabulary that was operatic in range, a true coloratura.

I used to imagine Ozzie's brain as a sparkly jumble of shiny wires, that were occasionally touching each other and shorting out with a little "zzt - zzt" (imagine John Lithgow in Buckaroo Bonzai, touching his tongue to the live electrode). And this was long before the vet surmised that he probably had some little neural tumours that started to affect his motor control, giving him a charming twitch.

March 2003

He was very ~~handsome~~ pretty. People had trouble believing he was a boy. And with all that fur, who could tell? We just had the vet's word to go on. Except for the way he strutted after chasing off feline intruders or the occasional unfortunate dog who invaded his space.

July 2000.


June 2009.


July 2008.

May 2013.

Oz liked to help in the garden, especially when he felt the gardener needed to be reminded that it was supper time. While he was definitely the beta cat in the family, Harriet relied on him to the very end to get this message across.