The Second Half

Rabbit Blogging: Happy Birthday, Leo!

Happy birthday to our cute litte bun, Leo!  As with Pinchita, we don't really know when Leo's birthday is so we've lumped in with some of the cats on their assigned birthday of March 15th.  We also don't know how old Leo is.  We thought he was 2 years old when we adopted him, but when we took him to a rabbit savvy vet recently, we learned he was likely 5-7 years old.

That was a bit of a disappointment bc his life expectancy is 7-10 years old.  When we thought he was about 2 years old, we thought we had many years with him ahead of us.  Now we have to get used to the idea that we'll probably only have a few years with him.

Leo, posing on his blankie:

A little more relaxed for this photo op:

Enjoying the view from the top of his Bunny Luv Critter Castle:

He's usually pretty tidy, but once in a while he makes a big mess:

Like all of our critters, he's too cute to elicit any anger at anything he does:

Everything he does is cute, as far as I'm concerned.  Happy birthday, Leo, and I hope you have many more happy, healthy days!

Friday Cat Blogging: Happy Birthday, Pinchita!

Happy third birthday to our sweet, darling kitty, Pinchita!  You may recall that Pinchita is the cat we adopted from Aruba a couple of years ago.  She had some medical issues shortly after arrival here, the most discouraging of which was a lymphoma diagnosis and a prognosis of one or two months to live.

Fortunately, she's still alive and doing well!  The diagnosis at that time was not definitive bc that would have required a biopsy and Pinchita was in no condition to have an endoscopy to get the tissue.  She still hasn't had a biopsy; we've avoided it bco her continuing good health.  Since she's been thriving, we haven't wanted to subject her to the endoscopy.  And, if I recall correctly, her abdominal ultrasounds have improved since that first one that suggested intestinal lymphoma.  She's been on prednisone since that initial diagnosis, just in case she really has lymphoma, but her dose has been continually tapered downward as time goes on.  I believe she's currently receiving 1/2 mg every third day.  At some point and unless she has problems, she'll go off it entirely and we hope she'll do well without it.

We really don't know when Pinchi's birthday is...we though she was a kitten when we first met her: she was so tiny at 4.75 lb.!  (We weigh her weekly and she's now at 9.7 lb., just over twice her arrival weight.)   A more thorough examination told us that she was a full grown (albeit undrenourished) adult and pregnant!  We lump most of our cats into two birthdays, March 15th (yes, the ides of March) and September 15th, based on what we think is closer to their actual birth date.  If we have no clue, we lump them in on March 15th.  So, since we think Pinchi might have been slightly older than 1 year old when we met her, we put her birthday as March 15, 2009.

She is, of course, still positive for the feline leukemia virus, so she continues to reside in separate quarters:

She's a social being so she shares the room with Leo the rabbit.  In the above picture, she's standing in victorious posture on top of Leo's cardboard castle.  There's a screen door on the room, for two reasons:

1. Bco of her sociability.  Her positive feluk status means she can't come in contact with uninfected cats or their things.  But she still likes to see them and they watch her sometimes, too.  The screen isn't a 100% effective barrier; we are considering making the bottom half plastic or glass.
2. It allows for better heat and a/c circulation.  She could stand the poor circulation, but it was uncomfortable for us.  Plus, once the bun arrived, we wanted to make sure it didn't get too hot or cold in there for him; he's more sensitive to temperature than she is.

As an aside, we could give the resident cats the feline leukemia vaccine, but it's not nearly as effective as we'd need it to be to feel comfortable letting them mingle.  Also, there's the risk of vaccine associated sarcomas, which are overwhelmingly fatal.

Here she is in one of her cheesecake poses:

Is she or is she a fiiiiine looking cat?  You know she is.

Friday Cat Blogging: Lizzie's Feeling Better

So just about the time little Leo was doing poorly, Lizzie became ill, too.  She had a couple of days in December where she stopped eating and started vomiting.  These are alarming signs, especially from a cat who has been robustly healthy and very much a cat's cat, and certainly signs that should be treated immediately.

Our regular vet is a housecall vet, but this kind of issue needs a visit to a vet facility bc, at the very least, an x-ray will likely be required, possibly an ultrasound as well.  We had an appointment to bring her in around mid-day, but, early that morning, we decided not to wait any longer and brought her into the emergency vet at Animal Emergency and Referral Associates in Fairfield, NJ.  Several of our pets have been there before, either for emergency reasons or to see the specialists there.  If she needed surgery to remove something or some kind of tricky treatment, we wanted her treated there.

We were especially concerned about surgery  to remove an obstruction bc we thought she might have eaten a chicken feather.  Lizzie loves cat toys that have feathers attached to them.  Since we have chickens, Kevin gave her a couple of feathers that Sandy had dropped since she was molting at the time.  She went bonkers over them and first started showing symptoms the same day she got the feathers.

The ER vet thought the x-ray might miss a feather.  I later showed an actual chicken feather to the Internal Medicine vet, who thought it would have been noticeable on the x-ray.  The feathers on the toys were different from Sandy's feathers in that the former were softer, lighter, more pliable.  Sandy's feather looked and felt stiff, like a small quill feather for writing.

Lizzie stayed overnight for observation, tests, fluids and some hand feeding.  She was eating on her own the next day and, since there was no identifiable problem, she came home.  She's been doing very well since then.

We have no idea what the problem was, which I find a bit disconcerting.  I like to have as much information as possible wrt our pets' illnesses so that we can make the most informed decisions wrt their care.  I also like to know if it's a one-off thing or if it might recur.  In this case, it looks like we won't know what caused her to get sick.  I'll surely take a healthy kitty, if I have to choose between that and an answer, and hope it was just a bug or something like that.

Despite the funny looking eyes, here's Lizzie feeling better and hanging around at the top of the stairs, as is her wont.  She particularly enjoys sitting about two steps down and staring at the gap in the trim left behind by some contractors who ditched us toward the end of the project.  I think she hears things from there and is lying in wait for The Thing That Lives in The Wall.  I think there was something(s) living there at one point, although I think they moved on when the roof was replaced and sealed up tight last year.  But kitties have long memories for these kinds of things and, actually, I trust a cat's judgement wrt these matters over mine.

Sanctuary

The other day, when I blogged about Leo's recent health issues, I mentioned how I like to see him looking relaxed, comfortable and secure.   I thought about that a bit and I realized that I, too, like to feel relaxed, comfortable and secure at home!  Stephanie, after whom one of our chickens is named, once noted how calm my home is and, after thinking about that a bit, I realized that I do put some effort into keeping that way (that is to say, a person noted this, not a chicken).

Firstly, I suppose it must be admitted that the absence of children probably contributes a great deal toward a calm, quiet home.  We do have a fair number of pets, but they're pretty mellow, too.  The chickens are all hens, so they usually just chatter here and there, you know, bok bok bok.  They tend to vocalize a bit right after laying an egg, but that's it.  Apparently, some hens start to crow a bit as they age, but that's probably a ways off for our girls yet.

The cats don't make a lot of noise.  It did seem really quiet after Dolly died in November.  I don't know if this is correct, but I always figured she got loud bc she went deaf and couldn't hear herself.  But she was talkative and loud, so her absence was quite noticeable.

The rabbit makes very little noise, although his cuteness is deafening.

So basically there's just the two of us to make noise and we don't seem to be very good at that.  There's the tv, but we don't watch a ton of tv.  There's music, but we don't blast it very often.  (For some reason, I save that for the car.)  We don't argue very much (sometimes I wonder if we should argue more, i.e., if we're both too non-confrontational) and, even when we do, it's more of a "discussion" than a holler fest.  I think I can count on one finger the number of times I've raised my voice in anger.  And for some other reason, I don't like to yell throughout the house, say, from downstairs to upstairs.  I don't know why; what would be so wrong about that?  I don't know, yet I always have a little misgiving when I do it.

Maybe that misgiving is bc I really, really count on being able to come home and feel safe and secure.  Not so much from any specific threat, e.g., crime.  It's more an appreciation that I can shut the figurative door on bad news, lousy weather, whatever happens to be flooding the news channels at the moment (politics, tsunamis, scandals, royal weddings, etc.), annoying people, basically any kind of stupidity, etc.  And it's not so much that I want to always ignore tsunamis and elections and whatnot; or that I don't care about people suffering; it's more that I appreciate knowing I can get away from most anything by shutting the door, grabbing a diet Coke, sitting in The Comfy Chair and luring a kitty onto my lap.

I said that I put some effort into keeping the house calm, but now that I think about it, it doesn't seem like very much effort.  I certainly avoid inviting over offensive people, but that seems like a no-brainer.  Some people feel they have to invite person X bco a family reason or something like that.  Sure, I'll invite someone who's a little annoying if they're, like, married to someone I like, but that's about as far as I'll go.  Positively speaking, I invite people whose company I enjoy, who add to my life rather than suck the lifeblood out of me.  And I would have no qualms about giving the heave ho to anyone who harshes my mellow chez moi.

I also don't like having a lot of stuff going on at one time.  E.g., I would never schedule two big things, such as having the roof done and the garage built, at the same time.  I also wouldn't schedule them too close back to back.  That's just asking for trouble.  Just as it's true that construction work will cost X% more in the end, it will also take X% longer than planned to complete.  So yeah, I kinda take it easy wrt that kind of stuff.  It's just not worth it to me to have so much stuff going on right where I live.

So I guess I do manage things in such a way as to preserve quietude on the home front.  As much as I like people and I like going out to do stuff, I like knowing that I can come back to my little burrow and do my own thing.  I don't think I've ever not looked forward to coming home.

Leo's Trials & Tribulations

As Charlie Brown would say, "Auuugh!"  I just typed up a big long post about Leo's recent health problems and then the internet connection dropped and I lost the whole thing.  Perhaps it's just as well bc the post was getting a bit wordy and involved there.  Let me sum up things better then:

• Leo got sick in December, 2011: lost weight, not eating, messy stools, goopier eye discharge.
• We brought him a couple of times to our housecall vet's colleague with a brick and mortar practice.  He got him feeling better, but not back to normal so he referred us to Dr. Margaret Fordham at Oakhurst Veterinary Hospital.
  • Leo's been there a couple of times already and has had:
    • x-rays (looks good), fluids, Critical Care, meds, exam, observation, nasolacrimal duct flush
    • his teeth ground down to the gumline
  • Back at home, he continues his meds and he's doing very well.
  • We learned that Leo is older than we previously thought.  He's approx. 5-7 yo so he's actually an elder bun.  This is disappointing bc we had thought he was 2 or 3 and life expectancy is 7-10 years.  He remains, however, cute as a button regardless of age.
  • We also learned that the eye discharge is not related to his incisor removal (done before we adopted him), but more likely due to a blocked nasolacrimal duct.
•  He goes back to OVH for a follow up in a few weeks.  The idea is to see how fast his teeth grow in order to figure out how often he needs his teeth ground down.

We've learned a lot about Leo in particular and rabbits in general.  Not all vets are rabbit savvy, so, even though it's a bit of a hike to OVH, it's a relief to know that he's receiving well-informed care.  He's an excellent traveller and patient.  Here he is about to leave for OVH:

Is he freaking adorable or what?!  Here he is, back at home, feeling better.  He loves just sitting on top of the ottoman.

 I like seeing him stretched out like in this picture:

I don't know if I'm correct, but when I see him lazing around all stretched out in the open, I interpret that to mean that he's feeling safe and relaxed.  That pink bed is actually Pinchita's pink princess bed, but Leo's taken it over and camps out in it for hours at a time.

Casual feet!

He's doing very well now: eating his select greens (he only likes certain greens) and pellets; producing good stools; his eye looks much better and bopping around and relaxing like his usual charming self.

First Two Egg Day of 2012!

So I haven't blogged in a donkey's age and yet what is the topic that compels me to blog today?  Why, it's no less than the first day of 2012 on which the girls have laid (lain?) two good eggs!  Here are the beauts:

Because there's no good reason not to post another picture of the girls, here they are:

This is from last summer; here they're sunning themselves.  I think that's Michelle on upper left and Sandy on the upper right.  Stephanie's on the bottom.

Today's eggs are from Stephanie and Sandy.  Michelle lays a bigger egg, but hers have had thin/no shells lately.   I found it surprising that Michelle lays the big egg and Stephanie and Sandy lay similarly sized eggs.  Michelle and Sandy ("the twins") are the same breed.  Stephanie is a different, slightly larger breed.  I thought Michelle and Sandy's eggs would look similar, but no.  Sandy and Stephanie's eggs are the same size, but Sandy's is slightly darker.

Who was laying the big egg was a topic of speculation for some time until it was determined with finality.  Although curious, we weren't going to sit around and watch to see who lays what egg over the course of a few hours.   Each hen was suspected, in her turn, to be the author of the big egg based on very casual observations.  Finally, one morning Kevin went to let them out and, as usual, checked for any eggs already laid that morning.  None.  Then, while he was still there, one chicken went in and settled in to lay an egg.  He waited until she was done, went in to collect the egg - which happened to be the big egg - proving once and for all that Michelle is laying the big egg.  As he put it, he outwitted the chickens.  We take our successes from whence we can.

Since I last blogged, Sandy molted and went on holiday from laying for the last few months.  She's recently started up.  From the article, Light in the Chicken Coop (about adding artificial light to chicken coops):

Hens naturally lay eggs when the days are long, and slow down as the days grow short in winter. This is because daylight stimulates the pituitary gland, which stimulates the hens' ovaries to produce eggs. Hens lay when they have daylight for at least 12-14 hours per day, and egg production drops off significantly and may even stop once days are shorter than this.

So her molt, combined with the shorter days, led Sandy to drop off laying eggs.  She appears to be starting back in again.  I barely notice that the days are longer, but I guess it's enough for Sandy.

Sandy's molted both winters we've had the chickens.  I don't believe Michelle molted, unless it was a very light molt.  Stephanie hasn't molted at all yet.  Curious.  I thought Michelle was looking a little scraggly in certain spots, so maybe she's getting ready to molt, but I don't know for sure.

Molting is when chickens lose some/all of her feathers and grow new ones.  They can look a bit ratty during molting although I think my girls are always gorgeous, but I'm hardly objective.  It takes a lot of energy to grow new feathers, energy that's diverted from egg production, hence the decline in laying.  But soon enough, a hen will have herself a fine new down coat and start laying again.

It may not seem like much, but I shall take today's egg output as a sure sign of spring to come!

Mystery Men

Normally when I've got a cold/flu/or other illness for which rest is recommended, I pop in my DVD of the 1995 version of Pride & Prejudice, starring Jennifer Ehle as the spirited Elizabeth Bennet and the handsome Colin Firth as the dashing Fitzwilliam Darcy, and settle in for a good, long rest.  Last night, however, I deviated from this routine and watched an installment of a new-to-me TV mystery, Case Histories, on Masterpiece Mystery.  From the show link:

Jason Isaacs (Harry Potter, The Patriot) stars as private investigator Jackson Brodie, the tough former soldier and policeman with a heart of gold, in this series based on the acclaimed novels by Kate Atkinson. Brodie, haunted by a past family tragedy, struggles to balance his personal and professional life while coming to the rescue of the bereaved, the lost and the dysfunctional in the Scottish city of Edinburgh.

While they mention Brodie's heart of gold, they neglect to mention Isaacs's pecs of steel which, I assure you, are integral plot points.

And where did I find this image, you ask?  Why, through a Google image search for "'jason isaacs' topless", which led me to none other than the PERVS R US tumblr site.  Their motto:  "We objectify hot men and don't feel ashamed!"  So, uh, yeah, I like watching the show as much as I like watching the show, if you know what I mean.

Actually, I do like the show.  Jackson Brodie, the main character, is ex-army and ex-cop.  He's now a PI in Edinburgh.  He has a penchant for getting involved with oddball types, probably due at least in part to his heart of gold.  I do like an odd character and the British seem to do odd very well.  Good characters also in his secretary, his former colleague on the police force and his young daughter.  His ex-wife so far has been a bit one dimensional, but we may not see much of her anyway.

He also seems to have a knack for being in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time, i.e., coincidences are a bit frequent.  I'd prefer to see the coincidental stuff come about via other, more credible means, but that's a small quibble at the moment.

The series is based on author Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie series.  How do I not know about this series?  I shall have to remedy that situation asap.  The first series was only 3 episodes long, although the episodes were longer than other Masterpiece Mystery shows.  I'll guess they were each originally split into two episodes.  I hope they make more episodes.

I think I can safely say that I enjoy all of Masterpiece Mystery's offerings.  Wait.  I wasn't too keen on Geraldine McEwan's Miss Marple.  I know that's blasphemy to her fans, but there it is.  My favorite Miss Marple was, of course, Joan Hickson.  She set the Marple bar very high.  I do like the current Miss Marple, Julia McKenzie. 

But back to the men:  I loved Mystery's Inspector Morse series and lamented the deaths of the character and John Thaw, who played Morse.  Mystery has since produced the Inspector Lewis series, starring Morse's former lackey, Inspector Lewis, and Lewis's lackey, DS Hathaway.  Now, the Lewis character doesn't do much for me, but the Hathaway character does.  Hathaway is played by Laurence Fox, who looks quite a bit different from Brodie, in that the former looks like quite the long drink of water:

I like that he seems very comfortable in his long, thin body and that is attractive in itself.  As an aside, I liked how Kristen Johnson seemed very comfortable using her body in 3rd Rock from the Sun.  Hathaway is calm, thoughtful and quietly funny.  He's intelligent and his education and status as an ex-seminary student provide him with knowledge the average person, and certainly Lewis, doesn't have.  In that way, he reminds me a bit of Morse.

Speaking of Morse, I read on Mystery's website that Masterpiece will air a new Morse series in 2012, a Morse prequel to be exact:

Shaun Evans Plays Young Endeavour Morse

A prequel of the long-running series Inspector Morse — titled Endeavour — will air on Masterpiece mystery! in 2012, marking the 25th anniversary of the series' 1987 premiere. Shaun Evans (Ashes to Ashes) will play the younger version of Colin Dexter's iconic character. Set in 1965, the story follows the hunt for a missing schoolgirl, which draws Endeavour Morse back to the place that will define his destiny: Oxford.

Well, I am definitely looking forward to that series.  (Morse's first name is "Endeavour", although his character keeps that quiet for most of the series.)

And now it's time for me and my tissue box to head off to bed.  'Night!

FO Friday: Figheadh Yarnworks Fundamental Junior Vest #2

FO Friday refers to Finished Object Friday, a meme started by a Ravelry user.  It gives bloggers an excuse to blog about the fiber crafts they've finished.  (There's also a WIP [Work in Progress] Wednesday, to blog about one's fiber crafts in progress.)

Earlier this year, I posted about a vest I knit for our niece Kristen's 3rd birthday.  It's Figheadh Yarnworks Fundamental Junior Vest.  The Plan was to knit the vest for half of our nieces's birthdays (the other half of the bunch get Ysolda Teague's Damson shawl).

So that means I also knit a vest for Sofia, who also turned 3 this year.  Here's the front:

 
And here's the back:

 
This time I knit it with Cascade Yarns 128 Superwash in color #893 on size US 9 needles.

I've also been knitting the Damson shawl for nieces Ashley and Gabi.  I'll have posts up about them soon.

The next recipient of the vest will be Sydney.  I made the vest a little longer for Sofia; I think I'll add some length to it for Sydney, too.  The pattern doesn't look like it's supposed to be very long; looks like it comes to the waist, but I'd like it a little longer.  It looks kinda stubby otherwise.

One thing I'd like to figure out for next time is how to get the collar back to lay flat.  It didn't do that on the first one; just on this one.  I did use a different bind off for the collar on each of the two I've made so far.  Don't know if that has anything to do with it.

I'll use a new-to-me yarn for hers: another from Cascade, Pacific in color #17.  I first saw it at Finger Lakes Fibers in Watkins Glen, NY when I was there for their Finger Lakes Fiber Tour.  That was a ton o' fun, btw.  Several other Tourists mentioned that they'd used Pacific and were very pleased with how it felt while working it up, how it looked on the final product and how it washed (all the yarns I use for kids' projects are superwash, i.e., machine wash and dry).  I'm looking forward to trying a new yarn.

Friday Cat Blogging: Sunning

The sun has made some furtive appearances in the last few days and the cats are all over any chance of sunning themselves.  Here's Lizzie in the window:

 
And here's Ed getting some of that solar action:

 
It was still humid when I took these pictures; it's since cooled down which means the cats can sun themselves and take in some nature smells.  Mmmmm.

Chickens: Scaly Leg Mites

Ick.  The chickens had scaly leg mites earlier this year.  Actually, I think only Michelle and Sandy had them; Stephanie looked good, although we treated her as well.

Scaly leg mites.  I'm feeling itchy just thinking about them.  The mites live under the scales on chickens' legs.  The legs then get irritated and this irritation pushes up the scales, making the scales raise up rather than lying flat as in healthy legs.  I think it might bother the chickens, too, since Michelle -- who seemed to have it the worst -- would scratch at one leg with the other leg.

I think this is Michelle in this picture:

 
We were leaving for vacation about a week after spotting the mites.  Actually, we never saw the mites; they're too small for that.  We just saw evidence of their existence.  We wanted to hit the mites hard before leaving for vacation so that our chicken sitter didn't have to deal with them.

Here's another picture of gross chicken legs:

 
One treatment is to do the following once a week for several weeks.  Since we wanted to really whack the mites out of existence quickly, we did this for several days in a row before leaving for vacation:

1. Scrub the legs with warm water and a brush.  We used warm water and a toothbrush.
2. Dry the legs.
3. Coat the legs with vegetable oil or petroleum jelly.  We used oil once, but switched to petroleum jelly for the remaining applications.
4. Clean the coop/run/foraging area.
5. Apply mite deterrents, e.g., food safe diatemaceous earth to the coop/run/foraging area.

The way this works is that the oil/jelly suffocates the mites, which is pretty gross if I think about it so I don't think about it much.  It did seem to work as they looked much better before we left for vacation and even more improved by the time we got back a week later.

Improvement can be slow, though, and it can take up to a year for the scales to grow back.  That's not a problem for the chickens.

For comparison, I believe this is Stephanie in this picture; her legs never appeared affected, but it made sense to treat her as well:

 
The treatment was a problem for the chickens in that they didn't seem to care much for being snatched, having their feet scrubbed with a brush and then having them coated with petroleum jelly.  It helped that we did it at night, after they'd put themselves to bed already.  Chickens are dopey and slow when they're going to bed, asleep and getting up so it's a good time to snatch them for treatment, to move them, etc....basically, most any kind of handling.

The mites thrive in wood so many chicken keepers find that their wood coops are the source of the problem.  This was not the case for us bc we have the plastic Omlet Eglu coop.  I can't be sure, but I think the problem was either wood mulch and/or woody yard debris that ended up in the compost pile.

See, we got the chickens in fall, 2010.  We let them roam the yard over winter.  Sure, they crapped everywhere, but we weren't frolicking in the yard in our bare feet over winter anyway.  Come spring, we confined them to a corner of the yard so that we could frolic in the yard in our bare feet.  Their new area had wood mulch in it.  Also, we decided to put the compost pile in the chickens's area so that a) they could enjoy rooting around in it and b) they would aerate it for us.  The scaly leg mite business coincided with their new living quarters; that's why I think something in their newly confined environment (the wood) allowed them to get mites.

If you do have a wood coop, the suggestion is to thoroughly clean and treat the coop (which I did anyway, even though our coop isn't wood); remove and destroy any bedding, shavings, etc.; there are sprays you can use on the coop and/or birds; you can also sprinkle food safe diatemaceous earth around the coop/run/foraging area to help stave off mites.

• 3 Steps to Treating Scaly Leg Mites from My Snazzy Chicken Coop
• Scaly leg mites chickens (especially posts from "velvet_sparrow")from iVillage Garden Web
• Scaly Leg Mites and Parasitic Diseases from Miss. State Univ. Ext. Service

That's probably more than you ever wanted to know or see about scaly leg mites in chickens.  You're welcome.