Self Sufficient Pets!

When we went to New York in June my nephew, Austin, was watching our cats for us. He did a great job and I trusted him to do it well. However, they were planning on joining us in NY for the long 4th of July weekend. I didn't want to find someone else to watch the cats during that time so I decided to try to make them self sufficient for those four days.

This is the water fountain I bought on amazon.com. It holds enough water for my cats for about a week. Lately my dogs have been drinking out of it too, but I won't complain because it still lasts about three days with two dogs and three cats drinking out of it.

This is the automatic cat feeder. I can pore a month's worth of cat food into it, set the program to feed the cats, and don't worry about them again. You can set it to feed 1-4 times per day, 1/4 to 2 1/2 cups of food per feeding. I love it!

Here's our cat door in the window. You can buy one on amazon.com here for about $125. Brian built this one for me from a $20 cat door from Lowe's, a piece of scrap wood, and a little bit of paint. The bonus is that the dogs are using this too. Now all five of my animals can let themselves in and out whenever they want to.

My dogs really don't eat very much. I fill their food bowl every 2-3 days. I have to add water to the resevoir on the fountain every three days, and I have to feed my cats once a month. It's all so simple!

Now, if I could only teach them how to handle traffic jams at the door ....

If You Give a Kid a Camera

You get a bunch of stupid pictures.

The end.

If You Give a Girl a Kitty

Those of you that are parents have surely read the book by Laura Numeroff called If You Give a Pig a Pancake. For those of you who haven't read it, it goes something like this: The little girl gives the pig a pancake. Then the pig asks for syrup, gets sticky, needs to take a bath, asks for bubbles & toys, gets homesick for her farm, wants to visit her family, take pictures, etc etc ... It goes on and on until at last they are building and decorating a tree house. The wallpaper makes the pig all sticky, which reminds her of syrup. The last pages wrap up the story like this: "And chances, are, if she asks you for some syrup, she'll want a pancake to go with it." It's a cute story. Kids love it for the silliness, teachers love it because it helps teach sequencing and predicting. Whatever. Anyway, my brother and his girlfriend gave me this cat for my birthday.

He's cute, isn't he? I like him enough that he has a special spot right next to the front door of my house. He's the first thing people will see when they come up my front steps. Well, after I took this picture I was noticing how dirty the front porch was. So I decided to power wash it. It turned out great! The only problem was that it made the back deck look dingy. So I power washed that too. Then I decided that I needed to paint my rocking chairs because next to the cleaned up porch, they looked faded and plain.

After my porch rockers were painted I decided that I better stain the Adirondack chairs that my Uncle Jeff made for me. I didn't want them to get old and dirty looking like my rockers had.

I was very pleased with how they turned out. The only problem was, I couldn't really see them from my front yard or from the street because the bushes were too overgrown. So I enlisted the help of Kenny and we trimmed the bushes. They are huge and I couldn't quite get to the branches on the very top so I made him climb up into the middle with a hack saw to finish the job for me.

before

after

right in the middle!

The finished look was nice:

I was really happy with it. But then I remembered that I still have a couple of weeks of summer vacation left. I decided to stain my entire privacy fence. Right now I am 1/6 done, have a sunburn, am covered in bug bites, have a stiff neck, have a sore wrist, and have already gone through five gallons of stain. What in the world was I thinking?!?

It's looking pretty good so far. I went to Lowe's to buy more stain today and found the cutest plant to put in my kitty. I hope he's happy on his cleaned up porch while I am out in the sun working on my latest project!

Mein Sampson Too Lieben

Thursday would have been Sammy's 10th birthday. He was born on July 21, 2001. We were living in post housing on Fort Meade, Maryland. I had a preschooler, a toddler in diapers, a 6 month old puppy (Susie), and a 6 month old kitten (Rosie). We moved on average of every 6-10 months at that point in our lives. I did not want another dog! I did not want another responsibility. I have to say, the argument discussion about whether or not to even purchase Sammy was a big one. It ended like this: "I don't want another dog, but we aren't getting anywhere with this argument so you might as well do what you want!!!" Before the last word was even fully out of my mouth Brian walked out the door with the checkbook and came home with a puppy.

When this picture was taken I didn't even really like him yet.

 He ate toys, furniture, and diapers. He ate bicycle seats. He ate Susie's poop. And then he'd come inside and burp the most disgusting poop scented burps. Yeah, I didn't really care for him.

This is Sammy last month before we had to say good bye to him.

He had cancer in his bladder and his head was caving in on one side. The two different veterinarians we took him to told us that it was likely caused by the muscles in his head atrophying. Unfortunately this progressed rapidly and made it painful for him to eat. He tried to stay happy and please us up until the end, but saying good bye to him was the best way to end his suffering.

His official AKC name was Mein Sampson Too Lieben. Our other dog's AKC name was Mein Susie Q Lieben. In American/German it means roughly "I love my Susie Q." Sammy's dad's name was Sampson so we thought it would be cute to name him Sampson Too ... like he was also Sampson. Since it rhymed with Susie Q it seemed to fit. Anyway, his name was very appropriate. But the time he was two years old I was in love with him. By the time he was four I couldn't imagine our family without him. By the time we said good bye I was so glad that I lost that argument in the summer of 2001.

RIP Sammy

July 21, 2001 - June 17, 2011

Busy as a Bee

The post with Kenny in his underwear was on my very first day of summer vacation. Right now that seems like it was a million years ago. I have stayed extremely busy, but in a good way. That evening Brian came home for his R & R visit from Afghanistan. We had the best staycation ever! As soon as he left the boys and I went to New York to visit my family. That was also busy and fun. We were back in NC just after the 4th of July weekend and I dove straight into several projects. One of my "projects" for next week is to do a few blog posts about the things we've done. So just think of this as a little summary/preview. Until then ........