Last night I was woken up by an odd sound,  ‘Pud-pud-pud-pud’!  Sanosuke was standing on his hind legs and digging at the door mirror. I watched him sit back on his haunches and stare into the mirror, past his own refection.

He wanted into the mirrored image. A part of the bedroom he thought he needed to explore. ‘Sanosuke in wonderland’…

I rolled over and fell back to sleep, but within the hour the same noise woke me!  Pud-Pud-Pud-Pud!  He looked like he was practicing on a boxing speed bag. That was how fast his little paws were moving.

 I sat up and got his attention away from the mirror.  “Sano! That’s a mirror! You can’t get inside a mirror!” he reverted back to the mirror with a shake of his ears and a downward turn to his whiskers, frowning, first at me, then at the mirror.  

This went on two more times during the night.

I even got up and stared into the mirror to see if, maybe, a bug was crawling just out of Sano’s reach. It wasn’t.

Sanosuke wanted to find a way into that other room.

He does the same fast run on the sliding glass doors in the kitchen. Now, that, I understand! He wants to either catch a bug, or have me open the doors; allowing him to sit by the screen and stare outside at the birds…

But what did he want in my bedroom mirror?

I have a few plants growing that I never planted. One looks like a Gourd. Or, maybe it’s yellow squash??

Sanosuke and Kaoru love Zucchini. It can be raw, or cooked they will gobble it up.

Here’s another what is this..Eggplant? Watermelon? Audrey II?

Here’s the pumpkin..

I was up at four thirty this morning. I wandered around the quiet house, then I opened the blinds and kitchen door and stepped outside onto the deck to watch and listen to the sunrise. Birds raised their voices in the cool morning air and sang.

When I make a video I try and choose the best audio I believe fits with the visual aspects. Doesn’t always work…

But, standing out in the early morning sunrise I don’t think anyone could have chosen any sounds better for this moment.

Yellow pink clouds in a clear baby blue sky, mists rising off the fields and the sun slowly rising in the east. I watched as the colors deepened to reds and yellows.

“Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning” I whispered to the Robin sitting on the roof.

The odd weather we have been having lately, baking in the humid heat, to storms with seventy five mile and hour winds, I wonder what today will bring. Behind me to the west the sky was a deep misty grey. I guessed maybe around noon I should see what Mother Nature has in store for us.

Uriah complained. He wanted to go outside. I pushed past the cats huddled near the screen. All were hopefully waiting for a bird or a horsefly to come their way. Kaoru talks to flies and Sanosuke eats them.

“Eat too many and you’re going to throw up!” I warn him over and over.

Kenshin stands close by and in total agreement about the flies.  He had to be given antibiotics because of his infatuation with flies. Now he ignores them. 

Uriah whined again. I let him out through the garage doors, then came back inside and collected his breakfast. Some Iams dry food, two liver snaps and a beef basted dog bone.

By the time I stepped outside he was already hunting out his ‘mouse’ formally known as, That Rat.

If, I call it a mouse he chases it. If, I call it a rat, well, I think he hears cat and we don’t chase cats.

I took a few moments to notice the wet grass and the chilly air was a bit more uncomfortable, while standing in the grass, than on the deck.

Still, early mornings, in the summertime, remind me of camping.

I would wake up starving and make an attempt to light a fire. Some worked most didn’t. When the fire started I would fry some bacon in a pan, add an egg or two and pull out some stale bread, which I would toast by setting on the edge of the pan. 

When the wet wood refused to burn; I would let my nose find breakfast. In state parks they have a small store, with a little area where they cooked up and sold a breakfast of pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage and coffee, milk or juice. Sitting around on a damp picnic table wrapped in a sweat shirt, half asleep, eating like I was starving  in that cool damp morning air, and usually the only meal without the added protein of bugs. Was a wonderful adventure! And that food was amazing!

The sun lifted up over the trees. Bright white yellow and reflecting off the mist and dew everything sparkled.

Uriah munched on his breakfast and I headed into the house for some pancakes and coffee, minus the bugs…

Happy Father’s Day!

Time to go dog food shopping!

Uriah has a bad habit of not eating what I give him, at least not right away. When his brothers were alive he would tease them with his food. They ate faster then he did, with his usual, “I am starting trouble!”  grin!  He would sit on his food and wait.  Literally! Sit on his food!  So when they were finished and came nosing around he would show off by slowly eating in front of them.

Uriah, set in his ways, keeps up that play. With no one to show off to, Uriah wanders off and those country rats steal each morsel right under his nose. A problem starts when the mice take his food and carry it into the cars engines.

To get Uriah to eat I have to stand next to his food bowl, no matter where it is.

Or, I try to anyway. Uriah is a dog that has the ability to ‘out wait’ anyone.

He can hold his pee for hours, then still wander around and hold it in until I can’t take it any more. I will stand next to a bush and pretend that I’m lifting my leg, until Uriah looks likes he’s laughing at me, and then joins in.

Today I opened the garage doors and pulled out my car. I opened the engine and Uriah helped me look under the hood. 

Mouse poop littered the top of the engine!

I loosened the air filter and pulled it out. Mouse poop inside under the air filter! Great!  When I had taken my car last month for a fix on a recall, I had to dish out an extra eight hundred dollars to remove a ten pound bag of dog food from my air intake. Lovely little Mice! 

Michael had a doctor’s appointment on Friday.  He took his old Saturn, not trusting my mouse condo.  *His car saved our lives in an accident in 2004. A young girl on a cell phone..* So he totally trusts it to fend off mice:-)

Michael came home two hours late riding in the cab of a tow truck. Seems the mice may have invaded his engine too. Lack of a dollar, means his car is now a paper weight in the garage.

Back to Uriah helping with my engine!

 I pulled out the Shop Vac and vacuumed up mice poop on my engine. Then I popped the hood of the Saturn. I removed the air filter and didn’t see any mice droppings. Michel told me, that the air intake was under the car, and that will need to be removed to find the problem.

If a mouse was sucked into the engine…well, bye, bye engine. I can’t crawl under that car …

I stepped outside with Uriah and we both contemplated the problem. Or, I should say all three of us thought about it!  Me and Uriah, and That Rat who was sitting near the door on his hind legs watching us with a thoughtful, “what’s going on guys?”  look…

I jumped when I saw that reddish- brown haired rat. He in turn jumped and raced into the horseradish plant as I yelled after him.  “We are not your family! Stupid Rat!”

Hmmm! I wonder if he could be trained to keep the mice out of the garage.

I looked down at Uriah; he never made a move to chase the rat. But he did take a mouth full of his food and started to chew, slowly.

*

I was shifting through bird names and I pulled up, Dickcissel.  Then I Googled the Dickcissel’s picture; he looks similar to some of the smaller song birds I saw in the Blue Spruce just outside the window next to the computer.

Then I played the  Dickcisselcall/song, both Sanosuke and Kaoru sat up and listened.  As the young cats ran out of the room my attention turned back to checking my email. I had closed the site with the bird’s song, so when I heard a bird singing again I automatically rechecked my task bar.

 It’s like checking if I left the iron on…not that I use the iron anymore.

 It took me a minute to realize, that singing bird was coming from outside the window, in the Blue Spruce. And that bird was talking to my computer. Hmmm!

What all this rambling means is I added a Dickcissel to my list of birds I have seen and heard.

http://www.sdakotabirds.com/species/dickcissel_info.htm

I took this picture while standing in the kitchen, hiding behind the counter and zooming in through the window. The bird, I believe, is a Brown Thrasher.

What do you think?

I played the Brown Thrasher’s song and Sanosuke and Kaoru went crazy, again.  I really shouldn’t laugh when they start jumping from window ledge, to window ledge all excited, but I couldn’t help myself.

http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/679/overview/Brown_Thrasher.aspx

Surrounded by farm land, and

Open fields of untouched soil

Winter is cold wet and frozen

Spring brings a thaw of rains, and  

Flood waters and open creeks

Those swell to streams

And then…they come into the house

How tempting a treat to a cat

Hawk or coyote

In a pet shop

You are worth a couple of dollars

To me your cost is closer to a thousand

To fix the damage, when

You, you tiny rodent

built a condo inside my car

Within the air ducts and around the engine

Time for Feisty Sanosuke, Kenshin, and PJ

To play with those Sweet little mice

In the garage,

Furry and fat scamper off my walls

I hear your nails scratching, and

your teeth gnawing

Your days are numbered

I have to insist,  give up your license

To my car, and my house

Your cash is shredded in this years nest

And plastic is not accepted

So run, run little furry mouse

Sanosuke, Kenshin and PJ want to play,

Tomoe just wants to watch

I will set out sticky traps

And search in every corner

Are just one too many mice in my life…

It was two AM on Tuesday. I woke up to the cats boisterously running through the hallway and sliding into the bedroom.  They bumped into the bed, the walls, and the vertical blinds. I rolled over and drifted back to sleep.

Michael sat up and started talking, “I wonder what’s going on?”

Without looking I muttered, “They’re just playing behind the vertical blinds”

Michael crawled out of bed and carefully stepped in front of the bed, searching the shadows.  “No! Something’s up.”

He came around my side of the bed and flipped on the light. “Look at Sano?”

I sat up and Sano was sitting all pretty and proud with a mouse dangling from his mouth.

“It’s fake!” I muttered and tried to lie back down.

“No, that is real” Michael laughed and Sano nodded his head so the mouse, who was being held by his tail, swung upward  then came down and was hit against the rug.

 Sano’s eyes narrowed; when Tomoe walked up to him and sniffed the mouse, which I need to point out was very much alive. Then Sano growled.

Tomoe glared at Sano as if she wanted to smack him. Michael immediately told me to do something about that growl.

Sorry, I have had one too many mice dropped on my chest while I slept. I am not fond of the critters.  To show how much of a chicken I am, I pulled the covers over my head and told Sano to stop growling and take the mouse to his brothers, downstairs.

Instead Sano dropped the mouse. The mouse ran in a circle. Tomoe hates getting bitten so she stood a healthy distance away and just watched.

Sano played with the very fat grey and white mouse like he was playing a pinball game. He wouldn’t allow the mouse to run under the dressers, but he did let him disappear under the bed.  The one I was cowering on.

I jumped out of bed and ran in a circle flapping my arms yelling at Michael, “Get that mouse out of the bedroom!” Then I headed out into the hall and called Kenshin and PJ.  They recognized my frantic, Oh my!  A mouse is in the house!  Hysterical call and ran up the stairs to see what they were missing.

With the two older males now trying to find the mouse, I crawled back under the covers. Tomoe crouched on the edge of the bed, hanging over the side and stared at the floor and at Sano, who was carefully scooting out backwards from under the bed.

Michael muttered something I couldn’t understand. So I peeked out from beneath the blanket.  He held Sano up for me to see. Sano had that mouse clenched in-between his teeth and once more swinging by its tail.  Michael held Sano over the waste basket, and asked Sano to “drop it” -the mouse- into the wastebasket. Michael had to repeat his request three times before Sano opened his jaws and the fat mouse plopped into the plastic bag.

Sano was confused as to where his mouse went to and searched franticly with Kenshin and PJ’s help under and around the bed. Tomoe kept an eye on Michael and followed him out if the bedroom.

At this point, that mouse was out of my sight and I hoped Michael had given him a first class ticket to the moon…

Or, maybe toss him out the door.

The last mouse that was tossed out the door had been caught in a sticky mouse trap.  Michael was afraid the cats would get into the garbage and get stuck in the glue. So he had chucked that sticky mess out the door.  He figured on scraping it off the grass in the morning.  Instead it landed right in the path of a coyote.  Yapping loudly, that coyote raced across the fields with a rectangular piece of plastic and a struggling mouse stuck to his nose…

Four

             pictures

                              are

                                     priceless.

What we learned about Sano on the fifth day;

He loves Michael, and he loves to cuddle with me( if Michael isn’t around)

He loves Kenshin, Tomoe and PJ. They love him back. When he was lured out of the living room by Kenshin, I thought Tomoe was going to have a heart attack; she raced around looking for him, then glared at Kenshin.

He is big on cuddles.

He gets angry at ‘me’ when he is given his medicine.

We can’t show him what we are eating, he tastes everything.

He doesn’t care if we hover over him anymore, he is feeling safe.

He is a big talker.

He decided the pillow on the couch is the best place to sit.

He can lie on his back on the floor and push himself around, while facing the ceiling.

He will cry until he gets picked up then gives out kisses.

I was playing with my camera’s  video and  irritating our new kitten. I was able to do a little editing. See how you like it, comments and advice welcome.

Happy Valentines Day, everyone!!

Friday afternoon my husband announced we were going for a ride, and he refused to tell me where we were heading. It was a beautiful sunny day, and he drove south, which took us further out in the country. I was enjoying the ride. I felt like Uriah, except I didn’t hang my head out the window.

I could see the damage that this winter had done to some of the silos and barns, roofs needed patching and paint was wearing away.  The roads were warped from freezing and thawing. Most of the streets around here have streams beneath them, anywhere from a few inches, to a few feet; the flowing water cracked the blacktop and caused waves to set in, making the drive similar to a roller coaster.

We were headed in the direction of Sycamore, Illinois.

Driving along, Michael started mumbling. “Seems someone moved a building…!”

“If you tell me where we are gong, maybe I can help.”

He snapped. “You get lost in the living room!” Michael muttered gripping the steering wheel.  “I missed a turn somewhere.”

“Okay, so, if I was looking for something, what would I be looking for?” I kept my eyes forwards, because I knew he was slowly looking in my direction, he was getting miffed…

“Tails!”

“The animal rescue?” 

“Yes!”  Michael rolled his eyes as he replied.

“Why?”

A very heavy sigh came out of him, I was sure if I looked in his direction he would have deflated half his size. I didn’t look..

“You said Kenshin needs a friend. So for Valentines day I’m getting you a new cat.”

“You mean for Kenshin?” I said coyly.

“You’re on my last nerve!” He answered softly.

“DeKalb TAILS Humane Rescue is on the left, side of Peace road.” I pointed out. “Turn on Barber Greene Rd.” I motioned straight ahead and added. “It’s the second traffic light.”

Michael made a growling noise when I tried to read the road signs. ” Stop! I know where we’re at!” He signaled then turned left, then right into the parking lot. We passed by a volunteer dog walker, and slipped into a parking space.

Our thirteen year old who had been quiet the entire ride, piped up. “This is the same place we parked when we adopted Kenshin over two years ago.”

 “That’s a good sign then!” Michael opened the front door, and held it open as we walked inside. “Maybe someone in here wants to come home with us!”

Straight ahead was a counter and to the left, leashes and dog and cat food were for sale.

Between that area the doors were closed that lead into the dog rescue section, we could hear them barking.

A sweet puppy greeted us wearing a pink collar. She was a patchwork combination of black, brown and white. She wagged her tail happily.  After saying hello, she headed back to a big floor pillow and laid down.

A very nice, woman welcomed us and started pointing out the rooms. They have a small critter room, where we could see birds and rabbits. They even have a rat and a mouse.  This room was between two cat rooms. Both had older cats inside, they walked around, and watched us as we entered. A beautiful Siamese mix walked up to the glass door inviting us in. To bad, ‘she’ was a she. Kenshin needed friend to play with, not a female who would tell him what to do all day. That is Tomoe’s job.

The woman pointed out the large aviary type cage in the center of the room; it held black kittens, all female. The room to the left of the front door was closed off due to illness. Until the veterinarian gives them all a clean bill of health, that room will stay closed, a safety precaution for the rest of the rescue. 

We were taken along a hallway to the room that housed some of the younger residents.

I was interested in seeing one guy who I saw on their web site, Hooligan, an all black male, with gold big round eyes.

The woman took him and his brother, Trouble, from their cage. We thought they were four to five months old, but they were four weeks old when brought in, not four months old as their website had indicated. Now, they looked about eight to ten weeks old, and very tiny.
I turned and saw another pair of gold curious eyes staring out at me.

“Who is that?” I pointed up, “Is that a male?”

Quickly she said, “You don’t want him.” and walked with us back down the hall into a playroom. 

There we watched and interacted with the cutest little boys. They ran and passed off a toy mouse as if they were playing a football game. They were very careful with their claws, and so sweet!! But very small. 

Kenshin is nearly twenty pounds. He loves to grab his very old brother PJ in a head lock and slam him to the ground. PJ taught him that move, and now I think he regrets he had.

Another woman came in the room and started asking questions concerning the type of cat we were looking for. Michael told her about Kenshin, and she pointed us towards the older cat room.

The TAILS rescue is very warm; the cats need the extra heat to stay healthy.  I was melting…

“Can we see the cat I noticed in the cage across from these guys?” I repeated that request several times.

Instead she explained these young ones, Hooligan and Trouble, were brought in at the end of December with some health problems, which have since been cleared up and are now ready to be taken to a new home.

I was wondering about the large gold eyes I saw peeking out at me.  “Ok, so are there any males in that cage I’ve been asking about?”

She said there were two males, I asked to see them. Once more we returned to the kitten room and looked into a cage. That’s when she explained, fearfully, they were on the edge of being feral. When the cage was opened the intelligent looking cat we first noticed came forward, a male named Buddy.  The very cat we had been told we don’t want. His brother pulled back and seemed to scare the woman. She quickly closed the cage door and handed Buddy off to my husband as we headed back to the play room.

“This guy has never been in this room, and he’s never connected to anyone.” She said by way of warning and carefully backed out of the room and leaving us with Buddy.

He ran under one chair then peeked out at us, spotted Michael and ran under his chair. Michael reached down and lifted him on his lap where he sat and kneaded his very big paws. He never purred.

We started to notice the attention we were getting through the door.

The woman came in and said Buddy never reacted to anyone like he was doing with us. “But aren’t you sure you won’t like to see someone else?” 

“Ok.” I said and Michael rolled his eyes.
 Just a note here: Michael gets along with felines far better than he does with any other species, especially humans, and he’s proven to me time and again he knows a rare cat instantly.  (He made me add this)

We left our daughter in the room with Buddy, and we walked across to yet another room with older cats; very sweet, sad and lonely cats. It was obvious they loved the woman.   It was their nap time and one cat she pointed out was about two, but he loved to sleep. He was sleeping on a cat tower and just about to fall through the hole on top. We all laughed and she said, “He will fall through without waking! He can really sleep, not much for running around.”  Then a beautiful black cat came up and started rubbing and purring on Michael, but hissed when he tried to show him to me.

We quickly left that room.  Michael wanted to take everyone home. He pulls the “curmudgeon act” because he’s a complete “softie” at heart, when it comes to animals and his family anyway. Especially cats because; well, he is a cat, personality wise.  

A different woman came forward, and asked which cats we already saw. She turned and saw our daughter cuddling Buddy, she responded like the other lady, “He never reacted to anyone like that!”

Once we saw everyone in TAILS, Michael talked to the woman and I went back into the play room. I picked up Buddy, and stood near the window, where I could see Michael. The lady looked in and seemed shocked, Michael walked up to the glass, and Buddy meowed loudly. He reached for the glass and pressed his paw against it in an attempt to reach Michael, who pressed his hand on the opposite side of the glass…

Update:

He was put into a cardboard cat carrier for the ride home. We were assured he could not escape. But while the paperwork was finalized, which took ten minutes, he ripped his way out of the box. We borrowed us a plastic cat carrier:-)

I haven’t slept at all, since Thursday night. Buddy, is now called, Sanosuke, keeping with the anime flow of names. He stays in a cage, set up in the middle of the living room, until he gets a clean bill of heath from the veterinarian. He has an appointment,  Tuesday at three.

*

*

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagara_Sanosuke

Tails Humane Society

2250 Barber Greene Road
DeKalb, Illinois 60115
Phone: 815-758-2457
Email: tailshumanesociety@tbc.net
Website: www.tailshumanesociety.org/index.asp