Archive for January 2014
Bravest Cat
It seems as though a pattern is being revealed to us where we start talking about reaching the limits of our patience with trying to make progress normalizing relations between our cats and dog, and then they suddenly make big gains toward the goal. In the last few days, Delilah and Pequenita have been working diligently to practice co-existing peacefully.
While Mozyr has lagged behind in the bedroom, the two females have been spending a lot of time fraternizing out in the main room. We are leaving a gate up, blocking the hallway to our bedroom now, and Delilah often waits by that gate for Pequenita to venture out. That little cat is being the brave one and stepping out in plain view, even as the dog winds up with excitement over the mere sight of her.
Occasionally, Delilah is able to play it cool long enough that it appears we’ve reach a new drama-free mutual acceptance between them. It offers us rewarding glimpses of what it might possibly be like someday. Pequenita will walk right under Delilah and stroll about calmly and slowly, while Delilah peers down at her with a look of surprised disbelief.
It is almost too funny to watch Delilah struggle to control herself, and eventually her wagging tail gets so much momentum that it swings the front of her body into action, springing back and forth in attempt to get the cat to play. It looks as though, if she thought she could get away with it, Delilah would snatch the little kitty up like a chew toy and run around squeaking her.
When the energy gets to be too much, Pequenita pins her ears back, turns sideways, and in no uncertain terms hisses a powerful message that backs Delilah off. The cat also practices a mean swing that has already taught Delilah to be quick to back away when she is bouncing around in hopes of some play.
When it gets too overwhelming for Pequenita, she just sprints back behind the gate for a while. After the dog has calmed down again, ‘Nita will return and try the exercise another time. We are surprised at how quickly she has been returning. It is often enough that it seems evident that it is an intentional experiment toward achieving normalization.
We couldn’t ask for anything more from Pequenita. She is truly one cool, brave cat.
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Two Views
Winter here comes with a variety of looks. I captured two recently that reveal the dramatic difference possible from one day to the next. Not surprisingly, the temperature swings can be just as dramatic.
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Where’s Mozyr?
With the horses and our dog, Delilah, getting the majority of attention since they all arrived, we have admittedly neglected the cats to varying degrees. Of course, one of the reasons they haven’t been getting the same amount of attention is that they so rarely demand it.
Can I just mention here what a nuisance Delilah can be with her penchant for scouring the firewood pile next to the fireplace to claw out reasonable sized scraps of bark which she then carries to any and all floor spaces accessible to her, to crunch into shreds, leaving wood shrapnel strewn everywhere? Yes, I can, and I just did.
You’d think she wasn’t getting enough fiber in her diet, but after all the horse manure, frozen dead moles, paper trash, and stuffed toys she mouths and often times shreds, I am pretty sure her chewing addictions aren’t vitamin or mineral deficiency related.
As we have slowly advanced the steps toward normalizing relations between the dog and cats in our house, Delilah has gained space to roam freely. We prohibit access to our bedroom and the basement for now, allowing the cats a few zones of protection from canine harassment. For the most part, the cats remain free to move about as they please. Their usual choice is to stay holed up in our bedroom, which has always been their perceived safe zone.
From the start, little Pequenita has been the bravest about testing boundaries with Delilah. Poor Mozyr has always behaved like a literal little scaredy-cat. He will often disappear from sight, hiding as far under our bed as he can get.
Saturday night we spotted that the rarely used (and only recently rediscovered) cat beds that Cyndie had placed on the floor in our bedroom when company arrived, had been peed on. In no mood to deal with it, I tossed them outside to freeze. Then I spotted Mozyr on the top level of their cat tree, perched in a position that looked like he was trying to pee. Poor guy was having a problem.
It being the weekend of historic cold temperatures, a visit to the vet was the last thing we wanted, but if he was having urinary trouble, and if we had been missing signals up to this point, it seemed important to have him seen. In the morning, Cyndie searched for an emergency vet that would be open and Mozyr VERY reluctantly made it into a carrier for the trip.
The veterinarian said cats will tend to stop using the litter box if they associate it with pain or difficulty they have with peeing. I had another thought… when we are home alone, we usually use our bathroom without closing the door, and Mozyr almost always makes a trip in to seek attention and get a drink from a water bowl on the floor in there. For the two weeks we had guests, the bathroom door was always shut when in use, and the timid little scaredy-cat was probably lost as to what to do.
It could be that he was not drinking as much water, or was just too scared or uncomfortable to go down and use the litter box. The vet re-hydrated him with IV fluids and we are enticing him to drink more with some tuna water. He seems a bit more like his old self already.
Yesterday, Pequenita moved us ever closer to ultimate dog/cat normalization with a relentless series of forays into unprotected territory, walking right underneath Delilah a couple of times, while ‘Lilah fought the urge to over-react. Our beautiful canine did everything she could to be good, but lost it a few times, chasing ‘Nita back to the gate. We think they both did a heroic job of getting better used to being in proximity with each other.
Mozyr did his best to not run under the bed every time he heard ‘Lilah’s tags jingle, but he hardly set foot out of the bedroom.
Slow progress, but progress in the right direction. Our hopes for an ultimately happy ending are renewed. I think Pequenita will deserve the majority of credit. If Mozyr overcomes his fears, that will deserve a worthy celebration.
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Horse Play
Sometime before Christmas, Cyndie brought home a “present” for the horses. It was like one of those exercise balls that lie around unused in so many people’s basements. One night while the Morales family was staying with us, Jose and I decided to inflate it, but we didn’t set it out right away. I forgot all about it until Cyndie was taking down the Christmas tree and tidying up the house. At that point, it stood out distinctly.
Yesterday, I took the ball with me as I walked down to clean the stalls in the barn. As I approached the paddock, I set the ball down in the snow and it began to roll toward the fence. The horses had already demonstrated being on alert when they saw me coming with the strange looking red orb, but now the alertness morphed into a playful interest. I let the ball stay against the gate where it came to rest while I stepped in to clean the barn.
After a short time, I came out to find all 4 horses still standing by the gate, staring at the big red ball. That was good enough indication for me that it would be okay if I put it inside with them. It rolled downward as soon as it reached the ground and Legacy set off after it immediately.
It was a hit. I took some pictures of them and then tried to capture some action on video. What I got was a lot of fun, but it wasn’t of them playing with the ball.
To my surprise, when the camera came on, Dezirea suddenly made a bee-line toward me to see what I was doing. That distracted Legacy’s attention away from the ball and he started up toward me to see what was going on.
It was all great fun out in the bright cold sun, while the ball lasted. By the time I came back to the barn to get things in order for the evening feed, and to bring them inside for the night, I found the ball in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the paddock. It appears that one of them pulled the plug. Unfortunately, it was a white plug, so if they didn’t eat it, it is lost in the snow for now.
Looks like the exercise ball games around here will be on hold for a while.
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Priceless Gift
Our friends left us three days ago to return to their home in Guatemala where it is warm and green. You know that a deep connection was made when you feel a part of you is missing after a friend departs. We are experiencing that, times four. Maybe it is amplified by the intense blast of cold temperatures now arriving in their absence. It’s as if a part of us has frozen.
Deep connections that get stretched across great distances will change over time, but they never end. My experience of returning home from Portugal has given me the opportunity to notice how the long-distance connection matures over time. The special people in our lives become so much a part of us that we are never really separated. I get a sense of Ian Rowcliffe in almost everything I do, and thoughts of him are perfused with the spirits of his family and the local friends to whom we were introduced.
The Morales family are now permanently bonded with us and are with us in everything we do from now on. A seed has been planted that has us imagining what steps we must achieve to allow us to travel to Guatemala to visit them there and meet their family and friends. We also feel a strong desire to lure them back to visit us when Wintervale is warm again and thick with green growing things.
I miss young Marco’s laughter and fullness of life, Jose’s endless energy and honest curiosity, Dunia’s brilliantly happy spirit and keen intuition, and Marco Vini’s wise and artistic peacefulness whether working or playing. I keep hearing the beautiful sound of their voices in my head as I go about the return to my old routine.
We are filled with the richness of the gift of new friendship, a connection with a family of precious people. They are gone from us now, but they will never be forgotten. Their spirits continue to permeate more than just our minds at Wintervale, as our horses and Delilah were influenced, as well.
Their visit and the bond of friendship we have received is a truly priceless precious gift.
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Cold Balance
While we were up at the lake last weekend, I captured this interesting scene. On warm winter days, the copper tops on the posts heat up just enough in the sunlight to melt the snow that rests upon them. The resulting moisture creates a slippery junction that allows the snow cap to slide toward the direction each post cover leans. As the sun descends in the afternoon, the copper cools and the junction re-freezes, leaving the sculptures teetering in place at unlikely balances, like this one:
We didn’t get to see if this snow cap eventually fell off on its own, because the temperatures never made it back up out of the deep freeze again prior to our departure for home. I expect they are locked in place for a few days more as we are now headed into what is predicted to be historic levels of cold temperatures for the next few days.
Oddly, we awoke this morning to temperatures above freezing (33°F) even though our predicted high for today is 24°. If it makes it down all the way to the low forecast for tonight, that will be a 50° drop in a day! Since we haven’t seen temperatures go this low in almost a decade, this could be the coldest weather that two of our horses, Hunter and Cayenne, will have experienced in their lifetime.
The barn is prepped and ready for the herd to spend extended hours under shelter of a roof and out of the wind. We have buckets with electric heat in the base to keep their water from freezing. We are hoping no pipes freeze and no more windows shatter around the house. This will be the kind of cold that tests everything: people, animals, trees/plants and machines. I haven’t heard how deep the frost has reached into the ground this year, but I expect it is getting deeper than it has been for a long while.
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Sledding Fun
Julian created some fun gif images showing our sledding adventures up at the lake place. Here are a couple with he and Jose taking some runs down the hill onto the lake. Just click on them to see the motion!
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Sounds like our guests got out of here in the nick of time. The days ahead are predicted to be colder than it was last week. It has been a long time since we had a winter as cold and snowy as this one has been thus far.
It has me thinking maybe I should have lobbied harder to be allowed to hide in one of their suitcases on their trip home.
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Sweet Sorrow
‘Twas the second day of January, and all through the house, echoes of emptiness kept ringing out.
This morning, I said goodbye to the Morales family as they loaded their luggage into our truck before Cyndie drove them to the airport. Delilah barked her own goodbye, and then we shut out the lights in the house and all went quiet. Too quiet, after you have just had such a fabulous time with company that they come to feel like family who make your life whole.
I expect the feelings of loss related to their departure are magnified by the knowledge that they are traveling over 2000 miles away. It is a familiar feeling, awaking memories of the time Cyndie and I departed from Portugal, saying goodbye to the Rowcliffe family who we had grown close to during a two-week visit there.
It is the feeling I get every time my annual June bicycle trip comes to an end and all the precious souls I have communed with for the preceding week scatter in all directions for the places they call home.
It is a separation from people who have enriched and expanded my world and caused me to grow in ways I never imagined.
I’m pretty sure Delilah will miss the attention she was getting from our friends. Younger son, Jose, turned Delilah into a lap dog with the connection he seemed to make with her.
I expect the horses will miss the extra attention they have been enjoying from people who are “horse-smart.” I know I will miss the support that Marco and Dunia provided toward caring for our herd.
The feelings of sorrow for the parting are easily balanced against the sweetness of experience and the immeasurable joy of memories we now hold. We carry the spirits of our friends in our hearts. They remain near and dear to us, regardless the physical distance that may eventually come between us.
Godspeed, Morales family.
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Relative Something 