pets – Page 2

October 8, 2015

kitty black cat

no-name cat

There are a lot of fluffy black cats in my neighborhood and they all like to hang around at my office window. I mean, there ARE other kids of cats as well, mostly stripey, and my upstairs neighbors have a fluffy silly goose of a ragdoll who keeps trapping himself outside and then meows at my window until I rescue & return him to his owners. But mostly it’s the fluffy black cats who come to my window to ask for pets.

There is Smokey, a big tom belonging to my neighbors two houses west.

There is Lola, a medium molly belonging to my neighbors two houses east.

There is a little no-name cat that I think is a female (due to her size) that I have no idea where she lives or who she belongs to.

Smokey likes to pretend he is unfriendly & too cool for pets but he is a really a hair baby. Lola is a little skittish but also loves pets, and the no-name cat is SO FRIENDLY OMG. She and Lola will both come right inside onto the windowsill or even climb down onto my desk. Gwen loves it when this happens because Gwen loves any opportunity to pet a kitty. She’ll come running over breathlessly squeaking “hi! hi! hi kitty black cat!” and will pet and pet and pet those cats as long as they will let her. The other day she actually tried to climb out the window after the no-name cat, she loves petting them so much.

All this talk of fluffy black cats may have you thinking “hey Tanie, don’t YOU have a fluffy black cat?” And you would be correct, I DO still have a cat, and if you follow me on instagram you would have seen me posting a lot more pictures of him recently.

Mark Fluffalo is still very shy and very skittish, but he freakin’ LOVES attention, and his love of attention is starting to become stronger than his love of hiding under the furniture all the time. Two times recently he didn’t run under the bed when I walked into the bedroom. When he is under the bed I can reach under there and pet him and he doesn’t hiss or scratch me anymore. The other night he cuddled next to me on the couch for a really long time and was so chill I was even able to trim five of his claws before he bit me (not hard). It’s a kind of miracle. It’s also miraculous how gentle and patient he almost always is with Gwen. He is less scared of her than anyone else so sometimes the only way to pet him is to send Gwen in first because he won’t run away from her. It’s a pretty good trick, and she definitely deserves a lot of the credit for taming this savage beast.

gwen & mark

kitty black cat

May 11, 2015May 11, 2015

monday morning

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My hairdresser went on a month-long vacation and in that time my bangs grew OUT OF CONTROL. They got so long I had to start pinning them to the side and now I’m considering growing them out, oops. I just got them in December, and getting bangs once my hair reached a certain length was always the plan but idk you guys, I don’t love them this time. I guess we’ll see how it goes- failing at growing out my bangs was part of the reason I cut all my hair off two years ago.

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The other weekend I finally got around to weeding my terrible garden and seeing which of my plants have survived another year of my neglect, so now we’re in the part of the year when I pretend to care about it and buy some new plants and remember to water it every day. Last year I bought a ton of groundcover plants but lost interest in them too quickly and they all withered and died. This year I bought just one, a Corsican mint, as well as this cool-looking little fern. My upstairs neighbor also gave me a bunch of pansies that I planted in the worst spot in my garden, right under the foyer window where the roof overhang means no rain reaches the plants there (it’s where all my groundcovers died last year). Will I be able to keep any of these plants alive? ONLY TIME WILL TELL but probably not.

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This is not our cat, it belongs to some of our neighbors and sometimes they bring him down to the backyard so Gwen can pet him. She is absolutely obsessed with kitties right now, and when I hold him (his name is Theo) she climbs into my lap and lays there quietly, softly petting his little paws and ears. It also helps that he is the chillest cat in the world, but she is much nicer to him than she is to any of the dogs. Seeing her gently patting him and whispering “ki-y” is so sweet and really makes me want to get a cat even more.

I haven’t had much time to post lately because I’ve just been so busy with real work. I am mostly caught up on orders but so behind on other things, it’s ridiculous. I actually put my shop on vacation temporarily to try and give myself some time to catch up!

The thing I’m focussing on right now is finishing a pair of bunny boots. They were ordered by one of my kickstarter backers, and I SWEAR TO GOD THEY ARE CURSED. Little things keep going wrong with them so they are taking me forever to finish. First, when I went to attach the little black studs for the eyes, they would not set right and just crumpled and bent and eventually I had to pull the mangled remains out so many times that the leather of the vamp (the toe section of the boot) tore. I had to cut whole new vamps, but I’d already attached the muzzles & noses to the old ones so I had to unstitch them to put on the new vamps, but then I discovered I’d accidentally hit one of the noses with my mallet, ruining it (they are small triangular studs). I was so frustrated that I ended up doing a completely different face, with appliquéd features instead of the studs. Then, when I went to sew the first finished vamp onto it’s shaft, I sewed almost halfway across before realizing I’d forgotten to put the ears into the seam, so I had to unstitch that! And for the final curse, after finishing the upper of the first boot I went to assemble the second and discovered the other pair of ears was missing. Now, I’m 90% sure that I did make four ears, and in all likelihood Gwen got ahold of them and put them somewhere so clever I won’t find them for months. HOWEVER there is also a slight chance that I only ever made two ears, and any time spent searching for the allegedly missing pair would be a waste I can’t afford. So now I have to make another pair of ears, which I probably already made, making it also a waste of time.

It’s just really frustrating and exhausting and as a consequence I am at the end of my rope with everything in my life. I’m tired and have zero patience for nonsense from anyone. Last night I ended up so frustrated by little things Taylor and Sym and even Gwen said and did that after making and serving dinner for everyone I shut myself in the bedroom to read this supremely boring book I’ve been slogging through and didn’t have anything to eat myself until later. Not very mature or productive, I know. Also not productive is the work avoidance procrastination I’ve been doing: running errands with Taylor that I don’t need to go on, rearranging the foyer, deciding the most valuable use of my time is to take Gwen shoe shopping, gardening. NOT THE WAY TO GET THINGS DONE. Hopefully this week I’ll be able to get properly back on track, because lord knows right now I just want to go back to bed and pull the blankets over my head and go “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU” to all my responsibilities.

April 15, 2015April 24, 2015

people who look like their dogs

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Every morning when I walk down the hill to the elementary school I see a man who looks like his dogs. One time I talked to him and petted his dogs, but he’s usually on the opposite side of the street as me so I don’t often get the opportunity, which is unfortunate because they are some very cute and friendly pups. He has two Brussels Griffons, and if you’ve never seen one before then click that link because you are in for a treat for the eyes. The man who owns these two dogs has a beard and I swear, it is styled in the exact same way that his Griffons’ “beards” are styled. I actually wonder which came first: does he style his beard that way because of his dogs, or does he style his dogs that way because of his beard?

He’s an older man and with some wrinkles and character in his face (I would describe him as rugged and outdoorsy), and all his features, not just his beard, have a real Brussels Griffon look, especially his eyes. It’s kind of uncanny! Last Friday Taylor and I were in a little cafe down the street getting coffee before we went to the aquarium, and the man walked by. Taylor had never seen him so I LUNGED towards the window and was like “LOOK LOOK IT’S THE MAN WHO LOOKS JUST LIKE HIS DOGS” and two girls sitting nearby started laughing because the one girl had literally just said the same thing to her friend.

Now the question is, do I look like my dog? There was a point a few years ago when I was slowly lightening my hair from dark brown to blonde and one of the in-between colours was a very Georgie reddish brown, but idk. I don’t know if people see me and Georgie walking down the street and say “There’s the woman who looks just like her Pomeranian!” Here are some pics of us together, so you can judge for yourself.

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The day I picked her. I’ve gotten a lot of flack over the years for getting a dog from a breeder but I’m not even exaggerating when I say that no rescue would give me a small dog with my house full of children.