The NaVe&D Zoo - Part One

It's amazing how a blog face-lift can inspire!

All I've been doing all morning is thinking up blog posts - and the one that won out for today? Part one of the zoo post I've been promising since the beginning of my little adventure here in the blogisphere! I'm going to do it in two parts to make it not so long.  We have a lot of critters!

Today, ladies and gents, you will be introduced to the furry members of our little (mostly) harmonious zoo.

First stop? The cat fur babies.

This is Sess, Sessie, Sesscabob... you get the point. I'm not quite sure how old she is. She's my first cat EVER, and the reason I am now only one step away from being a crazy-cat-lady. (D keeps me balanced precariously on the ledge of that particular pitfall) I got here as a rescue from an Animal Hospital I worked at in 2004/2005.  She was kept in a cage above where I kept my stuff and kept playing with my ponytail every morning.  It was pretty much love at first sight.   She has a broken K-9 which I am going to have to sell my first non-fur baby to get fixed (joking - OBVIOUSLY I WOULD NEVER DO THAT. But that's about how much it's gonna cost).  She also pukes pretty much daily, not quite sure why, but she's a happy girl, eating and pleasantly plump, so I'm just gonna keep loving her!

This funny guy is Topper.   He can be found in most cases laying on his back twitching like he's seizing 'cuz he's purring so hard.  There is a YouTube video of that coming soon! He's my baby - we rescued him as a tiny kitten from a friend who took him from a crack-head's house, half his whiskers had been burnt off and I'm pretty sure he has ingested some hard drugs at some point in his life. He was once really skinny - which you can see here is a faint memory at best.  He's as happy-go-lucky as can be now... and I'm pretty sure he thinks he's a dog.  YouTube evidence of that coming as well. He's completely fearless (or slightly stupid, we aren't sure) and won't back down from either one of our big dogs.  Our female dog raised him as her puppy.

This picture pretty much summarizes the story.  Can you see how Sess recoils at the mere sight of her adopted brother Topper? Poor girl - she really loved being an only child.   She hates him and the only time she ever grooms him, or tolerates him at all, is when I "force" her to by holding him in front of her face so she can groom him.  It's pretty funny. I had to do this at first to teach Topper to groom 'cuz he was a nasty little shit-stained kitten who never had a chance to learn to groom from his mommy.

Now, to the dog fur-babies.

This is Bronx.  He weighs 100 lbs. He is going on 11 years old - wouldn't think so would ya?  He's got a bit of grey under his chin though, and he's starting to appreciate my fibromyalgia gait when I walk him, gives him a chance to meander along with me and smell the roses.   He's a HUGE suckie baby... until he sees a dog on the street.  Then it's ON!  He was attacked by a pit bull as a puppy and D has never been able to get the aggressive reflex to relax in him.  Callin' Cesar Millan!  We need his help!  We love our pups to death, but their aggression towards other dogs creates a barrier between us and all our fellow dog-walkers/lovers.  And it sucks for the dogs too because it means that they NEVER go off leash.  Ever.  And we don't have a yard, so that sucks even more.  But we do our best, and aside from some recent issues Bronx is a happy and healthy boy!

This is Atilla.  She weighs 75lbs. She's going on 10 years old.  As you can tell in this picture she loves to be comfy.   This dog HATES going camping.  Can you believe that?  She whines and cries when she has to sleep on the ground outside.  We literally have to bring couch cushions for her to sleep on.  She's a princess.   And a lean mean fighting machine.  She learned Bronx's hatred for other dogs and sounds like a wild jackal when she's see's one... "mommy, mommy pleeeaaasseee let me rip up that little fifi dog!" It's sad.   We try and try to teach them to love other dogs, but it's just not happening.  Our friends just got a little puppy - we're hoping to introduce our dogs to it with strong cage muzzles on.  We are thinking that perhaps the puppy smell will lessen the aggressive instinct.

 When we first moved in to this apartment (date is wrong, it was actually in 2007) we gave the big sucks our old mattress.  Check out Bronx, maximizing comfort by using a pillow.  They both steal pillows from our bed at night if we aren't careful.

And here are a few more of my fave pics of the furry babies.

Oh man, I have a billion pics I could put up here..... I'll put up two more... just two more..

Ok! Thaaaaaat's All Folks!  If you wanna see some more - leave a comment! Leave a comment even if you're sick to death of seeing pics of my fur-babies.  Moral of the story? LEAVE A COMMENT!................................................................please!

YAY! PRIZES :)

This is a bit belated... OK A LOT.  But hey - I had a good reason! Trying to use a laptop who's keys don't work makes typing not so fun.
But I'm going to catch up now, I promise.

First order of business?  Accepting my blog award from Roxy! 
Until now I  didn't even know there was such thing - but I'm thrilled & honoured to receive it!  Roxy is an amazing woman - so supportive and caring! Thank you for being a friend!

So... I'm told this is how it works:

• Thank the person who nominated you for this award. - check!
  
• Copy the award and place it in your blog. - check!
  
• Link the person who nominated you for this award. - HEY! didn't know how to do this before either! learning so much stuff tonight! check!
• Tell us 7 interesting things about you. - below...
  
• Nominate 7 bloggers.
• Post the links to the 7 bloggers you nominate. - um... .below!

I nominate: (in no particular order) - Don't mind the twitter names.
I am a lover of anonymity :p

1. TTC_Queen
2. Fertilitychick
3. Ahmymarriedlife
4. exceptformonday
5. iwillbeatpcos
6. thehoneyb
7. PCOSChick

And Now... 7 interesting (?) things about me....

1. I am a musician of sorts - mainly a singer at this point (as you know, and SHOULD VOTE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE NAVE SONG!) but I started off on the piano - got up to grade 8 and then switched to Viola.   I played the viola all though high school and into university, but gave it up (though I still regret totally giving it up, and still own my instrument so I'll probably go back sometime soon).  My real desire was to play the cello but my high school music teacher told me my hands were too small - I kinda proved her wrong though, in my final year of high school I taught myself to play. Couldn't afford to buy an instrument though :( I also taught myself to play the guitar - but that's purely for fun - I pretty much suck, but I enjoy it so I figure it doesn't matter.

2. I am trained as an interior decorator, but work as a receptionist DH & my home maintenance company (his father started it and left it to him, so I had to quit my other book-keeping/reception job to help him run it), and I dream (DREAM!) of being a writer... Blogging is helping a bit with that dream.  At least I'm not getting rustier & mustier as days go by.

3. DH and I have a small zoo in our 2 bedroom apartment.   Here's a list of what we currently have (we have been considerably downsizing since starting our TTC journey...)
AHEM....
- 2 dogs (one rottie/sheppard, one rottie/sheppard/pit)
- 2 cats (one is a flame-point siamese, the other I call "sweetcat cutecaticus")
- 1 iguana
- 1 chinese water dragon
- 1 mali euromastyx
- 2 chinese fire-belly toads
- 170 gallon salt water fishtank (used to have over 100 species in it, but again, we're downscaling, so now theres 3 fish and a shrimp in it :p)

4. I have been diagnosed with 4 different mental illnesses.
I don't think I have any of them.

5. I can read very very fast - but that means that I don't always retain everything the first time round, so I wind up having to re-read things a lot.

6. I have lived in Toronto, Ontario (or subburbs of) my whole life.... but I am pretty much sick of it here and can't wait to move further North ( Fertility Chick - you live in my dream spot, pretty much :P)  I dream of big open spaces, trees, clean air, nicer people, slower pace.

7. I tend to do what I can to make sure I don't hurt anyone's feelings.  This means that my feelings tend to get hurt a lot, because of being uber-flexible.   But this is something I am trying to work on.  So if I become a bitch suddenly then ya'll know why :p

Ok - so I got more brief as I went on, but you are all welcome to post questions, comments, whatever your hearts desire. 
I am an open book :)

RIP Phlangey the Chameleon :(

 

So this morning we got up out of bed to find that our chameleon, Phlangey, is no longer with us.  I have never owned a lizard before being with my guy, but I actually got kind of attached to the little guy.  We bought him 3 years ago from a pet shop that, to be honest, really shouldn't be a pet shop.We got a lot of our "rescue" lizards from there.  

Phlangey was a fastinating guy.   He loved his bugs (I think he masterminded a plot to have crickets breeding endlessly in his habitat - I know we sure didn't do that on purpose!!!)  and he loved to hiss and bite people :p   Not the friendliest of lizards, but he was stunning to look at as he changed colours to suit his environment.  

We aren't certain why Phlangey didn't live as long as we'd hoped.  We'd estimate he was about 3 1/2-4 years old and they should live 5-8 years.   Not sure if that's in captivity or just in general.  

My only hope (and only worry) is that the Topper the Cat didn't have something to do with it.  Stress wise only - he never got into the habitat at him physically.  But Topper would frequently watch Phlangey - and in fact, I think Phlangey may have taught Topper to hiss!   We tried our best to keep him away from the habitat, but when Mommy's away, cat's like to play....

Anyways, we are sad today at the loss of one of our beloved little zoo.

RIP Phlangey! 

pls. excuse DH's mountain man appearance in this photo!  Sometimes I just can't get him to shave it off :p