There’s no doubt what we’re watching tonight – the first home game of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Boston Bruins and the Chicago Blackhawks.
The series is 1-1, and the teams are very evenly matched; the announcers keep saying, “It is written that if these two teams were to play 100 games, they would each win 50.”
I just hope it doesn’t need to go into triple overtime again!
If it does, though, Jacoby’s ready for the game!
Today is Father’s Day.
In our house, the girlcats gravitate towards my husband, and the boycat gravitates towards me. But Jacoby bonds with his dad, too.
So let’s hear it for all the cat dads out there!
Happy Father’s Day!
Here’s another Aby in need, this time on Long Island.
“I have a six year old male Aby who needs a new home, my daughter is allergic to him. He’s a sweet beautiful Aby, not declawed, he’s only been an indoor cat. Great home that understands and loves Abys a must. Nikki is in Locust Valley, NY. Hoping to find him a home ASAP. He has no special medical needs, eats Purina indoor cat chow. He’s a really handsome ruddy Aby. He doesn’t sit still on a sunny day to take great pix he loves looking out the window pretending he can catch the birds. He’s fixed but not declawed. He’s a sweetie I just want him to have a great home. I’ll miss him. We are located in Locust Valley NY on Long Island. My cell is 917 848 1756. Thank you so much!”
Looking at the photo, I’d say he’s a red, not a Ruddy, but hey, at least he isn’t declawed, right?
If you’re interested in Nikki, please contact Cathleen Graham in Locust Valley NY on Long Island by email at cathleencgraham@yahoo.com or by phone at 917-848-1756 or 516-922-1202.
Then we have Polly, a ruddy female in Southern New Jersey.
“I have an 8-year-old Aby ruddy female who is living for the past two months in isolation (guest room) because she has developed an aversion to my two Aby boys and is in attack mode. She’s very friendly, outgoing, healthy and would like to be the only cat in the household. She’s probably very lonely for lack of social life. I had one person interested, but he is wavering and I would like to place her as soon as possible. I want her to go to a responsible household.”
I’m enclosing pictures. I live near Mt. Holly New Jersey, around 20 minutes from Philadelphia.
If you’re interested in Polly, please contact Helena Gartenstein at sphinx42@aol.com.
This week’s Photo Hunt subject is “Unknown.”
So, here is a mystery for you. When we are INSIDE, Angel does not like Jacoby. He tries to play with her, and she hisses, growls and smacks him.
But, when we are OUTSIDE…
…Angel actually seeks out Jake’s company…
…and his protection! Is it just the lack of a ceiling that makes her change her mind?
I took these photos on Sunday when we took Jacoby and Angel out to the parks near our building.
Don’t they just remind you of these three photos I took of them the very first time we took them out to the same parks, back on 9 August, 2009?
Well, except for the fact that Jake’s a little bigger now! But Angel’s actually wearing the same harness in both sets of pictures.
I’m sure many of you remember the plight of St. Anne. I first posted about her in November 2011, and there were several updates about her. At the time, it was difficult to get ahold of the owners, who placed ads on Craigslist but didn’t respond to emails.
Well, it looks like St. Anne is back on Craigslist and looking for a home again. Seems she was diagnosed with an allergy to poultry. Here’s the full text of the Craigslist posting:
“Extremely loving female, 8 yrs old with lots of years left to go. Purebred Abyssinian, color = ruddy. Spayed, FIV and FeLeuk tested negative. Shots are due, very healthy. Due to hard times I can barely afford to feed my family so our beloved kitty has to go.
She is very allergic to ALL commercial cat foods and fresh poultry. If she is eats them she will get hotspots/bare itchy patches of skin. We have been making her a homemade cat food of other meats. Please don’t let this scare you, it is easy and not expensive at all. I will gladly give you all the advice and recipes you can handle, also cheap sources of meat. Plus I will provide you with some of her food to use until you make your own.
She is a great cat and we will all be sad to see her go. We are asking for a $30 adoption fee as a way of filtering out any creeps who would sell her to some animal testing laboratory. BUT we would waive that fee if your veterinarian can give you a good reference to convince us you are a good pet owner.
I will consider an out of state adoption under the right circumstances.”
There’s also an email to the Aby Rescue list:
“Unfortunately we need your help again. I am using our previous email conversation to help you remember us. We managed to keep St. Anne a bit longer, but to make a long story short, we need to have somebody rescue her after all. She is now illness free, but she is still having allergy/hot spot problems. We are still unable to afford her vet care and it is unfair of me to keep her with us when somebody else could get her the help she needs.
I determined that she is allergic to chicken and other poultry as well as all other commercial cat foods. We cannot afford to try the super expensive organic/specialty diet foods, but I don’t think she would do well on them anyway. I have been feeding her pure beef, pork, etc. and she has done well but then she’ll steal some poultry from the kitchen or kibble from the other cat and go crazy with hot spots all over again. That being said, we can’t afford to feed her pure meat anymore, because I realized she was eating better than my children! [I'm including] a link to the Craigslist ad I have for her adoption with more info, but I haven’t found anybody.
Could you please put the word out (again) and help us find her a loving home?
Jerri & Rocky”
This is all I know. If you want to help or get more information, here’s all the contact information I have:
Rocky Torres rojerthat@hotmail.com
Phone: 813-263-3871
Tampa, Florida
Turns out, Angel is pretty good at walking on a leash. Sure, Jacoby gets all the attention, but Angel can hold her own.
She decided all on her own to jump out of the stroller and walk alongside it.
Jake was already walking up ahead with me, and I think it was a case of “Aby see, Aby do.”
Cats do learn by observation and imitation, after all.
I was very impressed – and proud!
She trotted along like a real pro, which is really awesome considering she hasn’t been outside since (I think) the summer before last.
I wonder if walking on a leash is an inherited trait?
It seems to be in Angel’s bloodlines!
Today is the day we celebrate Angel’s birthday.
We do not celebrate it with a surprise party!
Actually, her rescue, Purebreds Plus, wasn’t sure of her actual birthday, but they thought it was June so we settled on June 11. But I think I might know her cattery and her real birthdate. I think she’s from a cattery called Abytopia, which is in Oregon now but back in 2007 was located in Northern California. This breeder did have a litter born in the summer of 2007, on July 4th, and one cat, Abytopia’s Collette, is listed on ERoS.
I think this girl is Angel’s littermate sister, but I can’t get actual confirmation. A lot of people think my theory is sound, though. If I am, it means two things: one, Angel’s full name is Abytopia’s One-Eyed Angel of Purebreds Plus; and two, she and Jacoby are not-so-distantly related through their most recent common ancestor Tinbats Morgan’s Passing (Jake’s Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfather and Angel’s Great-Great Grandfather). Which is pretty cool.
Happy 6th birthday, Angel!
(Click cartoon to embiggen, or you can view all cartoons in Slideshow mode on Flickr.)
Jacoby often sleeps with me, but he usually sleeps on top of the covers, behind my knees.
It’s always a delightful surprise to find him curled up next to me, under the covers, when I wake up.
Of course, once he’s there, I can’t actually get out of bed…
I have to wait for him to get up.
This could take a while…
I am angry. Very, very angry. I do plan on calling someone tomorrow, too…just as soon as I figure out who to call.
We took Jacoby and Angel out to the parks along the Harborwalk today. Angel actually did amazingly well outside on her leash.
However, we actually had a really hard time finding a place to let the cats explore, because so many people were playing with their dogs.
OFF THEIR LEASHES.
The Harborwalk is NOT a dog park. It doesn’t have a dog park. Perhaps it should have one, a designated dog park, but right now, it doesn’t. And Boston city law is very clear on the leashing of dogs.
We were at Binford Park when, suddenly and out of nowhere, a strange dog just appeared next to our stroller!
It looked like a Rottweiler mixed with Lab and Pit Bull, and it was wearing a spiked collar. And no leash, of course. I grabbed its spiked metal choke collar and yelled for the owners. They meandered up slowly, and gradually a woman came and leashed the dog. I yelled at her – not swearing, but reminding her that there was a leash law in this city and that this park was not a dog park.
What made me really angry was the woman’s attitude. She absolutely did not care about the fact that her dog came running up and threatened us. “I didn’t know you had cats,” she said.
I retorted, “It doesn’t matter that they’re cats! What if this was a child? YOUR DOG NEEDS TO BE ON A LEASH!”
“Geez, chill out,” she whined. “Nothing happened. No harm done.”
“Great. Yeah, nothing happened, this time,” I snapped. “‘Oh, it’s okay, your cat didn’t get killed by my dog, everything’s fine!’ Awesome. But what about the next time? Keep your dog leashed!”
And she just sort of drifted off with her dog, her entire body giving off “whatever” pheromones. I’m sure she took off the leash again once she was out of sight. She didn’t even apologise.
Then, on our way home, we stopped to visit the welder’s cats.
And while we were there, just chilling in the shade with the two kittens we knew two years ago, an Italian Greyhound just barged up, barking and lunging.
It was on a leash…but the humans let go of it.
Luckily, the welder’s cats have a fence to hide behind!
But I have to wonder how many times a day these poor cats are bothered by random dogs in their own home?
This time, the owners didn’t even show up. They eventually managed to call the dog back.
But I am so angry. Ironically, one of my friends, Lee, asked me this week about trouble with dogs. “Do you carry mace or pepper spray when you are out w/Jake? I only ask because it worries me that a dog could attack. There are several folks in our Scottie group who have been attacked by larger dogs while out walking their Scotties and in a couple of instances, the Scotties ended up dying of their wounds,” she wrote me on Tuesday. I said I’d never really had any major problems since we got the stroller…and then today happened. I am actually thinking of getting some dog repellent spray like postal carriers have…even though I’m kind of scared to even use the stuff. I’m also planning to start carrying a quick-opening umbrella to use as a shield if this ever happens again.
It really sucks when you can’t go out to a public park on a lovely Sunday afternoon because people can’t keep their canines under control.
UPDATE: I’ve contacted Animal Control through their website and also their Facebook page, as well as the pages of the City of Boston and Mayor Tom Menino. I sent the following message: “PLEASE GET SOMEONE TO PATROL THE HARBORWALK! It is ridiculous how many people allow their dogs to run offleash in this area. I tried to go out with two cats and was hassled or simply could not use a greenspace because dogs were running offleash. My cats are leashed and like to go out, but we had TWO incidents yesterday where dogs were offleash (one technically had a leash on but the owners let it run around dragging the leash). I posted about it on my blog here: http://abyaday.wordpress.com/2013/06/09/aby-a-day-june-9-going-to-the-dogs-serious-sunday/ However, it’s not just a problem because I have cats. It’s also dangerous when I’m on a bike and dogs are just roaming around. I’m afraid of colliding with one. And many people bring children and babies to these parks, especially Binford…these dogs are NOT under control and many of them are not licensed, either. Something needs to be done.” So we’ll see what happens.
June is always a bittersweet month for me, because it is the month that Gun-Hee went from being a healthy, normal almost-two-year-old Aby to being gone.
These photos were taken on 7 June 2008. He wasn’t really showing symptoms of FIP yet.
We took the red line out to Cambridge. He always loved to look out the window as we crossed the Longfellow Bridge.
It was a hot, muggy day. We went to Harvard Square.
Gun-Hee posed with John Harvard and his famous shiny shoe.
That was a really good day.
There have been a lot of posts about Jacoby lately, but not so much about Angel.
What’s our one-eyed Angel been up to, you ask?
Ohh…nothing.
Just Aby stuff, I guess.
Abys are so helpful!
As a sidenote, you would not believe how hard it is to find a stamp pad in downtown Boston.
(Click cartoon to embiggen, or you can view all cartoons in Slideshow mode on Flickr.)
As much as Jacoby loves to go on therapy visits, he also loves coming home.
After we park his stroller in the bike room, he happily leads the way to our door.
Even though all the doors look identical, he always knows which one is ours and he’s never wrong.
Which is a good thing, because it’d be a little embarrassing if he went to the wrong door and then someone opened it unexpectedly!
Before we can go inside, though, Jake has to do one of his famous carpet rolls.
Okay, NOW we can go inside!
Cheeseboy, a local New England chain of grilled cheese sandwich shops. The first shop opened in Connecticut, but the second Cheeseboy opened in our very own South Station in October 2010.
And who doesn’t love grilled cheese sandwiches?
After we went to the Post Office on Monday, we went to South Station for a snack and I got a delicious Tomato and Basil with Light Swiss Grilled Cheese.
Jacoby was very well behaved in the train station while we were eating.
There was a remarkable absence of Aby grabby hands in my food! I guess Jake was too busy people watching to want to steal my supper.
(PS: Happy birthday Sherry!)
I was in Koreatown on 32nd Street, NYC this weekend and after a wonderful dinner at Shilla we stopped in for dessert (bingsoo – Korean shaved ice) at a little Korean bakery called Tous Les Jours. What has this to do with Abyssinians? You might well ask…
The bakery is a hip, happening place, with a big screen on the back where they show the latest K-Pop videos. I look up, and I see G.NA‘s latest hit, Oops, and…a cat. But not just any cat, of course. A pretty blue Aby!
Apparently, the cat is actually G.NA? But it also shows a Korean cat guy loving on his kitty, which you gotta love. Maybe he’s loving on his little Aby BFF a little too much, though…If you’re interested in the lyrics, translations abound online.
Still…random Aby sightings never fail to make my day!
This week’s Photo Hunt subject is “Quaggy.” Okay…this is an odd one. I had to look up this week’s word, because I wasn’t sure of its meaning!
quaggy [ˈkwægɪ ˈkwɒgɪ]
adj -gier, -giest
1. (Earth Science /Physical Geography) resembling a marsh or quagmire; boggy
2. yielding, soft, or flabby
Wow. I had no idea what I was going to do for this word…and then Jacoby and I happened to go to a park in New Hampshire with a river.
Jake wanted to go down to the water, of course.
The shoreline was a combination of sand and mud and definitely fits that first description!
Jake’s feet really sank in!
He left some really good prints behind.
And so did someone else! I’m not sure what made this print, but it wasn’t a dog or a cat.
