Category Archives: Non-cats

The Exciting Adventures of Chemo Kitty

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So, for all of you who are wondering how my Zoe is doing, here’s the latest. After starting her on chemo about a month ago, my vet and I decided to take her off the treatment after a week; she was throwing up every day, her appetite had really decreased, and she’d gotten really dehydrated. For the next couple of weeks we worked on settling her stomach down, getting her appetite up, and making sure she stayed hydrated. Before I knew it, my old Zoe was back – she’s put on a little weight (I think the prednisone is really helping with that), and is drinking plenty of water. I discovered that if I pretend that I’m getting myself a glass of water, she can’t help but drink from “my” glass. She also likes to eat her dry food from these little desert dishes that I have – kind of like those on the “Fancy Feast” commercials. Anyway, my vet wanted to try the chemo again, but at a reduced dose and frequency. We had to get the chemo specially formulated because it’s such a low dose, but after one week of treatment, Zoe seems to be doing ok. She has thrown up a few times, but not like before, and she’s still eating, drinking, and running around looking cute. We’re taking it week by week, and this week was good – hopefully, they will continue to get better!

On another note, Teddy Bear has a really bad snaggle-tooth that must come out. And apparently, I have $500 that must be spent on that. He goes in for that this Friday, so wish him luck! Poor bear – I think he’ll feel better, though, and his breath will definitely smell better!

Cuteness

Posted in Animals, Cats, Entertainment, Hobbies, Non-cats by

I recently purchased Photoshop Elements 5.0 so that I could start digitally scrapbooking. I’m kind of behind in my scrapbooking and part of the problem is that I’m so perfectionistic and making pages using paper and adhesives and cutting stuff out and all that takes so long to do – I haven’t started any pages recently because it’s just too much of an undertaking. So I decided to go digital and have my pages professionally printed – it’s actually quite cost effective, and is fast and easy to do. Plus, since I’ve been using my digital camera exclusively, I don’t have to print photos out and cut them up – one more step I can skip.

Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to write about. I purchased Elements and have been trying to learn how to use it. And the best pictures to start practicing on, I’ve found, have been pet pictures! So here are pictures of Zoe, Jesse, and Teddy – I’ve lightened and warmed them up, increased the contrast, and used a glow filter. Cute, huh?

The hills are alive…blah blah blah blah blaah blaaaaah…

Posted in Animals, Career, Me Me Me!, Non-cats by

About once a week I get to leave the dim confines of my office and drive up to Palomar Mountain. I spend the whole day looking for butterflies! Me and the rest of the survey team are specifically searching for an extremely rare endangered butterfly, the Laguna Mountain Skipper. We think their flight season is almost over (sightings have tapered off a bit), but I thought I’d post some pictures of some of the butterflies – and other things – I’ve encountered on the mountain. Enjoy!

Here’s the Laguna Mountain Skipper. It’s about the size of your thumbnail, maybe a little bigger. There’s a look-alike species that is also present, just to try to fool us; but I’ve been scoring 100’s on my LMS tests, so I think I’ve got that problem licked.

See that little white dot on one of the leaflets? That’s a skipper egg. The butterfly will land on horkelia (the host plant pictured here), curl her abdomen around the underside of the leaf, and deposit one egg, maybe another one on a neighboring leaf. They’re kind of hard to find, and each individual lays only maybe 100-200 eggs before dying. Most of the eggs are parasitized by wasps, or grazed by cattle when they eat the plant. It’s tough being a skipper, and I’m surprised any of them make it to adulthood!

This is a funereal duskywing; there were a lot out this week but they moved very fast and were hard to photograph.

Here’s a lupine blue – there were a ton of blues out last time I visited the mountain, and there are a bunch of different types. They are some of my favorites! They’re still relatively small, a bit larger than the skipper (some of them).

This is a Melissa blue, which hasn’t been documented on the mountain until now. I took this picture because I thought the butterfly was really pretty!

This Mylitta crescent is quite a bit bigger than the other butterflies pictured; kind of mid-sized. There are a lot of larger butterflies on the mountain – we’ve seen monarchs, admirals, and swallowtails. This one just happened to stay still long enough for me to get a picture of it!

Sick of butterflies? I came across this Southern Pacific rattlesnake last time I was out in the field. I also saw two green racers, but this rattler let me take several photos of him. Don’t worry – I didn’t almost step on him, and my camera has a very good zoom lens. This guy was easily as big around as my wrist, and I’m not sure how much more of him was in the burrow there. I’m definitely learning to watch where I walk!

Fabulous Teddy Wear

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I think Teddy Bear is going to benefit the most from my sewing classes. I used the last bit of yellow flowered fabric that I had to make a nice poofy Easter bow for him. Doesn’t he look nice? Awwwww… He can be sure to look forward to many fashionable clothing items in the future: a vest, booties, maybe a tail warmer. What a lucky dog [insert evil laugh here]!!!

Dia de Los Muertos!

Posted in Animals, Home Life, Me Me Me!, Non-cats by

I love Halloween – it’s undoubtedly one of my favorite holidays. Unfortunately for Teddy Bear, it’s one of his least favorite holidays because 1) he’s not allowed to eat any candy, and 2) I get to dress him up in fun costumes. This year, he participated as Darth Teddy. It was either that, or I cover up his cone and the rest of his body with aluminum foil so that he could enjoy the holiday as a satellite dish. I figured he’d disagree with the former idea a little less, so we went with that one (by the way, Teddy just got his stitches out and is now cone-free). I managed to cobble together a pretty decent pirate costume together at the last minute, mostly from pieces gathered from my closet (hmmmm…). I wore it to work – about ten or so people dressed up for Halloween, and everyone else just laughed and pointed fingers. Oh well – I had fun. We also got a TON of trick-or-treaters – hardly any candy left at all!!! Which means that I won’t feel *too* guilty finishing off the leftovers. I hope you had a great All Hallows too!

My Dog Is From Outer Space!!!

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Yes, my dog is wearing a cone. He feels humiliated, shamed, less than canine. The tragedy of it all! It started a few days ago when I took Teddy to the groomer. He’s an older pup – 13 1/2 years old – so he has a few lumps and bumps and assorted nuggets as older dogs tend to have. I highlighted these for the groomer (literally, in bright blue) so that she could avoid them when she shaved him, but alas – I think she nicked the cantankerous growth that has existed like a second head on Teddy’s ear. Last night it was all pussed up and a complete mess – yuck! So, today I took him to the vet (he loved it, oh yes, loved the muzzle they put on him – what fun!) who said that the angry nugget should be removed – in surgery – tomorrow! Boo hoo! So, like a car going in for a tune-up, Teddy will be going in for surgery to get the growth removed and his teeth cleaned (let us not forget the deworming medication for his tapeworm infestation, too). All for a pretty penny, which I will be charging, of course. The good thing is that I get to make fun of him for having to wear a cone for the next two weeks. The cats are kind of scared of it, and Teddy is having a hard time not banging in to things when he’s wearing it. Anyway, here are some pictures for you to enjoy!



There ARE some good things about my job…

Posted in Animals, Career, Me Me Me!, Non-cats by

It’s good that I can get outside every once in a while. You know, away from my desk, my computer, my office without a window…

Today I got to hike around Lake Calavera in reviewing the City’s trails program. It was such a nice day out – sunny, not too hot, a nice breeze. There were about ten of us on the hike and about eight of us walked over this poor little guy without realizing that he was even there (and to tell you the truth, there were so many dog and coyote turds all over the trail, my eye probably dismissed this baby rattler as a dog dump. But don’t tell him that!).

Hhhiiiisssssssssssssssss!!! (Translation: don’t tread on me!)

It’s a good thing Teddy Bear is so cute…

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…or else he’d probably be living in Tijuana as a dog scrounging around for scraps of crack or whatever he could find. Yes, TB is very cute. These pictures were taken by a friend of my mom’s during a recent visit to the dog park. Aside from being cute, TB can be pretty annoying – but I’ve been told that it’s probably because of his breed and not simply a personality defect that makes him incredibly needy, whiney, insistent, and demanding, not to mention having bad breath.

I’m just joking around (kind of!). I love the little guy, personality defects and all. He’s loyal, a great watch dog, and does a great job of cleaning up any little bits of food that might fall on the floor, saving me the trouble from having to do it myself.

Labor Day (Under the Tucson Sun)

Posted in Animals, Non-cats, Travel, Vacations by

Wow – you’re probably thinking to yourself, incredible! Two new blogs from Marci??? Amazing! Well, don’t get too used to it. Like I said earlier, I’m busy! Now bug off and continue reading about my fabulous weekend trip to Tucson.

I planned a four-day weekend so that Mark (the new boy in my life, in case you were wondering) and I could drive back to Tucson – I wanted to see his house, meet his mom, and experience the insanity of Tucson drivers for myself. It’s only a 6.5 hour trip if you average about 85 mph – it was a long trip going out Thursday after work, but nice that I could spend Friday just relaxing instead of driving. Most of Friday and Saturday Mark and I just hung out at his house – a very nice house indeed – watching movies and not doing too much. On Sunday, his mom drove out from Pierce and we went to the Sonora Desert Museum, which is kind of like a little Wild Animal Park full of all sorts of desert animals. Did you know that Javalinas are little pigs that run around the desert and snort and rub each others’ butts to mark their territories? And actually, they’re not pigs at all, but collared peccaries. The museum was really amazing – I had fun tracking down all these stamp stations that you got to stamp in a little book about animal tracks. Woo hoo! After that we drove back into town for dinner at P.F. Chang’s (I’d never been there before), and then a private viewing of Ronin back at Mark’s house. Today we drove back to San Diego, and well, there you have it. It was a good weekend!

There’s no fish in the desert…

Posted in Animals, Career, Day Trips, Me Me Me!, Non-cats by

It’s true. There are no fish in the desert, especially here in Southern California. I know this because I’ve looked. Well, there are desert pupfish, but not in the area that I was in.

I have a lot to catch up on! I’ve been very busy, with training in Sacramento and Denver and moving and field work, but back to the desert. In late May, I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to spend three days out in the desert near Palm Springs searching for the endangered Coachella Fringe-Toed Lizard. I didn’t see any of those, but I did see a ton of zebra-tailed lizards, desert iguana, desert horned lizards, and even a long-nosed leopard lizard (which was absolutely gorgeous, by the way). We were surveying in a few areas, including the valley that has hundreds of windmills. There’s a reason why they chose that area for windmills, too. You know why? Because it’s frickin’ windy! I think I saw a few lizards fly by, but I mostly just found abandoned shoes and rubber hoses in those plots. And it was global safety day – I was busted by some workers for not having a hard-hat and safety goggles, who warned me that propellers fall off the windmills all the time (my response: “gee – if one of those huge blades fall off and hit me on the head, do you really think a hard-hat will help me out?”).

I sure do miss the desert – it wasn’t as beautiful as Utah or Arizona, but it was still good being out there in the dry air and hot hot temperatures. Good times! Here are a few pictures I took – there’s the horned lizard and desert iguana, in case you were wondering (alas, the leopard lizard ran away before I could get my camera out – boo hoo!).