the continuing saga of my cat’s hopeless love for our mailman February 16, 2008

It finally warmed up a bit today, and with the sun shining in, we decided to play on the front porch for the first time in months. I think the last time we played on the porch may have been Zoe’s first birthday.

(I guess there’s nothing in this shot that makes it obvious we’re on our porch, except maybe that Z is wearing a hat).

While we were there, I got to witness first hand, the shameless flirting that our cat Doza engages in with our mailman. Some background: Doza is 5 years old, friendly, and particularly fond of men. She’s a good hunter, and doesn’t appear to be afraid of anything at all, but in the years that we’ve had her, she has never tried to run outside.

(Doza snuggling with her favorite man)

Ok, so this morning, while the Z-girl and I are enjoying the fresh air and the view of cars driving along our street, Doza is on the porch with us, and is pawing at the door like she wants to go inside, when she notices the mailman is at our neighbor’s house. She chirps cheerfully a couple times, jumps to the window by our front door and watches him intently as he starts up our sidewalk. (While I was on maternity leave, she would consistently ask to go out on the porch a minute or two before he came with the mail. I don’t know if he’s just really that punctual, or if she was always watching).

So Mr. Mailman (the object of Ms. Doza-cat’s affection) arrives with a Net.flix dvd for us, and when I opened the door to get it, she calmly walks out the the door - which, as I mentioned, she’d never done before - as if she was just going to accompany him on the rest of his rounds. He smiles at her, calls her sweetheart, tells her that she can’t escape, and then pats her paw as I pick her up. I doubt that did much to quell her mailman-crush. In fact, I bet she never cleans her paw again.

Circle of Life on my front lawn September 10, 2007

Our front yard has been quite the stage for viewing nature’s cycles this summer, what with the bunny birthing and raising that was going on.  Sadly, yesterday morning we witnessed the other end of the cycle when Zoe and I came across a large, unmoving pile of ginger fur in our flower garden.  It was pretty clear that the cat was already dead, our cats weren’t paying any attention to it, and it was just so still.  But just in case, I took Zoe inside and had Chris go take a look.  He verified that it was a large, long-haired ginger cat, that appears to have lost a fight with another animal.
Animal control wasn’t working this week (staff training), so we took it to the humane society to have them scan for a microchip (there wasn’t one) and dispose of the body (after holding on to it for a few days in case someone is looking for it).  We’d been to that shelter on two other occasions - to adopt Doza, and then again to adopt Tycho.  But this time we went to the intake area where people were surrendering animals.  Such a sad room.  One woman was bringing her elderly dog to be put to sleep, another man was bringing a dog he’d found as a stray that he’d hoped to be able to keep, but found that he couldn’t deal with her behavioral issues.  Both left in tears.  Compared to that, bringing the body of a cat that I’d never known was simple.  Still, our cats got extra hugs yesterday and today.

To bring it back full circle, I’ve seen the mama and one of the baby bunnies quite a few times recently.  Last night, the baby hung out in our back yard for a long time and even let Zoe get a good look (from a safe distance).

Pictures September 10, 2006

Sorry to take so long with posting some pictures.

The new kitten, Tycho (he’s the grey one). He and Doza are getting along quite well now, but this was the first time we’d seen them curled up together.

And here’s my new haircut, except that it’s weeks old now. The picture was taken the day of the haircut, and it never looks as good as when you first get out of the salon, especially since I’m usually too lazy to try to dry it and style it a little. That was 4 or 5 weeks ago, too, so I’m a little bigger now, and my hair’s a bit longer.

We went to our childbirth class this weekend. We were in the “express” class, so it was only today and yesterday, rather than once a week for 6 weeks. It was a lot to absorb in a weekend, but I’m glad we did the express class, I think I would have felt like it was too long otherwise. I’m glad we took the class, it solidified a lot of my preferences for how I’d like the birth to go (understanding that such things may not be in my control) and answered a few questions. Both of the instructors were really good, and I thought they did a great job of outlining how things work and were reassuring, while still seeming very realistic. I reserve the right to change my mind on the realistic aspect of it after going through an actual birth, though.

There was the one slightly annoying moment when one of the instructors was talking about post partum sexuality and she mentioned perkily that you need to use birth control, because “some of us” are more fertile than others, and if she hadn’t been using birth control, she’d have been pregnant again 5 weeks after her second daughter was born. She was just so dang cheery and seemed so sure that we would all be in the same boat as her. I almost laughed (a bit bitterly) out loud. At my last appointment, the midwife brought up the same topic, but she did it in a much less obnoxious way, and it is something that I’d thought about quite a bit. Even before I was pregnant, I’d been wondering what I would do if we did have a kid. There’s all the stories you hear of couples having difficulty conceiving their first, and then being surprised by a second pregnancy because they didn’t think they’d need birth control. I have to admit, the idea of being surprised by a pregnancy is awfully tempting, and before being pregnant, I’d figured that I just wouldn’t go on birth control again and would just see how things went. But now, I just can’t imagine being pregnant while caring for a baby. And this has been a pretty easy pregnancy. I talked to the midwife a bit about our infertility and birth control and the fact that I’d rather not have kids really close in age. Her response was that I should assume that my body will go back to being fertile, and I should definitely choose some form of birth control. Then she kind of laughed and said that I could probably also assume that any birth control we use will be more effective for us than for other couples and we should quit a few months before we wanted to start trying. So assume everything has changed, and then assume everything has stayed the same. Sigh.