Category Archives: Animals

Bird of the Day: Egrets at War

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I was meeting a friend and Maria Isabela’s near the pier when I sighted this egret and had to get a shot, but very quickly war ensued. These fighting egrets were moving so quickly that it was hard to get an unblurred shot. Here’s the best I could do. Click on the first photo to enlarge and see the captions.

 

The calm before the battle.
Equally calm.
And then, one invaded the other’s territory,
and the battle ensued.
Another egret watched, but did not engage.
On the wing,
but in a minute or two, one flew away
And calm again prevailed.

For Granny Shot It’s Bird of the Day

Escape?

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photo with permission by Adam Stefanca

Escape?

Tourists of every size and shape
visit the zoo to stand and gape
at lion, leopard, tiger, ape.
They eye its thickness as they gape
at chainlink, conjure up the scrape
of claws on metal, then on nape.
What is their likelihood of escape?

 

 

Today’s prompt word is escape.
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/05/09/escape/

Winner of “Cat in the Window” and new Cat Prompt

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A cat in confinement (of her own choice, of course.)

Remember my “Cat in the Window” prompt? I pledged to have a drawing of all participants at the end of May and send a contribution equal to the number of participants to the charity of the winner’s choice.  This is April 30 and I just did the drawing  and sent this message off to Tammy at Tammy’s Reading Life

Hi Tammy. You, along with 31 other bloggers or Facebook friends, entered a photo for the “Cat in the Window” prompt on my blog. I had promised to have a drawing and to contribute an amount equal to the number of participants to the winner’s favorite charity. Congratulations, you are the winner!! if you tell me the name of your favorite charity, I will send them $31. It needs to be a charity I can pay via Paypal as I live in Mexico and a check would take 4 months to get there, if I could even find my checkbook.Thanks for playing along. Just today I published a post, “Cats in Confinement.” If you have a fun photo on this topic to post, just link it to my post in comments. Hope to hear from you soon. Judy

Thanks to everyone who sent or published photos of cats in windows.  Just today I published three pictures of cats in confinement. Want to play along? Post a photo of a cat in confinement and send a link to this site:

https://judydykstrabrown.com/2019/04/30/cats-in-confinement/

Cats in Confinement

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Here are some photos I snapped today in the Vet’s office waiting room. How many forms of feline confinement are there, anyway? Share yours with me by posting links to your blog below in comments. (Click on photos to enlarge.)

Annie and I have been to the vet twice in the past two days and since tomorrow is a holiday (Mexican Labor Day, when ironically nobody works for a day) they want us to come back on Thursday. Since her treatment is exactly the same if it is cancer or no, I decided to spare her that long needle for the biopsy.  So we’re home with one medicine, another available Thursday, another expensive healthy cat food she won’t eat and, blessedly, for her, the freedom of the whole house. She did not like her sojourn in the dread black bag pictured.

 

Here are some photos I snapped today in the Vet’s office waiting room. How many forms of feline confinement are there, anyway? Share yours with me by posting links to your blog below.

 

 

El Raton Cat Food Motivational and Dispersal System

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Click on photos to increase size. If photos are not sharp at first, please wait a moment to allow for focusing.

If you are following my development of a totally unique new concept in cat food based on the cat’s own preferences, you’ve already seen the rationale HERE and HERE.  A suggestion by Forgottenman in the comments of that post has led to my improvement of his suggestion. Namely, a feeding dish on the back of a windup mouse that will cater to a cat’s natural proclivity to pursue his quarry. This system ties into a cat’s wild nature, turning a feline turned domestic once again into a hunter/huntress.  Watch your cat’s appetite turn from finicky to ravenous as it gives way to the spell of wild game gained in a wild pursuit. (Flavors available in mouse, rat, squirrel, garter snake and cockroach. Further motivational dispersal systems will soon be available compatible with all of the flavors.)

 

Disclaimer: Fancy Feast does not indeed make a “Mouse” flavored cat food. I have altered and used their can design only as a means to illustrate my earlier poem. This is a joke, folks!!!!

Excellent Investment Opportunity!!!

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Excellent Investment Opportunity!!!

My old cat will not eat her meals of chicken, meat or fishes.
Can after can, they’re offered, but they do not meet her wishes.
And although she’s demanding, calling for food at all hours,
only now and then do I provide food she devours.

I spend a fortune on her food, but still she oft refuses it.
She lowers her nose and sniffs the air, saunters over and peruses it,
gives two licks, then leaves the rest, meowing for some other
as later it is eaten by the dogs or by her brother.

“Fancy Feast” or “Kitty Cuisine”—whatever, she rejects it,
and if perchance she deigns to dine, afterwards she ejects it.
Since somehow at 18 years old, she’s nonetheless abiding,
perhaps they are hyperbole, these things that I’m confiding,

Still, she is particular and more so as she ages.
At 6 a.m. and noon and five and midnight, how she rages.
It makes no difference whether I am sleeping, sitting, standing.
“Now” and “Now” “NEEEEOW!!!!” she yowls, stubbornly demanding.

Lately, I have had a thought (It’s genius and no less)
of how to please her highness re: this culinary mess.
We need to have new flavors of cat food she might like—
rat or lizard, garter snake, hummingbird or shrike.

Why has no one thought of this? It makes such perfect sense.
Cats do not trawl for tuna or sit upon a fence
waiting for turkeys to trot by. They do not fish for trout.
They wait for passing chipmunks or for mice to run about.

I’m starting up a business canning food that she would eat.
She’ll gobble mouse fresh from the can and soon she’ll be replete.
If I can’t  find investors, I’m going it alone.
“Judy’s Pest Control and Disposal”––killing two birds with one stone.

 

Here, if you are interested, is the first stage of development of my innovational new cat food: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2019/04/14/cat-and-mouse/

And here is the final product: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2019/04/14/el-raton-cat-food-motivational-and-dispersal-system/

 

Cat in the Window, Apr 12, Candace Spence

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Here is a photo I received via email from my friend Candace Spence, who is the 25th person to send an image!  The prompt is still alive until the end of April! HERE is the place to link your photo if you are putting it onto your blog. We’ve just hit 25 entries, so on May 1 I will hold a drawing and donate up to $100 to the charity of choice of the winner of the drawing, depending on how many entries there are. You can also see links to a number of the photos there.

thumbnail_IMG_0232photo by Candace Spence

Cat in the Window, April 11

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DSC09428DSC09425

This fat cat had installed herself amongst my friend’s art supplies, perhaps a hint that she herself was worthy of becoming art, and so I assisted in this feat.

One more cat in the window photo, and we’ll have 25 and a guaranteed payoff to the charity of choice of whomever’s name is drawn, but the challenge goes on all of April, so I’ll keep adding to the ‘kitty” up to the amount of $100.  Okay to enter more than once! When the count hits 25, I’ll republish the list of entrants, so check to make sure I got your name on the list. Please establish a link to the site given below:

Here is the challenge site to link to: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2019/04/07/cat-in-the-window/

 

Cat in the Window Prompt

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Here are a couple of my own “Cat in the Window” shots, as well as one by my friend Gloria. The story behind her shot is that I was visiting at her house and we were talking about “things” we loved.  She brought out this bronze cat and said it was something she’d thought she liked, but she’d never been able to find a place for.  I suggested she put it on the windowsill and she said she often put flowers there, but I said, no, I meant to put it on the outside sill between the window and the window grill. She just sent me this photo.  Perfect!

IMG_4897

And, here is a recent little encounter acted out inside/outside my kitchen between my very reclusive older cat, Annie, who is still resentful of the four kittens I adopted two years ago. She is just now starting to allow a few overtures from Kukla, who with her brother Ollie is one of the two remaining “kittens” who are pretty much outside cats except for occasional nighttime visits inside, where Annie is pretty much the crabby occupant to their tentative visitor. (Click on the first photo below to enlarge and view all.)

Waiting for dinner

It could be be beginning of a beautiful friendship, or Annie might just be coveting Kukla’s breakfast.

Now, please share your “Cat in the Window” photos. And don’t forget to tell us the story behind the photo! Publish them in your blog and put a link in comments below or if you don’t have a blog, just send me the photo via Facebook or email.

A Bi-lingular Education

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image by Diana Parkhurst via Unsplash   

A Bi-lingular Education

If you’d like to speak of tongues, a creature that is singular
is the arboreal lemur that is said to be bi-lingular.
One tongue is used for grooming another lemur’s hide
to sort out all the hairs from the delicious bugs inside.
Bugs provide fine nourishment but hair of course does not.
That smaller underneath tongue traps the hairs that it has caught
and arranges their expulsion, while the top tongue gets to savor
all those juicy bug parts that deliver so much flavor
combined with all the flowers and the fruit that it is able
to gather to provide the meal for a lemur’s table.
So when it comes to dining, when lemurs eat, it seems
that it works much better when they work in teams.
They form a culinary guild with very simple dictums.
One provides the appetite. The other provides victims!

(All true, by the way!!!)

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Prompts today were lingular, victim, guild and team. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/03/05/rdp-tuesday-lingular/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/03/05/fowc-with-fandango-victim/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/03/05/your-daily-word-prompt-guild-march-5-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/03/05/team/