An Update

Nov. 14th, 2024 11:46 pm
bunn: (Default)
For some reason I haven't posted here in ages, but I don't really want to drop out of the habit, so here's an attempt to catch up. 

Itching things
Read more... )I am now feeding Theo the new insect-based dog food pellets, which he seems to like a lot, as much as almost anything apart from cheese.  Cheese is his absolute favorite thing. 

Nenya cat remains competent and untroubled by Woes. 

Not even going to try to post about World Events.  Times too interesting. 

I read a copy of Neil Gaiman's M is for Magic which had been hanging around, to try to decide if I wanted to keep any of my Neil Gaiman books, now that it turns out he's a creepy sexual predator. Haven't decided, but did conclude the end of M is for Magic seemed oddly cold and depressing, so I will probably get rid at least of that one. 

The number of orders arriving at the Shop on the Borderlands is up considerably on last year, but the value of orders is not: we are mooching along sending out about 20% more stuff, but with about the same money coming in as last year.  Unsure if this is down to what we've got in stock, macroeconomic trends, or just... randomness.  We have reduced the enormous backlog of RPGs in the house but not in the Shop, however, which has to be a good thing. We might even have slain the backlog by the New Year at this rate. 




We took the canoe out a couple of days ago, just a gentle paddle for half an hour.  I wanted to check that she was still in good condition, thinking of probably selling her in the Spring. She's not really best adapted for the amount of wind we get here, and we haven't used her much since we got the kayaks and the boat.  I will miss her but hopefully we can find a more up-river home for her where she will get further moderately-sedate adventures. 
bunn: (Default)
 

 

The time has come for photos of dogs!  Today we went to Stackpole woods and practiced Theo Standing On Things.  I was so pleased with him Standing on these wooden mushrooms that I photographed him twice. 

Read more... )
bunn: (Default)
 This morning, I was drinking coffee quietly when Fankil sprang upon me and bit and scratched my arm quite hard. He broke the skin, though I was wearing a thick fleece-lined hoodie that covered my arms. A few days ago, he got out of the upstairs room and when Pp caught him, he gave him a long deep scratch that needed bandaging. I don't quite know what we are going to do with him. I'm still hoping that his behaviour will improve and he can be re-integrated with the other cats. He is a lot more confident now, and very playful, but also WAY too fierce. He is a small cat, but even a small cat can hurt!
Fortunately, he seems to have the sense not to really tackle the dogs, who could certainly eat him if it occurred to them to do so. And that suggests that he can control himself, if he wants to.
We have been letting him wander over the new roof outside the living room, and when he was doing that he was a lot calmer, but now he has discovered that he can get down via the scaffolding into the garden. When he discovered this, we had a panicked half hour when we thought that he was gone for good, but thankfully he then came back on his own (and assaulted Nenya, or possibly, she assaulted him).
These cats are definitely the most spicy cats we have ever owned. Well, apart from Gothmog, who is a little round sweetheart and deserves to be protected.
In other news, the blown-off roof is now well and truly replaced, the floor (complete with new joists because the previous owner had skimped on joists) is in, and the builders are now working on the rooms underneath that had got all wet. Not sure if they will need to replace the floor. So far they have pulled all the insulation out of the walls, removed the lights, and taken off the plasterboard ready to replace it.

 
bunn: (Default)

The cats are still living separate lives. Gothmog, who under the impact of moving house, builders, and I suspect, increased pressure from Nenya after Fankil went missing, had a bit of a breakdown, has gained a bit of confidence, but she's still spending a lot of time just sitting on our bed, like a small worried black hole with eyes. 

 

She does get up and bounce about a bit at night, and sunbathes by the window. 

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bunn: (No whining)
Hmm.  I need to work out where I'm going to put photos now.  I did try sharing them across from my Google account, since that's where my phone puts photos anyway, but I kept finding things were unexpectedly locked. I really hate the way that Google likes to hide options in the most unlikely places, presumably in case people should actually find and use them.  Maybe I should go find my old Flickr account. 

Anyway, this post is not about that.  It is about the Great Storm that came rolling in from the west on 18th Feb, which the Met Office christened Eunice, which sounds genteel.  It was NOT GENTEEL. 

Proceeding up the estuary at about 80mph, Eunice blew the window at one end of our sun room in, then it came INTO the sun room and lifted the roof off, jamming it vertically against the wall of the house. Poor Gothmog kitty was in the room at the time, but fortunately she ran to the door, and Pp managed to whiz in and grab her.  

For several hours the sunroom roof was wedged upright against the main house roof, while my various sketches and bits and pieces that were in that room got whirled away into the Cleddau, and we wondered if it would break all the windows as it bounced against the wall.  Fortunately, it then exploded, raining bits of itself all over the surrounding area and nearly slaying an incautious neighbour who had ventured outside wondering if the worst of the wind was dying down. Luckily, it just missed him. 

The insurance company was overwhelmed with people trying to claim, I think, and was very little help. They told us to ring round to try to find someone to fix the broken rooves locally that they could pay, but of course everyone was doing that.  Fortunately, our neighbour Yvonne, who seems to have 99999 useful cousins, has a cousin who is an architect, and was in touch with a small roofing contractor who seems to have absolutely zero 21st century presence.  He does hand-written quotes, has no email, and barely even answers his phone.  BUT that was fine, because it meant he actually had time to arrange to come fix the missing tiles on the main roof, which finally happened today, and to quote to replace the blown-off roof, which is planned to happen over the next two weeks. 

 Unfortunately, in the meantime rather a lot of water has run through the sun room into the rooms underneath, which we were getting converted into additional shop storage and a place to keep the canoe, and were SO CLOSE to being finished. 

The Canoe itself flew over a 4foot fence to visit the nearly-slain neighbour.  We haven't been over to get it back yet.  It seems like tempting fate to move it back outdoors to the place it took off from. 

Gothmog is now in residence in our bedroom. Thankfully, her litter box issue seems to have resolved, so I think maybe that was a medical thing that the antibiotics have helped with.  She seems quite happy now. 

Fankil the no-longer-missing grey kitty is living in the living-room.  A lot of his fur has fallen out and having been super sweet and cuddly and delighted to be home, he's now going through a bitey phase. I think the steroid injection & the lotion the vet gave us is helping him, but I am really not sure how much longer we can keep him in one room, he really wants more space. 

Nenya and the dogs continue to be fine, though Nenya is annoyed that she has been excluded from rooms she considered her own, and would also like the sun room back and is a bit shouty about it. 

Still, things are moving forward. As interesting times go, the war in Ukraine makes anything in the UK feel very small. 
bunn: (Cats and Hounds)
My optimism about integrating Nenya and Fankil cats took a serious knock yesterday at 6am, when SOMEONE managed to pull the living room door open.

I don't know if it was Fankil trying to get out or Nenya trying to get in. The first I knew was the sound of a serious cat-fight occurring, and I flew out to stop it to see Nenya flying madly down the stairs with Fankil on her tail. It's all a bit of a blur, and I'm not sure if Fankil broke off the chase or if I managed to stop it: either way, thankfully Fankil did not follow Nenya out of the cat flap. Once I had got them all back where they were supposed to be, I discovered that Nenya had been either scratched or bitten on her bum. Not badly, but still.

So, we regroup. If I had realised that Fankil might be about to encounter another cat face to face I would not have allowed him access to the catnip. He's definitely our most catnip-focussed cat. :-/

I started a new sourdough today. I enjoyed experimenting with sourdough back in 2020, and now the house move is over, I'm going to try resuming that. Though there is a rather nice local bread available here named Vortigern, with a dragon on the label, which is definitely a selling point.

Cats

Jan. 28th, 2022 11:34 pm
bunn: (Cat)
Nenya the white cat is very happy. She is a competent, able cat, she has access to a vast cat tree, a lot of exciting places to sit and climb, and if she likes she can go outside through the cat flap for a little bit to chase leaves and stare at birds.

Fankil the grey cat is also very happy! He is slightly less competent than Nenya, but very cuddly and cheerful, and VERY pleased to be indoors again after his Big Adventure when he went astray for several months.

It's warm and comfy again, and he likes to roll around relaxing and hang out with the dogs. He has been to the vet, who discovered that he has feline Covid (not related) and a bacterial infection, so he's had antibiotics and is in isolation from the other cats for two weeks, but is feeling much better (and also smelling so much better, thank god). At the moment he's living in the living-room where he can look out at birds and chitter at them.

Gothmog the black cat is NOT happy, and I wish I knew how to fix it. She seems to have suffered a horrible loss of confidence. Maybe it's the house move, maybe it's something about the new house, maybe it's the noise of the builders working or Fankil going missing or Nenya being mean to her or Theo being pushy around her. Or all of those things.

She has now given up hiding under the bath, and instead decided to hide on the windowsill in our bedroom and take pee breaks on the bed. This obviously will not do, so I have washed all the things, and she is now assigned the sun room downstairs, where Nenya can't get at her, where she'll have more space and sun and with luck, she can forge a new relationship with the litter tray.

I've also started taking her out for brief supervised garden breaks. She used to spend a lot of time outside in Cornwall, where there was more cover and it was easier for a cat to wander in and out through windows, and I feel that maybe some time with her feet on the grass will help. She does seem to enjoy the outings.

At the moment, all three cats are living separately in different rooms! I am really hoping that we can get them integrated back together again. Nenya and Fankil seem to be quite chill about situations where they can see one another at a distance now, so I am hopeful that might work out once Fankil is out of cat-isolation again.
bunn: (Cat)
 Gothmog has decided that her previous favorite room, the sun room is too noisy (builders in the garage underneath) and possibly also, at this time of year, too cold.  She has moved into the bathroom.  

Specifically, she now lives under the bath, in the space accessible because the motor for the whirlpool thingy burnt out and was smoking, and we had to take part of the side off in order to find out if we were likely to be incinerated or electrocuted.  It's all been made safe, but we hadn't put the side back together. 

She comes out if you call her, and to watch you with wide blinking eyes if you have a bath, but seems to like it under there, so until the builders leave we are feeding her in there.  The door is open, she could leave.  She does not. 

bunn: (Default)
 The house is full of food and sleepy hounds and dozing cats. We have eaten way too much, and I'm still gently nibbling on a lump of chestnut and cranberry stuffing. Here are a few photos from the last week or so:

Rosie on a visit to the Koffi Lodge cafe.  We were in Tier 1, least likelihood of plague, at that point, so everything was pretty much as normal (we're now in Tier 2, so slightly more serious). Rosies long legs poking out under her jumper and overcoat make me laugh.



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I hope you mostly managed a happy Christmas, if that's a thing for you, so far as possible at the moment. 
bunn: (9lurchersleaping)

Um.  Things that have happened. right then.

The car window that was fixed has broken again due to internal conflicts with the door opening mechanism whatsit.  I did ask when I picked up the car from the garage and they told me the door and window had quarrelled, whether they were likely to do so again? They promised not.  They were wrong.

Hmph.  I now have a solid wooden wedge keeping the window up again while the garage scours ebay for a second set of window parts, and a new door-thingummy.  I hope they can replace both together this time, and restore harmony to the Door.

I finally got around to assembling the Fidget Board I have been making.  This was solicited by a local nursing home which cares for dementia patients: apparently a Thing now is to fix a bunch of knobs, switches, clips, hinges etc to a board, which is then left around in the lounges etc, and gives the residents something untaxing but occupying to do with their hands.  I thought this seemed like a great use for some of the many 'That Will Come In Handy Some Day!' items I have piled in the utility room.

It was harder work than I had expected putting it all together though, because it seemed like I had 999 partial... things. Objects. Artifacts. Gadgets. Hardware. Wood... bits. Very few of which fitted neatly together.  I ended up having to carve a plug-hole for my nice shiny metal plug on a chain, for example, because I assume that we either used the hole that the plug came with, or maybe there wasn't a hole?  Who knows, that would have been years ago.  YEARS I have been hoarding that plug on its shiny chain, and probably a year I have been hoarding the spare shelf that came with my Art Stuff shelves, that I used for the board bit. But now I have Done Something With It, and shortly I shall say farewell to it forever, which cannot be a bad thing.

I have photographed a lot of roleplaying games recently, which I rather enjoy. We seem to have moved now to a status where I am doing most of the shop photography and Pp is doing the data entry and stuff that requires Deep Lore about Roleplaying History. New (to us) roleplaying games are being added at a rate of knots and a goodly number of people are buying them.  This is good.

The cats are very happy at the moment, and Gothmog and Fankil spend a lot of time wrestling and boxing and doing other cute things.  Sometimes Theo joins in (Fankil really likes Theo, though I think he's wisely wary of Theo getting overexcited and hence too rough).  I would take pictures of this, only the automatic lens on my camera has failed and taking photos of wrestling cats in poor light using a manual lens seems a bit fiddly.  Maybe later in the year,

Although Theo failed his final exam at Dog School, because he absolutely would not lie down on command (he knows the command.  He just didn't feel like doing it when there were puppies around to look at), I have none the less declared him done for now on the dog training front.  We may start lessons again in September.  But he does know all the basics, and I just need to practice practice practice on defeating distractions, and that will be easier if I just take him places to practice rather than to classes, I think.  He is currently 8-9ish months, so he's really at maximum distractability at the moment.  He is getting better at bringing me his squeaky walrus to throw instead of humping my leg, but there's still work to do there.

Let's have an art dump of recent arts.  I seem to be painting quite a lot at the moment, which is partly because I'm feeling a bit tense and painting is a good release for that.

Read more... )



And Finally!  I am offering art in both the Fandom Trumps Hate and Fandom For Australia charity auctions, and to my extreme delight, someone has actually bid on my Fandom for Australia offer!  Two people! Woohoo!

But I am suddenly exhausted from typing all that, so I shall simply link to this tumblr post about that rather than pasting it all in.

bunn: (canoeing)
Theo the Small Gentleman is now a Moderately Sized Gentleman. He now weighs 16.3Kg.

For contrast, here he is with that walrus when we brought him home:Read more... )


Oh, and here are a couple of cat pictures. I made the first one for Pp for Christmas, showing all three, and the second is just Nenya looking peeved, probably at Theo. :-D

Read more... )

bunn: (Christmas)
This time last year, I bought Pp an infra red camera so he could see the elusive, terrified, growling cat he had adopted.

This year, I have to be careful not to trip over the cat because now, Fankil greets us with joyful cries and insists on weaving closely around my legs and demanding cuddles, particularly first thing in the morning when I'm not very awake!


In other news, I did a re-paint of this old Christmas painting, using my New Skills:


Arguably it is a little cheesy, but I don't care, I like it.
bunn: (Cat)
 He still looks a bit alarmed when he sees you.

But he no longer runs away. In fact, he sits there and smiles!
Read more... )t, now is probably the time. 
bunn: (Cat)

All our three cats are now getting along well.  Gothmog the Black and Nenya the White spend a lot of time playing together.

Fankil is still shyer, and panics if there's a loud noise, but he seems to be becoming the most snuggly of the three.   Gothmog and Nenya like playing exciting games (though Gothmog likes to snooze on PP's desk of an evening) but Fankil likes quiet moments and having his tummy tickled.  We can pick him up now, and he purrs and snuggles.

However, last night Some Cat jumped on the bed at ten to 6 in the morning, landing on Pp's face and causing him to splutter in alarm. Said cat then panicked and fled across Pp's face and then mine, leaving Pp with an impressive set of facial scratches, and me with a couple of small punctures to the cheek.  Neither of us was awake enough to really register which cat did this, but the MO definitely suggests it was Fankil.

bunn: (Cat)
Yesterday, Fankil let us stroke him, and this morning, he climbed on my lap in pursuit of a treat! 

I must admit I wasn't sure we would ever get him to this point...

He is very handsome.
bunn: (canoeing)
... Yes, we stayed in the same county that we live in, and went canoeing.  But on a new river!  A river we'd never explored before!
We went to stay by the River Fal, which flows south from Truro to the port of Falmouth.
This is where we stayed.  It looked out over the creek, and the coast path was just to the left. 


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bunn: (Cat)
It is time to use the internet for its original and true purpose : showing off photos of our cats. 
Here's Nenya sunbathing.

And here is Fankil! Read more... )
On the whole, the Project Cat Project seems to be going OK. 

Cattitudes

Apr. 9th, 2019 09:59 pm
bunn: (Cat)

We've had lots of little milestones with the three kitties.  Nenya (the white one) is slowly becoming more chilled and less likely to chase the other two and bop them.

Fankil (the grey one) was terrified of her for a while (despite them being so close when we saw them at the rescue!)  I think it was because Nenya didn't know Gothmog (the black one, and the youngest).  So, when she arrived, Gothmog tried to play a bit rough: Nenya was in no mood for that, having just been spayed and suffering from mastitis, so she chased Gothmog, who ran to Fankil, who hissed and hid.

So for a couple of months we have had something of a state of war within the house, Fankil and Gothmog hiding upstairs, and Nenya ruling the roost downstairs.  But things have got easier since Nenya has been allowed outside (and has discovered that the outside is the realm of the Giant Next-Door Cats, who are all about twice her size.)  Also, Nenya does actually like cats, and I think she got a bit lonely.  So we have been trying to encourage peace, and basically not spitting and tearing around the place like tiny furious loons in hot pursuit.

Today for the first time, Fankil went outside.  I saw Gothmog leading him through the living room and then out through the open door (because it was sunny this morning I had the door open so the cats could dot in and out.) I was a bit worried that Fankil was going to just vanish, but no, he and Gothmog played with leaves for a little bit on the patio, then they came back in.   Nenya has worked out how to use the catflaps, but Gothmog and Fankil haven't, yet.

And now they are playing in the livingroom, and Fankil just came and sat on the sofa next to me for a bit!  Now he's gone a little way away, but he's still sitting on the sofa next to Rosie.  This is very fine progress. I admit at one point we were starting to wonder if we would ever see Fankil, and then if we could possibly get all three to actually get along.  But things are looking good now.

bunn: (Default)
A peacock!
I am rather pleased with this because I think it's the first thing I've ever made with coloured pencils that actually has a decent depth of colour and doesn't look too stiff.  Background is brusho again, and then the detail is all Inktense pencils, overpainted with a waterbrush to bring out the colours. 


And here are three dwarves fighting an acrylic dragon!
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I made a card for my Mum for mother's day too, and took it over to her today, but I forgot to photograph it. Hey ho.

On Saturday I found some pheasant tailfeathers while walking along the River Walkham, and brought them home thinking the kitties would like them. This was apparently the best decision ever: Gothmog keeps bringing me tailfeathers to throw for her (they aren't the easiest things to throw, but if you throw them like a dart, with the hard bit first, they will travel several feet.)

More wind than we thought on the river today,  so we were only out an hour and then quickly headed back with the aid of the breeze behind us for an icecream (or in my case, a sorbet : one scoop of kiwi and one of gooseberry fool).  Now my shoulders are aching so I'm quite glad we called it a day early.  
bunn: (canoeing)
Brusho is basically paint powder that you can sprinkle on the page and then mist with a plant mister (or other squirty bottle of choice) to create mad splodges. I like the contrast of putting dark ink with it, but the downside is that there's no undo - if you put the ink on, you are stuck with it, every line has to be right! 

Read more... )

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