More pictures!
GoldKitty got his arm stuck in the blinds' control strings.
GrayKitty wants out.
Both kitties just want to know what the heck I'm doing.
UPDATE: I'm not sure why GoldKitty's eye is acting the way it is. It's not the way he usually looks, though one eye or the other does squint from time to time.
Since I don't have any cats, I probably wouldn't make a very good catblogger. It does so happen, though, that Meatloaf has picked up two strays recently. We're not allowed to have animals, so he probably wouldn't appreciate their desire to hang out in front of the shades. But I appreciated it.
It's too bad that these kitties will grow up to be cats some day.
We were shopping at an artsy store today so that Jay could find a gift for his girlfriend. It was a neat place with a lot of neat stuff that was way way too loud for any home that I would be willing to take residence in. There were two dogs sleeping in the store.
I honestly don't believe humans are nearly as capable of ever being as comfortable as those dogs were on that hardwood floor.
According to
this article kindly linked by
Jack Cluth, dogs may be smarter than previously thought:
A series of careful studies concluded that the energetic German house dog has a stunningly large vocabulary and apparently can even do something scientists thought only humans could do -- figure out by the process of elimination that a sound he's never heard before must be the name of a toy he's never seen before.
That feat, described in today's issue of the journal Science, suggests that dog owners who claim their pets understand what they're saying and are trying to respond may have been right all along.
"Maybe this is the Albert Einstein of dogs. Or maybe this is something that other dogs can do too," said Julia Fischer, a biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who helped test Rico. "We just don't know. We need to find out."
While many species can be trained to recognize the names of objects, what makes Rico unique is that he recognizes so many words, can puzzle out the names of new objects on the first try and weeks later is surprisingly good at remembering what he learned, the researchers said.
The findings are the latest evidence that animals are capable of more complex communication than had been thought and that dogs, in particular, are especially astute at comprehending their human companions.
Though it doesn't have anything to do with audible language comprehension overall, it reminds me a bit of this quote from Gerry Spence:
"Wisdom usually does not fall from high places. The mighty and the splendid have taught me little. I have learned more from my dog than from all the great books I have read. The wisdom of my dog is the product of his inability to conceal his wants. When he yearns to be loved, there is no pouting in the corner. There are no games entitled "Guess what is the matter with me." He puts his head on my lap, wags his tail and looks up at me with kind eyes, waiting to be petted. No professor or sage ever told me I might live a more successful life if I simply asked for love when I needed it."
My name is Missy. I'm a ten year-old purebread Collie who's staying with the Whitlock family for a while.
They're nice people and all, but sometimes they get on my nerves. Take for instance today during the UT-A&M football game. Now, I was raised by an Aggie family and would bleed maroon if I ever let myself get down and dirty enough to get a cut. Oh, and I look like the Aggies' mascot.
The Whitlock family is a Longhorn family. Uncles Ray and David went to UT and uncle Ray owns season tickets. Watching the game was hard enough, but enduring their hooting and hollering was more than my delicate constitution could bare. I hid in the other room when it started to get bad.
When Uncle Ray played his Eyes of Texas CD after the game, it was more than I could bear. I started to bark and howl as loudly as I could. Since I couldn't share the many reasons why Texas A&M is the superior university with the cutest mascot in the world, it was all I could do.
They started laughing at me! Uncle Alex commented how interesting it was that an Aggie dog would howl at the Longhorn anthem.
Well duh!!!!! What did he expect me to do?! They all found it very funny.
But they're wrong.
There's nothing funny about a 46-15 Longhorn victory.
Harrumph. I'm going to go pout now. Or see if I can beg off some dinner from their plates. Whichever.
[Ed. note: Theme blatantly ripped off of Sugarmama]
I was outside enjoying the nice cool air when something abnormal happened.
One of the quirks about our apartment complex is that dogs often run free here. Our little cove is surrounded by fence and there aren't a whole lot of places for the animals to go that the owner can't retrieve them. Some consider this a bug, but for me it's definitely a feature. This place is a little more uptight (and/or nicer) than our last apartment so it added a sense of informality I like.
Anyway, this evening a man was working on his car out in the lot and his dog was out there with him. A Muslim mother and daughter were walking along and the dog walked up to them. I can't remember the last time I saw two people so terrified. Now some people are naturally afraid of dogs, but this dog was obviously very friendly. Most people I know who don't like dogs manage to stay calm, if unhappy, when approached by a non-threatening dog.
The man said "Don't worry, he's friendly."
The mother, frozen with tears streaming down her cheeks, asked him to please retrieve the dog. He called the dog a couple times, but it was curious about the (to it) strangely dressed people I guess cause he just kinda sniffed around, tail wagging. After what was probably fifteen seconds, the daughter (probably 13 or 14 or so) just burst into tears. The dog's owner wasn't quite sure what to do. He didn't want to approach too fast and make the situation too unstable, but he obviously needed to get the dog. The dog knew what he was trying to do and avoided him. When he got too close to the mother and daughter, it moved away. He corralled it back to his car as the Muslims just stood there embracing one another in utter fear.
It didn't take long for me to figure out: Dogs are unholy to Muslims.
That makes their horror explained in two ways. First of all, I can imagine if I considered an animal unholy I would not be comfortable anywhere near one. If one was sniffing around me, I very well may freak out, too. The second, and lesser reason is that if you have spent your life avoiding canines for religious reason, you have very little exposure to them. Even something such as a wagging tail may come across as threatening.
I can't imagine what my life would be like if I hadn't been around dogs. We had one, my best friends had one, my neighbor had two, and my aunt and uncle had one. It's hard for me to believe that they could ever be evil or satanic or however it is that Muslims look upon dogs as scornfully as they do.
It's one of the things about religion that I simply do not understand. It's not just Muslims, either. Jews and pork. Pentacostals and caffeine.
This isn't to say that I don't understand religion and religious dictates. I believe in God, Jesus, the Seven Deadly Sins and the Ten Commandments.
I also believe that God has a way of telling us what not to do apart from formal religious education. When we touch a stove, we feel pain. When we eat too much, we feel lethargic and get a stomach ache. When we act beligerently towards others, we feel guilt (or at least we should). Every superficial high has a low. Alcohol makes us lose our inhibitions but then leaves us hung over. The idea that God gives us things that make (some of us) feel better and gave no downside is just strange to me. I love dogs. I love taking care of them and playing with them. How can that be wrong?
In a sense, I feel sorry for the adherent Muslims whose faith takes a wide-eyed, tail-wagging dog and turns it into something evil. Something to be feared or hated. Similarly with Jews and pork. I don't even like pork all that much. Taking one meat that tastes as good as another with equivalent (or healthier) nutritional content and saying "Yes, you can eat one" and "No, you cannot eat the other" seems inherently odd.
I am the type of person that generally likes to try everything at least (and usually only) once. I honestly believe that one way to pay tribute to God is to appreciate the gifts He has given us.
How can this be evil?
