The beaver is a proud and noble animal
Notes from a bemused canuck
Tolstoy has taken to sleeping in the most random places ever in the past few days. Normally, he’s sleeping under the Poang in our bedroom but in the past 3 days, we’ve seen him:
– on the couch (which he never does)
– under BenBen’s cot bed (he’s usually *in* it)
– behind the scratching post we just put upstairs (it’s always fun when he attacks your feet in the middle of the night when you’re not expecting it)
And this morning, we found him sleeping on BenBen’s play mat.
Random animal :)
With the weather being so nice recently, the BBQ has had a good dusting off and has seen more usage in the last week than in the last year :) I think that having it so close to the back patio door will be a good thing. We had Bratwurst, veggie kebabs and steak last Sunday and we had BBQ chicken salad last night. If the weather holds out for tonight, it’s going to be burgers :)
Oh, and as a side note, 
makes a really good BBQ sauce :)
I’ve finally pulled the finger out and gotten some pictures online. You can go browse the galleries on the website and see:
Pictures of the EMBL Staff Association Retreat to Edinburgh: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/edinburgh_may_2009/
A really cool collection of night-time areal pictures of London: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/london_from_above/
Some recently added pictures of Mr BenBen: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/ben/
Of the last gallery, let me give you some teasers :)
It would seem that the cats are taking well to the new environment. They were in and out all everning, part of the night and most of this morning. They’ve discovered, much to their chagrin I would imagine, that our neighbours have a dog :)
I snapped this with my camera phone last night. I have no idea how she climbed up there but Reenie spend a large part of the evening on the roof of our shed and our neighbours. Later that evening, I heard the dog bark and saw Tolstoy magically appear on top of the party wall fence :) I’m sure they’ll get used to it.
Tolstoy has taken to sleeping with BenBen during his daytime naps. It’s cute, and it promotes a good immune system, so we don’t mind it. Sometimes, Tolstoy sleeps with his tail on BenBen’s head and if we happen to move Tolstoy, BenBen stirs because his head suddenly got cold :)
The Beeb was running an article this morning about how people were bombarding the Imperial War Museum about information on how people coped with shortages and rationing during the war in case there’s the Great Depression, part deux.
Katy said, as a quote of the day, that she liked WWII propaganda posters because they were cheery and colourful. I like them because they’re sensible, down to earth and are a proper example of the British stiff upper lip mentality.
Any attention is good attention.
If I love you, you can have my butt.
If there is no fuss, there needs to be food.
If there is no food, there needs to be fuss.
Giving me fuss is a privilege, not a right.
My paw always tastes good.
It takes a lot of effort to look this fabulous.
I felt like crap on Friday so I stayed home from work. I still have a major case of the lurgie and I’ve been feeling off and on all weekend. I blame the new grad student at work for giving me his Ebola.
We had to go to Saffron Walden in the afternoon to go meet our solicitor and sign some paperwork. On the way back, we stopped at the duck pond. BenBen was completely out of it, but we had a bit of fun with Katy’s new phone.
When we got home, BenBen went into a major meltdown. We think that, between his teeth beginning to play up, his last round of shots and a bit of a cold, he’s been feeling very under the weather and has been feeling very tired and grumpy and has been a cast-iron bugger to feed. So, when we got home, he decided that he was most decidedly not a happy camper and wailed. Solidly. For close to two hours. As soon as we brought him upstairs to start his bedtime routine, he settled down and had a good night but Katy and I were rather traumatized because – for all our griping at times – he is normally a really good baby and rarely kicks up a fuss.
Just as we were going to bring Ben upstairs, Reenie barged in the house with another mouse – still alive – and ran to the shoe rack to drop it in my boot. Again. Except this time, she missed the boot and the mouse got away from her. We so didn’t need that extra little bit of aggravation when our nerves were still frazzled from all the crying. I tried to look for it but I couldn’t find it and we had to go get the boy to bed.
Once things settled down and there was blessed quiet again in the house, I was able to shift some clutter around and find the wayward rodent. Lo and behold, it was the same mouse as two days ago!!!
We freed it in some bushes. If it comes in again, we’re keeping it as a pet.
We spent most of the weekend packing stuff away in boxes and got some good progress done. Most of the mice that Reenie brought in over the weekend were deceased, so we didn’t have too much aggravation. She did manage to drop a live mouse in my boot though, and Katy had to use some fancy penmanship to get rid of it. I just hope it didn’t pee too much in my boot.
Such are the joys of cat ownership.