We have had a beautiful sunset tonight.
It is a fitting send off for Silver, one of our rats, who has passed away quite suddenly. We do not know what ailed him, just that he went from us very quickly.
That leaves us with one lonely rat, named Storm. Some rats are happy to be by themselves, but others will pine away with loneliness.
Time will tell which Storm is.
One of the down sides of having pets is having to say goodbye.
Margaret xx
SON AND I DONATED THREE BOXES OF BOOKS TO THE ANNUAL LIONS
CLUB BOOK FAIR THIS MORNING.
BEFORE WE LEFT TO DELIVER THEM, I SNAPPED THIS PHOTO OF SHADOWS BEING CREATED BY THE MORNING SUN STREAMING INTO OUR KITCHEN.
MY HEADER PHOTO THIS MONTH IS OF THE WHARF AT OMOKOROA IN
THE BAY OF PLENTY. THE PHOTO WAS TAKEN
IN 2011 BUT NOT MUCH HAS CHANGED HERE SINCE THEN.
HAVE A HAPPY DAY,
MARGARET xx
I love food! Eating delicious
meals is something I really enjoy. The trouble
is, as I grow older, I’m finding I need to adjust more and more how and what I eat.
As I mentioned in my last post, I am sometimes using
chopsticks to help me eat a bit slower. I’m
also trying to watch the portion sizes that I serve myself.
The recommended size of one serve of pudding/dessert is half
a cup, which doesn’t seem very much but is actually quite adequate.
Dinner just doesn’t seem complete without something sweet to
finish with, and I’m afraid fresh fruit doesn’t usually do it for me (even
though I enjoy it for breakfast and lunch).
Feeling guilty about what you eat is a terrible way to live,
so I am not going to deny myself the pleasure of eating pudding. I just want to control how much I eat.
And so it was that when I went op/thrift shopping last week,
I was delighted to find these two wine glasses that hold half a cup each.
Don’t you just love the neon blue colour of this blueberry
jelly? Although I shudder a little to
think what colour it will make my insides!
I only make up half a packet at a time, so I can finish it
within two days. I will have one tonight
and the other tomorrow night, and eat them (slowly!) with a small teaspoon.
The other item I was delighted to find was this decorative
china plate. It is one of a 1996
Bradford Exchange issue by artist Lena Liu, and I just loved the whole pretty
picture it made.
We continue to have hot weather here, often quite sultry. Thankfully it is a little cooler in the
mornings so I can get things done around the house.
The pets struggle a bit.
Son gives the rats cold ice cubes to gnaw on and they spend a lot of
their time sitting on stones and staring out the cage towards any air movement
(we often have a fan directed at them).
The cats find the coolest spot they can, usually the
concrete beneath the carport in the shade.
They sprawl out with their bellies on the ground, and their fur seems to
all be standing up on end (the worst of being a long-haired cat). We brush them both regularly but they are
still shedding hair.
This is Mittens enjoying the deck before the sun began to
bake it.
I hope your day is a good one 😊
Margaret.
Mittens and Millie, our two cats, are both growing older and
each winter they feel the cold more and more (a bit like us old fogies!).
Millie has discovered the joys of sprawling in front of the
fire to get warm, but Mittens is still afraid of it – she doesn’t like the
movement of the flames or the crackle of the logs.
So I put a fluffy blanket on her favourite chair in my room
and she snuggles into it to sleep (at night, when she gets too cold, she
appears on my bed and curls up beside me).
Every time I walk into the room I get this “look” from her –
am I being a nuisance by disturbing her, is she telling me to go away, or is
she just checking out what I am doing?
Only Mittens knows for sure!
Today is the first day of the last month of winter –
Yay! It won’t be too many weeks now
before the trees start putting forth new buds and the birds start getting
amorous.
Sometimes the year seems to go by so slowly, but other times
it is whizzing by much too fast. Before
we know it, it will be the year 2024 – oh, my goodness!
Make the most of each day 😊
Margaret.
HEADER PHOTO FOR AUGUST 2023
About two hours drive from our place is Mount Maunganui. This photo was taken the last time I climbed
to the summit – in 2008!
The Pacific Ocean here is much loved by surfers, who flock
to the waves when the surf is “up.” On
the other side of the peninsula are the quiet waters of the harbour, which is
also the entrance to a major port. At the
base of the Mount can be seen the popular Beachside Holiday Park, along with
the hot salt-water pools.
Pets can be so funny sometimes.
Mittens has taken to curling up to sleep on my handbag –
presumably in an effort to stop me going out!
It doesn’t work 😊
Margaret xx
I am house-sitting this weekend, keeping my old
friend Rusty company while his humans attend a wedding.
Rusty escorted me on a wander around the garden, and I thought
these two Froggies made a pretty picture sitting together.
As children, we would catch tadpoles (and the occasional
frog) in the cow’s water trough.
It was fascinating watching them grow legs and finally turn
into little froglets that we would then release back into the trough.
I seldom see frogs these days, although sometimes they can
be heard – usually in overgrown / under-developed areas beside lakes or a
river.
I am so thankful I had a rural upbringing 😊
Margaret.
The newest additions to our household have arrived from the
breeder. They are about six weeks old
and Son has named them Silver and Storm.
 |
| Silver and Storm in the nursery cage |
They have a cage to themselves until the older rats get used
to them. The cages are placed beside
each other and there is a lot of nose twitching and general excitement between
the two.
A couple of days eating the same foods and they will smell
alike and the older ones will accept their presence and adopt them into their
Mischief.
 |
| Silver investigating a snooze site |
Son will still supervise them the first few times he puts
the young ones into the main cage. Rats are
very communal and quite loving towards each other, so older ones seldom offer
harm to young ones in the same group.
They are more like to get upset because the very active young
ones are zooming around the cage and the older ones find it tiring just
watching them (not so very different to grandparents!).
 |
| Son introduces Storm to me (as close as I got!) |
Hope everyone is having a great weekend 😊
Margaret.
I am house sitting for a few days, caring for my little
friend Rusty while his owners are away. Apart
from the rain and a clock ticking, it is very quiet here this morning.
I have just read the news and there are weather warnings out
for several places in the top of the North Island for severe gale force winds
and torrential rain.
It seems likely that we will receive some of it as well but
I don’t imagine it will be too bad here.
I was rudely awoken yesterday morning at around 5.45am with
my bed shaking badly and a loud roaring noise.
It took me a moment to waken properly and realise it was an earthquake!
This one was about 50km (25miles) away from us – a 5.1 (on
the Richter scale) at a shallow depth of 7km near Te Aroha. The biggest quake I have actually felt for
some years.
The cats were unperturbed and nothing was damaged, but it
was the end of sleep for both Son and I.
Have a great day everyone 😊
Margaret.
There is nothing guaranteed to make your heart start beating
faster than waking up at 4.30am and hearing thumps and thuds happening out in
the living room.
I went to investigate, thinking Millie must have caught a
mouse and brought it inside. But no!
I turned the light on and there was this ginger streak of a
cat racing around the room, up the outside of the chimney, trying to climb a
bookcase, knocking down the big television (thankfully it never damaged it),
and then climbing the curtain and perching on the curtain rail glaring down at
me.
I frantically called out to Son and he groggily joined
me. We opened both doors and tried to
coax the cat out but it wasn’t having any of it.
Finally, after more racing around, it made it back to the
cat door (which is behind my small television), but in its blind panic managed
to wedge it shut before getting its body stuck between the TV cabinet and the
wall. It sat there growling while Son
went outdoors and eventually managed to get the cat door open again.
A bit of prodding and poking, and the cat was backed up
enough to reach the opening. It was gone
like a bullet – out the door, over the fence, and off into the darkness like
its tail was on fire.
From the smell of it, we are picking this was a Tom Cat
(especially as this is kitten season). It
was well fed and definitely not feral, so belongs to someone although we didn’t
recognise it as a neighbouring cat.
Hopefully it got such a fright that it will never ever want
to come and visit this house again!
Where were our two cats all this time? Mittens was hiding beneath my dressing table,
and we later found Millie hiding beneath the deck.
The photo above is of Millie, sitting on my grocery bags and
pretending she is invisible because she knows she is not meant to be there.
Margaret 😊
Well, it wasn’t really “murder most foul” but there was a
lot of blood on the floor.
Son had been introducing Spike, our sole resident rat, to
Rascal, one of the new adopted rats. It
was going well until grumpy Spike bit Rascal on the foot.
Rascal is a gentle rat, but in his hurt and fright he
lashed out and bit Son on his thumb.
More a puncture wound than a gash, but deep enough to bleed a lot.
It’s a long time since I was last called upon to administer
First Aid to anyone (husband used to require my services quite frequently!), but
I remembered what to do and soon had his thumb cleansed and bandaged up.
 |
| Rascal snoozing in his hammock |
After drizzly rain most of yesterday and thick fog this
morning, today has turned out quite sunny.
There is a stiff breeze blowing and the neighbour’s sun umbrella is busy
flapping around.
They (the neighbours) were letting off fireworks last night
(they only went on sale two days ago, in preparation for Guy Fawkes night) and
both our cats were happy to be inside.
They don’t hide like some pets do, but they were very alert and nervy
and skittered at each burst of sound.
I like to watch well-organised firework displays, but am
very wary of individuals letting them off.
There was a big fire near Christchurch yesterday and that has been
blamed on irresponsible use of fireworks.
Sometimes having fun gets taken too far.
Stay happy 😊
Margaret.
I am finding having rats in the house as pets is becoming a
very traumatic experience. They die a
lot!
As regular readers know, my son loves his pet rats and often
has up to four of them at a time. They
have a large cage to roam around in, and he gives them lots of care and
affection (rats are very social creatures).
Each rat has its own personality and even though I don’t
have day-to-day care of them (and can never give them cuddles!), I still get
attached to each one.
Domestic rats only live around two years, but this year we
seem to have lost a lot of them. One of
my favourites was a small black rat named Rattle – named because of the
different colour at the end of his tail, much like a rattle snake.
We were down to two rats – Rattle and Spike – when both
became sick with some mysterious illness (it happens in rats sometimes). Rattle never survived and I was surprised how
upset I was.
I was thinking that perhaps I need to learn how to step back
from loving pets (cats included), but then I remembered that life needs to have
love in it. The price we pay might be
grief, but feeling and expressing love and receiving it in return is really
what life is all about.
 |
| Rattle in one of his cheeky moments |
Spike is now alone – never good for a rat – but son has been
offered the adoption of two 13-month old rats and has accepted the offer.
Son will remain on the list for two new babies when next a
litter comes available with his breeder.
Life is enriched with fur-ever luv 😊
Margaret.
Yesterday we sadly said farewell to our gentle vegetarian
rat, Mello. He had a good life, short
though the life of rats is, but it was time to end his suffering.
What really broke me up was seeing Rattle, one of the new
younger rats, nudging him, licking him, and finally lying over top of him in
mourning.
It is so easy to believe that animals do not have feelings,
but many of them (if not all of them) definitely do.
I took this photo of a punga tree fern while walking in
Hamilton Gardens yesterday. I was so
happy to be able to walk for 30 minutes without stopping – my legs were wobbly, but that is to
be expected after so many months unable to do anything.
It seems that a lot of my exertional breathlessness and
utter exhaustion has actually been a side-effect of one of the medical drugs I was
taking. Now I have stopped taking it,
things have started to dramatically improve.
I hope it continues!
The first signs of spring are appearing. The grape buds have burst and the distant
trees are getting a slight haze of green about them. Summer is on its way!
Have a great day 😊
Margaret.
Two new little rats have joined our older boys, Mello and
Spook. Son has named the newbies Rattle and
Spike.
Their colouration is black Berkshire, with a black back and white markings on the underbelly parts. Rattle has a white tip
to his tail, a little like a rattlesnake, while Spike has a longer white tip on
his tail just like a spike.
They spent a couple of days in a smaller cage sitting beside
the large cage, so that they could get used to each other’s scent.
There were no problems when they finally got together.
If anything, Mello and Spook simply adore them. Grooming each other was soon the order of the
day, and they now often snuggle down together to sleep.
We had fog again this morning, and that cleared away to mostly
cloudy. Judging by comments made yesterday,
it seems our winter here is quite different to a lot of places so I am
preparing to write sometime soon about our climate here.
Did you know a group of rats is called a Mischief? Quite appropriate I thought 😊
Margaret.
I had a lovely visit with Rusty (and his owner!) yesterday
afternoon. He always gets so excited
when he hears my car arrive, and races around the room when I enter.
Maybe he has an ulterior motive though, as he loves having
someone throw his soft toy so he can chase after it.
Taking photos of Rusty can be quite difficult as he is rather camera shy. When your face disappears
behind some machine and then it clicks at you, his ears go flat and he starts
to shake.
Poor Rusty.
Rusty’s owner and I did some family tree research
together. We thought we had discovered a
West Indies cotton plantation owner (complete with slaves) in an off-branch of
the family, but further research showed that this was incorrect.
It is a bit like a treasure hunt discovering what happened
among the family all those years ago. I don’t
think I will ever completely rid myself of the thrill of that hunt.
How can you not love finding Skeletons in the Family Closet?
Margaret 😊
Maybe I am just a Big Softie. Even though I am not fond of pet rats and
cannot bring myself to pet them, I am still sad when one of them passes away.
Timmy Rat died peacefully last night, safely cuddled by his
two brother rats. We had been expecting
him to go (he was very elderly, being over two years old), and he faded quickly
the last 24 hours.
Son will bury him this morning in the garden, alongside his
predecessors.
The weather forecast today is for partly cloudy with strong
winds and only 20% chance of rain. That will
make a big change to the last few days, with all the heavy rain, strong winds, and thunderstorms.
We have had so many thunderstorms pass over us that I have
lost count. Some were a little further
off and we only got the edge of them, but a few also came right over top of us.
Cataclysmic crashes of thunder that make the whole house
shiver and shake are guaranteed to wake you up at 3.30 in the morning!
Looks like Winter has arrived 😊
Margaret.
Poor Mittens.
For about three hours last evening I could hear this dull
thudding noise happening every now and then.
The neighbours were up to something strange, was what I thought.
And then Millie began racing up and down the hallway with
thumping feet, as only a cat can do.
That should have alerted us to something, but it didn’t.
Finally, I thought I would get nosey and investigate the
strange noise. And that was when I heard
a tiny piteous little meow – Mittens shut inside the linen cupboard!
She was so traumatized that she refused to leave my side the
rest of the evening. She slept on my bed
all night, and now she keeps following me around everywhere.
Mittens is a “needy” cat at the best of times. She thrives on lots of loving contact with
the humans she adores (and hides from the rest of them), so she is being given
lots of attention today to help her forget her terrifying experience.
Son and I have been avid followers of the Pacific Super
Rugby season this year, watching nearly all the matches as they are broadcast
live.
Tonight our local team, the Chiefs, are playing here in
Hamilton against the Canberra Brumbies.
We won’t be attending, preferring to keep to our comfortable armchairs while
watching the game live on Sky TV.
The Brumbies are ahead of us on the score table, but it is a
home game for us and local support might help swing the game in our
favour. Should be a good game,
regardless.
Have a Happy Weekend everyone 😊
Margaret.
