Message board topic:

Piggy has figured out a new game.  He has a little, igloo shaped dome he likes to sleep and hide in.  He sleeps in it most of the time and hides in it whenever I run the vacuum cleaner.  It's just big enough for him to turn around inside and he'll usually sleep with his nose sticking out the opening.  Now he's discovered that if he lifts his head a bit he can drag it all over the cage with him.  Sometimes, rather than dragging it around, he'll just spin it around in circles.  Whenever I walk by, many times a day, the opening is facing in a different direction.

Poor little guy doesn't get anywhere near the affection we'd like to give him, (because of the cat).  Now, whenever he does get affection, I have to trim his claws.  They grow so fast.  If you let them go too long, they start curling back and give him trouble walking around.  It's a challenge because he won't stop wiggling, and I try to be so careful not to cut them short enough to bleed.  So far no bleeding, but I probably never get them as short as I could.

Right now he's eating his hay.  He still eats amazing amounts of food.  Mostly hay but also celery, grapes, strawberries, huge amounts of spinach and carrots.  He gets watermelon whenever we have it but that isn't too often.  John

WOuld he walk around with his fun shell ourside on the floor if you gave him a chance?

 

David and the CoolCyberCats

Forever in my heart





Cats Nap. Only Humans Put Them "To Sleep": Sterilize, Don't Euthanize!

 

  I don't know.  It might even be easier than dragging it through all that soft litter.  Whenever we have him out of the cage we have him on a blanket, because while he eats all the time, it all comes back out all the time.  As much as he eats though, he drinks very little.  Maybe a couple of ounces in a couple of weeks.  He gets almost all of his water through his food.  There's no water in that hay which he eats more of than anything else, but I guess there's plenty in the celery, grapes, apples and strawberries, and I forgot to mention he loves pineapple.  He loves watermelon too but we can't get watermelon very often and we don't get pineapple very often.

I've been trying to get a lot of outside painting done lately.  The house has siding but the gutters and trim need it.  There was a lot to do on the porch.  I couldn't get some of it done because I was driven off by red wasps.  None of them got me but I've been stung by them before.  Both times they caught me by surprise and man they hurt!  So there's no love lost between us.  When the weather starts turning I'll go to work on the inside.  It's been a hot, rainy Summer until this last month.  Now it's been hot but almost a month since it rained and I haven't mowed the yard in weeks.  The weatherman is predicting rain later this evening ahead of a "cold" front.  (Not really very cold.)  I don't have a lot of confidence in my weatherman though.  John

What are red wasps? I am not familiar with those.

When I was a child and we were in El Paso TX, I remember red ants that bit me one anf man those hurt!

 

David and the CoolCyberCats

Forever in my heart





Cats Nap. Only Humans Put Them "To Sleep": Sterilize, Don't Euthanize!

 

I was looking for a good picture of them but they look pretty much like any other wasp.  They get a little bigger than most wasps and they're kind of rusty red in color.  They're more common here than they were in Illinois and apparently they do live in Texas.

Sitting in a truck one day, something itched on my leg and I scratched it through my pants.  Stupid red wasp had crawled up my leg and when I scratched, he got me.  Left a little pea sized crater that seemed to take a long time to heal, though now I can't tell where it was anymore.  The second time, I was barbecuing and felt an itch under my watchband.  A red wasp had somehow gotten between the underside of my wrist and the watchband, and he got me.  This was a bigger wasp and it hurt worse than the one on my leg, maybe because my wrist is more sensitive than my leg.  I was told to try a baking soda paste on it to take the pain away, and I can tell you without a doubt, it doesn't work!  That was sore for a long time too.  But I can't see where that was anymore either.

I never had that "killer instinct" but when it comes to wasps, if they know what's good for them, they'll stay well away from me.  As the expression goes, "They drew first blood!"  John

The big animal news of the day is, there've been a few squirrels playing around the house.  I have a table and chairs sitting outside beside my driveway, and yesterday I noticed a pile of something on the table.  A squirrel had gotten on the table and ate a walnut there, leaving behind most of the stuff surrounding the nut.  He had to have dragged it at least a couple of blocks before he decided where to eat it.  A neighbor a couple of blocks away goes around collecting walnuts to sell and I bet that's where he got it.

I got a picture of Piggy in his "turtle house" the other day.  He get in and moves that thing all the time, sometimes spinning it in circles!  I'm constantly moving it to one corner to give him as much running room as he can get, and every few minutes I find it somewhere else.