Escaping Suburbia

I love this item from the Gazette-Times crime watch section today:

OSU Department of Public Safety
Tuesday, May 26
ANNOYING FLIRT: 2 p.m., Valley Library. Library staff complained that a male student was flashing the laser light from a computer mouse at other patrons, annoying them, despite being asked to stop. The student said he did it to get the attention of a girl he liked. He was advised to try another tactic.

He was advised to try another tactic… oh, honey. Try chasing her around the playground at recess!

P.S. Crime watch section. NEWSPAPER. Yep.

The previous owners of our house left behind four or five birdhouses around the property, and I’m pleased to say that they all have occupants this spring. The one above is right off our backyard deck, so we can sit in the living room and watch all the activity. Mr. Wolf snapped this awesome photo over the weekend. The next day, the baby birds had flying lessons.

Here’s a shot that I was able to get that isn’t nearly as good, but you can see some of the big old bug that’s for dinner:

Both of these can be clicked to see larger versions with more detail at Flickr.

In other news, we discovered yesterday that Miley (pictured in the post below) had been bitten in her right paw. We came home to find her limping on three legs, holding the swollen paw aloft. We thought maybe she’d broken it, because we also found a very heavy vase knocked off the mantle. Took her in to the emergency vet who said, nope… puncture wounds. We don’t know if it was Marcus who bit her or if she’d been bitten at the shelter before we adopted her. Before yesterday, we saw no signs of a hurt paw, but she had an unexplained fever on Monday when we went to get them both checked out. If she was bitten sometime between Sunday afternoon and Monday by Marcus, could she have developed that fever by Monday afternoon?

I’ve never had two cats at once, and it’s been just about forever since I had a healthy, young cat, so I’m not sure what’s normal. I can’t tell if the two of them are playing when they chase each other around and she smacks at him, or if she really doesn’t like him near. He watches her all the time (if he was human, he’d be a little creepy), but if he bit her…? I haven’t seen him make a gesture like that. I don’t know. It’s been four days and  I’m sure I’m just over thinking… I just hope they can get along and be companions.

She is amazingly affectionate and purrs like a motorboat. He’s a little more standoffish and skittish, but still quite the love. With the long weekend, I’ll be trying to get some photos, if they ever sit still!

Meet our newest family member, Miley! She’s a year and a half. We also adopted Marcus, but he’s being a little shy right now, so no photos yet.

Both will be getting new names, we think.

Cute new comic strip over at comics.com…

Click on it to see a larger version, my wordpress template is really too narrow for almost everything. Think I will change it soon. Fixed!