Don't feel sorry for Rufus, he gets plenty of love and play time with Max. What usually starts off as grooming quickly turns into hours of rolling around and play fighting followed by sleepy cuddles embraced in each others' paws. I think we must have taken a million photos of those two embracing, but it's just so darn cute.
Max and Pandora have become best friends all of sudden and can always be found maybe not cuddling together, but at least sitting/sleeping very very close to one another. We are somewhat surprised by Pandora's recent soft spot for her little brother as she has always been one to swat Max's face anytime he tried to get near. True to form, she still hates Rufus.
Don't feel sorry for Rufus, he gets plenty of love and play time with Max. What usually starts off as grooming quickly turns into hours of rolling around and play fighting followed by sleepy cuddles embraced in each others' paws. I think we must have taken a million photos of those two embracing, but it's just so darn cute.
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We stayed up all night waiting for the snow storm, huddled together downstairs watching movies and peering outside frequently to see if the storm had arrived. I logged online every hour to check the current weather. Dinner plans with out-of-town friends were canceled for fear of icy roads and delayed flights. The weathermen never really seem to be able to predict the weather. They say snow storm and it usually is the exact opposite. We were hoping for a snow day. The kind where you stay inside all day to watch the snow fall like it's the most magnificent thing you've ever seen. The kind where you bundle up in a hundred mis-matched layers to walk one block in knee-high snow to check the mail. The kind where you can make snow forts and snowballs and snow anything because anything made with snow day snow is therefore fun and magical. It snowed all day but the huge snowflakes swirled around in crazy flight patterns without ever really sticking to the ground. Sly's office closed so officially it was a "snow day." I kept waiting and waiting and waiting for the big storm, the one that would make it impossible to open my back door without piles of snow falling inside, but that never happened. I gave up waiting and finally went outside to enjoy what was left of my snow day. I let the kitties out on our deck to see if they would love snow as much as I do. (They don't.) Sly cooked up a feast (another reason I love snow days) of classic court bouillon with homemade cocktail sauce and classic French-style mussels. I think I may be the only person left on the East Coast that keeps urging this cold crappy weather to stick around just a little longer. I can't help it, I love Winter. PS: Sorry for the schizophrenic blogging and for breaking out my travel posts into a million tiny posts. The only way I can handle editing large amounts of photos is if I take them in chunks. Plus when writing about SF, I get a bit nostalgic and I can only deal with my sentimental self in small doses.
Some days you need a chubby little kitty to cuddle and kiss. Thank goodness for squeezable marshmallow kitties with velvety soft noses and scrunchy little faces. You can call me crazy all you want, but I just love this little buster.
Our other boy, Max, has always been the smart one -- the kind of kitty that you look at and know that he is really an old spirit trapped in a fuzzy kitty body. He started doing "dog-like" things on his own when he was very young: playing fetch, jumping up in the air to catch items I threw, retrieving mail. He can do a series of tricks: sit, stand, down, stay, and listens and responds very easily to commands. When I say hello to Max, he always responds with a meow.
Rufus is the opposite. To put it nicely, he's our sweet and cuddly cat -- the one that always wants to snuggle, the one that always needs and wants a hug, the softest little bunny bear marshmallow of a cat ever. Unlike his older brother, he has been impossible to train due to a massive case of ADD. He cannot focus on anything for very long unless it's food, in which case he is so obsessed he can't think of anything else. Imagine my surprise when Rufus approached me with his favorite stuffed mouse and dropped it in my lap. I tossed it thinking he would soon lose focus and find something else to play with, but instead he returned with his toy. I tried it again. Again he returned. I threw it several more times, and each time he came back with the mouse. We played fetch like this for nearly an hour until a jealous Max came by and took his toy from him. Rufus pretty much does whatever the two older kitties do, so I'm wondering if fetching was something he learned from Max, or if this is something he just naturally did on his own. Maybe Rufus has been holding out on us... A quiet Saturday afternoon on a sunny Winter's day. We have been experimenting with letting the kitties outside on our upper decks when the weather is nice. So far they have been behaving, except for the one time Pandora jumped on the ledge and gave me a heart attack as she teeter tottered unsteadily for what seemed like forever.
So while I kept better watch over our daredevil kitties, the hubs carefully filleted fish and peeled shrimp to make fish balls for the dashi broth he had on the stove all morning. In between watching the kitties and tasting Sly's broth (someone has to do it), I took photos of the slowly fermenting lemons that had been sitting on our kitchen table. Eventually we left the house for some tea and hookah with the sis and bf at our neighborhood Iraqi tea house, then came back home and ate more soup. Sly's simple dashi recipe: Ingredients: 1 sheet of kombu seaweed, approx. 4x4 in size 2 c. dried bonito flakes Directions:
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