Buster did the cutest thing today...

Lowrider Cat

2006-03-21T11:35:00.000-08:00

This is my sister's crazy cat. His name is Carne, and he was a stray until my sister attempted to domesticate him. Carne will destroy anything in his path. Currently he is a General in the war on string. He refuses to admit defeat. He also regularly beats up on a 150 lb Rottweiler. Look at him-10 lbs of pure muscle! He has no neck and very short legs. In this photo he is scouting out his next battle.
When I was visiting my sister last, I was talking on the phone. Carne snuck up behind me on the counter, and attacked my head. It was terrifying. When I told my sister, she said, "oh yea, he has a thing about hair." BEWARE!

More Petsitting

2006-03-21T11:23:00.000-08:00

We are petsitting again. This time we are watching two bunnies- the Bunnyman and Echo. Buster is pouting. I thought I mentioned it to him, but I guess in all the hoopla over my sister's wedding, I forgot. He was not too keen on the furniture rearrangement in the kitchen, and he is doubly unkeen on the fact that now there are two bunnies in his kitchen. Rabbits are very territorial, and foreign bunnies=aggression.
Last night Buster actually charged me and growled. He is not happy. I feel bad, even when he is being mean, I just think it is so cute!

Smee-less

2005-11-07T14:24:00.000-08:00

Now we are Smee-less and the world is returning to normal again, just in time for the holidays! I am going home this weekend and then again in two weeks for Thanksgiving. Poor pets.
Two weeks after giving thanks, I will be cursing Father Time, because I am turning 30. Nevermind all the benchmarks of the age, I have a happy home, my health, and a job. Anything else is just being greedy.

Smee sitting

2005-10-25T09:07:00.000-07:00

We are chihuahua sitting until Sunday. I am so happy, because I have always wanted a chihuahua, and now I have the cutest, neediest one ever! Her name is Smee, she is ten years old, and, yes, her tongue always sticks out like that. I was in the grocery store yesterday, just a cell phone call away from being Paris Hilton, as I picked out apples and soothed my little dog. I was actually talking to her in the fruit section because she wimpers whenever you leave her sight, and sometimes when you are standing right in front of her!

can you believe it?!!! This is getting creepy

2005-09-29T15:14:00.000-07:00

You Are A: Bunny!

These adorable woodland animals are known for their fluffy cotton tail and shy disposition. Bunnies reproduce like crazy and are found all over the world. As a bunny, you spend your days hopping through fields and chewing on grass and leaves. Your cuddly, gentle appearance is irresistable!

You were almost a: Groundhog or a Pony
You are least like a: Duck or a Frog Take the Cute Animal Quiz!

Bad Buster

2005-09-27T09:48:00.000-07:00

Exhibit A
Buster eating the plant.

Exhibit B

Up close, not just sniffing.

the return of the cutest thing

2005-09-27T09:33:00.000-07:00

Buster loves bananas, he goes nuts for them, though they are very fattening, see proof (left).

I haven't been keeping up, but Buster really has been doing cute things:
1. Someone (not me this time!) didn't close the door to Buster's pen completely and Buster jumped onto our bed at four in the morning! Who knows what he was doing all night long?
2. Buster got a gift, a peachtree branch. He loves to chew it and throw it around. It is so cute. I have pictures.
3. This very morning, I was hugging Christopher goodbye and Buster stood right in the middle of us on my feet. He wanted love too!

Tofu You Junkyard Cat!

2005-08-15T16:29:00.000-07:00

Sunday I went to the Tofu Festival in Los Angeles, yada, yada, yada, I left with a tow yard cat.
The Tofu Festival was great, the food was pretty good, and our car got towed. Paul Reiser emceed the tofu eating contest. I was trying to remember what show Paul Reiser was on and I kept getting him confused with Steve Guttenberg. My Two Dads, no, Three Men and a Baby, no, hmmmm. He was actually really funny, but I wonder if he was doing the show for the love of tofu. Wasn't Mad About You a mega hit show?! Helen Hunt is doing movies, what about Paul!? When is Jack Nicholson going to call Paul!?!?!?
The towing thing was a total pain. There were three of us and we did not see any signs about restricted parking. Judging from the line in the tow place, others didn't either. We walked about twenty minutes to the tow yard and waited about a half hour in line. I must say, the tow truck drivers were really friendly and gave us sodas. The cutest little kitten was running around the parking lot, and he came right up to me for attention. Of course, I picked him up and we all decided that he was too sweet to leave there. On the way out we asked the drivers if we could take him. They told us that he is friendly and were happy to give him a happy home with three lovely ladies!
We call him Viertel. We gave him a bath, cleaned his ears and fed him. He hated the first two. I have some A-dorable pictures of him in a pink sweater that I will post if I can figure out how to get them from my phone to a computer!

Nah, not so cute

2005-08-08T14:25:00.000-07:00

Lately Buster, who has finally reached that terrible age of adolescence, has been not so cute. He has taken up un-cute hobbies, like digging into the carpet and taking big bites of carpet. I still hate to leave him when I go to work, because he gives me a look saying that he is really sorry and will try not to do it again.
I have a couple of vacations planned in the coming months and I feel quite a bit of anxiety about what to do with Buster. Skip is so self sufficient, and his home is spacious enough for him to run around a bit. Poor Bus is confined to a space no more than 3'x2'. I think he must be almost 1'1/2". These are very rough dimensions here, I am not that good at estimating space. As an example, I think all destinations are a half hour away. Thus I am always late.
With my number one petsitter moving at the end of the month, I am forced to consider other options. Option one, finding someone to come to my house. Pro: Bus gets to be in familiar surroundings. Con: He might have to stay in his home the whole time. Option two, board in a kennel or in someone's home. Pro: He will get fed for sure. Con: I don't think he will get out much here either, and he will be with a stranger! I don't know if there is time for the full background check, fingerprinting, home visits, and reference checking that are associated with this option. More later...

A profile

2005-07-29T12:05:00.000-07:00

Who's there?

Skip: a profile

2005-07-26T14:00:00.000-07:00

Before I even met Skip, I knew I wanted to get a chinchilla just to name him Skip. I don’t know what inspired it. I hadn’t seen a chinchilla in years. When I was in middle school, the mid-late eighties, there must have been a lot of press for strange pets, as a kid, the things that happened always seemed a bit unexplained. In my little world, cats and dogs were so passé, the pets d`jour were potbellied pigs, sugar gliders, and chinchillas. If you must have a dog, a shar-pei would be the only way to go. Those were the days that my sister wanted a potbellied pig named Cookienose. Looking back it disappoints me still that my parents were not up for a pig in the home, and I say this without an ounce of sarcasm. Pigs are clean, they are smart, and they are cute. Those are major pluses in my book. A couple of years later my parents conceded to letting us adopt a cat, Mocha, from the pound. After that a TV news segment led to the adoption of a giant rabbit, Harvey, and two other cats, Tigger and Baby, followed in the ensuing years. I feel compelled to mention here that we owned probably 2-3 hamsters before I was ten. To this day, I am plagued by guilt that I didn’t pay more attention to those hamsters. I wake up in a cold sweat, dreaming of a very messy cage and a savagely wild hamster, the result of not enough nurturing in the critical stages.

I don’t remember the prices of the pets in the fancy pet store or its name, but I do remember the salesperson telling us that you could break a chinchilla’s bones just by holding it wrong. What a terrifying thing to tell a child. At the time I wanted nothing to do with those little creatures. It is entirely possible that they were just trying to discourage us from asking to hold the little things because they do not like to be handled and their fur absorbs the skin’s oils. It made me feel like an awkward giant, and the mere possibility of squashing something with my bare hands, or hands at all, disgusted me, and still does. Until 2003, I had only purchased hamsters in pet stores, so it was a sore spot. When I first stated that I wanted a chinchilla named Skip, I was half joking. I was on the phone with my boyfriend on one of our marathon calls. My sister and I lived in a petless apartment. It just seemed natural, a chinchilla named Skip. Surprisingly, they are not hard to find. I went to a couple of pet stores, and quickly found one with two chinchillas. I went back to the store three times to visit Skip. I grew to know the salespeople, and I grew to dislike the way they handled my pet. When I finally bought Skip, I really felt more like I was saving him from a life of being awoken in the middle of the day by the barks of a hundred puppies, and definite obesity judging by the saleswoman’s liberal hand with the raisins.

Skip has a scrutinizing countenance. He has big black eyes rimmed in blue, a pushed in nose with long teeth, and giant ears. Closely resembling a tyrannosaurus rex in shape, he has giant lower legs (for jumping), and tiny forearms with little hands. His spiky bristled tail is almost as long as his body and he can move it in 360 degrees. Skip’s thick fur is grey and black, each follicle is black at the roots and mottled grey to the tip. It is also the softest fur I have ever felt in my life. I would bury my face in his body, were it not for my acute allergies. He is very brave, always ready to jump out of his house or run after Buster. When I first got Skip, I tried to take a picture of him in his cage with a disposable camera. The flash went off and he produced the most pained sound I have ever heard, sort of a sharp gasp. It made me feel like a terrible awkward giant; the kind that could crush you or burn out your eyes with a single flash.

These days Skip has grown accustomed to my ham handed ways. He knows how to push me away with his tiny paw-hands or give me a warning nip. I know about him too. He likes raisins, anything wooden to chew, Pepsi cola boxes, lava sticks (but he chews them too fast and they are too expensive), carrots, parsley, lettuce, cilantro, banana, apple, papaya, his ball, and to be scratched on the belly, behind the ear and neck.

Guilty

2005-07-15T15:57:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite shows this past season was Showdogs Moms and Dads. It was great. A perfect reality show paring of comedy and desperation that makes the viewer feel just a little more together, a superiority boost that everyone needs at 10pm on a weekday. I laughed, sighed, and tsked the whole while, telling my boyfriend that if I ever get like that to lock me up because those people are goners. I know that I am in the deep end of the animal loving pool. C'mon I tear up everytime I see a person with a service dog. It is the selflessness, the unconditional love, it gets me every time. But, do I fit into the category of animal enthusiast or overly obsessive pet owner?
I do not whip out pictures for strangers, but if you ask, hey, I happen to have nine 3x2s right here. I talk to my pets, and sometimes even tell long drawn out stories about my day, which they probably don't understand. I can imagine Skip asking Buster, "What the hell is a fax!" I draw the line at dressing them because let's face it, that is teetering on the edge of sanity. Some folks decorate their entire homes around themes, like Rhodesian Ridgebacks, or Siamese cats. Okay, I do that too. When out shopping, I look for rabbit things to buy. Blessedly, I have not found a store exclusively for rabbits yet, selling t-shirts, mugs, and bumper stickers. Not that I would ever put a bumper sticker on my car. My dad instilled in me a deep respect for my car, and I just don't think I could do that. Years ago, I stuck an ASU Alumni sticker in my darkly tinted rear window as a kind of rebellion against the system. You couldn't even see that sticker, but I knew it was there, and I felt guilty about it the whole time. I couldn't sell that car fast enough.
I take care of my pets, but will never refer to myself as their mother. Instead I make up silly variations on the letter B or S. Buster is BB, Busty, Bus, Bdiddly, Bun, Bman, BBee, just "B" or Bojangles, and Skip is Skip-bo, SB, Skippy, Skipili dippili do, Skipster, Skipsky, Sippy, Sulu.
They do not sleep with me (but oh! if they would!). They have their own room, and they eat better than I do. I buy them fresh veggies 1-2 times a week, washing, cutting, and bagging veggies, which I feed them twice a day. They also get treats, hay, pellets, and veggies, faux lambskin mats, grass mats, old paper towel rolls, toilet paper rolls, bath mats, pop boxes, etc.
Buster even loves to groom me, licking my face, ear, arm, any exposed skin, so I can't even say that I don't kiss them. I started this website, hmm, I think I smell something, coffee, maybe? Is it time I was locked away with those Showdog parents? But who would take care of my babies?!

Before and after

2005-07-14T17:09:00.001-07:00

And Buster now!

Baby B

2005-07-14T17:09:00.000-07:00

These are some pictures of Buster as a baby, evidence of his cuteness. He has maintained that certain aloof quality that appears in these pictures, but his face is not so round and he has about tripled in size.

2005-07-14T17:08:00.000-07:00

Buster as a baby

U-haul

2005-07-03T09:19:00.000-07:00

My recent move made me nostalgic for all my other moves (hah)! Seriously, though, it was quick and painless. This is mostly due to the hard work of the "heavy lifters" and to a lesser extent, me, the supervisor.
I have moved (not counting moving from the hospital when I was born) 12 times.
Skip has moved (counting the move from the pet store to my home) 3 times.
Buster has moved (again, the pet store to home) 2 times.
No significance, just counting.

Introducing Buster

2005-06-21T16:07:00.000-07:00

Just call him and Buster will come leaping into the room...if he feels like it. If you pat the couch just the right way he will jump up there with you, and if you are very lucky, he will lick your arm, leg or face. Buster is most definately one of the cutest pets in the universe. Now my family and friends are sick of hearing sentences begining "Buster did the cutest thing today," so now they can read about it too. Guaranteed to make you smile even on the worst day, not just Buster, but Skip and a little of me too.