Kitties Kitties. Marshmallow & Pumpkin

 I was thinking since I had written about all the other animals it was not fair to neglect the two inside kitties. Bumpus will have to have his own post later...

Marshmallow and Pumpkin are siblings. Marshmallow is a boy and Pumpkin is a girl. They were a gift to our youngest son from his girlfriend for his birthday last year. So they are still babies really. 

Marshmallow was very white when he became part of the family. And Pumpkin of course had lots of orange color with white mixed in.As time has gone on, Marshmallow has started looking more like a toasted marshmallow instead of a puffy white one. 

Here he is relaxing on the bed. He has the prettiest blue green eyes. And you can see how he is getting a bit orange on the top of his head. He is a very mellow dude. And a little bit of a scaredy cat. He will run and hide is he gets startled. Or if he see the granddaughter coming - haha. 

Pumpkin is orange like her name suggests. She is the adventurous one in this set of kitties. She will wait at the door when we come in at night and look like she is ready to dash outside. Which is not a good idea since there are coyotes in our neighborhood. 

She is very lovey and lets our granddaughter pick her up and cuddle her and drag her all over. Usually plopping her on my lap since Pumpkin is getting bigger all the time and weighs more.

She is upstairs looking out at what is going on in the yard. Wonder if she can see Mrs. Fuggles from that window.

Turtles and Tortoises Among Other Things.

 Funny how animals come into your life. Right now all the ones we have are gifts or rescued from somewhere else.

Current list of Critters:

1. Darby - the dog
2. Marshmallow (cat)
3. Pumpkin (Marshmallow's sister)
4. Kitty Bumpus (the outside sort of feral cat)
   
5. Skeeter (red slider turtle)
6. Tilly (another red slider)
7. Mrs. Fuggles (African Sulcata Tortoise)
8. Various gold fish

 I must admit I do buy goldfish off and on as needed. What that means is if the visiting blue heron fills up at the "snack bar" then the number of goldfish I have in the pond goes down significantly. This year I did have a few fish that came from a friend though. Interesting how big and fat they can get in the pond. And they have actually figured out how to hide better. So I might think they are all gone and buy more only to discover that there were some left, they were just hiding. 

 The Turtles

The red sliders live in the pond with the fish of course. They have a marble slab to bask in the sun on and some sand if they feel like laying around on something softer. They also sometime sunbathe on the rocks surrounding the pond. Skeeter was the reason we got the pond functioning again.  He belonged to a friend who lived with us for a while and her little Skeeter had always lived in a terrarium. We put him in pond and he (actually she) GREW bigger. And keeps growing.

Some other friends read that we had Skeeter and asked if we wanted another red slider that someone had randomly dropped off in their yard. Of course I said yes since I figured fish were not enough company for Skeeter. So Tilly became part of the pond family. She is bigger than Skeeter and probably much older. 

The two of them used to try to get out of the pond enclosure, but now they seem pretty happy. Sunshine, fish friends, food everyday... their life is pretty good. 

The Tortoise

Mrs. Fuggles wandered into a yard down the street from us. The people called me up and said hey we think we have your turtle (I had a box turtle that had disappeared several years earlier). Assignment - look up box turtles and look up African Sulcata tortoises. Quite a size difference. But hey, they had never seen my box turtle, so they were guessing. Needless to say - we went down to look at what we thought would be a turtle about 8 inches long, and came home with a tortoise that was probably 16-18 inches long... That was in 2009. So we have had her for 12 years so far. I will have to measure her. I know I can't pick her up any more as she weighs too much.

We had a shadehouse with a fence around it, so that was where we put her. After she had been here about 3 months or so, another neighbor mentioned that the people living next to him had a tortoise that was missing ... I went over to tell them that I assumed the one at my house was theirs. They were taking care of it for a friend. Hadn't even noticed it was gone that long. They came over to look at it two times. Then they moved away. So I am guessing that after this many years, the tortoise is mine - for now anyway. They live a long time. So she will be here after I am gone. We are not sure how old she is. Maybe around 20.  The people who were watching her for someone else said she was 3-5 years old back then. 

In the winter we would put her in the garage at night to keep her warm. When she managed to open the garage refrigerator we figured it was time to build her a house in her garden paradise and leave her out there year round. Her little house is heated for winter cold. And she has dug herself a long tunnel underground that she goes into when it is hot in the summer. To make sure she had plenty of room, I kept making the fenced in area larger. We finally decided her yard was big enough and made it look pretty. As long as I keep the romaine lettuce, corn, watermelon and other delicious greens coming, she is pretty happy.

In case you wondered, Fuggles is a type of English hops. I just liked the name. It sounded sort of earthy.

WK1 A: Why I Chose this Theme

 Hah-- Here I am making another new blog to share how to do it. As with all programs they do a refresh -- kind of like the grocery store, so you will walk around and find things you never noticed before -- or get totally frustrated -- which is often me when I am in a hurry. 

With Blogger I tend to poke around and try all sorts of things because it has that button at the top to reset the normal settings -- so I am not going to break it. Or haven't yet. 

Anyway I will send out the video -- it will be in the Announcements so you can check it out if you need help figuring out how to change things up. 

Again-- the fun backgrounds that Blogger has are there when you choose advanced options and choose to change your background - You can add your own image back there or choose one of theirs -- but remember -- the way to save is that tiny icon on the bottom of the right side.

Have fun with this. And since this blog is about my dog Darby - I will add an image of her... Just a minute while I find the one I want.... I found it, added it in and dragged the photo where I wanted. I also chose to have it on the right side so the text would flow around it. The add a photo option for me was in the ... (dot dot dot) area. 

So that is my dog Darby and she has a baby toy from my granddaughter. She "caught" the bunny. I think this photo is very funny. It is one of the favorite ones I have taken of her.  Darby is a very sweet dog and loves to gently carry her babies with her in the house and in the back yard. She has found a variety of Ada's baby toys and also cat toys that are laying around the house. Hope you like my blog and my story.