JacPat.com

Oops! We did it again!

Meet Marble, the latest addition to our family. She’s about 9 weeks old and we’ve had her a little over a week now. Since Maggie has so much color, Jacki and I thought we’d get one in black & white

Munchie was pretty much fine with her from the start, but Maggie took a long time to adjust–she’d hiss and growl and was generally inconsolable for several days.

She came around, though, and now they play all the time. We hoped this would be the case, as Maggie never got to play with the older cats. Michael and Munchie were too set in their ways. Munchie seems to like Marble so far, and Maggie has a new playmate, so everyone’s happy right now.

Jacki’s going to kill me when she sees this on the Internet, but it’s too adorable to leave out!

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We lost our fourth pet in the ten years we’ve been married. Michael, the cat we rescued after she was abandoned by the tenants of the former rental house next door, became ill over the past few months. I had to take her to the vet for the last time today. She had lost a great deal of weight, was listless and unable to jump up to her food dish. Michael weighed only 4 pounds, 9 ounces this afternoon, down from 4 pounds, 15 ounces a week ago.

The vet suspected cancer, but she was too weak to undergo a biopsy and treatment probably would not have helped at this point. They had already ruled out kidney problems and hyperthyroidism with blood work, and the test for the feline AIDS virus has not yet produced a result (though it seems unlikely to be the cause, we went ahead with the test because while her blood work did not come back positive for the virus, it was not conclusively negative, either. We need to know so we can get our other two cats tested if necessary).

We had to put another cat, Michelin, down last year, and our dog Emmy about five years ago. Our other dog, Oso, died from congestive heart failure in the back yard about a year before that. I have been present for all of them. It doesn’t get any easier. I know it’s better than having them suffer like Oso did, but there’s this nagging little doubt as to whether they are really sick or someone made a mistake and they’ll get better after all. I mean, you don’t just take Grandma down to the doctor’s office to have her put to sleep just to “put her out of her misery”, right? Or take Junior out and shoot him because he broke his leg? No! We fight as hard as we can and even sometimes use machines to do the fighting. It’s just that our pets are not self-aware and have no concept of mortality - they just get sick and die; they don’t understand why.

Come to think of it, neither do I.

I know I’ve been promising my sister-in-law a Maggie update, but I just had to share this: we tried something amazingly cool last night — outdoor movies! I built a 12′ x 6′9″ screen out of 1-1/4″ PVC pipe and a painter’s tarp, rented an LCD projector from work and brought out a DVD player and an old stereo for sound, and we watched “Fantastic Four” under the stars (and blankets–the temperature was in the low 50’s!).

This was kind of a proof of concept, the idea being to host movie parties in the warmer months. I got a lot of ideas from a web site I stumbled across, the Backyard Theater forum. I love the idea of outdoor movies, and this is incredibly easy to do.

The screen took about 2 hours to build. I measured and cut the PVC and put it together with elbows and tees, then cut the tarp to size (a little larger than the frame). I added grommets around the perimeter of the tarp, then laced it to the frame with twine. The screen stood on a couple of pieces of rebar pounded into the ground next to the high fence/wall at the south side of our yard.

I tested the projector on supports of varying height and distance from the screen until I found the right spot. Next came the DVD player and bookshelf stereo system and voila! Instant theater. We dragged out a couple of lounge chairs and drinks and enjoyed the show. It was a little cool outside, but the test was a smashing success. We’re going to host a DVD viewing party with highlights from my 20th high school reunion, and this will be the perfect way to show it. I’m also looking forward to showing Independence Day outside in July.

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Jacki’s birthday present this year was a trip to the Vision Quest Ranch Bed & Breakfast in Salinas, California. The four animal-themed rooms are giant tents on stilts overlooking a 5-acre enclosure with three African elephants wandering freely with two ostriches.

Each evening, trainers bring a small exotic animal or two to all the rooms for the guests to see and learn about,

but the most amazing thing happens in the morning: your breakfast is brought to you with the help of one of the elephants! The trainers bring along a bag of fruits and vegetables for you to feed the elephants with, then they move alongside the deck for hands-on interaction.

We also got to take a private tour of the compund and see most of the other residents, including probably the most famous lion in show business, Josef.

Josef is a very talkative lion; he likes to roar and grunt to let everyone know he’s there. I pride myself on being able to sleep through just about anything, but a lion roaring at two o’clock in the morning was enough to get my attention. It’s good to know the ol’ survival instinct is alive and well!

We signed up for their Pachyderm Package, which enabled us to spend some up close and personal time with one of the elephants. We even got to give “our” elephant, Butch, a bath:

During this activity I learned a couple of things: Elephants’ feet, though quite large, are just as sensitive as ours, and they can even be ticklish; and elephants will break wind even when company comes over.

This was an incredible experience. Jacki and I both had a great time. The staff all made us feel welcome and they seemed glad to have us there. The company is called Wild Things, Inc., and their website is http://www.wildthingsinc.com.

As usual, there are lots of pictures in the Gallery. Go take a look, and feel free to comment!

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We climbed a rock today. It’s the one behind us in the photo below:

It’s called Moro Rock and it’s in the Sequoia National Park.

Jacki wanted to get away from town for a day, so we decided to go somewhere we had never been together. I’m not really the outdoorsy type, but it sounded like a nice change of pace.
We packed up a picnic lunch and headed north in Jacki’s car - it gets better mileage and handles better on twisty roads, which are the only kind in the park.

After a nice picnic, if you don’t count the gnats and bees, we made our way further into the park so we could go see the General Sherman Tree, the largest tree in the world. Once we found a parking spot, we walked the half-mile trail down to the tree. It was HUGE!

As we walked the fenced-in path around it, we came across a branch that had fallen off the tree in January, 2006. Just that branch was bigger than most normal trees; it crushed the fence on the path when it landed, and they had to build a new section of the pathway around it.

After exploring the surrounding area, including walking through a tunnel carved through the side of a fallen tree, it was time to head back to the car. Remember when I said it was a half-mile down? Well, what goes down must come up, or something to that effect…the sign at the top of the trail had said it should be about a 15-minute walk down and to allow 30 minutes to return - and they weren’t kidding! What had seemed like an easy stroll down to the tree turned into a grueling hike back up. At 7,000 feet the air gets pretty thin, and when you’re out of shape (wouldn’t being “out of shape” imply one was in shape to begin with?) it’s tough to hike uphill without sounding like you are the Big Bad Wolf practicing to render a couple of pigs homeless later.

We made it back to the car and caught our breath, then drove back through the park and took the turn to go to Moro Rock, which was the main reason we chose to go to Sequoia in the first place. We figured we would go and park in the lot by the rock, look at it, eat a snack, then go home. When we got there, however, the huffing and puffing had subsided and we decided to go on up.

To get to the top of the rock, you climb ~400 stairs that take you 300 feet up at a distance of about one-quarter mile. We were quickly revisited by the huffing and puffing, but pushed onward and upward. The payoff? A breathtaking (sorry) view from 6,725 feet of the mountains, forests and canyon below.

This photo shows where we took the first one in this post:

We made our way back to the car (downhill - yay!) and started driving back through the forest toward the egress. Jacki said she was glad we got out, did something out of the ordinary for a change, got some exercise, and managed to survive.

“We’re not out of the woods yet”, I said.

Jacki simply groaned and drove on.

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