Waiting for the Roses

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It’s New Year’s Day but it doesn’t feel like New Year’s Day because there was no Tournament of Roses Parade this morning.  Because the holiday falls on a Sunday, the parade (and the Rose Bowl football game) have been moved to tomorrow, in accordance with long standing tradition.  I normally get up early on New Year’s Day to watch the parade live on TV but this year I got to sleep in.  Now tomorrow is going to feel like New Year’s Day … as if I wasn’t already mixed up about what day it is because of being on Winter Break!

I do enjoy seeing the floats in the Rose Parade, but my favorite part is the equestrian units.  Of course, they never show them long enough for my taste (I could certainly do with less marching band coverage) but it’s not often you get to see horses on TV so I take what I can get.  I always watch the KTLA coverage with Bob Eubanks and Stephanie Edwards because Bob knows horses and always makes sure to comment on the equestrian units.

Other than watching the parade, I really don’t have any New Year’s traditions.  Some years I don’t even stay up until midnight to watch the ball drop in Times Square, although I did last night — mainly because I was pinned to the couch by a very happy, very heavy cat named Harry who has suddenly decided after almost 9 years of life that he is a lap cat.

Leopard Love

Yesterday I went on a VIP tour of The Living Desert with my sister P, her friend L and L’s daughter T.  L & T had received the tour as a gift from another friend who had purchased it at a fundraiser.  All of us have been the The Living Desert before but it’s been several years since the last time we were out there, so we were all excited about it, especially the behind-the-scenes at the leopard exhibit portion.

The leopards in question are a pair of Amur leopards, a male and female, both around 18 years old.  The Living Desert doesn’t breed leopards, and they got both of these cats after their breeding careers were over (the male is neutered).  We got to go into the Commissioner’s House, which is a private party facility not open to the general public.  One entire wall of the Commissioner’s House is made of plate glass, for a perfect view of the leopard enclosure.

Here is the female leopard giving me a very “I am a cat and you are a pitiful human” look.

Male leopard

And here’s the male looking rather hungry.

Here you can see just how close we were to the cats.  This is T taking photos on the other side of the Commissioner’s House (the glass wall is sort of U shaped).

The leopards were very nonchalant about being watched.  The female stopped to wash her paws right in front of me.

Then she plopped down and washed her face.

Amur leopards are so rare that their coats go for close to $1 million on the black market.  I think it looks much better on this beautiful girl, don’t you?

This move is so typical of a cat.  That paw was just the thickness of the plate glass away from me. I put my hand up against it and our “hands” were about the same size.

It’s a good thing that glass was there, because I don’t think I could have resisted tickling this belly!

Meanwhile, across the enclosure, the male was channeling my cat Billy with this “graceful” pose …

Eventually she dozed off …

And so did he.

These gorgeous cats put on quite a show for us (I felt like one of those obnoxious papparazzi the way I was following the female around) before they settled down for a long winter’s nap.  What a wonderful way to begin our VIP tour of The Living Desert!

 

Related articles

• Amur leopard captured on camera in China for first time since 1949 (telegraph.co.uk)
• Persian Leopard Reappears in Afghanistan (naturalhistorywanderings.com)

Feline Holiday Decorating Tips

Holiday decorating in a house with five cats in it is not easy.  There are only about 2 places in the entire house that cannot be reached by felines and one of those is the ceiling.  This severely limits where we can decorate and what we can decorate with.  After much trial and error (note: decorating a tree with only unbreakable or paper ornaments saves on cleanup of broken ornaments but still results in a tree with no decorations on the bottom third) we have reduced our decorations to:

• A mini (2 1/2′) tree that gets hidden in the bathroom at night to protect it

• A few tree ornaments that will stand up on their own scattered on the mantel
• Some glass balls hung from the decorative metal leaf sculpture above the mirror over the fireplace

• A wreath hung on the outside of the screen door

And of course, nothing in my life would be complete anymore without a little Zenyatta:

We also got a Christmas cactus that sits on the mantel during the day and on the bathroom counter at night (because apparently the first thing a cat thinks to do when encountering a new plant is eat it):

The cactus and the tree both go into protective custody in the bathroom at night, mostly because of THIS creature:

Pippin

Don’t be fooled by the innocent act; he is deviously smart and has the power of levitation as well.

The Cat Scan

Cover of Homer's Odyssey

The Cat Scan

Wow. I stumbled across this site today and all I can say is: I want to do this! The problem is, I don’t think any of my cats would cooperate by sitting/standing on the scanner long enough. If I didn’t want them on it, they would be on it 24/7 but as soon as I ask them to do it, they will refuse just to be contrary. Such are cats …

Speaking of cats, I recently read a wonderful book: Homer’s Odyssey by Gwen Cooper, about a remarkable cat who had to have his eyes removed at a very young age and therefore never learned to see. Despite this “handicap,” Homer learned how to navigate his home, catch flies, climb EVERYTHING and make humans fall in love with him. Homer survives several moves, a flight from Miami to New York, 9/11 (living just blocks from Ground Zero) and his Mommy’s marriage to a man who (supposedly) doesn’t like cats.

A Cat and A Duck Walk Into a Bar

Look — a duck!

This is the story of a boy (cat) and his duck.  When my sister and I went on vacation last summer, we stayed at the Chuckchansi Casino in Coarsegold, CA just outside Yosemite National Park.  One of the little perks in the room was our very own mini rubber ducky, who came home with us.  Most of the time, he lives on my sister’s dresser but the other day he ended up on her bed, where Timothy discovered him.  Once I demonstrated Ducky’s little squeaky function, it was love at first sight.

Soon Tim was tumbling Ducky around on the bed, having a good old time.  I’m not so sure if Ducky was enjoying it, though.

No, really, he LIKES being upside down!

They paused for a few photos, as you can see.  Just look at the LOVE on Timmy’s face!  There’s nothing like a cat and a duck to warm your heart.

A cat and his duck

Finally, they posed for this lovely portrait, which I like to call “Cat and Duck.”  I could call it “Timothy and Ducky” or even “Timmy and Chuck” (short for Chukchansi) but I like the more classical, timeless quality of the generic “Cat and Duck.”  They could be any cat and duck, at any period in time, just enjoying the wonderfulness that is the bond between a cat and a rubber duck.

And I’m sure that if they did walk into a bar, something hilarious would ensue.  Tim’s just that kind of cat, you see, and Chuck, well, he did grow up in a casino …