Crab Paradiso

We have welcomed 2 new little friends into our family.  Crabbie and Pattie.  That's a little Spongebob humor.  We were crabsitting for our neighbors and decided they might be fun to have around.

You can NOT imagine how much fun we had setting up our "crabitat".  Oh, how we labored over whether to buy the coconut house or the tiki hut house.  Should we get the pool with the palm trees or just use a shell from Seaside?  Decisions. Decisions.  Our crabs are fairly large.  When they first began roaming around their home, Madden called them spiders because they were about as large as a tarantula.

Of course,  Jack is finding every bit of trivia and health care information about hermit crabs.  There is a great website that has all kinds of info.  For instance, apparently there are a couple of species of hermit crabs.  hmm.  Jack got right on it.  Inspecting the shape

of eyes, color of shell, etc.  He had an entire checklist of things the crabs needed for a proper living environment.  He's going to make a great Dad one day.  Hays loves to feed them a little snack at sundown (when they are most active).  Yesterday, she chopped up banana and gave it to them.   The other day, carrots.  She drops in the little treat and says, "Eat up crabbies!"

I hope these little guys have a nice long life.  Watching them have their shell attacks and push each other around the tank is fast becoming a family pastime.

Minnie, Where are you?

Our kitty Minnie is missing!

Minnie has always been a roamer. That's how we ended up with her. She started infiltrating our house when Jack was 3 and Hays was about 6 months old. My earliest memory was of her curled up next to baby Hays in her Boppy pillow and Hays grabbing hold of some fur, ripping it out of Minnie's belly and Minnie not even flicking her tail. I thought, "Now that's a good cat". She kept up her visits daily and nightly. On cold nights, we'd let her in. "Minnies" was Hays's first word. So, when we moved...we took her with us. Her "real" owners be damned. They had about 12 other cats to deal with anyway.

And now she's missing. Strangely enough, Tom asked, "Has anyone seen the C-A-T?" Then we began to notice, she wasn't coming home to eat (kitty does love her food and the occasional tuna) and a quick snuggle. Searching the neighborhood, we began to notice every stop sign, light pole, big tree, etc. had fliers with missing kitties and small dogs. Whispers of coyotes began from the neighbors. Sigh.

We have only told Jack that Minnie is missing. He is crying with worry over her. We will put out our own flyer. I will continue to look for her on every jog. Thankfully, Khaki is keeping Hays distracted.

Please put some positive energy into the universe for our Minnies. Pray that she is only being held captive by a well meaning stranger intrigued by her quirky personality, or that Minnie has finally tired of all the noise over here and found a new home.

The Intruder

Khaki has become a guard dog. The other day, while Tom was working late, Khaki was outside on her perch. A smallish hill that faces out toward the street in front of our house. (See picture at left.) I had just put all of the kids to bed and there was still a little light outside. All of a sudden, I hear her bark. This was not her typical oh!it's-another-jogger bark. This was a real, grown-up I'm-protecting-my-house bark. Well, I look out at her. Still on her perch, but barking up a storm. I look in the general direction of where she is barking..nothing. I walk from the back door to the front of the house to see in the direction she is looking...nothing. Still, she continues to bark. I go outside to check things out more closely. Cautious because my neighbor has told me about foxes being in the neighborhood. I'm expecting to see a dog, or a realtor putting a sign in our yard, or a wondering stray. There is nothing. But wait, what is that? I see something stuck on my fence. As I walk closer, Khaki starts to get very fierce. Doing her bob-n-weave between me and the fence. Howling, growling, barking..."GOOD Lord, Khaki what's wrong with you?", I'm thinking. It's a white plastic bag. I yank it out of the fence and show it to her. She immediately cowers. I shake it in her face, and cussing in my head. I am totally not amused by her lack of protectiveness and her abundance of stupidity. She hits the ground, sure she will be killed by the white plastic bag. I march back to the door, muttering. She takes off on a 100 mile an hour tear through the yard. Thinking to herself, "Yippee! Alive another day!"

Minnie Kitty

Now a picture of the last of our family members. This does not, however, indicate her rank within the family. In fact, Khaki (who stands over Minnie, caging her between her four legs) knows Minnie is higher up the totem pole than she.

Minnie was actually our neighbors cat from our old neighborhood. When Hays was 6 months old, she pulled a clump of hair out of Minnie's side. And Minnie didn't even flick her tail. Now that's a good cat! She's just kept coming to our house, and the neighbors would come over to retrieve her..sometimes. When we moved, we just brought her with us. Once we told the neighbors that Minnie was Hays' first word..they agreed to let us keep her.

Tom loves to hate her. And he used to torment her (mostly under his breath) all the time. Once we got Khaki (who is cra-ay-zay), he realized and admitted, tormenting Minnie (now Khaki) is "just what I do." I guess he realized that Minnie wasn't so bad--small, quiet, doesn't beg, comes and goes throughout the day, basically the complete opposite of Khaki.

'course, everyone else loves her. And Tom is coming around.