Goodbye Miss Tabs

Goodbye Miss Tabs

    So the spirit of our loving and calm cat Miss Tabs has passed on to join her brother and all the other kitty friends she lived with at our house over the past 18years. 
So many it is hard to recall all of them in detail-, Spindles (Miss Tabs twin brother), Cooper- the big old white fluffy one, Black Lucky, so shy and gentle with  lovely eyes, funny Pugs, who loved the water, Blue cat, who just loved people but wasn't that happy with his fellow cats, Pixel and Wizzywig, the computer cats and probably a few more that came in as fosters and then passed on to new homes. The ones we remember well are the ones that came but stayed.

So what will we remember about Miss Tabs.

She came in as a feral kitten from a feral mother with a feral brother so it's not really surprising that she preferred the great outside rather than the warm and cosy inside. The few times we tried to keep her confined inside was the only time she was any trouble making her feelings felt by peeing in bad places and yowling! 

She would usually appear once a day  to come and feed and then again disappear into the woods and garden to do her own thing.She would accept a gentle stroking from time to time but didn't want to be held and getting her into a cat carrier was very frustrating for both the cat and me.
She has one bad eye and as she got older it became worse and gradually we realized she was in fact blind. It was amazing to see how she still managed to find her way around the yard. It was only in the last few months I noticed she was suffering from kitty Alzheimer's. She would start walking around in circles and I would have to go out and put her down in another place that she would recognize so she could get her bearings again. 

Then she became deaf and started to lose her sense of smell. Finding her food became a challenge as she could be right by it and even with me banging on the plate she still had trouble finding it. But she managed without complaint .I knew her time was coming to an end when her back legs started to become so weak she could no longer jump up on to a favorite chair or onto the stool to get in the cat door.

We will certainly miss her as we do all our pets when they pass on but we know from a very uncertain beginning, she had a great kitty life- one of the best.
Rest in peace Miss Tabs. 

Read about her as well at my earlier blog  
 only700.blogspot.com March26 2013

The Dog Master by W.Bruce Cameron

The Dog Master by W.Bruce Cameron

If you like dogs and a good story, this is the book for you.
It tells the fictional story of how the first wolf just might have been introduced to the first human in order to form  a new species, the dog.
It takes place in the Paleolithic age, about 30,000 years ago when a variety of different tribes were roaming the earth. It was a time when man lived solely by hunting and gathering . It was also a time of the beginning of the ice age and food resources were  in short supply so competition for food was great.
That is setting the stage for the novel.
The plot of the book tells the story  a young deformed man, Mal of the Kindred tribe who befriends a dying mother wolf and her litter of pups and of his experiences within his tribe and with other tribes, both friendly and not so friendly. Mal,  after he is thrown out of his tribe, gradually  trains the young wolf pup, that he has saved, to become his helper.
 The book is well researched and it certainly could have happened this way that "wolf" became "dog".
It is a good story.
I really enjoyed it.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

This is an older book I picked up at a book sale and I remembered that the book had been made into a movie which had been very successful. I also noted that there was also a real life murder enquiry that went on this year that seemed to follow the pattern of this book so I thought I’d better read it and find out why it had held everyone's attention.

It is a murder/mystery enquiry. A young wife goes missing and when there are no clues to her disappearance, her husband is suspected as being involved as is often the case. He claims he is totally innocent of any crime but is he?

The book delves into the past relationship of the couple, the ups and downs of their marriage and the police enquiry, until a solution to the mystery is found . It is told as if it is written by the wife and the husband separately in different chapters and so the complete story unfolds  from 2 different angles - an interesting way to write a book.

It certainly holds your interest and has a surprising ending and like all good books, keeps your attention until the very end.

It was well worth reading and I shall look out for other books by this author.

Halloween painting.

Halloween painting.

A bit late but need to put  up  on my blog so it's there or else I will be wondering next year if I did one. This is an entry into  the Master Painters Challenge for this month and the title was 'Trick or Treat" This is not very original as a creation but stuck for ideas this month.