Goodbye Little Loach

The time has come for us to say goodbye to our Pakistani Loach (botia lohachata). Not to worry... he is still alive and healthy, but for over a year, he has been the only fish in our fishtank. Now that we are moving, Mom has decided not to go through the whole trouble of tearing down the fishtank and setting it back up just for one fish. When she had more time, she used to love keeping a nice fishtank... live plants, lots of fish, she even had a chemistry kit to test the water and everything. But now she just has too much else going on. Mom has found a really good home for him with a friend, and she is glad she knows he will be taken care of.


Mr. Loach was my first friend when I was a kitten. He also provided hours of entertainment. When I was small (like in the first photo here) Mom and Dad put a chair near the fishtank so I could look in more easily. Eventually I was able to get on top of the fishtank and make sure he was safe. Plus it was another neat way to look at him. Sometimes we would even nap together. Mr. Loach liked naps... and in fact would sleep on his side on the bottom of the tank. People who didn't know about him would often think he was sick or even dead! Only one time did I try to get in and visit him. But I slipped and got very wet and decided it was better to have a friendship between the glass.


Somewhere Mom has a picture of Mr. Loach from when the fishtank was pretty and fancy, but of course she can't find it now. This is a picture of another Pakistani Loach on the web. He's not too big (only about three inches long), and has neat whisker things in the front of his face. Our loach is somewhere between 6 and 7 years old. In the wild, he most likely wouldn't live this long, but in captivity he may live up to 11 years!! Let's hope he does.

I will now close with a few more pictures of Mr. Loach and I having some fun together. These are not recent pictures... they are from before I was full-grown. I was about 7 or 8 months old in the pictures below (much younger in the pictures above!). Aside from my size, you can tell these are older pictures because the fish food was on top of the fishtank. This was before I found out how yummy fish food is and then it had to be stored in the refrigerator. You can click any pictures to make them larger!

YIKES!

Mom checked the catfood recall list the other day and was glad not to see the kind of food we eat on there. But then she saw the list again today, and OUR FAVORITE FOOD is on there!!!!! Mom is feeling really guilty because she doesn't know if it was there the other day and she just didn't see it... and we've been eating it this week. Fortunately, there have been no complaints for this specific food, and Mattingly and I are not exhibiting any abnormal or sickly behavior... but still she's worried. Now she just doesn't know what to feed us! I will eat pretty much anything, but Mattingly is a bit more picky with his wet food... and we have to be eating wetfood because as soon as Mom tried to decrease our amounts, we both started yakking up hairballs. She reinstated wet food and we've been fine. This should be interesting.

Other than that, strangers keep coming to look at the apartment we live in now, and Mom and Dad are a bit frantic because Dad only has one day off between now and move day. But really, that only affects the amout of time Mattingly spends under the bed while I investigate the strangers and report back to him. Even though our schedule is pretty much the same, I will be happy when everyone can feel more settled! Hope all of you are well out there in kitty blogland!!

Help Earl Grey!!

We don't really know Earl Grey real well, but we have seen him on FOS and on his blog. I'm sure you can imagine that we are very fond of gray and white kitties around here, so we wish him all the very best!!! (Well, we would wish him the best even if he wasn't gray and white... but... you know what I mean!)

LOTS OF HEALING AND LOVING PPPPUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRSSSSS TO YOU EARL GREY AND FAMILY!

Ridiculousness.... and moving too

Hi everykitty. Mattingly is not doing a good job of updating the blog regularly so I'm going to give it a shot for a bit. It's good timing because I need to get something off my chest so to speak.

Some of you have blogged in the past about nicknames given to you by the humans you live with. It's time to let you know about my nicknames. I'm hoping if I put this out there on the internet, and my parents see how ridiculous they sound, they may go back to calling me Harlie. I like my name. Unfortunately, Mattingly is the only one in this home who uses it! The first nicknames weren't so strange, though some of them may have been a bit rude. They called me Goofy, Silly, Crazy, Crazy Eyes, Krazy Eyes Kitty (adapted from a character on a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode), and sometimes Mom even called me Princess. Often I would also just be called Kitten. Also I have the nickname Chitten which is related to Mattingly's nickname of Chatten (another story there for another time). It's nice to have names that go together at least.

But recently, Mom came up with Harles Barkley (as in the basketball player). This made Dad laugh a lot. So then I became Harles Barkley. They tried to come up with other famous Charles', but only came up with Charles in Charge and Charlie Brown. So then Dad thought of Harlie Barkley Brown. This made Mom laugh a lot. Then they though it was hysterical say my "last name" first, and started calling me "Barkley, Harles"... and you have to pronounce the "," so they really say "Barkley Comma Harles". Finally, they are loving the Barkley, so I am often called just Barkley or even Barkles. THIS IS THE NOISE A DOG MAKES!!! They are using me for jokes... for their own amusement! The INDIGNITY of it all! I hope that by coming forward with my humiliating story, it will help to save not only me from further humiliation, but maybe even some of you who have to suffer with completely ridiculous nicknames.

Oh, and in other news we are moving in two weeks, so there will be a decreased incidence of blogging over here since there is a lot to do to prepare. I don't really know what that means, but that's what Mom told me. This is pretty much the only home I've ever known. Mom and Dad assure Mattingly and me that we will like the newer place better because it's much bigger. I guess we'll see. Mom says it's going to get weird around here first. I'll keep you posted!

A million blogs at least!!

It's official... this Cat Blogosphere is GIGANTIC!!! In light of all the recent events I thought it would be a good idea to go around and let everyone know how much we appreciate and enjoy them with an individual note. Well this is a much bigger project than I anticipated! You can see here that I am all tired out, and I'm not even halfway through the list! Not only that, I also realized how many blogs I don't visit. I would love to get to know everyone, but that's a tall order! I thought I would get it all done this weekend, but this will have to stretch out into the week. So if you haven't heard from me, please don't take offense or worry... I will be by as soon as I can. I know you all know what it's like to have to work around human schedules and obligations. Hmmmm... if Daisy can take an Operations Course, maybe I can see about taking a Typing Course so I can just blog myself with no help. In the meantime though, I am at the mercy of Mom's schedule. We hope you all had a restful and peaceful weekend. We did. And now I need to do a little more resting. Hugs and purrs to you all!

P.S. Tipper... I swear that is just extra winter fluff on my belly... I'm not as rotund as this picture makes me look! Not that there's anything wrong with that... I just want you to know I try to take care of myself!

P.S.S. When this current project is done, Harlie and I have to get ourselves together to join Derby's Dreamcats, and also Harlie wants to be a Pink Lady! Oh and we want to adopt a Virtual Squillion too. And we still haven't joined Coats of Many Colors. There's so much to do around here!!

Something Fun

Saw this on a few other blogs and snagged it. Wanted to post before we forgot!!

Mattingly -- [adjective]: Fuzzy to the touch 'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Harlie -- [adjective]: Having the texture of congealed cheese 'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Um... I like mine and it's true... but... um... Harlie kind of got the short end of this one. I promise you all that she is nothing like congealed cheese!! She is soft and silky! Hmm... maybe this one wasn't so fun for her after all.

Here Harlie... I made you this:

Hope that helps!

Is it over yet?

Yikes! While things over at Mr. Litterbox got a bit out of hand, I hope nokitty will really stop blogging because of it. We all make mistakes and I think everyone understands that. There were a bunch of misunderstandings that have been clearing up the past two days, and soon we will have talked and blogged this thing out. Can we move on after that? I hope so. The blogs that are thinking of shutting down and are going on hiatus are some of our favorite blogs. I hope you won't deprive us of the laughs and good times, and even some of the tears they have helped us to cry. We have learned so much, not only about cat stuff, but also about the type of kitties and humans we would like to be... and all of that is meant in a GOOD way. Beau, Zeus, and Skeezix are three outstanding cat bloggers who have done so much good for the community as to far outweigh any negativity from this experience. And we love Triple S (Scooby, Shaggy and Scout) so much that we would be so so sad to see them go as well... even for a little while.

I hope as a community we can say a collective "I'm sorry" followed by a collective "I forgive you". I think no less of anyone after this ordeal. As I said, we all make mistakes... no one is immune from that, kitty or human. Lessons have been learned, and that is what is important. But to just run away from it all after this would be tragic. I think we can be a stronger community because of this, but only if we all stick around and continue to work together.

I am leaving the post below about Skeezix up, because the things I said about him are true. They are also true about many other kitties (except possibly the actually litterbox stuff), and I'm sorry that I singled one cat out and didn't recognize all of you. Beau and Zeus, as well as so many other kitties, have done so much to welcome other kitties into the blogosphere, acted as ambassadors and been extremely generous is so many ways. In the next few days, we are going to be going around and letting cat bloggers know why we appreciate them, because we think all of you are special.

I hope no kitty or their humans act too rashly in this situation. Emotions are high right now, but time will heal all.

Love and purrs and headbutts from Mattingly, Harlie, and their Mom