All The Nyans....

 

NaBloPoMo Post #1

All The Nyans, Part One:

 

We call all the little mammals in the house "Nyans," even the fox. "Nyan" is the Japanese word for the sound that a cat makes, and it is also a video which became a meme a few years back. 

On days that Eler Beth works I take care of the dogs, cats, and fox, to whatever extent they need until she gets home. That usually involves taking Bryant (her big dog) outside and putting him in the kennel or on a tie-out and feeding him his breakfast if she has to go to work early.  That is never a problem. Bryant is such a sweet, good-hearted dog, and he loves his "grandma."

Back in April she fostered two newborn kittens found abandoned on the side of the road. They didn't even have their eyes open. That involved around-the-clock feedings and cleanings and changing of bedding. They were supposed to be only fosters, but all of us became attached -- even Thomas -- so they are now OUR cats. They will never leave. Right after we got them it was time for her to go to Florida to pick up Remiel, the Fennec Fox she had bought. At five weeks old when we picked him up, he was just barely older than the two cats, so they have grown up together. 

Then in June she fostered a kitten that a friend had rescued from the floods in our area. She was tiny and bedraggled, skinny, but old enough to eat solid foods. The original plan was to find her a home, but.... Well, she is now one of the Nyans, along with the older two cats and the fox. 

So on days when Eler Beth works I will message her on her break and say something like, "Fed Bryant and put him outside for a little while and fed all the Nyans." Of course grandma duties also quite often include playing with and treating Bryant and the Nyans. :)

Now we have three foster kittens, again acquired before their eyes were even open, that absolutely will not stay here when they are old enough to be adopted. We have found a home for one of them already.  One of them is a bit sickly and requires more patience in feeding; the two bigger ones take a bottle just fine, but this one has to be fed with a medicine dropper.  Their eyes are open now, and they are starting to play.  So now the message from me to my daughter when she's on her break is, "Bryant is fed and outside. I've fed all the Nyans, and I fed the babies." 

I enjoy doing it, and I love that my daughter has a heart that is never too full to take care of abandoned babies, but I have to admit that I will be ready when this round of bottle feeding comes to a close and these three babies have found their permanent homes somewhere else, much as I love them!

Pictures coming in a future post along with updates.  Hope you and yours (and all your nyans) are doing well!

~ ~ Lori

Bottle Feeding Soren and Illyana

Bub, Duke, Honey, and Jo Jo

Eler Beth and I were talking recently about pets, and I was trying to remember when was the earliest I could recall having a pet, or the earliest pets I could remember.

There's Bub, of course. Bub belonged to my Grandmother Dowell whose house was almost directly across the road from ours. He was long-haired, mostly white with some light brown patches. My memory of him is that he was kind of medium to medium-large, but I was pretty little, so that memory could be skewed. I'll have to see if I can find a picture of him. I don't know where she got him, or if he actually belonged to my Uncle Harlan, one of my Dad's bachelor brothers who lived with Mamaw Dowell until she died. I'd say he was a collie/shepherd mix, with who knows what else thrown in.

He loved Mamaw and would walk with her over to our house and back when she was still feeling up to walking over by herself.  He was very, very protective of her.  He would also meet me in the drive when I was allowed to walk over to Mamaw's by myself (with Mom watching, unknown to me), and he'd walk me home. He always seemed to know when Mom was frying chicken or baking biscuits, and he'd wait at the back door for a hand-out. 

I think his real name was "Whitey," but at some point he became just "Bub." He was a sweetie and loved kids. And if someone said to him, "Awww, poor old Bub," in a slow, sorrowful drawl, he'd lie down on his side and make a sound between a whine and a howl that sounded for all the world like he was saying, "AwWwwW." And then of course he'd get a belly rub. I don't remember when or how Bub died, but I'm pretty sure it was from old age, and it was after my Mamaw died in 1970.

Another dog I can remember from my early childhood was my sister P.J.'s dog, Duke. He was a Rhodesian Ridgeback, smart as a whip, and loyally in love with P.J.  He would do anything for her. I think she had him before and after she was married, and as she married when I was about 5, I was probably pretty little when she first got him.  I can remember him knocking me down one time, accidentally, and licking my face, and I said to him, "Aw, dawdie! Aw, Doot!"  And that became a family story. I must have been pretty little if I couldn't pronounce doggie or Duke correctly, but I can remember it well. I was standing at the back door, waiting for someone to open the door for me, and when they opened it, Duke ran in and knocked me down. I wasn't really mad at him, though. He was a sweetie too.

The third dog I can remember from when I was really young was Honey.  She was honey-colored, small to medium, and that's really all I can remember about her, except that she was my sister Barbara's dog, and Barbara told me she'd share her with me. So Honey was my very first dog. The only other thing I remember about her, though, was that she got hit by a car, and we buried her directly across the road in what we called "the sand banks."  Over the years a lot of our fur babies were buried there.  Barbara put up a wooden marker for her and engraved her name on it. For many, many years it stood there, weathered but stuck tight, and you could still make out the letters spelling "Honey" when I was a teenager. 

Then there was Jo Jo.  He was sort of my dog, too. He belonged to my Dad's youngest brother, my Uncle Leonard. Uncle Leonard and his family moved into Mamaw's house after she died, and Uncle Harlan bought and moved into a mobile home and set it up on acreage he owned directly across from Mamaw's house (which he also owned), and next to my Dad's property.  Jo Jo had a habit of coming over to our house too. He was a standard poodle mixed with something that gave him some weight to go with his height. His hiar was solid black with lovely curls hair that were never clipped. I don't know why Uncle Leonard gave him to me, but he was technically the first dog I ever owned on my own.  I have no idea what happened to him, though. Perhaps he just died of old age. I didn't have him long, and I don't remember grieving for him, but perhaps I did.  Honey's death is really the first pet death that I can remember being aware of.

Well, anyway, those were the dogs of my extreme babyhood and youth.