Our very furry children

I was born with a small family, just my Mom and Dad and me.  Of course, I had grandparents and aunts and uncles and even some cousins, but we never got to see them very much.  Now, I have a HUGE family (see last post!), including 3 little furry children who are plenty of entertainment and I believe grooming us for parenthood.  So let's start from the beginning...

Our oldest is Sonoma.  She is an all black cat that we adopted when we were renting our first place in Colorado and couldn't have dogs.  J was allergic to cats at the time, but he also missed furry companionship so for my first birthday up in CO, he said he would get me a cat.  We traipsed around what is called the Dumb Friends League in CO, basically the Humane Society and fell in love with this spunky little crazy kitty.  From that point on, we were doomed.  After about 2 weeks of J feeling pretty awful, his allergies subsided and he was fine!  She was a real sweet kitten, and about the time we moved to our house in CO, she knew she had us hooked and flipped the switch. 

 How do I explain her personality? She just started running around like a crazy tiger, attacking my ankles and peeing on rugs for no reason.  My in-laws have now named her "Psycho Cat".  It's kinda like she is on crack some days.  The vet prescribed Paxil, and that seems to help a lot.  I'm serious - people tend not to believe me when I say our cat is on Paxil - but she is.  She gets about 3 drops of tuna flavored Paxil every evening in her dinner.  This picture says it all.

 Anyway, she loves us - J especially - but not so much other people.  However, she has this really funny habit of loving up on carpenters.  I don't know why.  Anyway, to say she loves J is an understatement.  She absolutely adores him.  When he comes home from work, she is right there waiting for him to pick her up and she rubs all over him.  She lets him hold her like a baby.  Truly a sight to see.  When he wakes up in the morning, she lays on his chest and purrs.  And occasionally she grooms him...he has really short hair on his head and will wake up to her licking his head in the morning.  Quite the scene.  And very humorous.  When I go on business trips, she sleeps on my side of the bed and when I come back she is mad at me.  Believe me, I can tell.  As soon as J sits down in his chair, she is on his lap.  Even though we adopted her on my birthday, she is really his cat.

I sometimes worry how she will react with children in the house.  But I know she wants to protect us all, even the dogs, which is funny.  So I think she will warm to the idea...that is if she lasts that long.  She'll be 8 this year!  All the cats I had as a kid passed away when they were 7 or 8, but she shows no sign of leaving us anytime soon.  She'll probably be the oldest cat on the planet, just to spite us.  But we do love her, and all her craziness even though our parents hate her with a passion.

Then we have Sierra.  She is an Australian Shepard and my little love.  She is super soft, and about 40 lbs and short.  She has the coloring of a rottweiler, but no other features.  We adopted her again from the Dumb Friends League in Denver, CO after we had returned from getting married in Arizona.  They actually told us she was half rottie, but we have determined she is all Australia Shepard.  She was our wedding present to ourselves now that we had a yard.  How could you not love that face?

 She is quite possibly the sweetest dog I have ever known.  I call her my "Love Bug" because she is just so cute and sweet.  If I have had a bad day, she knows it and is right there trying to make me feel better.  If J and I are fighting or even having a heated discussion with raised voices, even if we aren't upset with each other, she will come to one of us and paw at us as if to say, "don't fight!"   I would say Sierra is more my dog than J's.  She just loves to be around me and I love her so!  And she has got the "puppy-dog" face down cold...one look and I'm a puddle!  She is also a bit of an adventurer.  When we had her in CO, she loved to go on our Jeepin' trips with our friends and she was in heaven.  Hiking around, swimming, whatever.  She was never scared!!  She turned 6 in January.

And our youngest is Blazer - have you noticed a trend with the names?  They are all named after Chevy vehicles because J used to be a Chevy guy...now he is kinda a Nissan guy, but Chevy's are still dear to him.  Blazer is an Australian Cattledog.  He is white with grey and brown splotches.  Oh, and he has HUGE ears.  Well, maybe they aren't so huge.  But when we got him and he was smaller, they were like wings.  We actually joked that we should have named him Radar because he could hear radios in China!  When we got him, he had one blue eye and one brown eye.  Now the blue eye is about 3/4 brown.  He is a very energetic dog, but also very nervous sometimes.  He has gotten better, but on the first ever walk I took Blazer on, I had to carry him.  At that point he was about 15 lbs, and it turned out to be a shorter walk than we had planned!  He just gets very scared easily.  For instance, if he falls in the kitchen because he got excited because he heard J come home, he will be afraid of the kitchen because he thinks it "bit" him.  He also seems to run into things a lot, which I chalk up to him being younger (he'll be 4 this year) and not very observant.  It takes some urging to get him to go into the garage, and outside of his yard.  He is quite the homebody. But he is a great dog, once we got him broken of chewing!  Such a cutie!

Now for some comparisons that I have noticed and make me laugh.  First off, Sonoma is an independent.  She doesn't care what we are doing, she wants to do her own thing and will tell you so - she's very vocal, so I don't know who she resembles.  Sierra is most definitely like me.  When I get up at 5:30 to go to the gym, she looks at me like, "I'm ready!  Let's go!" whereas Blazer looks at me through one sleepy eye as if to say, "If you think I am getting up, you are crazy lady!" which is what J is like - not a morning person.  She even knows if I have on my athletic shoes and my watch and is ready for her walk and disappointed if I don't take her.  Sierra is usually up for anything...she doesn't get scared easily.  I tend to do things and not get scared, I just figure out that I don't care for them.

 Anyway, Blazer is nervous (as I said before) and J can be that way too.  For instance, I have grown up flying on a plane at least a couple times a year, if not more and J didn't.  So he hates to fly.  But once it is over,he is fine.  Blazer, same thing.  He is scared to try something new, but once he does it, he realizes it isn't so bad.  The first time he saw a child (seeing as the only people who live in our house are grown-ups) he didn't know what to do.  He didn't try and bite or get crazy, he just put his ears down and was like, "what's wrong with this thing?  It's so small?"  It was very comical.  Whereas, Sierra wanted to lay by the baby and protect her!  See, Love Bug - or Bug for short.  Blazer always has to be into whatever we are doing.  If J is cleaning the yard, Blazer is at his knee.  If I am washing the dishes, Blazer tries to put his paws up on the counter and watch - he loves water.  And he loves to play - which J is very good at doing with him.  They wrestle around and go crazy, and then Sierra gets vocal because she and I were sitting quietly watching TV and they interuppted!  They are all humorous to me and have definitely taught us how to parent. 

I think of them as our children and sometimes it worries me.  Mostly Sonoma worries me.  I kind of think of her as the "goth" kid.  She doesn't want attention, but she does.  She was our first pet, so what does that mean about our first child?  Sierra is calmer, although she does bark a lot (has to tell us what is happening around the neighborhood, even if it is just a car driving buy) so I look at her as the gossip queen too.  But she has an old soul and is very protective of us.  If any of our kids (yes, hopefully plural) turn out like her, I'll be in heaven.  And Blazer isn't bad either.  He's energetic.  Someone called him a tornado once and that hits the nail on the head.  So he would be that kid that does every sport out there and is great at it.  Again, not too worried about him as a kid.  It's just Sonoma that makes me think sometimes.  She is calming down and I think when we do have a kid, she'll deal.  But still something I think about.

Alright, time for dinner.  Happy last week of March folks!

Love.