High Jumper

Perry is so good at jumping high to catch things that we throw to her. I think we have a future Kitty Olympian :)

Perry & Water

Unlike oil and water, and unlike MOST cats and water, Perry and water apparently go quite well together. After several days of spilling her water - sometimes multiple times per day - on the kitchen floor, today we decided to take full advantage of the current fascination with water and give her a bath, the first real one in her life. (She has had some partial baths/wipe-downs before but not a full immersion.)

We started slow: we put one of her small water bowls inside a large platter, which she surely could not tip over. She did tip over the small bowl inside it, though, and began playing with the water in the platter. Next, we moved to putting out a little Tupperware tub of water. She played in that, got in and out very quickly several times, and seemed all in all quite pleased with the experience. (The wall and cabinets surrounding the play area did not fare quite as well.) Here's a short video of this (the longer, better video is too large to upload here - you'll have to see it on my Facebook page):



Finally, we graduated her to the bathtub. Ben filled it up a few inches with warm water, then got the small tub and put shampoo and water in it. The bath commenced from there (video is on Facebook as it's too large to upload here), and after a nice dousing, we took her out and she was dried off as thoroughly as possible before being set free again :)



And here ends the "How to Give Your Cat a Bath" lesson.

Now, one more video - this one is of Perry jumping for her animals the other night. Maybe we should enter her in the circus...

Kitten Playtime...and Other Pics

Perry is getting bigger and bigger - but she remains playful as ever. Tonight she was quite hyper and running around and then jumping up high in the air as we threw animals to her to catch. Of course, she didn't do it nearly as well when we videoed her, but here is a little snapshot into her skills:



Perry's playtime is not limited to running and jumping. The other night when we were playing Scrabble (on the table to try to avoid her messing up the game on the floor or coffee table), she insisted on sitting on top of the table so she could watch us. She of course wanted to bite the wooden letter holders and the letters too, but we gave her her own letter holder (with no letters) and that seemed to appease her for awhile... We also gave her Ben's letters at one point just for the purpose of a photo op :)


And Perry, the Scrabble-playing kitten:



And while I'm at it (since I haven't updated this blog in about a million years), here are a couple other recent pics:

Pumpkin scones that I made last night using a Starbucks copycat recipe from the internet (they are super good): (Sorry the lighting is bad but our kitchen light is burnt out at the moment...it made for a challenging cooking experience, too, and all the more reason I was glad these turned out well!)


And, finally, a picture from Halloween (where we both look a little too mesmerized by the camera!) of us with our pumpkins we carved:

Kitten

Video of Perry the kitten:

Day Trip to Charlottesville

We took a trip today to Charlottesville to visit Jefferson's Monticello. It was beautiful with all of the fall colors. Only thing that'd have made it better would've been a blue sky! But, despite the somewhat dreary, overcast weather, we can't complain since at least it didn't start raining until we got in the car and began to drive away (yes, the timing was that perfect). We kind of missed Halloween/trick-or-treating, but then, we don't usually have many more than 2-3 trick-or-treater clusters in our neighborhood anyway. So, that's okay - the Starbucks pumpkin spice lattes were sufficient celebration of Halloween, I think :)

Enjoy these pictures, and try to imagine the colors about 10 times more brilliant (the pictures really don't do them justice - not sure if it's my camera or if the lighting was just bad from the overcast sky!).

Monticello & Halloween - 103109

Critters in the 'Burg

Wow, it's already October. Hard to believe! It's still warm outside, so it still feels a bit more like late summer than fall, but I know the cold weather is coming. I love fall, from pumpkin bread and pumpkin spice lattes to the pretty leaves and football games.

Today we went on a walk on Greensprings Trails in Williamsburg and it was a walk ridden with wildlife! We saw a turtle, a bunny, a bunch of deer (including 4 fairly up-close), a strange looking caterpillar, and various other creatures. Here are some photos at the link below, plus a couple videos of the deer (which really didn't upload very well - they're grainy and pixelated - but oh well, you can get the point at least!).

Greensprings Walk

Pictures!

We have been severely neglecting this blog because I (Jenny) am now on Facebook, which is where I tend to post everything now - pictures, thoughts, etc. So, sorry to those who check only the blog - will try to be better. Here are some photos from the past couple weeks or so:

Today - walking around William & Mary
(The above pictures were from an afternoon walk, which partly occurred because I am in charge of the annual report at my office, and I have to get iconographic photos of the campus; the professional we hired did well but didn't take a lot of close-ups, plus didn't shoot everything we wanted him to, so I took it upon myself to shoot things on my own. I will not bore you with close-ups of ancient bricks and columns, but the above link shows the best photos from the day.)

Beach Days - posted Aug. 23
(Our last trip to Sandbridge Beach, where we found the shore - and waters - laden with jellyfish! Yikes!)