Wowee free stuff!

North Shore treasures
Watercolour on Watercolour paper
12 x 14 inches
Barbara Muir © 2008
(This is a watercolour I did a few years
ago. I decided to show it to you without
even thinking about tonight's topic.
But when I'm at the beach I feel
the same as my scrounging animals.
There are so many shells, pieces of
driftwood and sea glass to decide on,
that I lose all interest in stores, and
manufactured goods. It seems so
exciting just to fill my pockets with
shells and to give my treasure to
Steven at the end of each walk, when
he gives his best shells to me.)

Some of you may be wondering about the state of the
fair Fiona, our three-year-old Siamese cat. Well thanks
to Dr. Hannah at St. Clair Veterinary Clinic the girl is
flourishing. Her coat is thicker and glossier than before
and she is becoming wildly inventive in her play.

Fiona the fair one wonders when
the next game is going to begin.

See Fiona views the blue boxes (the bins inside the house
where we put recyclable stuff before it goes in the big
outside Recycle container) as toy bins. So does Zoey,
but Fiona brings the pieces of plastic, small bits of cardboard
and other "reusable" material to us like a Labrador
Retriever dog. She wants you to throw a bit of plastic
for her. Is she without real toys? No. She has in fact
squirreled away about 20 small Ikea animals under one of
our couches.

Zoey the dog collects cat food cans. We feed the cats from
small two inch cans. After Zoey's polished off any tiny bits
left in the cans, she takes the special cat food tins
and lines them up around her big round bed in the basement.
We routinely pick up the cans and stick them in one of our
inside bins, but if we don't empty the bin quickly enough,
Zoey steals them back.

And Timbah the cat? He just carries socks, my dresses, shirts,
whatever he can find off the laundry room table and drags
that provender upstairs in case I can't decide what to wear.
After the journey up two floors of okay a clean house, but
not clean enough to warrant using clean clothes as dusters,
I can't really wear his offerings, which breaks his heart
temporarily. And people think animals aren't smart.
Try living with a crew of the strange creatures.

Have a loving-the-inventiveness-of-your-animal-family day.