A Little Culture

After starting to feel like Cinderella - feed (birds/cats/kittens/myself), scoop litter/clean bird cages, play, comfort, repeat - I decided to get out of the house for a bit. Sunday was International Museum Day, which meant a bunch of museums were free. I actually only knew about the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMOCA) being free, so that's the one we went to. It was... sparse. I think the gift store had more stuff to look at, and it is worth a look, by the way.

A couple of rooms had a display of photos from the 1970s called Suburbia.

This is what it looked like on the other side of the room... sparse. Hello... hello... hello... hello...

Does this make anyone else want to do a cartwheel? Or yodel?

I could have filled that wall up with some hysterical pics of my family from the 1970s - ha! I did get a laugh out of this one. I could so hear my mom saying this.

I even looked a bit like her. Maybe all pouts look the same.

The main exhibit was from a Danish artist whose specialty is light. You walk into this dark, angled hallway, fumbling for the light on your Smartphone, when you run into this.

It was humid. We thought we were back in Key West for a minute there! It's basically a mister with a light angled on it, but it was rather interesting.

Michael couldn't resist. Was he allowed to do that? Dunno. But he looked cool doing it.

When we got back home, the litter was still waiting. Sigh. It's worth it though.

Nothing but Kitties

Well, we haven't done much to share except that we took on 3 kittens to foster for a few weeks for Fearless. They need to be socialized and to get a little bigger (they're less than 2 pounds) so they can be fixed, microchipped, and vaccinated for their big debut at an adoption event at the end of the month (free kitties with all of the above taken care of?!). We got to name them and had to pick a theme, so went for The Lion King (cliche, I know, but we liked the names).

Zazu



Nala



Rafiki



And here's your moment of aaaaaaaw.

You have to admit they're adorable. They started out hissing when you even looked at them, but just 3 days later this happened. Nala climbed up some pillows on the floor and went to Michael! She's even started purring.

Here's our cat's response to this...

It's not going to be as hard to give them up as it will be to separate them. They play hard together and they pass out on each other - just like that.



That's a fish video they're watching. So cute.

All About the Animals

This weekend ended up revolving around my two volunteer jobs. Friday night, Fearless Kitty Rescue had a fundraising event. It was quite the soiree. A lot of great things were donated for the silent auction, and many people attended, so I hope they raised lots of money. The event was held at El Dorado Animal Hospital. Wow, what a set up. The examination rooms were nicer than some rooms in our apartment. Sheesh. All my photos went kapoot when my camera's memory card did the same.

Last time I was in to do my thing with the kitties, I had more fun than usual because Bruno was back. I'd love to see him adopted out, but since he wasn't, it was nice having him around again. As soon as he sees you, he starts purring, and if you give him the chance, he likes to wrap himself around your neck like a scarf. You sit, and he's on your lap. He's adorable.



Two cats like to drink from the faucet when I'm washing out/refilling the water dishes. This would be Cate (Michael's favorite) and Violet (who's only nice to me sometimes).



And then several kitties throw themselves at my feet and roll around. This one would be Chloe.

It takes me 2 hours to get my work done because of all these shenanigans. Even when I'm done, I take 1/2 hour and grab a toy on a stick and run around with those that want to play. It's really not a bad way to spend a morning. Of course, my kitties are cute too.

Then on Saturday, we were sitting around wondering what to do when Ranger Amy (who will soon be leaving McDowell Mountain Park for AZ Game & Fish - boo) called me and asked if I could take an injured raven in to Liberty Wildlife. Um, sure.  I was a little nervous, since I know ravens can hurt you, but Amy talked me through it, and then I talked Michael through it - ha! Good thing I volunteer for things so I can drag him into helping me! Luckily, he's usually up for anything (see adventures on Jacumba). We grabbed a box and a towel and headed over to the house where the bird was hopping around.

It had fallen out of this very tall palm tree. You can see that there were others in the nest too. Mom & Dad were not far away.

One of them was in a tree across the way, watching us. I was worried they were going to dive bomb us, but all they did was caw loudly.

I went and nudged the bird Michael's way, and he threw a towel over it so that it couldn't get him with his beak, and then we put it in the box. Thankfully, the process looked somewhat seamless (other than the fear on our faces), so we didn't embarrass ourselves in front of the home owners. Amy showed up right after and gave us a pat on the back and a better box to put the bird in. Then I was off to Liberty to hand the little guy/gal off for medical care. Happy healing!

Sunday, we decided to hike the Cholla Trail on Camelback Mountain near Phoenix. We keep getting out too late for this heat, so don't want to do any really long hikes, so this seemed appropriate. First you have to walk almost 1/2 mile through a neighborhood to get there.

Then you head up. Considering the trail itself is only about 3.2 miles roundtrip, taking about 1 1/2 hours, there's some great scenery of Phoenix and Paradise Valley.






And we saw a chuckwalla! Two actually, one was bigger than this one, but too far away to capture on film.

When you get about 1/3 of the way from the top, you have to start bouldering/climbing a bit. Normally I find this fun, but I had several things counting against me. 1) It was hot - which meant the rocks were hot; you did what you had to do quickly. 2) Lotion had gotten into my eyes and it felt like I'd been pepper sprayed, which led to 3) my nose running like a faucet (tissues were a waste of time; I was totally disgusting),



and this led to 4) me stumbling around with my mouth open, allowing lots and lots of gnats to fly right in and aim for my tonsils.

Aack, cough, phooey!

Yes, this was a buggy trip. Everyone we passed commented on it. I have to admit that part wasn't fun either, but if you've ever hiked in the Adirondack mountains, you know you don't just get harmless gnats, but you also get swarms of biting black flies and mosquitoes. I choose Arizona - until we get chased by Africanized bees...  This is what Michael looked like, swatting at the pests (his comparison, not mine).

This was me (danger, danger!).




I'm not going to lie. I was really glad when this trek was over, but as they say - what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.

Did I mention, when we got back in the car we saw this?

Hard to believe it was 68 degrees last weekend. No complaints though. This is the part we like about AZ. I know, we're crazy (we haven't even turned on the a/c yet and are quite comfortable with the ceiling fans). Michael knew just what to do though.

He lasted less than a minute. Brrrrr.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!



Thank you Plaza Fountainside, Happy Mariachi Trio, and all the dancers.