Sunday, June 30, 2013

Cute fuzzies to make up for the spider pics



Poor little squished Gadjo...

Do you think Fennec cares?


He does not.


 I love Rumi's arrangement of limbs here...

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It's kind of scary, what people ask Google...  Do they think Google is the man behind the curtain? The oracle of Delphi?


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And now, for fun, here are some of the recent internet searches that led people to my blog:

images of 6 bananas on a plate

flowered sheets

dog miss you

my calves

factory wall

don't kiss me

men in lungi nude [!]


More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Dark lady

So, the other day I noticed this was living two feet from my front door, and very close to where Mojito hangs out on my little porch area:


I am an extreme arachnophobe, as it happens. (By the way, that white thing is some extra-long twisty-tie thingies. They fell into her web when I was staking tomato plants in my containers, and I declined to attempt to retrieve them.)

I started thinking it looked a lot like a female black widow (Latrodectus hesperus). I'd had one in my art studio in my former house. (That was not a good day.)

I put the camera on zoom and got as close as I dared, took a pic, then went to my computer to see what I could see.

When I purposely overexposed the photo (below), the red hourglass abdominal markings became very obvious. 

Ugh!! 

I kept Moji off the porch and tried for a couple of days to find someone who might catch and relocate her. I detest spiders, but I don't think any part of nature should be killed unnecessarily. (Well...maybe mosquitoes.)

No takers. (Perhaps no surprise there.) So I got a dog-park-neighbor-guy to come kill it for me. Ironically, it turns out his profession is pest control, and he's seen plenty of black widows. But when he saw mine, he stopped in his tracks and said, "Whoa...that is big."

So now that she has shuffled off this mortal coil and become an ex-menace, I can brag about how I had the biggest, most badass black widow around.


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Now we are desperately in need of some fuzzy cuteness, aren't we?

This is the puppy a friend adopted recently. His name is Hoshi:


Legs-up napping.


Rumi's not stuck, in need of help--he was just nonchalantly hanging out like that all afternoon.

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Sleepyheads



I realize I have far more photos of my cats asleep than awake. Two reasons: my apartment is not super bright, so the flash usually is necessary, and they close their eyes against that. Also...I just love the way they sleep!

I realize, too, that I haven't shown any art in a really long time. I haven't been doing any. What with the legal stuff and work and the fact that I'm still really struggling to figure out how I can make the small "studio" at all functional, I have done nothing. I miss it. One of these days, I promise you'll once again see art on my blog!

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Friday, June 14, 2013

Caught in the act



I particularly like this last picture, where you can see Gadjo's little monkey hand holding on via the hole in the roll.

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Monday, June 3, 2013

Under the Broadway bridge



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More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Rumi's World (apologies to Wyeth)

Just Rumi, being "normal"...


Fennec managed to squeeze in torso, tail, and three out of four limbs. Frankly, it looked really creepy.


Gadjo and Fennec both had an adventure a few nights ago. I was reading in my bedroom and heard a cat argument going on outside a living room window. When it didn't stop, I went outside to investigate. And there--outside, below the window--was Gadjo with some other cat. 

My cats are not allowed out. So I was in shock, trying to figure out if that was definitely Gadjo, or the Siamese girl ("Shasta"--she looks quite a bit like Gadjo, and does go outside) from a few houses away. It was Gadjo! He panicked and bolted under some bushes, but eventually I managed to get him to come to me. He was terrified. I brought him inside, still not knowing how he'd gotten out. Then, back inside, I saw that he had popped one end of the window screen out (bending the whole screen in the process). It was too late and dark to deal with the bent screen, so I just shut the window. There's been a cat coming around frequently and it and Gadjo have arguments through the window. I think it was the same cat this time, but I'm not sure because it was dark out, and it skittered away quickly when I went out.

I went to bed and kept being woken up all night long by Gadjo howling. I figured he was agitated by his unexpected experience. Didn't get much sleep... and then just as I started to really sleep, there was a knock on my door. It was a neighbor. "Hey," she said to my sleep-deprived face peeking around the curtain, "don't you have an orange cat? There's one under the bushes out here."

I threw on some clothes and wandered bleary-eyed outside in the dawn. There lay Fennec, yes, outside, cool as a cucumber, with eyes half-closed, a Cheshire smile and an extremely smug expression, front arms crossed in front of him, the very tip of his tail moving, casual as can be. The antithesis of panicked.

I picked him up (oof), thanked the neighbor, brought him in, and immediately checked the window. It was still closed as I'd left it when I brought Gadjo in.

Gadjo stopped howling when his orange buddy was home, I went back to sleep, and a few hours later, when I was semi-awake again, I realized Fennec must've slipped out the corner of the screen just when I was bringing Gadjo in. Brat!

Brats, both of them. 

I'm so relieved they're all OK. (Also glad that apparently little deaf Rumi slept through their escape and so didn't witness it and follow their lead.)



More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Monday, May 20, 2013

Too busy

I haven't disappeared...just too damn busy lately. 

Oh, to be Fennec...



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More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Toe-floof and other things

Fennec outweighs Rumi and Gadjo put together.


Moji toe-floof, front feet in both pics.


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From a few days ago.  This being Boulder, it's now hot and sunny.

Sidewalk in the rain.

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Just a random post





Outside Boulder Public Library.



More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Friday, April 26, 2013

Dog + snow = joy






The only thing that made all that snow (four feet since April began) bearable was watching how happy it made Moji.

(Today was sandal weather, and it'll be around 80 this weekend...typical Boulder, changing radically within just a couple of days.)
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More art on my website: jalapfaff.com