Cats and Keyboards

Linda Arthur Tejera's avatarLIVING WITH MY ANCESTORS

I’m going two for one this time!

1.  Michelle’s Weekly Pet Challenge, Week #49

2.  Wordless Wednesday

In 2002 I offered to help a vet tech friend who was inundated by abandoned animals by bottle-feeding three kittens. I had never in my entire life had cats (always dogs) and I had barely even been around them. Three weeks of bottle-feeding these kittens and it was all over. There was no way I could part with them. So here we have the three siblings, George, Midge and Zuzu. They did so love my computer desk making it nearly impossible to accomplish anything! And, since the keyboard itself was actually inaccessible, they took over the desk and mouse pad. And when they tired of that, they moved to the chair so I still couldn’t get anything done! 😀

Today, Midge is the only one of the original three surviving.

George is already on the…

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Nairobi National Park (1981-8)

This blog always stirs many memories of our experiences in Nairobi National Park.

bushsnob's avatarA Bushsnob out of Africa

In the eighties, when we [1] lived in Kenya, many people regarded the Nairobi National Park (NNP) as a large zoo next to Nairobi. I must admit that for a while I belonged to this group. I did not think that to see the Jomo Kenyatta Conference Centre (the tallest building then) from the park was a nice sight.

After a couple of years, again Paul, luckily convinced me of its value and I realized what a great privilege it was to have such a large area of wilderness a few minutes drive from our houses! So, following his advice, we bought a one-year pass to the park. The pass was stuck on our Land Rover windscreen and it enabled the car (and its occupants) to visit the NPP as many times as we wished!

It soon became one of our favourite places to visit! We also brought lots of…

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Standing Sticks of Norfolk

Klausbernd's avatarFabFourBlog

Oh dear, oh dear, we had to rescue our beloved Dina in the last moment. Totally absorbed with her camera, she was so fascinated by the remains of the ancient harbour of Thornham (West Norfolk) that she didn’t notice the incoming flood. She should have known that the flood always comes from behind to surprise the inattentive. You wouldn’t believe it, but the waters are coming in much faster than you can run – especially loaded with a tripod, filters, the cameras and lenses. That’s like a miniature tsunami. 

Oh dear, oh dear, da haben wir unser Dinalein im letzten Moment retten müssen. Im Photographierwahn, fasziniert von den uralten Hafenbefestigungen in Thornham (West Norfolk), hatte sie nicht daran gedacht, dass das Wasser stets von hinten kommt, um den Unaufmerksamen zu überraschen. Und glaubt uns, die Flut kommt schneller herein als man laufen kann – zumal mit Stativ, Filtern, Kamera und Objektiven. Das ist wie…

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Fasting Finished

Klausbernd's avatarFabFourBlog

Happily, we finished our fasting more than a week ago. Many of you asked to write about our experiences. Most perplexing was how easy it was to fast for ten days. Most annoying was the endless drinking of herb teas and water and especially to drink this diluted apple cider vinegar. But our clever Dina made it just bearable by making us bite into a slice of lemon before and after drinking. As we expected, we felt increasingly lighter and happier. We became aware of our greed and understood Jean Baudrillard’s statement “we live in a world where there is more information and less meaning”.  But by far the best was how the pressure dropped by not using social media. It produced a great feeling of freedom not to have to check blogs, Instagram accounts and similar inessentials and to have lots of time to use in a meaningful and pleasant…

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#AtoZChallenge Stories From A Time of War – Winds of War and War and Remembrance

Maryann Holloway's avatarIF I ONLY HAD A TIME MACHINE

STORIES FROM A TIME OF WAR

THE SECOND WORLD WAR IN FICTION & NONFICTION

This month in the April A to Z Challenge, I am posting about books, fiction, and nonfiction that are about or set in the Second World War.  The war and the people who experienced it have stories to tell and these stories are so overwhelming they lend themselves to greatness.  I encourage you to sample some of these stories.  I promise you will not regret taking the time.  To help me develop an alphabetical list for this challenge, I used Goodreads.com.  Did you know that there are more than 883 fiction and 480 nonfiction books in this genre on the website’s Listopia as voted on by members?  That is a lot of stories and facts just waiting for us to explore.

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Well known for the two blockbuster television mini-series, these novels by Herman Wouk, the…

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Bienvenue en prison

iamthesunking's avatarlouiscatorze.com

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After first sticking his back leg in my tea and then kicking it all over me, Louis Catorze settled down with me to watch one of those maximum security prison documentaries. (We’re more low-brow than one would imagine – it’s not all Balzac and Baudelaire here at Le Château.) And it seems that, in Indiana State maximum security prison, they have a cat adoption scheme. 

I initially had mixed feelings about the idea. My first thought was the safety of the animals: if you’ve killed a human in cold blood and are quite casual and blasé about it, you’re unlikely to have much compassion or empathy for an animal, right? But the cats look happy, glossy and well-fed, pitter-pattering freely between cells but mainly sticking to their one Cat Daddy, whom they clearly love. Even if he happens to be a serial torturer or murderer. 

My second thought:…

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