Goodbye Johnny Lee......

Well, the sad time has come to announce our loss of our lovely little man, Johnny Lee, last month. He had developed leukemia, and the vets felt that he was too acutely ill to undergo any treatment. So it was a very hard time for us, since we only had him for two years, and he was just the gentlest soul around. We will miss him terribly.

The other unfortunate part to his death was that it left Mina in a bit of a funk. She was wanting someone to play with, but she recognised that he was too sick to do that. So, after he died we decided that we needed to get another cat to be a friend for her. We set out looking for an adult male cat (which we thought was most appropriate); but a small someone threw a wrench in this plan when we saw her at the pet adoption fair held recently at Galey's Farm by a bunch of the local animal rescues. The small someone is now named Juliette Lovebug, and she caught our eye as she is the very picture of Johnny Lee; she even has the same funny-textured fur he had. The new little J.L. is a recent capture from one of the feral cat colonies near Swan Lake. It's pretty amazing to see that she is so tame having been in "captivity" for less than two months. She really loves people, and is very curious about the other cats (Kiwi has told her to bug off in no uncertain terms, but Mina is definitely interested in her - yay!). Here's a short clip of the lovely little Juliette recently.

The Chevy-cat

Cat number 4 is officially part of the household (for as long as she chooses, anyhow). Chevy belonged to the people we bought our house from. She came back to the house 6 times (crossing both Mackenzie and the highway - unless she took the Galloping Goose, of course!!), and eventually we thought it would be best for her life expectancy (!) to let her stay (and we really liked her, too). She is a lovely cat who enjoys following me around the garden without getting too much in the way. She likes to have me in sight! In any case, we are every, very happy to have her and we hope she stays with us for a long time to come!

The canine additions to the household

Well, we finally took the plunge back in September and adopted two puppies! These pups are 'pure mutts'; they are very different looking even though they are sisters (probably due to different dads?). I brought them back with me from are from Inuvik, in the Northwest Territories, when they were 8 weeks old. Soooo cute! we had only intended to keep one, but... what's the difference between one and two, right? Well, not much except that they are more likely to listen to each other than to us! They are truly lovely girls, though... see below for a picture of Celeste right after we got home; a picture of Meganne is forthcoming and new pics of them as they get older will follow soon...