This morning I had my own camera shoot. :)  My husband and I were taking measurements of the windows in the front room this morning. We had many cat helpers. I was seeing some cute camera shots as they were exploring the curtains we had removed from the windows so we could measure the windows. I now keep my camera by my recliner  in the front room ready to go. I never know when I might need it. I really got going once I started taking there pictures. I think I got a good shot of all 10 of them. Just forget about all the cat toys and curtains on the floor. hehe

This first shot is one I just had to throw in though. It is of Dusty when he was a baby. Not long after his mother moved him and his brother into the house. I showed this picture to my husband today and he could hardly believe it is the same Dusty we have today. He is a grown boy now and has changed a lot since this picture was taken. Here is a new picture of Dusty taken this morning by the same scratching post. His colors have changed so much since then. He is a very shy boy who will hide when people come to visit. He loves to cuddle with the other cats and is scared very easily. He has a special voice he uses to let you know when he wants to be petted. One of his favorite places to be petted is his belly. We had a hard time getting him over his fetish for eating shoe strings. His eyes are a beautiful Blue color. When he looks at you with his Blue eyes with that dark face it is really something quite different to see.  Dusty is a cutie pie.

This is his brother Rascal. He was named Rascal for a reason. Rascal is a very active boy, the complete opposite of brother Dusty. He loves getting into every thing he can. He use to love to pull food out of my husbands briefcase after by husband would pack it for work. It was kind of funny watching him run off with a package of crackers bigger than he was. We would always get it back. I am not saying it would still be edible though. lol. Hubby quicklylearned he had to zip up his briefcase if he wanted his lunch to remain in there. Here is Rascal now doing his own thing while giving out his little boy look. He is a lover boy and likes lots of attention. While the brothers were young and growing up they were always together getting into mischief. We started calling them the Bobbsey Twins. The Twins for short.  You could always find them together. Now they have  developed their own personalities and like different things.

This next shot is a picture of Dusty and Rascal’s Mom.  She was pretty young when she had these kids.  My husband named her Precious.  We could tell when Precious first showed up she had been some ones pet.  Stubby and her, who were both outside cats at the time  would fight for the pets. She proved to be a smart little girl. She brought her 2 kittens in side when a dog was attacking the cats outside and killed two of her four.  She move them inside and went right back outside looking for her other two. Sadly to say she never found them. It took a few weeks before she gave up. We called Precious and her kittens the Three Musketeers for they were always doing stuff together.  We call her our Adventure kitty. She always wants to sneak into new places and explore them. Right now we make her think the attic and garage are off limits. So she is very happy when she gets a chance to sneak into them. One time she managed to sneak outside and was gone overnight. She had us worried. She is good at that. The first time she was in the garage she found a way to get under the house. She came out the next day. We thought we fixed it so she could not get under the house again. Boy were we wrong. Yesterday she snuck out to the garage three times and was able to move the stuff we put in front of the hole.  She had fun for about 4 hours.  She loves to follow me around the house and get petted. Here favorite thing to do is stand in front of you while you are climbing the stairs. She has blue eyes and is some what cross eyed.

Continuing along with the cats we have adopted since hurricane Rita is Snow Ball. Snow Ball was  abandoned by her mother when she was a few weeks old. Her mother would come by and not feed her.  It looked like the mother was taking care of the other kittens but not Snow Ball. We seen that snow ball was eating the cat food we sat out twice a day so we thought she would be OK.  But later it looked like she was not feeling well. My son and I were able to catch her and bring her inside. We gave her some kitty food, and tried to give her some milk. She ate the food but would have nothing to do with the milk. She was not going to be an inside kitty at that time either. We put her back outside and tried to get her the next day. Snow Ball was too fast for us.  As time went on we notice she was not growing.  She was coughing some too.  We found one of her favorite cuddling friends dead, it had been coughing also. Snow Ball was not moving much. We were able catch Snow Ball and bring her in.  I toke her to the vet and found out she had an upper respiratory infection. They had to give her fluids in an IV. I got medications for her and was told to bring her back in a week. Snow Ball gained over a pound that week.  She has gotten much healthier over time, but still has some eye problems once in awhile as a result of her respiratory infection. We call her our Little Monkey as she loves to climb all over everything. She has found new friends to cuddle and play with.   Show Ball likes to be in the same room as we are, but still does not like being petted too much.  

The last cat we brought in was Stubby. We actually did not think we were going to be able to move him with us from Texas to Arkansas since he had not showed up for a couple weeks. Stubby was always very friendly with us and loved pets.  He seemed to like the pets more than the food at times. We had not seen for a few weeks before the move. We would go out calling his name, but no Stubby.  We had started catching all the cats we were feeding that were still wild and had found us after hurricane Rita by setting up have-a-hart traps. We would then take them to a friends house who offered to take care of them. We were able to catch the ones that relied on us the most.  It was Saturday morning that I got up and looked out theback window to see if we had got another cat in the trap. We were going to have to take them down that day for the moving truck was coming to pack on Monday. I was so surprised when I seen Stubby in the trap.  I ran and told my hubby that Stubby was in the trap. We both noticed he was protecting a leg. Before I knew it hubby had gone outside and brought Stubby inside and was fixing him up a spot to hang out with his bad leg.  We brought him food and water and gave him lots of love.  After he settled down a little I took a closer look at his leg. I seen what looked like bite mark. It had looked like he had got into a fight. That is probably why he was not showing up. Monday morning I called the vet and made an appointment for Stubby. We found out he had a broken leg.  Now Stubby stole our heart as a kitten.   His mother was the first to show up after hurricane Rita, and Stubby was in the litter she brought with her. That is what got us started on taking care of the Rita refugee cats. When he was a kitten and first started living on our back porch Stubby’s right ear looked bigger than his left ear. It reminded us of the elephant Dumbo on Disney. Then one day when we seen him his ear was completely missing. That was the day we named him Stubby. We always gave him special attention because we though he would be having a harder time than the other kittens.  That is why he was so tame. As you  will notice in the picture Stubby’s has his right eye open. That is because he can’t close it, that eye remains partially open even when he sleeps. The muscles on the right side of his mouth don’t seem right either as the right fang shows a lot more.  We also call him our One Eared Wonder.  From what I can tell he is blind in his right eye.  He is also Snow Balls big brother. He loves to cuddle with with his little sister. In this picture he is on his pillow on the bed in the kitty room.  Stubby’s broken leg has been healing beautifully. He now runs around the house playing with the other cats. He jumps onto the lower platforms on scratching posts. He has not worked his way up to the higher places, but I am not sure if that has something to do with him being blind in one eye also.

These are the cats we adopted as a result of hurricane Rita. Before these 5 came around we all ready had another 5 all with there own stories. I will introduce them in another post.

I enjoy drawing cartoons both on and off the computer. I have not had a chance to play with them for a while now. But hope to be able to continue learning  to draw them soon. I keep telling my self I will not buy any more cartooning books until I start using what I have, but it isn’t working. I also enjoy animation. I have not had time to work on that much.

My biggest ambition is to be able to make software for children with disabilities that would be reasonably priced. Most software for people with special needs has such a high price tag on it that is hard for the average person to be able to afford it.  We could only get a few things for our kids because of the prices. I would have liked to have gotten them more.

My frist post to my Art blog. I thought it would be neat to start posting my art. So I can see how my art improves over time.  I also want to post special techniques I used to get surtain results. That way I can have a history of how I did something.  I have looked at things I have done in the past and said to myself I wish I could remember how I did that. This is a picture of a flower from a tulip tree. I was just having fun playing at the time.

Tammie