The Rooster Crows as the Crow Flies or Something Clever Like That

The week after Christmas, I painted a little rooster on a small scrap of watercolor paper. I'd gotten a new tube of Daniel Smith watercolor, Sleeping Beauty Turquoise, as a present and was eager to give it a spin. 

He turned out nicely, so I shared a photo on Facebook and started getting positive feedback almost immediately. A couple of friends expressed interest in buying him, but something so small on a weirdly-shaped piece of paper is more a doodle than a painting, so I offered to paint intentional roosters on fresh paper.

One friend said she wanted to send a rooster painting to her mother-in-law, who collects them, so I got busy and came up with this handsome guy. I named him Andre before flying him off to his new home in Stone Mountain, Georgia. 

My friend who commissioned him said her mother-in-law loves him! He is pretty and not as mean as he looks. 

In the Facebook conversation about Andre the Rooster, one friend mentioned how her husband loves crows and collects crow things, so I played around with the idea of painting one. The little watercolor sketch was delightful, if I do say so myself, and when my friend saw it, she insisted on purchasing it for her husband instead of waiting for a new one. I mounted him on a 7-inch square canvas and gave him a good polishing with Dorland's paste wax, so even though the painting is a watercolor, it is protected against both water damage and ultraviolet light and can hang on the wall like an acrylic or oil canvas.

My friend's husband loves the crow, and I'm waiting to see what the finished thing looks like hanging with the rest of the crows on the wall. 

SpeedKitty

Introducing Phoebe the Kitty

We have a new kitten, Phoebe, who got here just before Thanksgiving. One of the weekender neighbors found her, and after deciding that a mama cat wasn't coming back for her, he and his wife needed someone to take her, so we did. 

Having been separated from her mama too early, she had some special needs at the beginning, a gooey eye like many baby kittens get and also a urinary tract infection which required 6 weeks of treatment, but with the assistance of our always-helpful veterinarian, Dr. Little, her issues resolved and she's currently doing great, growing like a week, and keeping all three of our ginger boys on their toes. 

Initially, they were all unhappy with the idea of sharing us and their house with a new kitty, but after three days, they got tired of spitting, hissing, and hiding under our bed and began tolerating her at least a little bit. 

So far she has picked Bill to be her favorite friend and surrogate "parent," seeking his attention for both play and snuggles during those times she seems to be lonely for her mother. At first, when she was the one-pound, 5'ish week-old kitten, she obviously craved being mothered, choosing to sleep on a furry fleece with a thicker pile and approaching all three big cats' bellies in hopes of finding nipples full of milk.

She drank from the supplement milk bottle only once and right away preferred drinking it from a shallow saucer and going straight for the soft kitten food from a can. 

When Kinky realized that having a kitten around also means having kitten food around, he changed his tune. 

Her name was initially going to be something like Piddles or Dribbles, because she had some urinary continence issues with the UTI, but we settled on Phoebe, because we love the show "Fleabag" on Amazon Prime, which is written by and stars the brilliant Phoebe Waller-Bridge. The day after the Golden Globes we decided to go ahead with the name, since Waller-Bridge won either two or three statuettes during the awards. 

She's cute. This is her. 

Phoebe on her first day here. She was a tiny baby.

Bird-watching with Kinky.

Snuggles with Bill.

More snuggles with Bill.

Bright eyes.

Looking very catty - not so much a baby now.