Yeah, so we’ve got some horny animals in the house these days. It could be that valentines day is next week and love is in the air… or perhaps it is just because they are both unfixed still and are feeling “urges”…

Either way it is bad news! Gabby walks around with her butt in the air and she is meowing and talking like crazy while rubbing herself against anything she can.

Boner is just humping anything that is warm so we keep him in a cage most of the time. Problem is bunnies can’t be confined to tiny cages all day, everyday. They need to run and hop so we let him out to exercise but we also need to keep him from Gabby’s lady parts.

I am inventive you know so I put a cloth diaper on Gabby just to make sure we didn’t have any strange crossbreeding action. Then we set Boner free to exercise for a bit. It was not a g rated morning!

Weird thing is they are both okay with the humping, it is disturbing to us but they both seems to be having a good time… Oddly. I wish we had the money to fix them both right now. Unfortunately, we don’t so we’ll just make due by keeping them separate most of the time.

Good news is the new rabbit hutch N is building should be finished this weekend thanks to the warmer temperatures, yay! Soon Boner and Maybelle will both have room to exercise inside enclosed cages as opposed to being crammed in to one cage together.

The post Whoa, that lovin' feeling!!! appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

Fleas are nasty, nasty creatures. If you can’t tell the kind of make me crazy. It is all because of this one encounter N and I shared way back in the day. Right after we began dating N moved in to my tiny 1 bedroom apartment with me. It was in Tempe, Arizona in the dead of summer and our fridge died so I went to the complex management about it.

They wouldn’t be able to get us a new fridge for several days and all our food was spoiling so we were pretty put out. The complex management offered to let use a working fridge in a vacant apartment in the meantime. They could have just moved the working fridge to our place but whatever. So they gave us the keys to the vacant place, we packed up our spoiling groceries and headed over to store them in the vacant place.

As soon as we entered the vacant apartment we immediately were disgusted by how dirty and messy it was left, then we felt things jumping on our legs. We soon realized the place was totally infested with fleas and they were feasting on our fresh meat as we walked across the apartment. It was the most unbelievable thing. We were literally jumping all around and trying to run across the carpet to avoid the fleas.

After entering the flea infested apartment we would shake off and even left our shoes outside our apartment to avoid tracking fleas in to our own place. We had 3 cats at that time so fleas were the last thing we wanted. Unfortunately they were unavoidable.

Inevitably a few made it in to our place and began taking up residence on our clean kitties. We got rid of the fleas after several months and it was not a fun process. We were just thankful that our flea situation never even came close to the nastiness of the vacant, flea apartment. To this day fleas and roaches just make my blood boil (I’ll save the roach story for another day though).

Amazingly bathing the cats was mostly an easy task. Jack, our huge yellow kitty, was the handful of the bunch. He acted like we were trying to skin him or something, it was quite dramatic and man is he strong! The rest of the kitties were cooperative and now everyone smells and looks so nice. Also, they have all stopped itching so I feel good about the flea eradication.

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Want a comb that will electrocute fleas? I found this fun and evil little flea zapper online that ammused me.

The post Fleas make me a crazy lady! appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

We are not planning any outdoor fun this weekend but the weather surely impacts our lives regardless of our indoor plans… It make the animals crawl the dang walls! I swear it is like we have toddlers gnomes roaming the house at night…

N woke up this morning to Mr. Guy jumping on his face, yep it drew blood and made him rather grumpy since it occurred at 5am. Then N ventured out to the kitchen to get coffee started and the freezer door was open! Our other cat, Jack, has an obsession with walking on the top to the fridge/ freezer and he somehow opens the freezer door leaving the food to melt and spoil.

After N solved the bloody face and freezer door issues he sees that cat sh!t has been strewn all over the hallway. Our dog, Dixie, has to be gated off from the guest bath where the litter box is. She feels cat poo is the most scrumptious treat and she will leave little poo crumbs at and all around the scene of the crime.

After N cleaned up the poo crumbs in the hall he put Dixie outside, she likes to jump around and bark in the mornings to instigate “play time” while I am still sleeping. N puts her outside to keep the house quiet till I wake. Unfortunately it is blistering cold today so leaving the dog out to get frostbite wasn’t a good plan. He brought her inside, she noisily tried to get him to play with her. He turned his back on her and she went off barking. This angered him of course.

N had a rough morning, to say the least. Our animals are grooming us well for parenthood, they give me gray hairs! Jack is a fan of scratching the door jams so we cover them all with clear tape so he can’t grip them. He also can shred a cardboard box in a matter of days so this makes packing, moving or living out of boxes a problem.

Andrew can open doors and switch the lights off and on which makes shower time a blast, he is also great at escaping the house through window screens, doggie doors and more! Oh and he can jump on top of doors, yes on the very top of them while staying balanced in order to get to something he really want (aka the birds).

Hailey makes all the other animals angry at her and they often gang up on her throwing tufts of hair everywhere while over exaggerating loud cat fight screaming and yowling (you would think something was being killed!)

Mr. Guy is our schedule keeper and will loose his mind if we don’t keep the routine going each and every day! He wakes us up and will pace the room crying, getting in your face and triping you till you do what he thinks you are supposed to. This includes shower time for N and feeding time but is known to extend to other tasks from time to time. Oh and he pees in the tub/ sink when he feels the box is to much of a hassle.

Oh and the birds (Zebra Finches) have 19 eggs in their nest today! I know they didn’t lay all 19 recently. Only about 10 are recent but they just keep laying eggs, burying them in the nest and laying more. Guess they are having fertility issues too!

Create your own puzzles at PuzzleBee.com!

Ugh, it is enough to make you crazy! We are so ready for a human child… I think. ;-P

The post Crazy weather makes my animals crazy! appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

My cats are so annoying sometimes, Mr. guy especially! He is a control freak and will have litle temper tantrums if life does not follow the routine HE is used to.

N did not come home last night, that is a routine disruption. N usually gets up at about 6 or 7 am everyday and I will get up around 8 am. this morning Mr. guy proceeded to paw at me, pull the covers off of me and he even tried to weasel his way under the covers so he could scratch me. It was 6am, nobody was awake so he took it upon himself to try every trick in the book to wake me.

Pawing at the blinds to make noise, touching me with his wet/ cold nose, jumping on my head, pulling the covers off of me and scratching me were his torture tactics. He HAD to get me up because the world would end if the schedule & routine are not adhered to.

If cats are so smart that they can memorize schedules and routines to the minute then why can’t they recognize who the person is that usually completes the tasks? I m not the early riser nor do I want to be. I don’t care if you want me to wake up so leave me the freak alone!!

So I caved. I got up early thanks to Mr. guy and was in the process of taking my waking temperature. Once I recorded it I was feeling relaxed and had begun to doze off. Yes! I was going back to sleep.

Then Andrew strolls in and decides he needs to lay in the plastic bag of clothes by my bed. He rustles the plastic as much as he possibly can, Mr. guy is still using his torture tactics on me and I just yell “Fine! I am up you freaking ass holes!”. Dixie who is patiently sleeping in the doorway to the bedroom becomes frightened at my sudden outburst. Did she do something wrong? She vacates the area just to be sure.

I stumble across the bedroom looking for my PJ’s and Jack darts under my feet and meows at me, then Hailey comes in and meows too. I have only been up for 10 minutes and they are making me crazy! Am I irritable today or what? I am pretty sure I just wanted to have restful calm morning.

Turns out the gato food bowls are empty. They had food when I went to bed last night so they aren’t starving! Apparently having empty food bowls throws them into a tizzy! That is why the world is ending for them today. Is it mean that I am not rushing to fill the bowls back up? It’s only fair to torture them a bit in return right? LOL (Don’t worry I am only kidding, don’t report me.)

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Oh- for those of you following my post yesterday, N’s footage about the FLDS situation aired in Colorado and is available online for your viewing pleasure.. You can check it out @ http://www.9news.com/video/player.aspx?aid=51326&bw=

The post It is only 6am, let me sleep! appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

With my new camcorder I made a video of our 3 baby finches. Witnessing the miracle of life unfold in our own home has been great! They are all flying now, mom and dad are still feeding them and I captured feeding time on video for you to enjoy!

We are off to go see Enchanted in the theater today. Enjoy the finch video and have a good day!

The post Enjoying holiday gifts and the miracles of life.. appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.