Doodle Week: Friday - Snow People (on Wednesday - doh!)

Happy New Year evfurrybuddy!

Luvzya!



:) xxx

Doodle Week: Thursday - Angel (on Monday!)

Better late than never!

Pinky's home, yay! We've been catching up so I'm very behind (again)!

Hope you had a great weekend evfurrybuddy and that if you had to go back to day hunting today it wasn't too hard!

:) xxx

Santa Claus is Handing Out Gifts in Portugal

Father Christmas has braved the storks...

...and made the children of Portugal happy! "Oh, by the way, the storks tend to make nests on high chimneys which are mainly industrial and not residential so no problem for Santa!" says Pinky.

Doodle Angel will be late I'm afraid, fellow Doodle Weekers. Actually, I'm not sure I know how to doodle an angel!

I hope you're all having a totally bodacious Chrissy Mouse. I know I am!



:) xxx

Doodle Week: Wednesday - Gingerbread

Doodle Week: Wednesday - Gingerbread

Happy Holly days evfurrybuddy!

Here are some lovely Chrissymouse cards I've received. I was going to make my own this year but somehow, as has been the case for the last squillion years, I just never got round to it... Doh!

Pleeze takes dis card fur you,
our frendzez so true.
We tried sendin' it by emailz
& on da backs of snailz,
but truth be told,
da momee here iz so old,
dats evfun da urlz of da google
didz not speedz dis card to you.

Now some of youz iz on vakashun
across dis great nation
& somez needz our purrz,
so we iz keepin' our crossed toez
evfun when dere iz snowz,
& we hopes dats dis splendid world bringz
health to all, when da cathedral bellz do swing.
(& ringz & ringz & ringz)

Merry Christmouse to all,
Merry Christmouse to thee,
Merry Christmouse from da Fab five,
dat iz two plus three.

We lovez you all (far & near)
& hopes dat you hadz a ball
on da wonder-full & clear,
Kitty
Bloggo-spear.

Oh... & beforez I forgets, Happy New YEAR!!!

Thank you evfurrybuddy!

Luvzya



:) xxx

Doodle Week: Tuesday - Candy Cane

Doodle Week: Tuesday - Cane Candy:




















Click on image to see story.

This is where Pinky is spending Christmas:



Pinky says:

"I hope it doesn't rain and that the stork doesn't kick me out of the nest in the middle of the night! Did you know Storks are protected in Portugal and as they usually nest on top of chimneys or palm trees, if you pull one down, you have to replace it with another! See attached photo of a stork atop a palm tree bang in the middle of Silves town! A couple of other photos for you to show what it's like in winter here!"

Looks great! Amost as bright as the photos he took when he was there in the summer.

Happy, Happy Christmas evfurrybuddy!



:) xxx

Doodle Week: Monday - Trees

It's Doodle Week, yay! Today's theme is trees. Go here to find out more!

With thanks to hellasmultimedia for the Santa Claus hat.

Clip art thanks to Xara Xtreme Pro.

Thanks to my virtual soul mate the lovely Karen Jo (don't worry, no funny feelings here, it's just that we are two people who love cats, yet are sadly uncatted but share other interests too!) for this award:

"This blog invests and believes the PROXIMITY - nearness in space, time and relationships! These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award."

I would like to pass this award along to:

Chase
Angel and Taz
Omer
Moki
Tamra Maew
Forever Foster
Jan's Funny Farm
Mo

Luvza
xxx

Bankbonkiness

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7783236.stm

Santander, you're a huge, safe European Bank?




Yes.


Okay, lend us a squillion £s.




Why?


Coz we invested in the above bloke's fund and it turned out to be worthless.



Oh! So did we. You've got more hope of finding a shocking pink millipede or a Ninja cat than getting a loan from us!


What about all us little people who have savings with you or your subsidaries?












and


Who? Hahahahahahaha!!!





















http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/7780514.stm

Awards and a Meme

Omer, who writes such great and informative posts on his blog Of Cats, and is also the Daddy of Snow, Leo and Fairy, gave me these lovely awards:

Thank you Omer!

I think just about evfurrybuddy has received these awards by now so if you're one of my nominees, well, it just goes to prove you really have a great blog:

Dennis the Vizsla, Vampy Victor, Dr. Tweety and his siblings and the Momee and Dadee, Miles, Sammy and Billy Sweetfeets and Whicky Wuudler.

I haven't published any rules for either of these awards coz they seem to have got lost in the mists of time! I'm also awarding them jointly coz I'm too bone idle tired to post any more links (having done the ones below first. I'm a bit back-to-front this morning.)!

Faz tagged me for the Sixth Folder Meme. Here are the rules:

Go to your Picture Folder on your computer or wherever you store your pictures. Go to the 6th Folder and then pick the 6th Picture. Post it on your bloggy and tell the story that goes with the picture. Tag 5 other glorious peoples to do the same thing and leave a comment on their bloggy tellin' them 'bout it.

So here's mine. It's very exciting. You may want to sit down and take a deep breath before scrolling down to view this remarkable work of art. Don't take a swig of any beverage before doing so or you may snort it out of your nose. Just a warning.

Sorry Faz... and you thought yours was boring?! This was an experiment in doing my signature for mine bloggie (why, oh why, don't I delete my rejects? Doh). Strictly speaking you could say it isn't a picture coz it's text, but I did "draw" it freehand in my graphics package without using a text font so, there it is! I did have to spiflicate it a bit coz it was just a try out and was in black, so as I have a black background it would have been invisible, lol!

Okeydokey, now for the nominations. I have a feeling nearly evfurrybuddy has done this one so if I've been too lazy forgetful busy to remember and you have done it, please point me in the right direction so I can visit and take a look, coz I think this is a really cool meme and there will be many great pictures out there.

Daisy, Skeezix, Babs Beetle, Zoolatry and Mickey.

Good morning evfurrybuddy! Think I'll go to bed now...

Luvzya

BC
xxx

Leaky Eyes

I had an altogether different post planned but I'm too sad. I switched on the computer and TV this evening, settled down to watch Deal or No Deal and check my emails, hoping there would be one from Pinky attaching photos from the Algarve so I could show you where he is and what he's up to. There wasn't one, so I went on to visit blogs. The first one I clicked on was PB&J, only to discover that three kitties had been called to the Bridge on Wednesday! Well, as I read their post my eyes started leaking and as I went to visit the families they leaked more and more... Well, you all know how this is! I'm sure most of you have heard the news, but I'd just like to express my condolences to the families of Skeeter, Cloud Chaser and Kelly. I know how they are hurting. The hurt never really goes away but with time the happy memories come more often than the sad ones and let's face it, would we really want to live without any furbabies in case we suffer heartache when they have to leave us? I don't think so. They enrich our lives and bring us so much joy.

It took me a long time to realise that without the heartbreak, we would not have been able to fully recognise the joy they gave us (and hopefully vice versa).

Oh! I've just received an email telling me that John and Pat of The Good Cats have signed my guestbook. Thank you! I feel really blessed that you would do this at such a time!

My life has been changed by the Cat Blogosphere. There may be heartache, but that just proves how much love there is in this Community. I am honoured (and so is Bozo!) to have been accepted. Thank you!

Luvza,

xxx

Home Alone!

Even as we speak, Pinky is about to depart for Gatport Airwick to fly off and spend Chrissy Mouse with his frennids in Portugal. These are the same frennids he went to stay with in the summer. I thought I had some photos to show you where he'll be, but he must have just brought them over on his "dongle" to show me and not downloaded them to my pooter. It's a lovely place anyway, so hopefully photos will be winging their way through the ether before long!

This will be the first Christmas I've spent alone since my darling Mum died in 2004. I don't mind, I'm a bit of a recluse anyway, and so was Mum, but we always kept in touch by phone, telling each other what we were watching on telly, our culinary disasters (both of us great cooks - not!) and whatever else sprang to mind.

I'm invited to my half-sister's in Canada but I can't do all the travelling stuff, since I can barely do the stairs or walk down to the corner shop without being afraid of falling over (have several times on stairs!)

xxx

Monday Movies and Synchronicity

As you probably all both know, I can never keep up to date with all my adoring fans' two readers' blogs because I have far too many in my Bloglines, but I can't bear to delete any coz I love you all! So I kind of stick a proverbial pin in the list (after, hopefully, I have visited all who have kindly left comments for me) and one of those tonight was A Dog and 2 Cats. This is where the synchronicity (or possibly just coincidence) comes in and I think the best way I can demonstrate this is simply to quote the (first) comment I left for them:

"Hello! I clicked your link to watch the squirrel video and got this: http://www.http.com//www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ikH9ZRcF2Q.

There was a certain synchronicity here as Pinky and I have been looking into waking up our computers over our networks and over the internet when we're not at home, so I clicked on the last link in the list and got this:
https://www.gotomypc.com/mm/g25af_hybridLMlp.tmpl?

In fact Pinky installed stuff on my laptop to enable me to wake up my pc from my laptop today. We tested it several times and it worked perfectly. However, since he went home it hasn't worked! Doh!*

I haven't seen any squerls either, haha!

BTW, the wordy verification thingy is "ulegral". Could this be interpreted as "You all growl"? Oh, I crack myself up!!! :) xxx"

*The boldifying and redenning were not in the original comment but I've now added them to draw Pinky's attention!

Anyhow, I was curious about the squirrels so I went back to YouTube. There are loads of squirrel videos but I came across this one which I think is pretty amazing - and cute!

So then I noticed I had email and my Dad had sent me this:

Okay, okay, I know the "synchronicity" came before the movies but I didn't think that "Synchroniscity and Movie Monday" really worked!

xxx

P.S. If you use Firefox, don't use its spell-checker. It will totally screw your post!!!

Randombankness

I think maybe I should explain my last post a little lest my adoring fans readers think I was up for sympathy. I'm not a "victim" of over-borrowing or anything like that. I was brought up to believe that if you can't afford it, you can't have it, so the only loan I've ever had was a mortgage (fortunately paid off a few years ago, thanks to my lovely Auntie J, who told me she thought the money she was going to leave me in her will would be more useful to me then rather than later).



No, my anger was about the irresponsibility of the banks and how I (and probably most citizens of the world) can't trust them any more. The thing is, the British Government has guaranteed an individual's cash (savings plus current account etc.) in any one bank up to £50,000, so if you've got more than that in your bank and it goes tits up bankrupt, hard cheese, you lose the rest. So my darling Mum died just over four years ago and me being her only child, she left me all her worldly goods, including her flat. There were complications in the sale (which I won't bore you with) and the proceeds were less than the flat's worth (::dah di dah, di dah di dah:: sang the violins) so it was only a few months ago I received the proceeds of sale. I put them in a savings account in my bank, as you do... They were more than £50,000...

A few weeks later I get a phone call from my bank. To put it shortly, it goes something like this: "Have you got short-term plans for this money?" "Possibly." "We have several packages which could ensure you... blah, blah, blah..." "Thanks, I'll just leave it where it is for now please and thank you."

A week or two later I get another call, ditto the above. By now I've heard stirrings about the possibility of the "Credit Crunch" not just affecting bad debtors and stupid, greedy American banks, but stupid, greedy British banks as well. "No," I thought, "I'm not looking for a loan and I don't owe nobody nuffink, so I'm probably okay". "How safe are my accounts?" I ask. "Oh, safe as houses, we are part of one of the biggest banks in Europe, there's no way we are in any trouble. But we can offer you a package that will give you a greater return on your investment blah, blah, blah..." "Well, I'm thinking of buying a bungalow or having my current house improved to make it safer for me as I can't see very well so I don't want this money tied up for yonks" "Okay, no problem, let us know if we can be of any... blah, blah, blah...".

Then the news comes that the bank who owns my bank has been bailed out by the government. Bearing in mind that only last year my bank, let alone the bank who owns it, declared net profits of, I think, approximately £10 billion, I'm stunned!

This has become a very long and probably extremely interesting boring shaggy dog story account so I'll leave it for now, but:






Still to come in a forthcoming episode (da dah!):

What I Learnt at the Bank!!!

Oh No! Why?

How come the £ has gone so low against the $ when it was the American banks who started the "Credit Crunch", which turned into the "Economic Downturn", which has now, or is apparently about to be, a full-blown "Recession", with their "Toxic Loans"? This seems so unfair! My Mericky friends, please don't take this personally, I'd have to go a long way to find a better bunch of cats and beans outside of the Cat Blogosphere, other, of course, than also all the wonderful cat-loving nationalities in there that I'm honoured to count as friends. Um, does this make sense? Probably not; I just hope you know what I mean.

Well, the British banks also jumped on the bandwagon and lent far too much... blah, blah, blah... We all know the mistakes the banks in many countries of the world have made. Only last year (and in many previous years) I was aghast at how much profit my bank, for just one, declared! I wondered, "Why is some of this money not being channelled into better benefits for their savers?" So where have all these billions of profits gone? Where??? Why, then, did the bank who had bought my bank out (as an apparently thriving concern) need to be bailed out to the tune of millions by the British Government? A bank whom, I must say, is "owned" by a country in the British Isles who wants to be independent...

Just wondering...

Luvya! ('cepting you banks!)



xxx

Awards!

I have received several awards during the time I have been having computer problems and I feel so honoured but also guilty because it's taken me so long to thank the donors!

From Chica and Pumuckl

Thank you so much, I love it!

And these are the rules:

~ Put the logo on your blog.

~ Add a link to the person who awarded you.

~ Nominate 10 other blogs.

~ Add links to those blogs on yours.

~ Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs.

As Chica and Pumuckle themselves said, "10 other blogs? Wow, that's a lot! (But still not enough for all our dear furriends)".

So I nominate:

Luxor
Daisy
Mickey
The Fab Five
The Ballicai
Faz
Aoise
MoMo
Empress Bee
Pearl C. Pritchard

From Karen Jo

"With the Premium Dardos, recognize the values that each blogger shows each day in commitment to transmit cultural values, ethical, literary, personal etc. that, in short, demonstrate their creativity by alive thinking that remains intact from their letters and words."

In giving me this award, Karen Jo said, "for the sheer fun of reading her blog." I feel... I think... I can't express what this means to me!!! Karen Jo, you have made me feel I'm not totally useless! Thanks!

I nominate:

William
The Kracker Cat Blog
Kimo and Sabi
His Royal Highness Yao-Lin
Victor the Vampire Kitty

From Sukie

Thanks Sukie, it's beautiful!

1. Those who have received this award, can add the pic
2. Add a link to that person’s blog who awarded you
3. Choose 7 others to receive this award and add links to their blogs
4. Leave a message to their blogs so that they know about this

I nominate:

Angel and Taz

Grrreta

Sweet Ariel

Sweet Praline

JB

Maggy and Zoey

Kaze

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to post these awards. I've had a few technical hitches. I'll bore entertain you with these on another occasion.

In the meantime I hope you all have a lovely easy Sunday:)

XXX

Wordless Wednesday

Don't Worry! You Too Can Have Super-sleek Furs!