Kara's Reliquary » Animals

Salty Rat is Famouse

Kara — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 18:52:17 +0000

Salty is ready for his close-up.

Apparently I decided that 5 am this morning would be a good time to decide what 2011 calendar to buy. As I browsed through the options with bleary eyes, I came upon Brown Trout‘s rat calendar. I checked out the back cover, and was clearly not awake enough to comprehend what I saw. My own Mr. Salty Rat was pictured sitting on a piece of red wrapping paper (I am assuming he is Mr. December). At first, I thought someone had taken a nearly identical picture, but quickly realized it was indeed my own Salty. It goes without saying that he was the handsomest rat on the calendar.

I would have missed Salty Rat’s calendar debut had I been able to get the calendar I intended to get. Lately I’ve been buying the pit bull puppies calendar, because the calendars with the adult pit bulls depict some dogs with cropped ears, which I can’t stand. But for 2011, even a couple of the dogs on the puppy calendar have cropped ears. I can’t stand to look at those pictures, so I pass on those calendars altogether. So this year, I came back to the rat calendar and got a surprise.

I suppose you are wondering why we didn’t know that Salty would be appearing in a calendar this year, but there’s a good reason. Stephen licensed the image through Alamy. Alamy doesn’t tell the photographers who is buying the pictures – the price for the photo is based on the size the client needs. So when Stephen licensed the photo many months ago, he didn’t think any more about it. I’m so glad I happened across it.

And yes, I know how to spell famous, but I love a bad pun!

2005 Journal: Seven Monkeys in the Sheraton

Kara — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 05:37:49 +0000

Please book me and my buddies a double double at the Sheraton!

I found this in my old art journal from March 2005:

It costs $27 per day to house research monkeys at Stanford. So if you have several monkeys, it can add up fast. I get a corporate rate of $180 per night at the Sheraton, which equals approximately seven monkeys in small un-luxurious cages at Stanford. You could get way more than seven monkeys in a king size bed at the Sheraton, and they’d be a lot more comfortable, even if it was a tad crowded. In fact, housing monkeys at the Sheraton sounds like a research project in and of itself (what would they watch on HBO?). But in order to make it work, we’d need one piece of missing information. Is there a surcharge for more than two monkeys in a room?

Rabbits are only $15 per day at Stanford, so you could get even more bang for your buck at the Sheraton with rabbits. But that’s the problem. You start out with 12 rabbits, and you end up with 364. That’s a lot of rabbits, even for the Sheraton.

Adorable Rats Doing Funny Stuff

Kara — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 05:51:15 +0000

Froppy - © Ellen van Deelen

I know that LOTS of people think rats are creepy and scary. I am not one of those people. I have a lot of trouble understanding why they feel that way. I feel the same way about spiders, though, so I can relate. Don’t expect to see pictures of adorable spiders doing funny stuff on my blog any time soon.

My friend Luba sent me a link to these pictures of rats playing musical instruments. I loved them, so I just had to email photographer Ellen van Deelen to ask if I could share a couple with you. Her photos do such a great job of capturing ratty personalities. They are funny, curious and smart, and her photos really bring that out AND they made me laugh. Apparently, van Deelen had the idea for these photos when she saw some tiny instruments in a store window. Rats are insatiably curious about everything, so they cooperated by thoroughly investigating the instruments, providing her with some wonderful models. If you click on any of the pictures, it will take you to larger versions of the images on photo.net.

The Musician - © Ellen van Deelen

If you’ve checked out my About page, you’ve seen a picture of me with a rat, Salty, on my shoulder. Stephen and I used to have rats and they were fantastic pets. I usually describe them as being like little dogs that don’t bark. Rats are extremely social and each has a unique personality.

Our alpha rat was Kat, who was hilarious. She was a little bully. If I was sitting on the couch, and she wanted to get from one side of me to the other, she wouldn’t simply climb over my lap. Instead, she would try to go behind my back by using her tiny hands to try and push me out of the way. And it usually worked too because I didn’t want to accidentally squish her. When we gave the rats treats, Kat would steal the treats from her sisters and go hide them. It wasn’t that she particularly wanted the treats. She just wanted to show them who was boss. She was usually too busy to eat the treats and when she forgot about them later, her chubby siblings would gobble them up. Kat was a skinny little thing, and she lived the longest of all our rats, which was still far too short.

The Band - © Ellen van Deelen

My favorite Kat story illustrates her personality perfectly. When we were in the room, the rats were allowed to come out of their cage and run around as much as they wanted. During one such play time, Kat’s sister Dill was sitting on the floor right in the middle of the room. Kat was walking from one side of the room to the other and found Dill in her path. Rather than walking around her, Kat chose to climb right over her, taking care to elbow her as much as possible. Once she was on the other side, she looked back at Dill and gave her a karate kick in the side. Stephen and I could barely stop laughing. It was such a Kat thing to do. For her part, Dill just sat there complacently through the whole thing.

The Irrepressible Spazi, riding around in the hood of my sweatshirt - © Stephen Bay

Another one of our personality plus rats was Spazimodo, or Spazi for short. There was never a more aptly named creature. He had a limitless supply of energy, which he used to create all sorts of fun games for himself, sometimes involving other rats or humans. Spazi’s best game was one I like to call Smash Your Face. I would lie on the floor on my side and Spazi would sit quietly by my feet – I swear he was trying to look nonchalant. Suddenly, he would take off running at high speed along the length of my body and launch himself into my face. Before you express any horror, know that Spazi never caused any harm by doing this. I was never once struck by a stray claw. He was quite careful and seemed to just want to involve me in his fun. I am sure he thought it was just as much fun for me as it was for him. And I guess it was, because he always had me laughing.

I highly recommend that you check out Ellen van Deelen‘s other rat pictures – they are truly wonderful. Please do not use these photos without permission from the photographer. She deserves the credit for her work.

My Dog is an Art Thief

Kara — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 06:20:49 +0000

Acrylic and charcoal portrait I made of Chiqui

We used to have pet rats, and they are known for stealing things. They would take whatever they could get their tiny little hands on and hide it away behind the books on our bookshelf (after nibbling hundreds of little bites in the edges of the pages). But I have never had a dog that stole anything. Chiqui is different. She loves to lie in her crate and chew on a bone or some other treasure she has found. We have discovered all sorts of interesting things in her crate, and we aren’t always sure where she got them. Once we found pay stubs under her mattress from a job I held some 15 years earlier (she is six years old).

One day I forgot to take out the trash, and left the bag by the front door. I remembered just as I arrived home and braced myself as I opened the door. Sure enough, she had strewn the contents of the bag all over the living room, including coffee grounds, a few green beans and some rice. I thought I got it all cleaned up, but a week or so later, we found an empty tin can she had hidden in her crate (luckily with no sharp edges).

But the pièce de résistance was when we discovered her love of art. A somewhat narcissistic love of art, actually. Stephen was cleaning out her crate one afternoon and starting laughing. He told me I had to come and see it for myself. When I crawled into Chiqui’s crate and saw what she had stolen, I cracked up too. There, leaning up against the wall of her crate, was a portrait of herself. I attended Artfest and in a class I took from Carla Sonheim, I created a charcoal and acrylic portrait of Chiqui. I had left it on the dining room table, and Chiqui must have pulled it off the table and taken it into her crate. Unlike everything else she takes into her crate, she made no attempt to destroy the picture. I guess she just wanted to admire herself.

Attack of the Killer… Cat?

Kara — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:45:55 +0000

I was walking Chiqui last night and checked my email on my phone. I had a wishlist notification from Bookmooch so I stopped for a moment to mooch the book. Just as I clicked the mooch button, a black cat shot out of the darkness and attacked Chiqui. I fumbled with my phone while I tried to pull her away from the cat, totally unprepared for the onslaught. I have never seen such an aggressive cat. I yelled at it to “get out of here” at the top of my lungs and it didn’t faze the cat a bit. Chiqui is a pit bull mix. The cat was, well, a cat. It wasn’t preternaturally large or anything. It was about a quarter of the size of my 60 pound dog. It was clearly defending its territory, because as soon as I wrestled Chiqui a bit further down the sidewalk, the cat stopped its mad pursuit (I was going to say dogged pursuit, but that would just be wrong). The whole thing was made creepier by the fact that it was evening, I wasn’t near a street lamp and it was a black cat. The house the cat was in front of was a long abandoned mess with an overgrown yard. In the gazillions of times we have walked past this house in the last five years, we have never seen the psycho cat.

It’s not the first time Chiqui has been attacked by a much smaller animal. Earlier this year, we were walking her when we saw a chihuahua, who was barking and straining at her leash to get at our dog. As we passed, said chihuahua pulled backward out of its collar and shot straight at Chiqui in attack mode. The little thing must have bitten poor bewildered Chiqui 10 times. Luckily the dog was so small that the bites didn’t break the skin. It was a bizarre sight – the dog was about the size of Chiqui’s head. Obviously, it wasn’t too smart or it wouldn’t have attacked a dog that could eat it in two bites. Throughout the attack, Chiqui just stood there looking surprised, as if she couldn’t believe this cheeky little midget was actually trying to take her on. The worst part is that when the owners finally got around to grabbing the chihuahua, they never apologized. They just stood there checking to make sure their dog was okay, although Chiqui never fought back. I told them they needed to get a harness for their dog, but they weren’t even paying any attention to us. They were just worrying about their precious little monster.

Poor Chiqui – always in the wrong place at the wrong time, it seems.

The Big D.O.G. Bailout

Kara — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:53:50 +0000

Thankfully, Chiqui is gnawing on a bone and not our walls (or shoes, or doorknobs, or laundry baskets, to name a few).

I have to hand it to my husband, Stephen. His gripes about our dog, Chiqui, are always timely. He has often complained that she adds negative value to our household, but lately he has taken to referring to her doggie treats as, “unearned bonuses.” In difficult economic times, we are all concerned about spending money on luxuries. But it seems a little unfair to subject the family dog to the same scrutiny as other line items on the household budget. However, in an attempt to pacify my frugal spouse, I submit the following written justification for Chiqui’s continuing role as cherished pet.

1. Exercise Program: Chiqui has enough energy to power the state of California indefinitely. But since we don’t have her hooked up to the grid, it is imperative that we find another way to release that energy so she doesn’t eat the walls (and she did actually eat a portion of one of our walls once, so we try to avoid that now). Chiqui requires two walks a day minimum, rain or shine. This means that I walk for an hour or more every single day. Walking is good for me. Walking is good for Chiqui. Walking is good for our walls. Score one for Chiqui.

Who could resist this face?

2. Companionship/Stress Reduction: Although Stephen thinks Aibo is all the pet an animal lover could want, I prefer real live animals, especially dogs. Robots are fun for about eight minutes. I checked. One of the reasons we adopted Chiqui was so I would have a buddy when Stephen is traveling. Notice I say “buddy” and not “protection”. Chiqui would let anyone in our house and offer up all our belongings if only they gave her a treat. Well, she would if she wasn’t hiding under the table. Protection, she is not. But after a long day at work, it gives me a huge boost when Chiqui bounds over to greet me. And after we have had our walk and our dinner, she is happy to cuddle up and have her belly rubbed. This is proven stress relief for both human and dog. At least it is in my house.

After a busy day of begging for treats and bumping into inanimate objects, Chiqui finally gets some shuteye.

3. Comic Relief: This is the area in which Chiqui excels. Of the many unbelievably silly things she has done, one of my favorites was the Red Dog Incident. Stephen was in the backyard painting the arbor over our deck. He was painting it red. We were keeping Chiqui in the house to keep her out of the painting area. But I can only let a dog stand by the back door with her legs crossed for so long. I let her out, but went out to supervise her to keep her on the lawn and off the deck. She did her business and before I could usher her back into the house, she took off on what we call her “crazy run”. She zooms around the back yard at high speed in kind of a half hop half run. Once this starts all you can do is get out of the way, because if her skull hits your shin, her head will be fine and you will be on your way to the E.R. to find someone to repair your shattered bone. You can all see what’s coming, so why on earth couldn’t we stop it? She ran/hopped onto the deck, which was covered with slippery plastic tarps. She bounced right into the paint tray, turning it into a sled that flew across the deck while paint splashed everywhere. A significant portion of this paint ended up on Chiqui. She was red. It is to my everlasting sorrow that I did not take a picture of my Red Dog, but the paint was oil-based and we were focused on getting the paint off the dog as quickly as possible. Soon she was mostly black again, although we occasionally found tiny red patches on her fur for about a month after that. Sure, it was a pain to get everything cleaned up, but we were laughing our heads off the whole time. One cannot underestimate the value of a good laugh, and Chiqui provides them in vast numbers.

If you are strictly playing a numbers game, Chiqui offers no discernible financial value to our household, but as we all know, there are things that money can’t buy. Stephen can continue to ask me if I would give Chiqui up if someone offered me a million dollars (Stephen also provides many good laughs), but my answer will always be no.

Please comment below and share how your pet adds value to your household. I could use the ammunition.