Monday, July 05, 2004

Camille has officially graduated from her PEG tubage!

Just realized I forgot to mention that, how could I. I pulled her tube nearly two weeks ago, happily! She's doing great, as I knew she would, and I'm slowly working on integrating into the household at large. Not the easiest task. She's a ballsy little one, pretty darn tough when she feels like she needs to be...but I have a houseful of tough cats and dogs too and she has no idea what she's in for. So for now, because she's still on meds and because I can't bear the thought of just turning her loose in the house and watching her get her little booty kicked, I take various cats/dogs on individual visits with her in her room. She does ok. I try to rotate among cats who will just ignore her, and cats who will put her in her place without hurting her. Hopefully she will get the drift that she doesn't just get to stalk/"kill" everything she sees. I can't blame her for it, she's basically grown up in solitary confinement -- but she wouldn't be alive at all otherwise, and I'm sure we'll all figure out a way to make this latest addition work. Long road ahead though, I think...
Just had a really fun few hours with my goats. Lucky (who is now Luca, sometimes), Trinket, Chloe (nee Brownie) and I just hung out in the front area. They had so much fun. I was worried about letting them out, thinking that they might just go feral on me (I'm all about worst-case scenarios) but the complete opposite was true. Actually I only put them back in their paddock because I wanted to come inside, but they followed me right to the door, and I didn't want them to look around and see the few plants I DO cultivate and eat them. I couldn't get far away from them, the minute Luca couldn't see me he'd start racing in the general direction where he last saw me. Which is GOOD - because Trinkie and Chloe follow him wherever he goes, so I now have much more faith in my ability to successfully move them from place to place without stress. He follows me, they follow him...easy!

We spent a lot of time wandering the yard, they ate a bunch of weeds. They haven't yet noticed the poison oak, I can't wait til they do and eat it all! Anyway, they climbed up on top of everything they could find to scale, most notably an overturned bathtub (ex-horse watering trough that's too heavy for me to move alone so there it sits!) and played king/queen of the mountain. And, they actually galloped around a bit, romping to and fro, and had some alpine ramming games (they don't even have horns but still they love to rear up and butt heads with each other, all in fun).

I think I'll go back out soon and let them out for round two!