Raja the Literacy Cat

Kade had a very captive little audience for his daily reading yesterday! Raja the cat just climbed up and made himself comfy.


Reading to the cat was the most fun he's had reading in a long time! Kade will read if I tell him to, but never choses to read for fun. Long books intimidate him, although he is a pretty good reader (at or slightly above his age level for this time of the school year). This book took him about 25 minutes to read, and he never once asked me if he could take a break.


I've heard of therapy dogs that are taken into school for children to read to. It helps to improve their literacy skills.


After seeing this, I believe animals really can be great reading companions! Kade was definitely more excited about reading to a cat than he ever has been about reading to me! I'm putting that on my mental list of good reasons to get our own cat when we move next year!

(note- Raja is not an actual trained therapy animal. He's just our friend's sweet pet. Well, sweet unless he's trying to steal cheese, in which case he's downright obnoxious! But we love him!)

Mostly fluffy stuff

I thought it might be fun to do a post of all the pets that I would love to have!

Now, I LOVE animals, all animals, but there are a certain select group that I would put in my own personal zoo. In my bedroom. I would get a quadruple King Size bed and cuddle with all of them at night, and they would be my best friends :) Besides that, there are many, many animals out there that need rescuing. Not just cats and dogs! Maybe some day I'll be able to give some of these guys a loving home.

Mini potbelly pig - Pig O' My Heart

Sugar Glider - Out of Love Sugar Glider Rescue

Platypus - I can't really adopt one, but the Healesville Sanctuary is wonderful!

Friesians have always been my favorite horse breed! GORGEOUS!!!!

Newfoundland - So many huge drooly dogs in need at Autumn Acres

The Flash and Thelma Memorial Hedgehog Rescue

Wallaby - A friend of a friend rescued one and had to cuddle it like a baby for 2 months! Oh, the torture!

I don't know what these are really called... I call them miniature monkeys. And they are cute.

If we ever get into our own house, at least two of these animals will be MINE! For now, I'll stick with Clark and Lex, my betas, and Slayer and Ninja, my frogs. Not so cuddly, but just as lovable!

By the way, today was my first day at my nanny job with the new baby, so I guess I'm in a really "aww that's so cute," mood. But I think you got that point already!

Elephant Art

I was amazed when I saw this video on Youtube:
(please watch the whole thing to the end, it is really quite incredible!!)



As I was looking through the comments on that video, there were a lot of people who were very concerned about the elephant. Was it being forced to paint for crowds of people? Did it get beaten if it did not paint? Do the elephants even like to paint? I was curious too, so I did a little searching and found this website:

The Elephant Art Gallery -Authentic and Inspiring Paintings by Elephants

These elephants live at the National Elephant Institute in Thailand. I'm not sure if the elephant in the video above lives here, or somewhere else. Apparently there are other places that have taken teaching elephants how to paint as well. The paintings on this website are mostly abstract, rather than lifelike, but I don't see how the video could be a fake.

Here are some interesting quotes from the website about the art, how the elephants learn to paint, and more:

"I am certain that our elephant artists know what they are doing when they paint. After I have handed the loaded paintbrush to them, they proceed to paint in their own distinctive style, with delicate strokes or broad ones, gently dabbing the bristles on the paper or with a sweeping flourish, vertical lines or arcs and loops, ponderously or rapidly and so on. No two artists have the same style."

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"...we have truly discovered an activity which the elephants thoroughly enjoy.”

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"Although elephants are very intelligent and naturally creative, painting with their trunks is not an activity that any have been found to perform in the wild. Therefore all the artists first have to go to school to learn how to paint... It takes only one day to discover if the elephant has real interest in the activity and any aptitude at art. Once the most promising students have been selected, they then continue to be taught for up to a week before they are considered ready to make a living from it...

They are taught by first showing them how to hold the paintbrush. While some curl the trunk around the brush instinctively, the preferred method at the Center is to hold the brush in the ‘nostril’ at the end of the trunk, which gives the artist greater range of movement for the brushstrokes. For this purpose the paintbrush is modified so as to be the right length and thickness to hold easily.

Next they are introduced to the easel and taught how close to stand to it so that they can extend their trunk comfortably. Finally they are guided by the mahout to apply the brush to the paper. Some artists take to this quicker than others, but all of them need time and encouragement to learn how to apply the paint within the confines of the paper, to know when the paint has dried up and to develop a style of brushstroke that suits them.

During the training the artist’s natural instinctive style becomes evident. No two elephant artists have the same style and just like human artists, their style develops and matures over time.

It is quite unnecessary to force the elephant to learn how to paint. Those that do not seem to enjoy the activity are introduced to other activities. Today there are 14 elephant artists at the Center and all of them thoroughly enjoy painting."

I, for one, would LOVE to own a piece of art by an elephant! They have always been one of my favorite animals. They are so intelligent, they have feelings, and I think they are amazing! I have also seen dolphins and horses painting. What I wouldn't do for a whole collection of paintings done by animals :)

Sonic the Hedgehog

Last Christmas, when we drew names within my family for gift giving, I drew my sister's name. Surprise! I have made her so many things, why not one more :) I wanted to make her something one of a kind, and I searched the internet for a long time looking for just the right pattern. I finally found it here: Silver Seams- That link takes you to a free plush hedgehog pattern! Looked easy enough, but I had never made a stuffed animal before, so I started with some muslin. It was a good thing I did, because it turned out absolutely horrible! It took me forever to figure out how to sew the pattern pieces together. Sewing 3-D creatures is a lot harder than it looks! After fiddling with the pattern and making three more deformed muslin hedge-things, I was brave enough to start on the real thing. I used some white faux fur fabric that I had gotten off Freecycle (I have received lots of great fabric from Freecycle!) for the tummy, arms, legs, and face.
I used neon green fleece for the back.
I hand cut little felt hands and feet:

I used felt for the nose, embroidered the mouth, and used safety eyes for the first time!
I trimmed the fur around the face to make it a more defined area.


Now for the hard part. Little did I know that they actually HAVE long, bright blue fun fur fabric. I almost died in the store when I saw it a week after Sonic was finished. I have a knack for always choosing the hard way, though! Instead, I went to Ben Franklin and found some bundles of bright blue eyelash yarn with specks of pink and neon green. Perfect! I bought three. They were normally $10 apiece, but I found them on sale for $2 on clearance.

I made the furry back by wrapping the yarn around 2 fingers about 10 times, cutting, tying the center, and sewing onto the hedgehog.
Repeat hundreds of times. Run to the store to buy SIX more bundles of the yarn.
Get cramps in your hands.
Slowly grow to hate the hedgehog, as you work on it for hours and hours and only seem to get an inch of work done.

And then one day, he was done! I used the *very last inch* of all that yarn I bought to cover the last bald spot on the hedgehogs butt. I was tricking myself thinking he was done, however. Next, I had to cut all the loops so the yarn would stick up like soft spikes. There were lots of loops. After that, I had to give him a haircut so he could see. That created a pile of blue fur on the carpet about 5 inches high, which got the attention of K's potential mess radar. He ran through the pile before I could stop him and now, months later, I am still finding blue fur in weird places.

I am just glad I got him done before Christmas (barely). Sis gave him the name Sonic, since he's blue, and he has had a happy life ever since.