introducing

The museum animals: Mama Kitty and Marc Anthony the Second.

Marc is doing what he does best in this picture: coming after Mama. For some reason she is terrified of him, even though a) she's bigger than him, and b) she's a damn cat, and cats eat birds. He'll chase after her while she's just hanging around, he comes into the office while she's eating and scares her away, he's basically kind of a bully.

Marc is maybe 2 or 3 years old, we got him from our vet. Our old chickens both died (Marc Anthony the First and his girlfriend, Cleopatra) and our vet's son had a few chickens of this breed, so he gave us one. I got to go pick him up. He crowed a lot on the drive. It was loud. I think he has a complex since he's so small, and has a crooked toe. He gets his food served to him in a bowl every morning. My first morning back I forgot that and just threw it on the ground. The second morning, he walked right over to his bowl when I went to get his food, like bitch, get it right. I've been putting my plant outside to get some sun; he pecked at it a little to show it who's boss.

Mama, on the other hand, is very sweet. We named her Mama because she kept having kittens at the museum. Mose was one of them, he was our pet at the museum for a few years until he ran away and broke my heart. We were pals. When he was little he'd go to sleep on my chair, then when I came in he'd either stay there and share my chair with me, or crawl into my lap and sleep there. If he was near me outside and I squatted down, he'd come over and climb into my lap just to snuggle with me. I loved that damn cat. I was so sad when he went missing.

Anyway, Mama was very skittish around people and used to run like hell if we so much as looked at her, but we started feeding her and eventually she became somewhat comfortable with us. We caught her a couple of summers ago and got her fixed, so her name's kind of funny now. Every morning she comes to the office for her breakfast, body slamming herself against the door until we open it for her, and then we have to prop the door open for her or she freaks out. But she lets us pet her, and she'll hang around me outside if there's no one else around.

We used to have a couple of sheep too, but they live with our vet now. I told a teacher that once and she was like "oh, they died?" I thought that was funny.