Cat Walking Pictures!!!

I've spent the last day travelling, and didn't have a chance to update yesterday, but I did get a chance to upload the pics of Elphie walking before we left. I've been reading The Gymnasium of the Horse by Gustav Steinbrecht and it's been really interesting so far. It's odd, because I've had this book for three years and never really tried to read it (I think I've read one of the forwards a couple of times). I think I thought it would be too hard or something, but it really isn't. I'm only about 30 pages into it (because I'm taking notes as I'm reading) but it's like someone put a Universal Translator in my head that has dressage as one of the loaded languages. I plan on putting my notes into this blog (kind of like the Lessons With Lendon book review I've got going on), that way I can refresh myself on the key points at a later time without having to page through the whole book, or try to keep my notes someplace where I know where they are.

Anyway, on to the cat walking pictures. Right now I only have Elphie pictures. Elphie's real name is Elphaba, which is the name of the Wicked Witch of the West in the book Wicked. That's why Elphie has a light green collar. My husband and I have seen Wicked three times so far, once in NYC, once in Columbus, and once in Dayton. We saw it the weekend we got engaged, so it has special meaning to us (plus I gave him Wicked and Son of a Witch for Christmas/Valentine's Day when we were dating, and Somewhere Over the Rainbow was the song we danced to for our first dance at our wedding).

Elphie still mainly hangs out along the side of the house...


...so I told Craig to carry her out into the yard and pet her, that way she felt safer and got to see that the middle of the back yard wasn't so bad. I was sitting with Kitty at the time...


...you can see that it didn't last long. I don't know if she'll ever be safe on the leash, she freaks out whenever she can't walk because she's reached the end of the leash...

...so for now she mainly gets to walk on her own with her leash dragging. She doesn't go far and one of us is always watching her...



...of course, Kitty's favorite game is to attack Elphie's leash. But I'm just glad that Kitty remembered she and Elphie live together normally. The last time Kitty was outside and Elphie was in the bedroom window, watching, Kitty was growling and hissing at her through the window.



These are half the Elphie pictures, I'm going to post more tomorrow or the next day. They're kind of boring, because cat walking really entails cat following. Or, cat untangling, when they go one way around a post and then decide to reverse without going back the way they came. It'd be cool if we could get Elphie to play fetch outside, like she does inside.

Oh, and I had to take a zillion pictures of Elphie because normally she is impossible to get good pictures of. Not only because of her color, but she really has no desire to pose, whatsoever. Kitty is a little prima donna when the camera comes out, but not Elpie. She doesn't look at me, even when I call her, and most of the pictures her eyes are closed or half closed. At least we have one photogenic cat though.