My Wife Has a Pet; Me

Posted on 10/11/2025 by Grumpa Joe
Daily writing prompt
What is good about having a pet?
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Living pets are famous for adding comfort into a life. My pet is a boarder in my house. She doesn’t belong to me, but to my step grandson. Her name is Katusha. Jet black with yellow eyes and a tail that never sleeps. It amazes me as to how she can keep that tail in a vertical mode and make it curve at the same time.

Katusha was adopted as a kitten and born under the deck of my step-son Freddie to a feral mother seven years ago. Freddie was killed in an accident shortly after, and his son, Gerry, inherited the cat. To make this story longer, my step-grandson, Gerry, and the cat now live with Lovely and me.

The cat has lived indoors the entire time. The only outdoor action she gets is when she sits at a window staring face to face with a squirrel or gazing at the birds feeding at a feeder. Last month when the night time temperatures began to drop, she surprised us by allowing a mouse to enter our living space. This can’t be I told her. You are supposed to keep our home mouse free. After that incident, I began watching her night time behaviour. Lovely has a habit of opening windows and doors to allow fresh air into the house. One evening I noticed the sliding door opening to our deck was cracked open about two inches. At the base of the door she sat in a crouch with her nose aimed, her ears up, radar-eyes wide open at a teensy-tiny hole in the corner of the door. About an hour later I turned from my computer to look at the front door and noticed Katusha sitting at attention and staring at the floor in front of her. I saw something lying there, but didn’t recognize what is was. Curiosity got me out of my chair to investigate. I had to get down on my knees to see it clearly. My eyes focused and by gosh it was a mouse; One of the smallest I have ever seen. It was dead and clearly delivered by Katusha for me to examine.

I have a habit where, when I get up to stretch or move, I say, “I’m changing chairs.” The final chair is the sofa in front of the TV. Within minutes of my plopping into that chair, Katusha arrives to join me. She jumps up, turns 180 degrees, and points her ass right at my face. She wants a back scratch which I give her and then grab her and pull her into my thigh where I can stroke her cheek and neck. We do this for a few minutes before she gets bored and changes position by moving to the far end of the sofa, away from me and settles into the fuzzy throw blanket I keep there for my warmth. She will be my close friend until Gerry comes home from his job. She hears the garage door open and immediately goes to sit at the door to greet him.

Filed under: Biography, Warm and Fuzzy | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

Daddy Big Bucks

Posted on 09/11/2025 by Grumpa Joe

Daily writing prompt
Name the most expensive personal item you’ve ever purchased (not your home or car).
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This is the first time I have chosen to accept the daily writing challenge from WordPress. I’m having trouble remembering what I bought for myself over the years, but they will come to me as I write. There are several things which I consider to be over priced items that I bought for me. Number one is my recumbent bicycle, topping out at $3500. I can swear that no one ever rode that bike but me. The next item has to be my fishponds. There were two. The first one, I dug, lined, and put flagstone rocks around the perimeter. The cost was lower than that of my bike, but I can’t put a price on my labor. Next was pond number two. Since I couldn’t bring the first one with me when I moved to another house I had to build it. By the time this took place I had grown much older and I decided to hire a company to create the pond of my dreams. I choose number one as my favorite. It was totally designed and built by me, and I had the most success raising Koi and Comet goldfish in that mini-lake. Pond number two was designed by me, but I relied heavily on the contractor to know what he was doing. As a result, pond 2 is shallower and relies on a commercial filter, which after a few years of raising fish, I have deemed to be adequate only for a table top goldfish bowl. I have had this pond for seventeen years and have enjoyed it to the max, and decree that I spent $12000 wisely.

Pond-1 shown in its garden walk beauty one month before Barbd DIes

Big Al and his Comet buddies enjoying a feast of fish pellets

I could delve into the intricacies of design that make Pond-2 inferior to Pond-1, but I’ll pass because Pond-2 is aesthetically more pleasing than Pond-1. Overall, the two ponds were fascinating, and I wouldn’t want to live in a home where I couldn’t raise water lilies and Comet goldfish.

One feature that I had in Pond-1 was a Garden Railway. Railroading is fun, but I decided that the hobby was too time-consuming, and I cut back to design a layout that encircles the garden around the pond. That provided me with projects galore: Like a bridge to cross a river, a trestle to climb a grade, and a tunnel to bypass a waterfall. The railroad was always a hit when our yard was included on the Prestwick Garden Guild Garden walk.

There are two memories I cannot forget that occurred in Pond-1. The first was watching a rather large frog catch a Goldfinch for its meal. The frogs developed a habit of laying in wait on the edge of the stream, and the birds would come to the stream to bath and to drink. This Gold Finch got a little bit too close to the frog and Zip, he went into the frog head first The second was the sight of a mink escaping the pond with my prize Koi in its jaws. I really liked that Koi. The kids named him Big-Al because he had grown to become over fifteen inches long and would eat out of their hands. The mink was not much larger than Big Al when I last saw them disappear into the underbrush of the back garden.

Pond-2 after shelling out $12,000 to complete and before planting
Pond-2 is shown as the central showpiece of the Monet Vision.

I thought of replacing Big Al by buying a Koi of his size, but changed my mind when I saw the price tag, which was close to a thousand dollars. The mink decided to have Koi for supper rather than a much cheaper and smaller Comet. Right about that time, my wife Barbara had a heart attack and the focus of my life changed radically.

After this period of my life, the most significant gifts I bought for myself were trips to Arizona for the winter and three tours to Canada.

Filed under: Biography, Birds, Fish, Garden, Pond | Tagged: , | 2 Comments »

War with a Caveman Slugger

Posted on 03/09/2023 by Grumpa Joe

Why do you blog?

When I first began blogging my goal was to motivate people to achieve their goals. I had read numerous books on self motivation, goal setting, and time management. In addition I listened to tapes by motivational speakers like Zig Ziegler, Tony Robbins, Wayne Dwyer, a Brian Tracy and others. I was pumped. My goal was to write motivational stories incorporating the rules I had learned.

At first, I did exactly as I set out to do with little to no success. Then, the world changed. Obama was nominated by the Democrats to be president of our great country, but then he hit us with his qualifier to transform the country. He kept preaching that he wanted to transform our great country into . . . What? He never answered that question.

That question bothered me. What did he mean? I began reading any and all material related to Obama, his parents, and grand parents. It became obvious to me that his transformation was to make us Communists.

His mother, father, and grandparents on his mother’s side were radical socialists. Which is journalist code for communist.

Obama’s father became a member of the Kenyan government. While in office he proposed a law to redistribute the wealth of the country to the masses. Thankfully, the Kenyan leaders saw through this plan and demoted his father to a very low position in the government.

Obama’s plan was modeled after his father’s failed plan of redistributing the wealth. When he was in office he spent money liberally at every chance.

My motivational blog succeeded in changing my goal to fight the communist front being pushed by Obama instead of trying to motivate Dylan’s like myself to to wonderful things.

My blog posts tried to point out the hypocrisy and stupidity of his administration. One problem I had was the enormous wall put up by the modern press. They believed, and tried feverishly to make you and me believe that Obama was lily white pure. They succeeded in making him Saint Obama and anyone who didn’t go along with the program was stupid and insane. The same press that put Obama on the pedestal turned 180 degrees to oppose Donald Trumps. Now that same press has Joe Biden on the Obama pedestal.

My blog GrumpaJoesPlace became a raging battle between me and the world of Obama.

When Joe Biden came into play, I changed the direction of the blog again. Instead of fighting a war I can’t win, I’ve decided to tone things down, and write about subjects that I have some control over. Occasionally, I lose it when Uncle and or Joe Biden do something so stupid that I can’t ignore it.

Judging by the way our government is headed I’ll probably be losing my cool frequently in the up coming months.

One thing is for sure, since I changed from bashing Obama, my readership has dropped to one half of what is was when I tried to slug him in the head with a caveman sledgehammer at every chance.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , | 3 Comments »