Missy, the champ

Earlier this year I saw Missy lying next to one of Shorty's toys. It was, in fact, Shorty's favorite toy, his beloved Moose. I thought "Oh, how cute, she just happened to lay down where the toy was." 

 Then I noticed it kept happening. Over and over.

Shorty and Missy get along but they don't play together because Missy, as an older cat, doesn't want to rough-house. And she has perfected the art of intimidating dogs. She learned this when Julienne was with us; just by standing there, without a hiss or a paw raised, Julienne would move out of her way. I had forgotten that she played this same game while we were living in the RV. It worked but Shorty is more confident than Julie so sometimes he got back at Missy. But even then, if Missy decided she didn't want to play by the rules, it didn't turn out like he planned.

Missy hasn't done this for a couple of years but she sure seems to like doing it now. Shorty will take his toys away from us, but not from her. When she is cuddled up to his toys or just lying near them, he sits nearby, stares at the toy (but not at Missy), and whines. Since Shorty is such a toy-hoarder, he's kind of easy prey in this game. It doesn't matter what toy he has, he wants the one he doesn't have.

And Missy, who has never actually played with a dog toy and never will, loves doing this to him.  

Shorty is so possessive of his toys that he won't share them with anyone. He hoarded them away from Julienne, and when Donna dog-sits him at her house, he even steals all the toys from Donna's dogs! So I smirk a little when Missy pulls this over on him.  But today I tried to give her something else to play with - lots of crumpled up receipts. She spent some time batting them around before deciding they were not as much fun as irritating Shorty. But by then he'd managed to sneak in and retrieve his toy. 

Missy didn't want to continue taunting him enough to actually get up. So all is peaceful in the Lambert home again (for today). 

Remodel update: A temporary sink

In order to fix the wall, Randy had to remove the old cabinets. Since we need a working sink, we set the old countertop, with sink attached, on a couple of sawhorses and Randy reattached it to the old plumbing. It sits lower than is comfortable but it should work until the new cabinets are installed.

Animal Kingdom with friends

We spent most of the day at Disney with Jerry and Cindy, who haven't been to Disney in about 20 years, so there have been a lot of changes! They wanted to see Animal Kingdom so we started there, with a ride on the Kali River Rapids. We got a bit wet but not too much, so we went on the Jungle Trek, which is a walking tour through the area with Komodo dragon, huge bats (who were not visible today - it's mating season), and beautiful, graceful tigers. 

Nearby are grazing water buffalo, who look like 100% muscle. 

When we were finished there, it was time for the Lion King show. This is the most popular show here and we were glad to see they are replacing/updating some of the costumes. These folks work really hard at this show and it's always amazing!

Time for another ride - the Kilimanjaro Safari. There is always something a bit different on this ride, because the animals can come and go in large areas. Hippopotamus, cheetahs, crocodiles, elephants, giraffes - today we even saw the lion resting on top of his rock. He doesn't do much else during the day, but it's rare to see him. We had a small delay while, a couple of cars ahead of us, three rhinos sat in the road until they were good and ready to move. And there are several different branches of antelope family represented here, all of them ignoring us completely.

We finished with a walk through the Gorilla Falls Exploration walk. Here we watched a hippo grazing on the other side of his underwater viewing area. Then we waited a few minutes at the gorilla viewing area while care-givers tossed fruit around and exited the area, before half a dozen gorillas ran back out to see what was there. The new mom had her baby snuggled against her belly. Last out was a large male - not so big that he needed to move to the bachelor herds, but pretty darn big. 

By then we were getting tired, so we went back to our car and drove to Epcot while we could still enjoy it. Cindy thought that Soarin' might trigger her vertigo but she had her wristbands on and a great attitude so we all went on it. And everyone loved it, of course! Afterwords we talked about what to do next, and getting a beer at the restaurant won out. We all decided it wouldn't make sense to push on to the World Showcase - that's an awful lot to cover in one day, and there was more to do and see right where we were. So we left Cindy and Jerry to get a sandwich at Sunshine Seasons before going on the Land ride, while we chose to take the ride home. Long day, but lots of fun!

Cheney Brothers Show, 2019

Today we went to the Cheney Brothers food show in Orlando! Several companies put on food shows but Cheney Brothers' is one of the best.

Just inside the doors, to the right and taking up a huge area, is my favorite, Duck Deli. They always put on a great show, with live music, a vast array of food products (breads, meats, soups, chips, pickles, etc) and they offer samples of everything! They go even further and make up samples of sandwiches with their products, and load a big rack with full loaves of bread to take home. None of this would matter if the food wasn't good, but it's all very good. Their Pot Roast was great and their Pit Ham was excellent. 

This was where Randy and Beth found the soups she wants to serve at church on Wednesday night. They tried samples elsewhere but these were the best. 

Randy doesn't sample indiscriminately and he doesn't buy ready-made products for himself because he cooks from scratch. But he does look for new trends and ideas. And since not everyone who cooks at the church cooks from scratch, he helps Beth find ready-made products that suit her needs.

Another large area was the Grand Western section, dedicated to different cuts of high quality meat. One of their best offerings was the cricket-encrusted Pamu Venison Bistro Fillet (aka Elk sirloin)! Randy was very impressed with that. Cheney Brothers has a such great variety of foods, from Japanese sushi to Latin American coffee and everything in-between, prettily displayed and ready to sample. Great show!