Flash Fiction: Identity Crisis

Posted on by Astrid

I remember what it was like to be a tiny, little lamb. Everybody adored me. They’d cuddle with me. Children would feed me grass they’d just picked from across the fence.

Then, one day, a little boy pointed out to his Mommy that I wasn’t a tiny, little lamb after all. He told his Mommy that I may’ve been dressed in sheep’s clothing, but that didn’t make me a lamb.

From that point on, everybody hated me. No more cuddles for me. No more grass feeds for me. Farmers started campaigning to be allowed to kill me.

But I still feel like that tiny, little lamb. How tragic it is to be a wolf in an identity crisis.

This post was written for Twiglet #326, which is “to be a wolf”.

Things That Made Me Smile (June 13, 2022) #WeeklySmile

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I haven’t done a gratitude list in a while and, to be honest, have been struggling to find enough things to be grateful for to make a list out of them. Today was another mixed day. However, I did find a major reason to smile in the morning, which I am sharing with The Weekly Smile.

You see, my assigned home staff has a new family pet and a rather unusual one at that. This morning, she invited me over to her house to see it and I actually got to hold the animal. Can you guess what it is?

Yes, indeed, it’s a hedgehog! Specifically, this one’s a four-toed hedgehog. They can legally be held as pets as of 2015 here in the Netherlands, but there are only a few breeders. My staff said she had to go through a whole screening process to see if she and her family would be fit to take care of a hedgehog. The hedgehog, a female named Willow, can only leave its cage for an hour at a time, because otherwise it’ll lose too much body heat.

When I held it, at first it didn’t feel prickly at all. I compared its prickliness to my sister-in-law’s late rough-haired dachshund. Only when Willow got a little overstimulated at the end did it put up its spines.

Hedgehogs like this one aren’t used to living in groups or even pairs, so they can easily be left alone for a few weeks (provided they have enough food and water) to fend for themselves. Even so, the atmosphere did feel cozy because of Willow.

After my visit with Willow, my staff let me jump on her kids’ trampoline in her garden for a bit too. Her husband has an aviary with Gouldian finches in it. They were too quick for us to even attempt to take pictures of them or so my staff said, but their birdsong was quite beautiful.

To Clone a Cat

Posted on by Astrid

One of Mama Kat’s writing prompts for this week is an interesting but rather hypothetical one: if you could clone a favorite pet from your past, which one would you choose and why? Now I have absolutely no idea about the science behind cloning and zero interest in looking it up, but I’m assuming from the question it could be a now-deceased pet. As such, I’m assuming the real question is really about bringing back to life said animal.

I must admit here that I’m not that much of a pet lover. I’ve had cats pretty much my entire life, but I can never seem to truly tune into their needs. It could be that I’m not a cat person, but I don’t think I’m a dog person either.

The only pet I’ve had that I seemed to be somewhat attuned to, was Morse. My parents and I brought him home from the shelter when I was fifteen. He was a Norwegian forestcat crossbreed of about three to four months old when we got him.

We named him Morse after Inspector Morse from the TV series, because he immediately started investigating his surroundings when he got home with us. I remember wanting to name him Amor (Latin for “love”), because I was in grammar school. However, my father vetoed that, saying it sounded weird to call for “Amor” in the backyard.

Before we got Morse, we’d had Pluk. He was rather scared of me stepping on his tail accidentally because of not seeing him. Morse didn’t seem as scared.

Morse got sick with the cat flu right out of the shelter and always seemed to keep a weak respiratory system. He was very thin for a Norwegian forestcat crossbreed. Nonetheless, he made it to fifteen-years-old. During his last year of life, he declined both physically and cognitively, but my parents decided not to let him be put to sleep. He finally crossed the rainbow bridge on July 30, 2016. If I could revive any pet from the past, it’d certainly be Morse. I really loved his mischievous, adventurous and investigative nature.

If you could clone a favorite pet, who would it be and why?

Mama’s Losin’ It

Full Day at Day Activities

Posted on by Astrid

Hi, I’m Marieke. I am the insider who is most often out at day activities. I enjoy sensory activities, movement activities and just relaxing in the weighted chair or snoezelen (sensory) room. I am also very good at relating to my fellow clients. I know that I am (or should be) intellectually more capable, but I don’t feel that way. I guess it’s something to do with social and emotional development, or whatever.

Yesterday, we went to day activities for the whole day. We’ve been going for the whole day on Tuesday for about a month now and we love it. We had fun yesterday too, going for a short walk in the afternoon. There’s a farm with lots of cute animals next to the day center. We walked near the animals. I couldn’t touch them, but the other client who was with me and the staff could see them. He said lots of funny things about the animals. Like, when we passed an alpaca that had its behind turned towards us, he said “butt” and laughed.

Today, our support coordinator would have visited us in the afternoon after we’d spend the morning at day activities. However, she was off sick so couldn’t come. Our support worker also couldn’t fill in for her and our mother-in-law couldn’t come either. As a result, we would actually have nothing to do and no-one to rely on for the afternoon. Our day activities staff were a little concerned about us, so they asked the manager whether we could spend today’s afternoon there too. We get funding for six half-days and we already go on Tuesday and Friday for the whole day and Monday and Wednesday morning. The manager was willing to treat this like an exceptional situation though. So we could attend for the full day today too.

It was so much fun. In the morning, we did a cooking activity. I went shopping for it with the staff. Usually, I participate in the cooking itself too, but we felt this would be too overwhelming. Instead, I went into the snoezelen room. The staff made a stir-fried egg roll with mushrooms, onions and bell peppers.

In the afternoon, we had music. A music therapist came to our group. She sang and played the guitar. We could also play on the guitar for a bit. We sang St. Nicholas songs. I am glad I was out, as some of the others would’ve found this too childish and just been annoyed at the noise. I really loved it though.

Tomorrow, I’ll have the day off, but I will go horseback riding in the afternoon. That should be fun!

Monday’s Music Moves Me: Nursery Rhymes About Animals

Posted on by Astrid

Yesterday, I wanted to participate in Song Lyric Sunday and I had the most fabulous song (haha) for the theme of “drive/driving”. Then I couldn’t find the lyrics, so I gave up. I however also discovered Monday’s Music Moves Me, another music-themed blog hop. The theme for today is “songs with animals in the title”.

I have not previously participated in this linky, so I don’t know whether it’s focused on just pop songs. Others are including The Lion Sleeps Tonight, which was going to be in my head all day long, so I had to replace it with another one. I picked a children’s song. My mother-in-law sings this rhyme regularly.

From there, I decided to look up more children’s songs on this theme. I remembered from a time I listened to a lot of nursery rhymes that there was one about Alice the [whatever] has five humps. I googled it and here it is.

From there, I decided to make this entire post about nursery rhymes, so here’s another lovely song I found.

And for my last song, I’m going to cheat a little and share one of my all-time favorite nursery rhymes. It doesn’t have an animal in the title, but I guess it has a whole farm of them, LOL.

What children’s songs with animal themes do you love?