It’s Mid-Winter here in the Southern Hemisphere, in Melbourne, Australia, to be exact.    We’re the place that’s reputed to have four seasons in one day, and sometimes, it really feels that way!

Since it’s rather cold at present, the cat has decided the only place to be is inside, unless the sun is shining.   One of her most favoured spots is on top of the snakes cages, as they are always heated.

Tia On The Snake's Cage

Of course, although the snakes are being kept warm, they are also in semi-hibernation, called brumation, so they’re not very active at the moment.    Not that Tia cares, so long as there is some warmth to be had!

My way of keeping warm is to add extra clothing, close all the doors into the room I happen to be in, and keep the heat in.    Doing this makes the thermostat click off and saves energy, but I’m still really warm.   Of course, a bonus is when the cat decides my lap is a good place to be…..

Don’t get me wrong, I love cats, and have a very spoiled one of my own.

Do you have a cat which lives near you, which comes to your door and
begs, pretending it’s a starving stray?   I’m sure that there are many cats
out there who lead double lives as con artists!

One cat comes calling regularly, and it’s probably all my fault.   I got into
the habit of putting out my cat’s scraps for the birds or whatever wanted
to eat it; Big mistake!   One local cat discovered there was regular food to
be had at this location.

This particular tomcat is very, very, good at using its huge green eyes to
plead for food, and has a meow to break your heart.   It isn’t even as if it
is starving – it’s quite well fed, not to say plump.    Makes you wonder just
how many homes it’s going to on its quest for food.

It should, of course, be a neutered tomcat, not entire, but there are still
far too many cats breeding because people just don’t think it’s important
to get a cat neutered or spayed.   That’s another topic though, and I’d
better not get started on it here……..

A Very Spoiled Tomcat

Why do people think that those bot generated spam messages, just
to get backlinks are going to remail here on the blog?    They are NOT!

Every time I check, I delete them all, after checking for that rare,
elusive genuine post.

I hate spam, and especially the kind which clogs up my blog with
stupid messages about sunglasses, porn sites, etc.

I don’t like my blog being used as a free backlink supply for all these
sites, but at least Akismet doesn’t allow them to be shown until
I’ve gone through them, so they don’t gain anything.

Go away, people, and write your own blogs, get your own traffic,
and maybe, just maybe, you’ll become more successful honestly.

This website is in the process of being changed from a fairly eclectic
place, to a site which concentrates on pets, mostly reptiles.

Although I’ll be leaving the older posts here, from now on, just
about everything you’ll read here will be pet related.

Other topics will be covered at my other sites:

http://jeandandrea.com             All about green gardening

http://jeand.biz                              Bits and pieces about business online

Yep, Tiger Woods is back!

That’s really good for the game, because it seems attendances have
dropped off while he’s been away.

I don’t care about what he did – it’s his business, and he can deal
with it however he likes.     If he wasn’t a public figure, it wouldn’t
even have made the news.

Tiger likes Augusta, and so far, even though he has been away from
golf for a while, he’s doing ok in the Open.

Will he win it?    Doesn’t really matter.   What matters is that the
spectators are back on the course, and golf is benefitting from
the return of Tiger Woods.

This time, I could NOT get Wordpress to update properly, no matter
what I did, so I guess I’m going to have to work with the old version
until I feel like trying it again.

Kill The PC

It’s so aggravating, when I know there is a new version available, and
it just won’t work for me. Guess I’ll have to learn more about the
workings of this stuff, but it’s going to be hard for a non-techy like me.

Uh-oh, when I logged in I discovered that there is yet another new version
of Wordpress to install.

For some reason I can never install it automatically on this server, so I have
to do it manually. Takes me hours, not being really technically minded.
It’s so easy when you have Fantastico and it’s done automatically, but I
guess you can’t have everything!

Off to play with the techo stuff again, and see what kind of mess I can
get into this time…………

In my garden, there are quite a few native plants, which seem to attract the native
birds. This is great, as I love having them there, except when they eat my fruit,
of course!

The question is, I feed the birds sometimes, but wonder just how much if overdoing it,
and making them too reliant on me, particularly since we are in a drought. One little
dove seems to come flying in as soon as I appear in the garden, and although this is
nice, it seems that she’s relying on me too much. Looks as it I might have to cut down
on her little seed treats.

Dove coming for food

A short time ago, while handling one of my pet pythons, he suddenly decided to bite
me. This is something he’s never done before, and I’m at a bit of a loss as to why.

It was a very hot day, and he was certainly very active, but the only reason I can
think of is that while crawling up the side of my head, he saw my eyelid blink, and
decided that it looked edible.

Snappy Eating

I don’t know about edible, but it certainly bled enough and I had a beautiful black
eye for well over a week.

Now I’ve learned that it’s not a good idea to completely trust any pet, no matter
how long you’ve had them. They are, after all, wild animals.

Well, that was fun – NOT!

I have two other websites hosted with a different host
which uses CPanel and Fantastico. That really makes the job
of updating Wordpress very easy – just click a few buttons and you’re done.

Not with the host this site is with. I’m not saying they are no
good, because I’ve been with them for several years with no
problems, except when I want to upgrade Wordpress.

It isn’t the easiest, when you’re not really technically minded,
but after two attempts, and several copies of the config file,
an hour and a half later, it’s done.

What a relief! I’ve made very sure that all files are backed up
on the server.

Now to find out how to copy all my posts and images to my
own PC so there’s a double safeguard. I’m heading over to
the Wordpress forum to get some help……..