Tag Archives: lizards

A Moment of Silence for Some Friends of Cats

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OK, not really friends, perhaps. But all the cats loved to watch them.

Today Susan unexpectedly lost one of her beautiful fish, a Gold Nugget Pleco, and Madame Houdini, a White Line Gecko. Dang, they were both fine yesterday.

Here’s a picture of Madame Houdini with two of her little gecko friends in happier days (like when she was alive):

She wasn’t called Madame Houdini for nothing. In her most famous escape (documented in the upcoming book Famous Geckos and Where They Hid, soon to be a major motion picture starring Stickon D. Wall and Leggo Mai Gecko), she not only got out of a completely sealed tank, but eluded six cats for three days by pretending to be a wall decoration, and then resisted capture by numerous experienced reptile wranglers. If you don’t believe me, check out these photos.

Madame Houdini could often be found on the back wall of her tank, where she teased the heck out of all the cats, but especially Jennifur, Auri, and Aurum. Jenni sometimes stood up on her hind legs like a meercat to look at her, while Aurum would come out in the middle of the night and stare at her for hours.

We will all miss them both.

Cat Tails and Tales :-)

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Recently I acquired a female adult leucistic leopard gecko named Lucy. Her previous owner couldn’t keep her anymore. So I volunteered. :-)

Yin (Yang’s brother) likes to watch our lizards as they eat or walk around their terrariums. So there he is up on the cabinet, watching Lucy. At the same time, Lucy is stalking the tip of Yin’s twitching tail. Hmmm, two predators following their instincts…Luckily for both her tank is locked! :-)

Cats and Crickets

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I brought home crickets to feed my lizards. As usual, all the cats wanted to paw at the bag, and then watch me release them into the lizard homes. More than once I have “accidentally” let a cricket loose on the floor. Naturally, a crowd appears, tails waving and whiskers smiling. They almost never eat the cricket, mostly watch it hop around. I later recapture the wayward cricket.

My friend’s cats like to eat the crickets she releases. Yin ate one once, but then he threw up so now he just watches.

Jennifur and Aurum are both transfixed by the lizards hunting inside their cages. Occasionally, Jennifur likes to “help” the geckos by batting at the crickets inside the terrarium. The lizards respond by running and hiding.

I just realized that all of our pets are predators…

A Piece of Tail

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Today while I was working at my computer, Steven called me over with some alarm in his voice. “I think it’s a lizard”, he said.

I walked over to the entrance to my office to find Steven and three or four cats staring intently at something wriggling on the ground. They (the cats) were trying to grab it and were huddling over it, so I whipped out my ever-present LED flashlight to take a look.

It wasn’t actually a lizard, but only a tail, bending fantastically this way and that, like a demented ballpoint pen refill on drugs. From the looks of it, it had belonged to a small alligator lizard that was now hiding somewhere amidst the cardboard boxes in the immediate area. Dropping a tail is a last-ditch survival trick of lizards that I had heard of many times, but had never seen in real life.

I thought it was pretty cool. Steven vowed not to eat anything longer than it’s wide, at least for several days.

Yang eventually carried it away proudly and presumably ate it. Yech.