DOSH IS COMMON????

[biggerbirdbrain]

Sounds like Crumbles probably had the run of the house, the neighborhood and YOU! What a crazy wonderful creature ... and how clever! No wonder you always talk fondly of her (I believe you mentioned her in earlier posts).

I don't know what breed Crumbles was but I thought this was a nice one ... just for you.

[technomc]

AAHHHH!!!

She was just a black fluffy farm yard kitty.....but wonderfully sensitive and a really good friend. I miss her dreadfully.

[biggerbirdbrain]

I've had my share of kitties I've missed along the way, as well. A couple of weird ones, freaked out ones, and cuddly ones. Some smart, some dumb as a bag of nails, and some just plain lazy-butts. Each one was always so distinct and individual ... loved 'em all!

[technomc]

Me too.
I rescued a cat that decided to squat in my conservatory. He had a dreadful eye and when the vet had finished with him, he only had one eye and no balls. Poor little thing. I called him Nelson. We kept him till he was recovered then rehoused him. My cats didn't like him much and fought all the time. My husband didn't like him either, and thought that having 3 cats was bordering on eccentric.
My last cat Tosca, did a runner one morning after we had been to the vets to organise his chop. I think he knew what was in store for him and his bits, and bogged off to somewhere he could keep them.

[biggerbirdbrain]

I love the name Nelson! How perfect!

The others may have been jealous of all the attention, because it was an intruder, or was defective. You know how species are ... not least of all, humans!

Most of the ones that got away ended up getting hit by vehicles. One of the reasons I stopped having any after a while ... the kids were shedding too many tears.

Buster, the bird I have now, though, took off one day and landed in a tree near the house when its cage door swung open as I was cleaning it out on the porch. I was scared to death the poor bird might never return and then starve to death or get eaten by someone like Crumbles. Luckily, with a lot of sweat, cajoling and maneuvering, I managed to get a long pole, get Buster to step on it, and retrieved him by lowering it ever so slowly till he got on my finger and I put him back.

[technomc]

MMMMM!!! Birds and cats...not a good mix.
What kind of bird is it threeb? Never fancied one myself.
I don't think i could have another cat now either. At least not till i'm an old bird. The heart ache is too much when something goes wrong, not to mention expensive.

[Binkie]

We used to love cats - had several over the years, but then gradually realised what enormous damage they do to the native birds and small animals. Being obsessed twitchers (bird-watchers to non-poms!) we chase off any moggy we see. We've been putting seed out for the wild birds, and now we have daily visits from rainbow lorikeets and pale-headed rosellas, amongst lots of others. Beautiful birds......after 30 years in Australia, I still find it a thrill to see parrots in the garden!

[technomc]

Hi Binks...
They are beautiful....how lovely to see them in the garden.
I put out seed too..i love watching the birds.  Roy has loads in his garden...it's huge. But the squirrels come and raid the peanuts, little toerags. Robins are my favourite, they are so bold and quite tame. They sit and wait for me to turn over the soil then nip in and eat the worms. Nothing as exotic as your visitors though.

[biggerbirdbrain]

Such spectacular creatures you have there, Binks!! We don't have anything quite like that in our neighborhood except for the rare painted bunting, and we get glimpses of them from time to time in our yard, seasonally. They migrate from Mexico, and are really beautiful.

[biggerbirdbrain]

sorry for the double vision!

[technomc]

They are gorgeous too threeb..and i'm sure you get more than one....

[biggerbirdbrain]

Yes, usually the pair. The female is a beautiful lime green colour!

[Binkie]

They're beautiful.....I've never heard of them before!

[biggerbirdbrain]

One of the really better ones I actually get to see, Binks. Texas has one of the most numerous bird populations, and here, in the central part, we are on a migration route, esp. from the Gulf of Mexico, and sometimes we get lucky if they land near our house. The buntings are very very skittish, and getting a good still picture is truly a challenge.

Birding is a huge business here ... #1 attraction for visitors, believe it or not! We have the cardinals, blue- and scrub-jays, tufted titmouse (I LOVE that name), chickadees, which are plentiful. There's also  the cedar waxwing, a gorgeous bird, that has red-tipped wings and lovely shades of buff and brown and yellow. They come seasonally, too, and not every year. There are many cedars here, which I think they must like. It was the first one I photographed when we moved into our house here, but that's not my photo.

[Alan W]

I know the subject line of this topic implies a question to me about dosh, but I can't resist following up Binkie's use of the word moggy. Mog, moggy and moggie are used in England and Australia as colloquial terms for a cat. I had always believed these originated in the fact that the letters M-o-g can be arranged vertically to resemble a cat, as in the attached picture.

It seems I'm wrong. Dictionaries say the word comes from a familiar form of the name Margaret, which was earlier applied to calves or cows. Of course this still doesn't explain why the name was used for cows or cats.

But even accepting this etymology, I thought I would be able to find some reference to the way the letters of Mog can be made to look like a mog, but I haven't found a trace of it on the Web. Perhaps I just haven't though of the right search terms. Has anyone else ever come across this Mog drawing?

(If the drawing was the origin of the word, it would perhaps be the only word in the language derived totally from the shape of its letters. There are terms that relate to the shape of one letter - T-shirt, U-turn, S-bend, etc - but I can't think of a case where the shape of a whole word represents its meaning.)