What are we supposed to do now?

Hunter come quickly, we have an emergency!
What's wrong, buddy? Did you hurt yourself?
No, but take a look at what I just read. It's Sue's latest travel blog and she says in there that it is only five days until Christmas!
Oh no! What are we supposed to do now? Are you sure? The weather sure doesn't feel like winter. There is no snow, it's not cold and André and Sue are running around in shorts and t-shirts. No wonder we didn't realize that Christmas is just a few days away. On the other hand this explains the funny little tree on the table. How could we have not picked up on that?!
Do you think Sue could be wrong about that? I mean sometimes she doesn't exactly strike me as the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. She has been wrong in the past and done some pretty dumb things in her days. Maybe Christmas in the US is not at the same time as in Canada. Kind of like their Thanksgiving is later. Maybe there is still time for the snow and cold to come?
Never mind that, Trapper, I'm more worried about the presents. I didn't even start thinking about them!
Presents? You are not going to give them gifts, are you, Hunter? We have never done that before.
No, silly, not giving - getting! I haven't sent my wishlist to Santa yet and now it might be too late. And even if it wouldn't be too late, how would Santa find us down here? I sure hope you are right about their Christmas being later than in Canada so we can make up our wishlists and send Santa a Change-of-address card.
I have an idea: why don't we use e-mail for that? It's supposed to be real quick. Let's go get Sue and type up our mail to Santa right now!

See you around

hunter and trapper

PS: don't forget to read André's and Sue's blogs (listed on the side), too and to follow our trip on Google map and on facebook. You can also check our web site for more pictures.

Hard work for us

Hi everyone

We had a blast traveling around with Alice, André's mom, and to show her what life with cats is all about. Though we are not sure if she is going to adopt one herself, we sure hope she is considering it after her experience with us. I mean, who could resist. After the pleasure of spending time with us anybody just has to turn into a complete cat lover!

True, but Alice says she travels a lot and she does not have a fifth wheel like we do, so having a cat may be impossible for her. She surely would want to take him or her (or maybe she would get more than one in which case it would be "them") along but can you imagine a cat traveling on a bus or a big ship? And not traveling anymore because she wouldn't want to part with her cat seems not to be what she has in mind. At least not at the moment. So I guess we just have to wait and see how she is going to resolve this grave conflict of interest.

André and Sue also enjoyed the time with Alice. They took her to places they had been before and at times they were astonished, how things had changed since they have been there last time. Let's face it: they are getting old! Some of the places we're talking about, they have visited 20 years ago. We don't think many cats even get to live for 20 years and these guys are talking about past trips. Do you think we should be concerned about whom we will be living with in the future, Hunter? André and Sue are as old as Methuselah and who knows how much longer they will make it?

I wouldn't be too concerned, Trapper, they still look pretty fresh to me. But maybe we keep an eye on them, just in case. Meantime we will have to get Sue to get back to work. Boy this is getting harder and harder all the time. Since we have been traveling she seems to think she is retired or something. She is all play and fun but no writing blogs or updating the web site. This has to change - we have followers who expect to read about our adventures and we cannot let them down. Besides, I have heard that in humans being mentally active will keep them younger. So getting Sue back to work may just help with that age concern we have.

Good thinking, Hunter. We could also keep her busy by nagging her for more walks outside, more treats and more attention in general. At least we don't have to worry about André. Sue is keeping him on his toes plenty.

So you see, we have our work cut out for us. Keep your fingers crossed for us and maybe send some requests for our blog. This would help in keeping Sue writing it.

See you around

PS: don't forget to read André's and Sue's blogs (listed on the side), too and to follow our trip on Google map and on facebook. You can also check our web site for more pictures.

Names and faces

Hi everyone

It has been in the works for a little while but our fifth wheel now has its own name and face! André's mother Alice first came up with the idea writing "vous me faites penser a des escargots avec la maison sur le dos" in an e-mail. After André had worked on it for a bit he and Sue finally found a signs place to print the decals for us in Gander. They have put them up and we think it looks pretty cool. Though nobody has faces as gorgeous and names as powerful as ours we think it looks cute and approve of André's design for our logo as well as what it says: 
Escargot

@Home on the road

a la maison sur la route.

As we said, the design is André's. He is good with stuff like that and had already designed the logo for the camp after he and Sue bought it. He found the drawing of an escargot on the internet. Then they came across a ceramic escargot in a store in Baie-Comeau and bought it. André then took the colours of that escargot and used it on the drawing, added the wording and voila, our fifth wheel had a face and name. What do you think of it? Let us know and if you ever see us on the road and happen to have CB radio, call us (calling fifth wheel "Escargot". Do you read me?). We would love to hear from you and see how many of you will see us.

Are you sure about that? I mean we do have CB radio but since we travel in the comfort of the fifth wheel and not in the car where the radio is, how are we going to answer calls? You didn't think that through, buddy.

That's what we have André and Sue for. Let them work a little bit. After all, they are allowed to stay and travel with us. They will let us know when somebody contacts us.

See you around

hunter and trapper

PS: don't forget to read André's and Sue's blogs (listed on the side), too and to follow our trip on Google map and on facebook. You can also check our web site for more pictures.

Finally!

Finally! Sue has been very slow this year decorating the house for Christmas. We were starting to worry if she's going to do anything at all when last Sunday she and André got the stuff out and put it up. We have to tell you though, they kept it a bit simpler this year. Usually Sue would put up everything she has. Not this year. And we agree: less is more. It looks very festive and nice without cluttering the place. It's our house and we like it to look nice and so we think they did a good job. Fewer decorations but lots of candles and of course our singing penguins. Boy they are just too funny when they're shaking those little bells.

As you can see in the picture they have set up the tree, too. We had to go check it out of course and it smells like our tree and the balls are as much fun to play with as ever. The two only changes there are the tinsels and there are no chocolates on the tree this year. The tinsels used to be gold in colour but this year they are white. Looks like there is snow on our tree and at first we were really concerned. We thought that the roof had leaked and the snow had come in for real! Boy what a relieve to see that it's just decorations! As for the chocolates: they are a tradition in Europe. Small chocolates wrapped in tin that look like pine cones, Santa, bells and other Christmas related themes. Since André doesn't eat them and Sue wants to loose some weight they skipped them. This also goes with the "simpler" thing.

Of course there are no gifts yet and usually André and Sue don't put any under the tree at all anyway. They say they give each other (and us) gifts throughout the year and like to avoid the big rush in all the stores. But this year there will be a little package under the tree for André. We had asked Sue to get him a new key chain for us and rap it up. He had given one of his up and put it in the glove compartment of the car with change for parking in it instead of keeping the change in a cup holder. Sue did as we had asked and the present is ready to go. Now we only need to keep it a secret from André till Christmas. So we count on you not to tell him, ok?

With the tree up and the house decorated, all that's missing is the smell of Sue baking Christmas cookies. She told André that she is going to bake just one kind this year, again since André doesn't eat sweets and she wants to cut back big time. But there is this one kind she just loves too much to pass on them and so she will bake some tomorrow. Somehow the smell of freshly baked cookies is as much part of Christmas as the penguins, the smell of apple and cinnamon and candles, don't you think? And if we get lucky, we'll get to try one too! So we will be really good and hope she will notice and reward us.

With this said, we wish you all a nice week, not too much stress but lots of seasonal spirit.

hunter and trapper

Caution: candles!

We don't know what it is but as soon as it gets a bit colder in fall we start seeing some white stuff falling from the skies. André and Sue call it snow. And as soon as that stuff turns up, things start to change in our house, too. André turns the heater on - which is really nice - and also puts candles up everywhere! Soon other items will follow and in a couple of weeks or so a big tree will stand in the living room. It will smell of freshly backed cookies and Sue will turn on those funny penguins singing a Christmas song with a snowman every so often. The whole house will look differently for a few weeks until everything goes back into boxes and disappears until the next year.

Now here is what we think of this phenomenon: we love the heater! It's a pellet stove so it has a real fire inside which looks very nice and also gives up this terrific heat. When it comes on we can lay in front of it bathing in the warm air coming out. Trapper sometimes even jumps on top of the stove and takes a nap right there. It's so cozy. The decorations are fine too. They look a little bit different each year and we don't know if that's because Sue can't remember how she did it the previous year or if she does that on purpose for us. You see, decorations have to be checked out and so we get to walk around the house and find things we can smell or even play with! This, of course, also goes for the ornaments on the tree. Lots of fun grabbing them and then trying to drag them away. We even tried to climb the tree to get to the stuff higher up a couple of times.

The singing penguins are more fun for Sue than for the song. Sure it looks funny when they shake their wings with the little bell attached to them but the real fun is in watching Sue when she waits for us to go after the bells. Which we don't do as long as she's around but only when she is looking the other way. It's like watching a kid waiting for Santa.

All this stuff is not in place just yet this year except for the candles. You see, André and Sue love candles and so there are a tone of them all over the place. They look fine and smell good but they are hazardous to cats! It is very tempting to go look what the thing at the very top is. The one that moves with every breeze of air. But no matter how careful we approach it, we can get in trouble when getting too close. This thing is hot!! It almost burned our noses when we tried to sniff it. André and Sue let us do that in hopes that we would stay away in the future. Learn our lesson, they said. But it's just too intriguing. And sometimes we don't even think about the candles when we move around. Like when Trapper jumped on the tea table and before anyone had a chance to react he felt this heat on his belly and something began to stink: he had jumped right over top of a wooden bar with several tea candles burning and stood there, front legs on one side, hind legs on the other. Or when Hunter sat on the same tea table, back to the candles and swishing his tail over the flames.

Bottom line is: candles are hazardous to cats (and dogs too we assume) so please keep an eye on them and your pet. We sometimes just forget and appreciate you're watching out for us.

We will keep you posted on the situation at our house as the season progresses. Until next week

hunter and trapper