cats + ponies + attitude, oh my!

My designated (or co-opted, as the case may be) area in our tackroom takes up one of the two available corners. This is both annoying and convenient. Annoying bc squeezing past the western saddle to get to my bridle hook is a pain (both visible in the bottom right corner of the following pic), but convenient bc there's actually quite a bit of space back in there that I've enjoyed packing full of all my crap.

I went through and organized everything a few weeks ago... but somehow it always ends up looking a little... sloppy. Especially with recent variable weather, I've been adding and removing jackets left and right, plus loaning them out, so my saddle rack is doubling as a coat rack.

The other day, tho, I did a double take. It certainly looked a bit lumpier than usual!!

Ha. But it was just a cat tho. I guess he found the temptation of my fleece and corduroy jackets too enticing to resist?

Oh hey look, there's another one too haha, this time on my neighbor's saddle pad collection. Goofy cat. We've been letting them in the tack rooms lately when the temps dipped into single digits overnight.... but it might be time to back off that, given a barn mate discovered fresh scratches on her saddle... oops!

Anyway, it was a busy weekend, with lots of hauling out for lessons, per usual. One of the barn rats actually scared the ever loving shit out of me bc she said my truck had a flat.... Turned out I was just parked in a pothole tho, thank god!

But it got my attention and I found myself subconsciously checking out my tires every time I was in the parking lot. Which is when I spotted this... anomaly haha. 

It's another cat!! This is Diamond, our teeny tiny pint-sized parking lot cat (bc the bigger cats won't let her hang out in the barn, the bullies). Isn't she adorable? She has the most pitiful mewl ever, and uses it to her advantage to make all the lesson student parents believe she must certainly be neglected, so they're constantly slipping her little scraps of food lol. Talk about manipulation haha!

Ooooh and another pint-sized thing that happened this weekend: my friend let me ride her welsh pony Krimpet (who wins the award for cutest name evar lol). Krimpet is just over 4 yrs old, very very smart, and very very athletic to boot. She's a sweet little thing... but is also perhaps maybe learning how to use her powers for evil instead of good. Don't let that sweet face fool ya!

She spent maybe the first 10min of our ride exploring opportunities for bucking me off lol. It was fine tho - she settled in and really was very sweet. My friend is gonna have a BLAST with this little thang! 

Plus, as I mentioned on Saturday - Bali came to our jump lesson at OF this weekend with his lease rider!! To my knowledge, barn management still plans on re-homing him, but no actual moves have happened. So his lease rider will continue to lease him right up until the end. 

"my name is bali and i am SO FIERCE, the bestest evar at being fierce!!!!" - bali, so very proud of himself haha

And they are having so much fun together haha. He got to come and play adult pony again, and while he was a touch excitable (much squealing during warm up!), they ultimately settled in and had a lot of fun jumping around.

Meanwhile Isabel and I might have been slightly off our game haha, and I could not for the life of me remember our twisty-turny courses. At all. Lol. Pictured above would be a moment where I tried to cover up my incompetency via some serious 'tude haha. "What do you mean I went off course?!? Does it look like I don't know what I'm doing?!? Ugh, the way I went was better anyway!" (also Isabel looks like she'd maybe rather not be seen with me lol).

Really, tho, twas a weekend full of cats. Like this one, who I recently discovered might be named Chloe. Tho, in fact, I've never heard anybody ever refer to her as anything, so she's kinda just nameless. She talks a lot tho, so perhaps we should just call her Chatty Cat instead? Idk... anyway she sat on my lap this weekend and was kneading her paws into my legs and I only realized too late that she pulled all these threads on my brand spankin new charcoal gray Pipers. Wtf, cat, really?!?

Fat Cat (yes, her real name) would never be so rude, obviously.

Anyways, more updates to come soon (must edit all my exciting media lol!), but for now, hope you enjoy these pictures of cats and ponies on yet another Monday morning...