House Sitting

As promised, this post contains the non-kitten parts of my time house sitting. While nothing measures up to kittens, the rest was very amazing as well.

This is the house I was taking care of. Isn't it beautiful?

This is the lovely back yard, where I ate breakfast most mornings. To the right of the picture, there are also amazing views of the national park (which the house is in) over the fence.

In the crystal clear stream near the house there are these awesome eels! We threw them scraps of meat and they came right up to us to eat it. It was actually hilarious, because they're big and a bit threatening looking, and I had this image of a toothy feeding frenzy about to begin. But as it turns out, they slurp in the pieces, which just disappear into their mouths in an instant, with no evidence of teeth at any point. Very funny to watch!

Near the park is Pauatahanui Wildlife Reserve, where I went for a walk while the kittens were napping. I walked on Te Ara Piko (The Meandering Path). It was truly beautiful, with the only downside being that the path was next to the road, so it was a tad noisy.

The path follows along the edge Porirua Harbour, which is lovely.

I have discovered that I love views of rolling hills over a body of water. They seem to frequently be among my favourites.

I believe that this is a heron, although I have been wrong before. In any case, it was really beautiful, and wasn't too scared of me, so I got to watch it fish for a long time. It was so graceful and stately.

The harakeke and other flowers around the river were truly beautiful.

Harakeke and those fluffy golden things are two of my favourite plants to see, and it was stunning to see them together like this.

While she was visiting, Kirsten and I went for a walk in the national park itself, which was beautiful.

This carved rock at the top of Battle Hill commemorates a battle between two Māori iwi (tribes), one of which was fighting for Māori rights, and one of which had allied with the Pākehā (Europeans). It is quite a sad story, actually, so I focused on the current beauty instead.

We saw and heard lots of tui on our walk, and J and I also see them frequently around our house. In addition to their unique call, which is a combination of staccato notes and harsh clicking, they are also incredibly loud fliers. So you always know when one is near. Getting a picture, however, is not nearly as easy, so I was thrilled to have snapped this one. Unfortunately, you can barely see the little tuft of white feathers hanging off its chin, which is the signature tui look, but still.

I had an amazing time at the house, by myself, with J, and with Kirsten. I was sad to leave, and it was very hard to say goodbye to the kittens. However, I was happy to get home to J, who had to stay in the city for work during the week, and then to be ready to launch into work the following Monday. So the timing worked out perfectly, and it was a delightful little segment of my summer.

Kittens!

I started my new job today, and I will be excited to write a post about it when I have a little more experience in the new setting, but for the moment, suffice it to say that I'm confident I will love it there, for however long I get to work there. All is well.

In other exciting news, for the nine days before starting my new job, I got to kitten and house sit, which was a fabulous way to enjoy myself and feel productive during that time. Plus, KITTENS!

The house, which belongs to our landlord, is in the middle of a beautiful national park. It is a lovely cottage with amazing views, great hikes, a crystal clear stream, etc. None of those things will be featured in this post, because none of them compare to kittens! (Take comfort, though, they will all make an appearance in my next post).

This is Mama Syrup with her five kittens, who thoughtfully organized themselves into a picture-perfect pattern. They were 2.5 weeks old at this point, and just barely had their eyes open.

This is all but one of the older litter of six kittens who were almost five weeks old when I arrived. Clearly, my legs are the best playground ever.

This is all eleven kittens beautifully napping together in their basket, once the older ones were big enough to be moving around more and they came out of the closet into the kitten around.

This is J's favourite kitten - a beautiful tortoiseshell who is very adventurous and an impressive climber (and the only one who made it up into this potted plant).

This is my favourite kitten, and she is the most adorable and perfect in every way.

J's favourite kitten was too high energy to cuddle with me during the three days I spent there before he joined me. Then, as soon as he showed up, not only did she zen out and cuddle with him, she actually reached out and held his hand (finger) and stared lovingly up at him for ages! They must be soulmates.

My perfect kitten fell asleep on my chest, which is officially the most endearing thing a tiny, adorable creature can do.

J's favourite kitten is also a perfect "mini-me" of her mom, which is awesome!

But look how my favourite can melt your heart by nibbling your finger!

Also, she cuddled up to the two younger kittens who look just like her, which was amazing!

Kirsten came to visit for a few days, which was great fun. She fell in love with the orange tabbies (or gingers, as they call them here). So each colouring was someone's special favourite, which is nice.

This beautiful orange tabby made me think of the human babies and small children I've taken care of, in that he would fall asleep in any and every position, as he ran out of energy in the middle of playing.

This is the only decent picture I got of one of the younger litter, and he looks a bit sad, but still adorable. 

Cuteness overload, right? You can see why these gorgeous babies took total priority over every other attraction the house and location had. And why I spent hours every day playing with them. And why it was VERY hard to say goodbye to them. Our landlord said that we were welcome to adopt one if we wanted, and it was hard not to be tempted, but we are resolutely petless at the moment, and don't need to be changing that based on cuteness.

Before I went, J was very firm and forbid me to fall in love with a kitten and bring it home. Then, 20 minutes after he arrived to spend the weekend, I found myself having to forcefully talk him out of taking home the tortoiseshell right then and there. I knew he'd be the weak link!

In conclusion, we have not adopted a kitten, and although I miss them greatly and had so much fun with them, I am glad of this.

More Flat Pictures

I finally got around to taking some pictures of the outside of our flat, and then proceeded to forget about them for a couple weeks. Sorry about that.

I am obligated to start with yet another picture of the view, as it remains the absolute most wonderful thing ever.

These are three of the six stairs that lead down to our door. Notice the pretty circle of paua shells that the last tenant made. 

I took this picture standing in front of our door. Our car is parked at the level of the street, which gives you an idea how of how our house is built on the side of the hill, below street level.

This is from next to the recycling bin in the last picture. This is the path that goes down into the back yard and to the door into the unfinished basement.

Here is the basement. As you can see, "unfinished" is an understatement. Half of it is rock. But over to the right, just out of the picture, is a nice big workbench and a place for our dryer. It's nice, because the humidity doesn't pour into the house. Also, storage tends to be hard to find in Wellington, so we count ourselves very lucky to have all this space. Plus, I find it vastly entertaining to have half of the basement made of rock. It's pretty cool.

None of you will be surprised by additional pictures of the view.

I still have not managed to be up before sunrise, but I'm sure I will be once I start work. This colour is the reflection of sunset in the opposite direction. It was brighter in real life, but oh well.

There we go; now you have a more complete introduction to our new flat. We are continuing to love it, so it may well be our home for a long time. It's a nice feeling.

New Year's Day on the Beach

Ever since our fabulous trip to Wanganui for Christmas, J and I have been enjoying relaxing around home. We have done some hiking, had a neighbour over for tea, and Skyped with friends/family, but otherwise, it's just been the two of us relaxing. We're reading, playing games, watching some cool shows, laying in the sun, practicing the guitar, crocheting, and generally enjoying ourselves.

On January 1st, we decided to start the new year by checking out Makara Beach, which is (we think) the closest beach to our new flat. It was the first day in over a week that it wasn't brilliantly sunny, but the overcast day was still nice and warm, so we were happy with that. J likes cloudy days better, anyway.

This is Makara Beach. It is about 15 or 20 minutes from our flat, on the west coast of the peninsula(ish) that Wellington is on. If you drive in almost any direction from Wellington, you hit water fairly quickly, as it is a skinny bit of land with a million bays and inlets and the one huge harbour.

I thought Makara Beach looked fairly pretty, but J was deeply unimpressed because he didn't think it looked very clean, and once I got a whiff of the rather strong dead fishy smell, I had to agree that it wasn't as pleasant as many NZ beaches. There was also some rubbish and dog poop, neither of which I expect to see on NZ beaches, so that was disappointing.

Nonetheless, it felt good to get my toes in the sand and feel the waves lapping around my feet.

We decided to walk along the curve of the beach towards this tall rock, which we saw some people climbing on, with rock climbing gear and everything.

The farther we got away from the parking lot/entrance, the nicer this beach was. The dead fish smell went away (perhaps it was caused by too many people fishing at once), and there were interesting things to see.

The tall rock was very cool, in among lots of interesting rock formations. We thought about climbing it, but decided that the jagged volcanic rocks below necessitated the ropes and climbing gear that the other people used.

J discovered that this was a tide pool area, with all the interesting marine life that entails.

The tide seemed to be all the way out, and the tide pools were low, but we could see lots of different things living in them.

There were interesting types of barnacles and snails with all colours, shapes and sizes of shells. There were also these shiny, black creatures that were delightfully squishy. Unlike the barnacles and snails, we only saw them quite near the low water, so they must be less tolerant of long stretches out of the water.

We discovered that there were paths leading up the coastline, and surmised that if ventured farther, that we would find more pristine stretches of beach, which would be great. However, we weren't prepared for that and J was only wearing water shoes, so we decided to postpone exploration for another day. I have heard good things about Makara Beach, and did enjoy it, so I'm optimistic for many fun adventures there in the future.