I’m going to go shower!

Good Saturday afternoon everyone!

So today, shall be a VERY exciting day, heehee, exciting for me is usually quite a small insignificant thing that happens… but this REALLY is going to be exciting… For the whole world of Kiss My Fishy anyway!!! Mwa ha ha ha ha!!!

Ehem… So yes, today, I have decided, that I’m going to go shower!... Okay, I do this everyday… but that’s the beginning of creating my very first “vlog”! Yep, that’s right, I’ve promised it before but now I’m really ready to do it! A vlog, for all of those people who aren’t so familiar with the term, is basically a blog, but a Video bLOG.

My mom’s been putting up a few videos, some of Gizmo and Gadget play fighting (Awww!) and others, so if you want to check those out her Youtube channel is – “http://www.youtube.com/user/Siovhinn”.

I have a new short poem for you guys! I’m going to post it, without the title, and then you can guess, at the end of this blog I’ll give you the answer to what it’s about!

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You’re pulled and tugged at all night long,
You’re beaten and thrashed at because you’re wrong,
And when you don’t get a bed to lay upon,
You are in the cupboard left alone.

By Bianca Cassandra P.
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I haven’t got much news, so like last time, this is going to be another randomer!

I’ve been meaning to write about someone that I haven’t heard for, for over a year, despite my attempts to get in touch. He was one of the nicest people that I’d met in Ireland. He was Francis!
Francis was a farmer that we met the year before we left Ireland, when we moved into “Hillside” the large 1900’s farm house. It was the coolest house EVER! It had these gorgeous carpets and curtains… and wallpaper, it really was magnificent. It even came with an AGA stove… AND a hidden stairway (this would have been the staircase used by the maid in the olden days, as it went straight through down to the kitchen and was the closest to the smallest bedroom of five)… It was so much fun to trick our friends, who didn’t know about it, with.

So yes! I get way too distracted!! Francis, he had the roughest hands, but the softest soul. He was born in Ireland, and had never left. When he was younger, Francis had been sent to the school in Northern Ireland “Friends” as a border. He was always longing for home though and decided that he wanted to take after his father, and sow the land.

It’s bizarre to think, that just by looking at a person, you know very little. If you passed someone in the street, you wouldn’t think, ahh, she can speak French and play the guitar… You just don’t know. With Francis, he was the last person I would have thought of to have a large pen collection, or his millions of post cards that he collected.

He even let my mom drive his combine harvester because she’d said that she’d always wanted to drive one. One day, he took us up to one of the old barns to show us his toys that he’d kept since he was a little boy. One was a little tin car that had a plastic man stuck inside it… It’d been stuck there for years :-P!

Even though I enjoy moving around and having the opportunity to go adventuring, I think it would also be nice to be someone who stays in one little town for their whole life and doesn’t just have memories, but the items from when they were younger too. I think the oldest thing that I have… bear in mind, I am only 14 years old!... Would have to be Gizmo :-P… 7 years is quite some time you know ;-P.

Francis dresses up as Santa and goes to the local schools in his area for Christmas, he even saved a school by raising one million pounds for it. He cried when we said our last goodbye the day before we left for Sicily, I thought it was the sweetest thing…

Missing you Francis, I hope that you come across this page someday :-).

Right, I think that I’m going to go shower… It’s “vlogging” time!!! I’ll try get it up on KissMyFishy’s Youtube channel and then straight onto here by today, but if not, it’ll definitely be up during this week.

Hoping to hear from you guys soon!

- Bianca

P.S. By the way, the poem was about a blanket ^_^.

Fudge, Licorice, Coconut... And Others Who Go By The Names Of Non-Food Products ^_^!

Hey guys!

I’ve decided to write a blog today because I feel bad that I can’t recall the exact date of my last post… I’m not getting very far too quickly with writing because every two seconds I keep having a fit of coughs… It’s unbelievably frustrating! I caught, what we think is, a summer cold a few days after getting Gadget, the kitten.

So I haven’t been feeling my best and haven’t been out since either… I also am not having a great time because I can’t really talk as much, as that usually leads to… would you believe it, more coughing! And I’m a very talkative person, so when I try and get a long story out in one quick sentence, I’m usually running out of breath at the end so it sounds like a deflating balloon.

As I said, I haven’t been out, so I haven’t got much news… therefore this shall be a very random post ^_^.

Since I’ve been living… I don’t really know any other way to put it… Since I was born! That works, I’ve had an enormous amount of pets… Well my parents had literally gazillions of birds and a couple of dogs on our property in Zimbabwe, but the animals that stand out for me the most are:

Nando, he was my green ring neck parrot when I was one or two until I was three years old. When we were FORCED to leave the country though, I had to leave him behind, so my parents gave him to friends of theirs… He was just learning to speak as well! Since I had to leave him, I’ve wanted another parrot since, not to take over the memory of Nando, of course, but just because I love animals and I’ve always had this vision of a parrot school… Okay, okay! I had that thought when I was seven… and yet, seven years down the line, I still want to make it happen :-P.

Except this time I would love to get an African Grey parrot, since they’re the smartest bird species, and I think they’re so gorgeous! Of course I’d have to get one now though since they can live up to 100 years of age… Hint, hint, wink, wink Mom and Dad! :-P It’d also have to be a baby… because it’s cute… Yeah, I know… lame excuse :-P.

My next BIG pet, well very little at the time, was Franklin my tortoise… or was he a turtle? I always get confused with the two… Anyway, yes Franklin was called Franklin because I was about four or five years old and I loved the children’s cartoon show “Franklin” about the turtle that went to school :-P. I remember Franklin’s first water slide sort of thing, and the way he used his little tiny claws to climb over my hand… And of course, how he smelt, so extremely bad… I don’t think that’s the reason we gave him away though, I’m not sure, but I think it was because we were moving up to Northern Ireland. This was when we were living in Southern Ireland by the way, we gave Franklin to a zoo.

In Southern Ireland I also had two pet fish, Sandy and Danny, because my favourite film at that time was “Grease”. My cousin came to stay with us for a while, and Sandy had guppies… My cousin, being a boy, thought that it would be cool to buy one of those miniature shark fish for my fish tank… Aww how sweet… Not! He put it into the tank, it chased the poor babies which luckily hid away into the castle ornament and survived, but one of my big fish (Sandy or Danny, I can’t remember which one it was) was attacked and killed before we removed the shark fish… I was so annoyed -_-. Before we moved up to Northern Ireland, we also gave the fish away.

We actually obtained quite a few pets in Ireland, my dad took Venetia and I up to a woman and we were allowed to choose a kitten each… Sadly though, this is when we realised that I was allergic and after less than two weeks of having them, we had to give them away.

My dad also took us to get two baby rabbits… I don’t think these lasted with us for more than two weeks as well. The neighbour’s dog kept getting into our garden every time we let the bunnies run around for a while, and once attacked Venetia’s. It was okay afterwards though. But the bunnies proved to be too much of a hassle to look after in the house, they really need to have a large area of land that’s secure.

Then in Ireland when I was seven years old, my parents gave Venetia and I a decision to make, we could choose to go to Disneyland for two weeks, or we could choose to get a puppy Shih-Tzu instead. Of course, we chose the Shih-Tzu!

Gizmo was the runt of the litter, when we went to the old couple’s house, there were a bunch of little puppies sleeping, pretty much on top of each other, all squished up. Gizmo was the quiet one, all on his own in the very corner of the cage. I wanted to get the one that looked like a hamster… but when my mom picked up the smallest one, and showed him to me, I fell in love.

He was completely black except for his chin, his chest and his one paw, so it looked like a little sock. Gizmo was originally called Othello, but soon changed because he looked more like a little gremlin. I think we must of seen him at two weeks, because for the three weeks that followed, on the Sunday, we were sure to drive the hour, just to see him. At five weeks old, she let us take him home.

This is Gizmo, 5 weeks old, in Venetia's (at the time 11 years old) arms... Now you can see how small he really was... Awww!!!

We were absolutely appalled by the fact that she told us that Shih-Tzu’s are to be kept in a cage, and are to be taught to drink out of a hamster/ gerbil bottle feeder… The cage lasted the first night then we quickly got rid of it. He’s a pedigree, his grandfather lived until he was 18 years old, so I’m really hoping he lives that long, or even longer :-P. He even has a show name and the papers, but we think that it’s cruel to keep their hair long, so we let him be, like his show name, a “Sporty Boy”.

Gizmo is my baby! He is the kindest, sweetest little thing you could ever have as a dog! We don't even think of him as a dog, he's far too intelligent to be put under that genre :-P. Okay! Sometimes... he can be smart, most of the time, he's smart enough, in the "smart enough way" to ignore us when we call him, or demand him to do tricks... That's how clever he really is :-P.

We also had “HotRocks”, he was a little orange kitty cat, that my parents brought home one night, as a surprise. We kept him for quite a while actually but soon had to give him to my great grandmother as my allergies were still too bad. He went through a million different names, but in the end, the last name given was HotRocks, because of how he walked :-P… Like he was stepping on hot rocks.

We also had Fudge, my hamster, Fudge ran away once... You see, I woke up one cold school morning in Northern Ireland, to find that one of the tunnels that connected to the hamster cage had come off! I quickly ran to the cage on the other side of my bedroom, to find that there was no Fudge there! After searching my room from top to bottom, I was forced to give up and go to school.

When Venetia and I got home, the hunt began again, a few hours later Gizmo began to bark wildly at Venetia’s cupboard. We moved the furniture to get to it, and placed some hamster pebbles where there was a hole that the hamster could have gotten in to. After being quite for ten minutes and waiting patiently, Fudge slowly emerged. I caught him and returned him to his cage, the fall from his cage must have proved too much for him though, because a week or so later, he fell ill… DUN DUN DUNNNN!

No, honestly though…

We took him to the vet, and he told us that he’d have to put him down. I didn’t realise how much I was attached to Fudge until that day, I couldn’t stop crying on the way home.

Rascal… Now Rascal, my word, did he live up to his name! He was Venetia’s 16th birthday present. A couple of weeks before Venetia’s birthday, we were walking in a park, and suddenly my mom said “Would you like another Shih-Tzu puppy for your birthday?”. It was quite a shock, and suddenly everything just happened so quickly, we bought a “Buy & Sell” newspaper (Not sure if you get it in America… or any other country outside of the U.K. for that matter, it’s just like a newspaper full of ads, by people) and we’d found a woman that was selling what we were looking for.

Rascal - That day

We called her up and within half an hour we were on our way to see her. It’s always how we’ve done it, we just rush into buying pets :-P! Venetia chose Rascal and a few weeks later he was at home with us. He was the naughtiest little thing, that was just so hard to train! Gizmo was very tolerant with him, but eventually Rascal was just too much and we gave him to our great grandmother. Her husband had just passed away so he lifted up her spirits again ^_^. Rascal became very settled down with her, and now is a lovely dog.

Rascal... As The Rascal :-P

In Northern Ireland we also had two budgies. Bashful, was my little blue one. We called him Bashful because of his stance, how he tilted his head, made him seem very shy. Chirpy, was much more lively… and well… you guessed it, very noisy!! Sadly though, one morning, I came down stairs, at 11 o’clock to find… Bashful… he was lying on his back :-(… With his little feet sticking up in the air… Bashful had died!!! I was so upset, we made a little coffin and buried him in the back garden. A little while later Chirpy flew away… It’s not fair that I love animals sooo much but they just don’t seem to work out with me 0_o.

We also, I’m not sure if I’ve already told you, had chickens for a while. That was also a very quick decision… Well see, I’d been wanting them for a while, since we’d moved onto the farm. And one day my mom and Karen (my grandmother) took Venetia and I to this local petting zoo, sort of place… We had just gone to see if they sold them… but ended up bringing six home.

Coconut was mine, Liquorice was Venetia’s and then there was Phoenix, Tawny, Little Feather and Kaleidoscope. They were so cute! We brought them home in a box and put them in the little front room, for my dad to see… Of course none of us wanted to tell him that we’d just brought home six chickens, so we left it to my mom :-P. He was really cool with it in fact ^_^.

Liquorice!

I taught Coconut to run to me and jump into my arms… I miss her :-(. We gave them away after quite a long time of having them, they’d just started laying eggs as well. But because we had two roosters in the lot, and my sister’s bedroom was closest to the barn that we kept them in, there was quite a lot of complaining about being woken up at all hours of the morning by them… It seemed that they didn’t know when dawn was… I don’t think the sun comes up at three in the morning in winter in Northern Ireland…

But that’s not the reason we gave them away of course :-P. We were due to leave for Sicily soon after ^_^.

Coconut!

In my time of keeping animals, I’ve also had “Sea Monkeys” and “Triops” quite a few times. It’s incredible how fast they grow, and they’re a lot of fun to watch, Triops do not have three eyes like the box says though!! They lied -_-!

And then of course there’s Gadget! I’ve told you all about Gadget before but I have even more information on Bengal cats now! So apparently he’s going through a stage that Bengal cats go through called “The Fuzzy Uglies”. It means that they get little white tips on the end of their fur, which camouflages their colours more. That happens at about three weeks old, which is when they would start exploring more in the wild. It’ll pass at around four to nine months so their true colours will show through and their markings will become more defined, so Gadget will just keep getting more and more beautiful! The pictures were just taken with my webcam, I'll get more high-quality ones from my mom another time ^_^.

Aww Cute! See his markings now? I can just imagine how stunning he'll be when he's all grown up ^_^.

I want a lizard. This will be my next pet… I’m hoping so anyway! I just have this thing about them. I love them so much! I caught a baby one the size of my baby finger in the garden yesterday. I was going to keep him as a pet, but thought that it was cruel to take him out of the wild. My ideal lizard would have to be an African Gecko… or a Chameleon, now that would be cool! Never put a chameleon on a black background though! Apparently, they get so upset and angry that their sides split… and they more or less explode… Of course I don’t know if this is just a myth or not, will “Google” that and tell you next time… Oooh, something to look forward to :-P.
Eeek! I’m sorry that I wrote an essay for you guys to read -_-.

It's absolutely stunning weather here, but with stunning weather... comes the sun... and the sun, is at times, a little too much to take. So, thankfully, it's cooled down an awful lot since yesterday, and now I can go relax outside, instead of in front of my fan in my bedroom... Yay, outdoors!!!

- Bianca

In loving memory of Fudge, the hamster. (Even though I know he’s not extremely likely to read this :-P, it feels nice to put it there.)

Happy 1st birthday Kiss My Fishy!!!

Hey guys!

I’m sorry for the wait again! I always forget to write up a Kiss My Fishy blog and then realise a little down the “line” and think "Oh no!!! It's been "insert a long amount of time here" since I last wrote up a blog!!"... And it's like my online memory, so if I forget what I did, or in what order, VWOOP, up I bring it ^_^. Extremely handy :-).

My word, I have so much news since last week!! The Tuesday past is really where the news is… We had to wake up at five in the morning… I wasn’t even sure that this time EXSISTED ;-)! Apparently it does... And my parents just HAD to prove it to me... By waking me up at that time! Well see I actually agreed to waking up (provided that there was espresso!)… But that’s not the point!

You see, Charlie (the Irish visitor, which I wrote about in my last post), his flight was at eight, or some ghastly hour like that… So in order to have at LEAST two hours to get ready, it was necessary to be awake early and then the drive is a good hour into Carcassonne, like I said before.

Once we where there, we dropped Charlie off, and went straight to the deathly-empty castle grounds of Carcassonne. We were there by half past eight and walked around, thoroughly enjoying it, for four hours. By the time Gizmo had given up on his legs and had chosen just to be dragged everywhere, we decided to head home. But the day doesn’t end there! I fell asleep in the car, and was unbelievably cranky when I woke up… and hungry! Even if I did eat a couple of hours before…

Anyway, we stopped at a pet store to see if they would clip Gizmo’s nails. I have no idea what happened to me, but I suddenly lost all of my French, and couldn’t figure anything out! I’m guessing it was because I’d just come back to life from being in a dead sleep, and my body wasn’t quite ready for being thrown back into reality again.
Eventually I got the message across and Gizmo was making… some-what-like-a-angry-monkey-noises... Honestly! That dog can moan! Once the lady was done, and I had gotten my French back in order, I asked her if she knew of any places where we could find a kitten. She had no idea -_-.

You seeee, my parents had been talking about getting a kitten, since we found out that I was no longer allergic… or at least not allergic to Wilf and Gi-Gi’s cat Billy (they are the couple who came over for the barbeque in my post “Saturday… which actually felt like Sunday because of going out on Friday, the Friday which felt like a Saturday…”)… So yes! The search began…

When we arrived home, my mom checked the post and found that there were two ads in the English speaking-French paper (I know my dad’s going to make a pun out of that one -_- :-P) that suited us, so I called them, and actually understood half of the address! When I say half… I mean… I got us in the right area, and from there we knocked on doors and asked people if they knew a woman who was selling a little, white kitten… There was absolutely no mobile signal out in this little rural area, 20 minutes away from my little town, so I couldn’t even do my MAIN plan! This was telling the woman that we were opposite the graveyard. Could she please come find us?... Okay not exactly rocket science, but it would have made my life so much easier.

After being an hour late for the “rendezvous”, we were almost about to give up, but decided to give it one last shot! Knocking on the door sealed my fate… Out came an elderly woman, who was missing more teeth that any person should be missing… She was soon followed by a tired looking, grey-haired, stout, man, who was rather menacing, without a shirt on and his tan in the shape of a vest…

They were actually extremely nice; we asked them and the man, pointed towards the hill, mumbling to his wife. Soon the wife was making a box shape with her hands saying “veranda”, after repeating the movement a few times. She changed the subject, and asked if we were here on holiday or not. Five minutes later, we were back trekking up the hill to the little house, where we found, another elderly couple, who pointed us further up the hill.

There, was a woman in a hammock, I repeated the sentence about looking for the woman, and she replied with “C’est moi!” (It’s me!). Relief! She led us into her house and went into a back room where she brought out a little white kitten, and also a Bengal. I fell in love immediately, but we couldn’t decide which one would be best for Gizmo’s sake and the kittens’.

After choosing… and getting down the hill, we changed our minds, and did a quick swap. I think that the lady (who I still have not learnt the name of -_-) was actually upset, but I’d set my heart on the tiger one! Two weeks before we’d even chosen the kitten my parents had a name ready… “Gadget”! It doesn’t quite work in French though, so it takes a while to explain why Gadget is called Gadget (The reason… only because of Gizmo’s name ^_^). He is the most gorgeous little thing! On top he’s like a little tiger, except not orange more blacky-brown, (his nose is so adorable, it looks absolutely identical to that of a tiger cub) but when he rolls over onto his stomach he shows the colouring of a cheetah! I will be getting up some pictures of Gizmo and Gadget together soon!

They’re still a little bit weary of each other but over the past four days they’ve progressed immensely with not minding being around one another. Gadget will be three months old on the 8th of August, which means that he was born on the 8th of May. The same day as Venetia! Aww, he’s a Taurus!

I have another poem for you! This isn’t written exactly how I usually would write a poem (the story just popping into my head and me going with it) instead when Charlie was here, he gave me the first sentence and a half (The river danced its merry way and sang its happy song, A songbird soared on high) and I was supposed to finish the poem.

Two minutes later, I was done, and called Charlie back. Of course, since it was intending on being a happy, summer poem, he wasn’t impressed on how I’d twisted it around… I love it though!

It’s a story… I wouldn’t actually harm any creature, especially a songbird -_-. You just have to be open-minded when you read it ;-)! You see, the world just keeps going on, no matter what… That’s what it was intended to say anyway :-P.

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The river danced its merry way and sang its happy song,
A songbird soared on high, and then was shot on down,
The world turned grey, the night took over,
A child in the distance cried for his mother,
The war had began, the dust had lifted,
As the songbird slowly drifted,
Down below he hit the earth,
That was the sudden birth,
The shots rang out loudly,
And still the river swayed mildly.

By Bianca Cassandra P.
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Oh hey! I just noticed something that I can’t believe I didn’t notice on the right day!! Happy 1st birthday Kiss My Fishy!!! Yes, I posted the first Kiss My Fishy post up a whole year ago now, since 8th of July last year :-O… It’s hard to believe that it’s flown by so quickly! Since I didn’t make such a big fuss over this, I shall be sure to make a HUGE fuss over “My 50th and 100th Posts” :-P! Look forward to it ;-).

Okay! I think that I’m going to make some hot chocolate and then head off to bed. I’m extremely tired, so shall read through this tomorrow morning and make sure it makes enough sense then.

Hoping to hear from you guys soon!

- Bianca