Cat and the Internet

You know how there's software that can block your access to the internet for a fixed amount of time, supposedly to increase your productivity by keeping you off Facebook or other time-suck sites? Well, this is what I have: She may not be software, but she is soft. And she does keep me off the internet, but I don't think she's increasing productivity.

 

But this whole train of thought has gotten me looking into RescueTime and WriteRoom/DarkRoom programs. Although to be completely honest, I'm going to start with this writer's-hack of Microsoft Word (because why should I give up the word processing features when I don't have to?) I've followed the instructions and for my experience, it turns Word into a notebook. No, not a computer-notebook, but it tricks my brain into thinking it's writing in an honest to goodness notebook-notebook. As long as I don't over-analyze the fact that I'm typing not writing by hand, I can forget for a time that I'm on a computer.

Now. If I can just wrangle the cat.

Rate Your Festive Feelings on a Scale of 1 to 10

Last year, my relations expressed their upset that I had no plans to erect a Christmas tree in my living room. I was finally living someplace that had the space for a tree. Actually, I had the space for an ungodly monster tree. And having the space meant I should do it, of course. But I couldn't justify the expense of it, even for a small tree that would look like a ridiculous toy tree in said monster-sized space. See, if you've never put up a tree there are start up costs; at the very least you have to get a tree-stand even if you get super creative with your decorations and string popcorn like Laura Ingalls Wilder and hang cat toys on the boughs.

But I wasn't hosting any parties or celebrations that year, and more importantly, I didn't have kids. Trees are for people who have kids. Little kids, grown kids, kids at home, kids coming to visit, grandkids. Not only does tree trimming take an army or a ton of patience, it's a bit like cooking a whole turkey -- even if you get the small one, what's the point if there's only one or two people to enjoy it?

I still decorated. I hung garlands in the windows and ran some strategic strings of lights, stuck a couple nutcrackers on a shelf where the cat almost couldn't knock them down.

This year, not so much.

I asked my also-not-living-with-kids girlfriend if she had decorated:

Me: I have done zero decorating
Friend: Me too.
Me: And have only slightly more than zero impulse to do it.
Friend: I'm kind of pretending Christmas isn't happening. If I got a tree I think my cats would destroy it. Plus, what, I'm going to decorate a tree myself and then just look at it? what's the point?
Me: That's what I tried to tell my relations last year: trees are for people with offspring. I did get festive last year. Put up decorations. No tree, but knickknacks.
Friend: I have a cute wooden advent calendar up.
Me: Oh!!! I have a festive jar of candy canes! #TakeThatMarthaStewart Friend: LOL! Not just a jar of candy canes, a FESTIVE jar of candy canes!

Read the rest of this post...

Good Cat, Bad Cat

And now to indulge in the internet's favorite past time, Cats. Recently, Good Cat went in to see the vet for some regularly scheduled feline maintenance.

She was quite vocal in her objections to going in the box, leaving the house, going in the car, leaving the car, and sitting in the vet's waiting room. The fuzzy brown puppy in the waiting room thought she was fascinating. But he was a very well behaved fuzzy brown puppy and just stare from across the room. Good Cat does not hiss. She cries. Short, plaintive bursts of noise that struck just the right acoustic balance to fill the entire waiting room and draw the attention of all three of the reception workers ... who were all more interested in how well the fuzzy brown puppy was handling everything. Sometimes cats can't get no love.

More vocal protests accompanied our move into the exam room. When I opened the door of the carrying box, she turned around, presenting her butt to the door. Clearly stating that while she by no stretch of the imagination did she want to be in the box to begin with, she would not be departing at the current locale. I'll get off at the next stop, thank you very much. So when the vet-tech up-ended the box, the result was a graceless but surprisingly funny rear-end first exit. More meowing. And some army crawling to the safest looking positions.

Vet examination proved that Good Cat is a Good Cat with no noticeable health problems, unlike Bad Cat who has had a bad tooth, urinary crystals and infections, eosinophilic granuloma complex, is so allergic to hard water that she'll lick the fur off her stomach if she gets too much, and last summer, got pneumonia. Oh and when she was a kitten she got a ball of infection pressing between bone and skin (there's a name for when an infection makes itself into a ball so that antibiotics don't work on it but I've forgotten it) which caused her paw to explode. Bad cat is expensive. But friendly. Everyone at the vet's office loves her.

Good Cat only ever sees vet for vaccinations.

I did however need to run by the vet my one concern about Good Cat's habits: she eats spinach. Loves it. She hears the baby spinach bag crinkle and she's there waiting next to me to see if I'll throw her a leaf which she then sniffs then hauls off to a new local to play with and eventually consume.

Of course, in fear of being considered an awful Pet Parent, I must downplay my enabling of Good Cat's spinach addiction. So I tell vet that Good Cat will steal spinach and snag dropped leaves off the floor ... which yes, she totally does, the fact that I regularly throw her a leaf is not mentioned. Vet nods. Asks if Good Cat might have a little bit of vomiting post-spinach-snag. Nope, no vom.

Vet nods again. Tells me, "If she wants to enjoy the occasional leaf then I don't see any harm in it."

Best. Vet. Line. Ever. The occasional leaf, said the same way a doctor would explain the benefits the occasional glass of red wine. 

So I head home in pretty good spirits. But hey, I'm not the one that just got stuck in a little box, uncerimoniously dumped from said little box, then given a rabies vaccination in my hip. I let the cat out, take out the trash, run to the post office, come home and find Good Cat is happy but sleepy. More than willing to let me pet her. Bad Cat is under the bed.

Bad Cat is usually an attention whore. Needy. In your face. Friends with everyone. Pet me. Love me. Feed me if you must but I'd really rather you dangle a string for me to pounce on. Nope. None of that. Not today. Today she is under the bed. Try to pet her -- gone. Dangle string -- she eyes you suspiciously. Bad Cat knows where Good Cat has been and Bad Cat is waiting, waiting for her turn to be shoved in the box and carted off.

For the rest of the day she waits, waits for the other shoe to drop. Meanwhile, Good Cat gets her "occasional leaf."

For Lack of Substance...

For lack of a topic of substance today, I present you with the Sad Cat Diaries. With luck, I will craft something of brilliance by next week.

Type in All Cats

It's bad form to type in all caps on the internet, a mode of communication generally perceived as "yelling." But what if, instead of caps, you could type in all cats?
Just when you thought the internet's obsession with cats could come no closer to all-consuming Ancient Egypt style worship, there arrives Neko Font, maker of the cat font.

Giant Furball of Doom

Took the cat back to the vet today -- we're starting to make this a tri-annual occurrence -- and let me tell you, whenever it comes time to shove the cat in the little cat carrier, the sleek little cat that can squeeze through any gap suddenly becomes Giant Furball of Doom who somehow just doesn't fit into the carrier.

So far this year we've had an infected tooth and crystals in the urine. The vet wanted us to treat both of those and use a pheromone diffuser (think Glade plug-in filled with synthetic cat spit) to rule out stress-compensation as the reason for her skin issues (licking all the fur off her stomach) and swelling issues (the pouty, collagen lip look).

Things were getting better. Then last week she starting urinating in the bathtub. Again. Bless her heart that her inappropriate peeing confines itself to an imminently washable surface complete with a drain. She's a good cat, really she is.

But now that the tooth's been taken care of and the crystals are down -- what's with the new swelling and the new whythefuckdidyoujustpeeinthetub moments?

Diagnosis: eosinophilic granuloma complex and a urinary infection.
Treatment: steriods, antibotics, and distilled water in a stainless steel dish.

The granuloma complex -- the part where she feels itchy and therefore licks her skin raw in places -- will keep coming back if I don't find out what she's allergic to and/or repeatedly treat her with steroids. I'm hoping the allergy comes from her body disliking the insanely hard water here. I dislike it too, kitty.

Where I live there is such a large amount of mineral deposits in the water that the inside of a new dishwasher turned from white to orange in under 18 months. If it does that to the inside of a dishwasher, I can only imagine what it does to the inside of a cat.

The Old Spice Cat

I'm not sure how I missed this Old Spice + Puss In Boots mash up last fall, but I'm loving it now!

Feline-1, Me-0

The other afternoon, I gathered materials to start working on a post-lunch writing project. I brought my journal, calendar/planner, and Nook with me and stacked them nicely beside my computer keyboard. I was going to move the keyboard and make a bit of space then journal/plan/read. But almost as soon as I had done that, the fluffy, needy cat sat square on my stack of supplies. I'd been completely and totally cock-blocked ... in a feline/literary sort of way.

Bad cat.

The good cat was nicely asleep on the cat-pillow I've placed on my desk as a preemptive strike against such shenanigans.

Apparently, I need more cat-pillows.

The new year arrives on a blanket of white

January arrived quietly here, and in its wake 5-7" of snow. It was as if mother nature -- who, like the rest of us, had been weary and distracted by the holidays -- suddenly remembered that it was winter and she should really get on that snow-thing she had promised us.

Safely tucked indoors, listening to the scrape and beep of the snow plow clearing the parking lot, I watched the tabby cat sit by the window and try to tap every snowflake that stuck to the outside of the glass.

I'm still in the process of wrapping up the old year, and thus I'm beginning the new one slowly. I have almost 30 more books from my 2011 reading list that I'd like to blog about.  I have goals and plans to make, but it doesn't bother me that they've not been made before the first seconds of 2012 ticked away.

I already know that my biggest goals for 2012 are ones which clarified themselves in 2011 -- I know what I need to do to live that life and be the person I want to be, the writer I want to be, the entrepreneur I want to be, and everyday I am taking small steps toward that that person. In this respect, I've not wanted to change anything about my attitude or habits in 2012.

And -- for the first time since I laid out all the money months ago -- I'm seriously glad I invested in two new pairs of boots. I anticipate a long white winter to come.

I invite everyone to leave a comment and tell me your hopes, goals, and plans for the new year -- or leave me the link if you've already blogged it.

Photo credit: VW-chick on Flickr.

cat scan

I happen to have found an entire blog devoted to what happens when you put a cat on a scanner bed and push scan now.

They're strangely adorable.

Oh, and if you get so enamored of the cat scan concept, you can scan your own cat (or your own cat's butt given the way many of the scans turn out) and send it in to the cat scan blog owner. You may make the cut and appear in a future post.

My cats will not be appearing as I, sadly, do not own my own scanner. The cats and I would have to make a trip to the library ... or the English office ... and somehow I don't imagine that going well.

Stupid Computer Tricks

Did you know you can rotate the orientation of your screen by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Arrow Key?  I didn't.  Until my cat rolled across the keyboard.

This fun new way of viewing the world appeared while I was attempting to watch a movie on my computer.  And it was made more awkward by the fact that I was using the touch pad to navigate at the time.  The directionality of the touch pad changed with the orientation.  That is, when I moused left across the touch pad (moving my finger from center to short side), it moved to the left of my super long computer screen ... except that meant that my finger was moving 90 degrees counter clockwise of the path of the cursor.  If you didn't follow that, just know that it took some wonky extra hard thinking to re-learn how to mouse.

For the love of the link

Some thoughts from the past few days, all mashed into one blog post.  Like a salad.  With croutons.

Kirk arm-wrestles Kirk -- yes, he's kicked the living shit out of himself in The Undiscovered Country, but never arm-wrestled before.

I spent the holiday weekend (yes, last weekend, not this weekend) in a book coma.  You know, read-it-all-night, can't-put-it-down, dawn-breaks-and-you-look-out-the-window-and-just-turn-off-the-lamp-and-keep-reading, book coma.

Decided that, someday, I really wanna go to Mythcon.

The book that kept me up all night was Warprize by Elizabeth Vaughan.  The book had great bones.  I fell in love with the characters -- that sort of love is the only thing that can keep me up all night.  Indifference puts me to sleep.

Wicked & Tricksy totally amuses me.  Again.

What surprised me about Warprize is that it was originally published in 2005 (TOR), its sequels in 2006 and 2007, and all three are already out of print.  Warprize, the first book, was picked up by another publisher, Berkley, and reprinted.  But I couldn't get the sequels in book format.  I had to download them Nook-for-PC style.

Is this  the legacy of Amazon?  Not the deletion of legacy publishers as middleman or the ebook revolution, but the inability to get a "new" copy of a book that was only printed four years ago?

Camp NaNoWriMo = totally fallen by the wayside.  Maybe in August?  Maybe ... November?

Then again, maybe Warprize isn't the best example to use to start making claims about what anyone's "legacy" is.  While I fell in love with the characters, I should make note of the fact that after reading, I wanted to request edits.  The series had the stuff to be epic -- a thousand pages, easily, not three volumns of 200 pages each (650ish when all is said and done).  It needed to take its time, really delve into the world.  Take it out of first person, and let all the interesting things the author created really blossom.

Also of note: It was also published by TOR, who from all my research, is great to their big name authors and really miserable to all their other authors -- more so than other big publishers in the fantasy genre.  Also, this was a TOR Romance.  Romance has a high turn over.  It's bought faster and more frequently than any other genre (I think it still outpaces YA but by a shrinking margin).  And this means that publishing house want to keep a fresh supply of new books, new life blood, for all the romance genre junkies to come snack on.  It's the last true pulp jungle left in publishing.


Kansas City Public Library, I heart you.  Hey, and this dude, too -- I also heart you ... erm, your blog that is.

And while I was busy reading all night and into the day, my neighbors were busy setting off cheap, illegal fireworks.  You know the kind: big bang, little spark.

Perhaps firecrackers would be a better term.

In the evening, late at night and -- of all times -- mid-afternoon.  I don't get that one.

Now, I find fire as fascinating as the next person.  But that's why I play with candles.  I can't say that fire crackers have ever held any entertainment for me.  Although all the banging and popping had my cats on edge for 72 hours straight.  My irregular sleep pattern didn't work to sooth them either.

Wondrous and creepy thoughts on victimization and tarot cards.

You'd think that there would be better amateur fireworks this close to the state line.  Take any road into Indiana -- any road: expressway, country highway or two-track -- and the first thing you see beyond the Welcome to Indiana! America's Crossroads sign, is a cinder brick building selling fireworks.

One night, perhaps Monday, I got to see part of the city's fireworks display right from my desk.  It was a pleasant surprise but, let me put it this way, I'm glad I wasn't waiting around for it.

Feline Existence

 I just realized that I've been a cat the past two weeks.  I've slept, eaten, kept myself clean, and occasionally moved objects around the apartment.  Yes, I've gone outside and interacted with the world at large, but for the most part, I've been a cat.

At least I haven't batted anything important off the desk and under the bed / refrigerator / stove / washing machine where it will never been seen or heard from again.

Last act of the semester: grading

One more thing to do before I'm done with this semester: submit final grades for my students.  After which, this blog will return to some semblance of normalcy which it lacked the past two weeks while semester wound up and I got uber-busy.  So Rosie and I are chained to the desk for the day reading final essays.

Yep.  Chained to the desk.  Or, erm, cat pillow that sits on the desk. Hard at work. Grading away.

And grading ...

And grading ...

Oof, hard work.

Cat Catcher

My friend told me about this wooden cat perch you can buy and attach to your desk.  For fifty bucks.  My first thought was that the moment you spend money on a cat toy, the cat will find the box more interesting than the toy.  Which is often true.  Why not just put a box on your desk?

So I did.

It was an instant hit.

The box used its magnetic powers to immediately suck in any cat who arrived on my desk top.

But the problem is I have two cats.  And only one cat can fit in the magic cat catcher at a time.

So I got a shoe box out.

It's amazing how much cat you can stuff into a small box.

How to wrap a cat

Because it's the holidays and you have time to waste and watching something funny and holiday related is always a nice relaxing thing to do.  This first video was found via Margaret




But then, if ya get wrapped up, ya gotta bust out:



Lastly, this is not a how-to-wrap-your-cat video ... but it's pretty damn cat-related funny.


Merry Christmas and a happy waste of time, from me to you.

Unabashed Cat Cuteness Day

And from theOatmeal

Side note

Sometimes, when running back and forth between rooms a lot, I feel bad because the cats will follow me into one room, just to have me go back to the other a few minutes later. It seems like they just get comfortable before I have to leave.

If only I could tell them I won't be but five minutes. No, no, don't get up on my account -- stay where you are and I'll be right back.

Um ... cat?

Hey cat.  Whatcha doin up there?

Ash has of late taken to sitting on top my desk chair's head rest.  Yep.  Above my head, while balancing on a 14" long by 2" wide chunk of plastic and cushion covered with blue canvas.  And she's not one of those skinny, spry little jumping cats that only weigh ten pounds.  No, Ash is a built-for-comfort cat who weighs a bit over 13 pounds.  The only way she can stay up there is by sinking her back claws into the side of the cushion and hanging on.  

The chair is none the worse for wear -- another reason to recommend IKEA and it's nearly indestructible fabrics -- but I have bled on several occasions.  She was getting better with the dismount (sigh) but then she saw a squirrel out the window and nothing mattered but speed.  

I'm really glad right about now that I didn't pay the extra fifty-bucks to get this desk chair in leather.

Think about this

I've been having allergy problems lately. I don't know if it's dust or cat dander or my apartment trying to slowly suffocate me or what. So I've been changing the sheets on my bed more often. I've been vacuuming more often. Vacuuming stresses out the cat. When she's stressed out she sheds like mad. Meaning there's more fur lying around my apartment. Which I then need to vacuum up, which stresses out the cat, which causes her to shed...

So I went and bought an air filter.