Friday, November 26, 2004

cute fuzziness overload - a.k.a. friday cat blogging

professional photo of a kitten sleeping

professional photo of 3 kittens sleeping

Three out of four narcoleptic kittens agree, the Oubliette could use some more material. To hell with 3 out of 4 narcoleptic kittens, what do they know about content?

This site was brought to my attention, and it's a great place to get a kitten fix. I've seen quite a few of the photos before, in various sites around the web. All the photos are obviously professional and by the same photographer. Regardless of who took the photos, they are still adorable, so enjoy the massive amounts of cuteness. If you have a slow connection, i.e. dial-up, this site will take a while to load, most of the pictures are 600 x 400 and all on one page. Fair warning.

professional photo of a kitten running through grass
I'm flying... at a very low altitude. Whee!

Nope, no pics of my own kitties this week's edition. Noah's and McCullough's Stories will be posted in the next couple of weeks. Maybe I'll get around to doing a little field reporting later, from the family farm. Stay tuned...

The Friday Ark is up over at Modulator.

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

the conseqences of not spaying/neutering your cat...


Cartoon by Mike Lester, Rome News Tribune, Rome, Georgia. Cartoon dated 9/03/2004. You can find an archive of Mike's other editorial/political cartoons here, along with many others.

Having grown up on a farm, we always had plenty of cats. "Mom! Look what I found them in the road. Can we keep them?... These guys can't be more than a couple of weeks old, are they even weaned yet? No, we (my sister and I) didn't find a momma cat."

time to stop eating gravel

Kidney stones suck. Big time. Though I would point that out for those who have never had one.

I knew something was very wrong last week when I suddenly was in so much back/side pain I couldn't move. A stone (or stones) is probably what the problem is, but I haven't gotten the CT scan results to confirm that yet, which will also show how many and how large they are. Then the doctor gets to decide the best way to get rid of them. I just know this is going to be so much freakin' fun...

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

scenic trip to the underworld

I managed to bribe Charon to bring me back across the River Styx. Ok, so I exaggerate. It wasn't that bad, although having a sinus infection and bronchitis at the same time is no fun. Thank the gods and pharmaceutical companies for antibiotics. Imagine breathing through pudding, it's about that much fun. I did get to catch up on some much needed sleep and some episodes of CSI:NY that have been sitting on the DVR for a couple of weeks.

I still haven't decided if I like CSI:NY as much as the other two or not. It has a much darker, moodier feel that the others don't. Vegas and Miami have such a glamour over what can be just as dark of an underworld, especially in the drug world of Miami. While NY has some of the glamour, it's also a more sophisticated glamour, not the in-your-face lights of Vegas or the beautiful bodies and beaches of Miami. It seems CSI:NY is mirroring the feeling of the city, darker, moodier, more sophisticated. I think CSY:NY will grow on me, once I become more familiar with the characters and the feel of the show itself, and not keep expecting it to be a carbon copy of the first two slapped into NY.

Thursday, November 11, 2004

ugh

No blogging going on, 'cause I've been sick and haven't felt like doing much of anything. Except sleep. Which I think I'm going to go do.

Sunday, November 07, 2004

carnival of the cats #33

Head over to Mind of Mog and check out all of the fuzzy kitty goodness at this week's Carnival of the Cats.

Friday, November 05, 2004

friday cat blogging

This week's kitty is Eep, named for the name she made as a kitten. She's also is or has been called the Wild Eep, Fluffybutt, Little Miss Priss, Typhoid Mary, and You Little Shit.

Eep squeezing herself under the entertainment center.

I was on my way to a meeting from the main office of my employer to a customer when I saw this little ball of fluff tumble into the gutter on the side of the busiest streets in the city. I flipped around at the next safe opportunity and commenced a cat rescue. I found a 4 week kitten sitting in the brush between some public housing and the street, with what looked like a broken jaw. As I approached, the kitten dropped a dried-out rats foot, and cautiously approached. Good, no broken jaw. I scooped her up, put her in my satchel I had rapidly emptied, made a quick call to the client from my cell phone saying I would be a few minutes late and hurried home to my apartment. I rushed in the door, suprising my husband who expected me to be at work, and handed him this tiny ball of fluff. "Here. I found her. I gotta go." I got a I-thought-I-said-no-more-cats look as I went back out the door.

When I got home I found Tom asleep in the recliner, a little fluffy ball asleep on his chest. He tried to feed her, but she was too young for chunky canned food still. She was very thin, understandably so, if the best she could do was dried rat foot. So we went to the pet store and got her some powdered kitten milk, which is apparently pure kitty heroin.

We didn't take Eep to the vet immediately, since we really couldn't afford it, and she was too young to get vaccinated. We'd had her for 2-3 weeks when we finally were able to take her to the vet at the same time we took the others for their yearly trip. The vet had some bad news for us, her blood test came back FIV positive, and it was possible that she had exposed the others while playing with them. We couldn't know for sure on the others for 6 weeks since it takes that long for the virus to show up after initial exposure. In 6 weeks we would take the other 3 back and see if their test were still negative. We had to decide if we wanted to put Eep down immediately, or keep her in isolation. No shelter in town would take a FIV + kitten. We decided to keep her, since she was healthy at the time. We would have to keep Eep separated from Noah, Amon, and McCullough forever. This was interesting in a 2 bedroom apartment.

That night was the worst for me. I was kicking my self for not getting her tested immediately, before letting her be in contact with the others at all. I knew better, and I had maybe taken years off the lives of the others. In saving one life, I had maybe shortened the lives of my three cats.

Eep ended up living in the master suite, bedroom and bathroom. She had one window she could look out. The other three had the rest of the apartment normally. Each day, we would put the others in the other bedroom/bathroom for a while and let Eep run around the living room and kitchen. Six weeks came and passed, we took Noah, Amon, and McCullough back to be re-tested and they were all negative. That was a great relief. We kept up the separation for about 4 months, until we moved to a 3 bedroom apartment. Overall the apartment was twice as big, which we all appreciated. Eep once again had the master suite, so she wouldn't be lonely at night, and was given run of the main area for a few hours while the others were confined to the other 2 bedrooms/1 bathroom.

About the time Eep was 8 months old, and she was going to be fixed, I read an article discussing the FIV test in kittens. Basically, in kittens less than 6 months old, the test is not accurate. The kittens can have the antibodies for the virus, which is what the test reacts positive to, and not the virus itself. The kittens get the antibodies from their mother through nursing, if the mother has the FIV virus. After 6 months of age, the antibodies disappear if the kittens do not have the virus. When we took Eep to be tested, I asked the vet about this, and said that it was true. The information had not been available when Eep was tested the first time, the study was that recent. So Eep was re-tested, and she was NEGATIVE! The vet said we shoud do another test to confirm the results in 6 weeks, and if it also came back negative, then she was. Six more weeks, and it too was negative. Eep could rejoin the group.

Of course, now she's spoiled and somewhat antisocial toward the other cats. She spent most of her kittenhood alone, only Tom and myself as her companions. Her only contact with the other cats was sniffs under the doors. Let's just say she never learned how to learn to play nice with others, or how to share. She's been slowly learning to adjust over the past 3 years, although I don't think she wants to learn to share. Stubborn little cat.

So Eep's story does have a happy ending. Despite the scare all the cats were fine. I know it could have been very different, and should have known better then. I shudder to think of what could have happened...


On a lighter note, here's a RFOAC to skritch and play with. Move your cursor over and around the kitty, you don't have to click anything.


Also check out the Friday Ark.

Thursday, November 04, 2004

hey, buddy, it gets really cold at 40,000 feet

So, why is it when a screw comes loose, the clothes come off? And it's never a sight you want to see, trust me. Usually it's a case of dammit, I haven't had enough Dr. Pepper for this.

Naked Man Hides in Plane Wheel Well

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 4 (AP) - A man was charged with trespassing after he stripped naked, scaled a airport fence, ran across the tarmac and climbed into a plane's wheel well before firefighters talked him out, officials said.

The man had earlier tried to buy a ticket for a Qantas Airways flight to Australia with only a credit card receipt. He told authorities at Los Angeles International Airport that he stripped off his clothes Monday to protest the airline's decision to deny him the ticket, airport spokeswoman Nancy Castles said.

The man, Neil Melly, 31, of Canada, suffers from bipolar disorder (also called manic-depressive illness) and had been listed as a missing person in Canada, Castles said. He was booked on a tresspassing charge, and was released from custody Tuesday.

Baggage handlers saw the man climb an 8-foot, barbed-wire fence that separates public and private areas of the airport and run to a departing plane as it backed from the gate. He climbed into a wheel well before the plane stopped.

He ignored police officers' commands to come out, but complied when city firefighters arrived. The Boeing 747, bound for Melbourne, Austrialia, departed an hour late.

Airport authorities will look into improving the fence, said Paul Haney, a spokesman for the agency that operates the airport.

What I want to know is did he strip before or after climbing over the barbed wire fence? Ouch.

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

4 more years

So, Kerry conceded. I wasn't paying close attention to what the margin was, how many provisional votes had to be counted, etc., to know if he had a chance as of my previous post. Apparently not, which is fine. This election was decided by the people, not by the courts or by the House of Representatives, which would have been the case in the event each had received 269 electoral votes.

Now comes the little bug that's eating away at my brain. Maine and Nebraska both award the electoral votes individually, based on Congressional District, not winner take all for the state. Maine has 4 electoral votes. Canidate A could win in 3 Districts in while Canidate B could win in the 4th District. Or 2 and 2. So, if all 538 electoral votes were allocated in the same way, by individual Congressional District and not winner take all for the entire state, how different would the results be? (Here's the artist talking) How different would the map look with votes painted by district, not by state? I know this is a purely academic question, but hell, I love this kind of puzzle.

Argh. This is going to nag at my brain until I find out.

Dammit.

my 2 cents on ohio

Let all the votes get counted before in Ohio before demanding anyone concedes. This is not a re-count people, but the FIRST count of people's votes. Let's get them all counted since it is close and be sure what the results are, so it won't get tied up in courts, again. I'd like to know in 2 weeks, when all the provisional votes are counted, instead of in 2 months like the last time around.

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