friday cat blogging - mccullough's story

McCullough trying to ignore the world. "I'm not paying any attention to you..."

Today is McCullough's story, who is also known as McCully, Cullough, Fur-ball, SnuggleBunny, Dammit, and "You're not very bright, are you?"

McCullough was the resident apartment cat at the building my best friend Eunomia, where she, the cat, lived in the crawlspace under the building. Eunomia took pity on her as it became colder, took her to the vet, and adopted her. Eunomia is very much like myself and Tom, never able to say no to a cat in need of a home, so she already had Cleo, Soleil, and Little Boy (a monster of a kitty I think I could put a saddle on and ride) living in her apartment. What's one more, right? Well, Soliel hated McCullough with a passion. McCullough ended up living under the kitchen sink, and would sneak out to use the litter pan when Soliel was asleep. Literally, she lived under the sink. Time didn't help the two tolerate each other either, McCullough stayed under the sink.

So, when it became apparent that the situation was hopeless, McCullough came over to stay with her "cousins" for a little while. Amon pretty much ignored her. Noah was happy to have a younger cat he could play with, and tried to be friendly. McCullough wasn't too thrilled about a new apartment and new cats, and unfortunately took Noah's attempts at play as attacks. Noah would walk over to her, then slowly reach out with his paw toward her. He would hold it there, then quickly and lightly tap her. "I'm not touching you.... I'm not touching you... I'mmmmmm noooooot tooooouchinggggg youuuuuu.... TAG - YOU'RE IT!" He'd then prepare for her to attack him, which didn't happen. McCullough was so used to being actually attacked, and not played with by another cat, that she would take off running. So, Noah would take off after her, thinking she had changed the rules of the game or something. After a few weeks of this, McCullough settled down and became relaxed enough where she would "attack" in return. She always gave Amon plenty of respect, and never did quite know what to think when he actually wanted to play with her. Noah is the trouble-maker who would attack Amon and not care if Amon being a grump.

After Eep came along, McCullough still didn't get any respect. Once Eep was cleared from her quarantine, she had already developed a pretty disagreeable attitude. McCullough is not a cat that handles agression from other cats well. Over the past couple of years, I have noticed a "bite me" attitude start to appear regarding Eep. It's hilarious to see Eep grump and growl at McCullough, and McCullough give her a look and body language that clearly says "bite my ass, fluffball".

McCullough is a sweetheart that loves to snuggle and cuddle. She's very much Tom's cat, and has always liked men better than women. Not that she'll turn down any lap or nap partner, but she definitely has her preferences. With the weather getting colder, she especially wants a lap and wants it yesterday. She is also a very good bed kitty, loving a good warm bed. This cat loves to snuggle so much, that when she gets into either Tom's or my lap, she tries to get as close as physically possible. If she got any closer, she'd have to be surgically removed.

Alas, poor McCully isn't the sharpest tool in the shed. I swear, most days the only thing between her ears is air. It's especially bad when she gets the moments when looking at her face, one can hear the wind whistling in her head, she has this look on her face "What? What you looking at? Umm, I'm fuzzy."


Come skritch me. Even better, I need a lap for my nap.

The Friday Ark is up at Modulator. There should be plenty of kitties and other critters.

Sunday's Carnival of the Cats will be over at Sharp as a Marble. Of course, most of you know that, since that's probably how you found my site. :)

update - renal calculi

For my readers who give a crap, mostly my friends/family since I can't remember who I've told what to. :)

Nothing showed up on CT scan or X-ray. Ok, stuff showed up, like 2 kidneys, a bladder, other organs, and a skeleton. No stones or other stuff that's not supposed to be there. So, either I passed the offending stone before the scan, or the whole problem was a kidney infection. Either way, I'm not having any problems now, which is all I care about.

general lack of ems related posts

I'm sure some of you are wondering when I'm going to write something about being an EMT and running calls. Well, first I have to run some calls worth writing about, which I have not done in the past 3 months. I'm not saying that I haven't been on any calls, there's just nothing remarkable about any of them. I only work 1, maybe 2, 12-hour shifts a week anyway, (being an EMT is not how I earn a living), so the odds of doing anything noteworthy is slim. EMS (emergency medical service) tends to be like this anyway, mostly boredom until all hell breaks loose.

the peterson sentence and fetal homicide laws

Jury Says Scott Peterson Should Die for Murder

Controversial issue of fetal homicide arises in Laci Peterson case

At this point I'm probably the only person on the web who hasn't registered an opinion on this case, so I'm going to fix that.

Since I did not sit on the jury and have the benefit of seeing all the evidence in the case that those present in the court did see, I will trust the judgment of the jury. The jury found him guilty of one count of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder, and recommended the death sentence. Rot in hell, motherfucker.

The part of this case that bothers me is the fetal homicide law that was used to make it a double murder case. At what point is an unborn child considered an independent legal entity, which can be murdered? After a live birth? At conception, the zygote stage? At first movement in the womb, or "quickening"? When the embryo has developed into a fetus, about 7 weeks?

The problem I have with fetal homicide laws is the potential there is for using them to weaken abortion rights laws, or at the very least, to influence the public's perception of abortion rights. Most people are going to hear/read about fetal homicide laws, and know that it's against the law to kill a fetus. The general public isn't going to be bothered with learning or caring about the exclusions for legal abortions. In turn, physicians, nurses, and others who work in clinics which offer abortion services will face even more negative public opinion. Too many health-care workers have been killed and maimed in this country for performing a legal medical procedure that some people don't agree with. With the publicity surrounding the Peterson trial, I'm concerned that there will be more of a backlash against such health-care workers, simply because of public ignorance.

Of course, without the fetal homicide law in California, the prosecution would have only been able to prosecute for a single case of first-degree murder, which in California is not a capital offense. By using the fetal homicide law, the prosecution was able to get a conviction for one case of first-degree murder and one case of second-degree murder. Committing a first-degree murder while committing a second-degree murder is a capital offense in California. The prosecution gets what they want, the death penalty for a high-profile and gruesome case.

There's no easy answer. In this country, there is a tendency to be very reactionary in lawmaking, to pass laws as a result of high-profile cases, and appease the public. There are other legal devices to prosecute someone for harming/killing a fetus without considering it a separate legal entity. North Carolina has laws providing punishment for harming a fetus, in one case the defendant was found guilty of "using an instrument with intent to destroy an unborn child". Lawmakers just need to actually think about what they're trying to do, be proactive and not reactive.

(Mira slaps herself)

Got a little idealistic there, I forgot well how Congress and the state legislatures get bogged down with getting themselves re-elected. "You mean we're supposed to actually create and pass laws while we're here?"

carnival of the cats #38

This week's Carnival of the Cats is up over at Cathcoll.net.

Even Eep approves of the kitty goodness.

updating the blog

Since I've been ill lately, and have a general lack of ideas for content, other than the cats, I've been updating the structure of the site. There is now a Who's Who section with a short profile of the cats and people in my life. There are also now new photos of the fuzzies on Flickr, some of which are not on this site at this time.

friday cat blogging - noah's story, part 2

Today's installment in the Story of Noah.




Noah looking out the window from his kitty bed, after having tucked himself in.

Noah became very spoiled very quickly. As a part of Noah going on trips, he learned to wear a harness and leash. He never would walk on it and go where I wanted him to. He would go where he wanted, and not play "dead cat" and refuse to move.

A few months after Noah entered my life, Amon wandered in. He and Noah eventually became buddies and playmates, Noah needed another cat to play with. Amon, who was no youngster when he entered my life, needed to play just as much. At the time Tom and I lived in a 2 story townhouse apartment, so one of the cats' favorite games was "herd of stampeeding wildebeests". This involved running hell-for-leather, up the stairs, in the bedroom, across the bed, out the bedroom, back down the stairs, through the living room/dining room, back up the stairs...usually at 3am.

Besides being a very sweet companion, who is always more than ready to cuddle, Noah has a mischevious streak. This is not helped by the fact he knows what thumbs are, he sees myself and Tom using ours for all sorts of neat things, and desperately wants a pair himself. He knows how to use doorknobs, but can't get enough of a grip on them to open doors. Unless he is really hungry, he picks up his food with his paw, brings it up to his mouth, and eats it piece by piece. He has also demonstrated he knows that if he is on one side of a door he has to puch it open, and if he's on the other, he has to pull it open. I'm not claiming that Noah is any smarter than the average cat; most just don't show off so they can get their human to do what they want. He would be truly dangerous with a pair of thumbs.


Noah in his stacking crate cubbyhole. His cubbyhole was about 4 feet above the floor; he would climb up the fromt of the crates like a ladder.

From and early age, Noah also took an interest in my art supplies. He was constantly fascinated by the little sticks I held in my hand that would make all sorts of strange marks on paper. For some reason, his mommy got very upset with him whenever he tried to "help" and make some marks of his own. Every onec in a while, I would get careless with a project, and end up turning in a drawing with a few paw prints that I didn't intend. I had to be careful when I worked in ink, Noah decided for some reason that he liked black India ink. Liked, as in liked the taste. He would dip his paw in the jar of water I used to rinse my brushes in, and lick his paw dry, since he couldn't reach the water with his mouth. He would repeat this as long as I would let him. I didn't get upset, since I purposely bought non-t0xic ink. It was just too funny, to this day I joke he was trying to make himself completly black. (He has about 10 white hairs on his chest) Now that he is older, and some of the kittenish mischief is gone, he is content to sit on my work table, or nap by my chair. Even when I work in oils, Noah is right there, watching or napping. For those who are not familiar with oil paints, the fumes are very strong, so with cats' very acute sense of smell, I'm suprised the fumes don't bother him.

There are 7 years worth of tales I could tell, which will be the subject of future, short posts. This ends my introduction of Noah. I hope you enjoyed it.


Looking out the window from the couch.

Be sure to check out the Friday Ark at The Modulator.

Also, Sunday's Carnival of the Cats is at Cathcoll.net.

carnival of the cats #37

In case you missed it, the latest Carnival of the Cats is over at The People's Republic of Seabrook, and has beeen since Sunday. Kinda late with my obligatory post directing people to the latest Carnival, it's still one of those kind of weeks.

saturday cat blogging

Tonight's post is part 1 of Noah's story.

I adopted Noah from a local no-kill animal shelter in 1997. He was born on May 2 of that year, according to the shelter's records. My then boyfriend Tom and I went looking for a kitten, to, among other things, keep me company during the day when I was home alone. My Crohn's Disease was acting up at the time, so I was taking a very light load of classes at college. Tom was taking more classes, and working, so I spent quite a bit of time alone. We went to the shelter to find a kitten.

The cats were all at a pet shop specializing in cats. Cats and kittens everywhere, having free run of the shop. We were looking for a kitten, so we ended up in the kitten room. A small room full of little balls of fluff. As soon as I walked in and sat down on the couch, a little black kitten came up to me wanting to be held. He was adorable. We wanted to look at the other kittens, not choose one without checking out several, so we held, skritched, and played with the other kittens. That little black kitten didn't want to go away. Well, we ended up adopting that little kitten, who was thrilled to have a home.

Noah became my buddy and my shadow. He was constantly by my side, and slept with me at night. Whenever Tom and I went on a trip to visit either of our families, Noah went with us, and learned to enjoy riding in cars. Wherever he went, Tom's family or mine, there were other kitties at the end to play with. He would either lay in the back window and watch the world go by and sleep, or curl up on my lap and sleep. Even if I was driving, he would curl up and sleep, not cause any problems. If he wanted to look out, he would simply get up and walk on the console to the back seat to look outside.

Noah has been my buddy now for 7 years, and should be for many more. Stay tuned for more of Noah's story. It's time for me to get some rest now. Noah agrees.



Update - Noah's Story, part 2

another round of the creeping crud

Ok, this has been kinda a suck-ass month for infections for me. I have some chronic health issues, the details of which are another post, so I'm somewhat more prone to infection than the average person. Another round of bronchitis, whee. So after 4 days of antibiotics, albuterol, cough syrup, fluids, and rest, I'm feeling better. I'm breathing much better now, so it's all good.

Update on the kidney stone, or more accurately, lack of one. No stone on x-ray or CT scan. So either I passed it one of the days I was having pain before the scan and x-rays, or it was, you guessed it, and infection. Either way, it hasn't bothered me in 2 weeks, so I'm not going to worry about it.

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

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.


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.

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...

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.

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.

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 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.



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.

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.

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 4^th 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.