Just what you were hoping for... another entry about my cats!
This time of year that's about all that's happening for me. And so...
This is handsome Jake when he's laying on your lap being petted...
Here is what happens when you stop petting him so you can take a picture...
If he had a knife... he'd cut a bitch for sure. Which is why I'll go back to petting and photographing at the same time...
And I guess I should stop working when Jake wants to be petted. It never works out anyway...
Jake can't help but be irritating. The minute I leave the house, he's all over the kitchen... the one place he's not supposed to go. I finally installed an alarm that sounds if I'm out of the house and there's movement in the kitchen. It works great. Here's the security cameras catching Jake two seconds before the alarm starts blaring...
I'd post a photo of him while the alarm sounds, but it's just a blur as he high-tails it out of the kitchen.
Jake isn't just irritating to me... he's also irritating to his sister. A while ago she brought up Jake's stuffed lion toy as her morning tribute. Jake was upset about this, and threw himself down next to it. Jenny, not dissuaded at all, snatched the lion and ran back downstairs with it. Jake, of course, tore off after her. A few minutes later, Jenny came sulking back, then threw herself on the window perch to pout...
I didn't know what was bugging her until Jake came back up with his toy lion in his mouth. Apparently he snatched it back...
As for Jenny... she's still as adorable as ever. When not pummeling her brother for irritating her, she's been spending a lot of time out in the catio...
She's also taken to hogging the blankets on my bed. I started rolling them back so she wouldn't lay in the middle, preventing me from being able to get in. So now she just lays on the roll of blankets...
Every morning Jenny drags toys upstairs as a tribute in exchange for breakfast. Or at least I think that's what she's doing. And now she's going overboard with it... bringing up an abundance of toys. I think she's trying to build an altar to the cat-god Bast.
And every morning I kick all the toys back downstairs so she has something to do the following morning.
Except a couple times now, she's having none of it. She barricades the steps so I can't kick the toys anywhere...
Typical.
And now I suppose it's time to go to bed.
Assuming the cats will even let me in my bed.
Tonight one of my worst fears nearly came true.
I went out the front door to drag the trash can from my driveway to my house. After I finished, I went back to open the screen door and noticed that I had left the front door behind it slightly ajar. For some reason I glanced down before opening the screen door and saw... Jake. I pounded on the glass to scare him the hell out of the kitchen before going inside. And then broke out into a cold sweat when I realized that, had I not seen him, it's likely he would have darted outside. The little bastard.
I have done everything I can think of to keep the cats out of the kitchen for just this reason. I even bought "scat mats" to discourage them from stepping foot inside. Touch the mat, and they get an electric shock. That worked for all of two days. On day three, they just started jumping over it...
Eventually they learned that I would yell at them if I caught them in the kitchen... so they started only doing it at night when I was asleep. After I realized what was happening, I had my security system alert me if there was motion in the kitchen after I go upstairs for the night.
Eventually they learned that even if I wasn't in the room, I could still yell at them if they went into the kitchen if I were home... so they started only doing it when I was away at work. After I realized what was happening, I bought an alarm that would sound if there was motion in the kitchen when I'm away from home.
Eventually they learned that even if I wasn't in the room and wasn't home, there was still punishment for going into the kitchen... SO NOW THEY ARE DOING IT WHEN I AM HOME SO THE ALARM DOESN'T SOUND, OUTSIDE SO I CAN'T SEE THEM, AND DOWNSTAIRS SO I AM NOT ALERTED?!? I mean, come on... exactly how many contingencies do I have to plan for before all bases are covered?
Living with cats is enough to drive one insane.
Especially since the little fuckers still pretend to respect the boundaries that have been set for them. When I'm getting them breakfast in the morning, they wouldn't dream of stepping foot into the kitchen...
But there's no question that they are planning their next kitchen break-in. Conditioning by reward and punishment is never cut and dry where cats are concerned.
Also not in question? How Trump is going to react in any given situation.
If you say or do something which displeases future Lord President Trump, you get the stick...
If you say or do something which pleases future Lord President Trump, you get the carrot...
Never mind that there are plenty of American companies in competition with LL Bean who have done nothing to deserve LL Bean getting preferential treatment and free advertising from their soon-to-be-president. But they didn't donate enough money to Trump to merit such treatment, so tough luck, I guess. Maybe if Lands' End were to put Trump's face on the cover of their next catalog proclaiming him "The Best President Ever!" they too will have Trump telling everybody to buy their stuff.
Which is a disgusting abuse of power by the president, but not entirely unexpected.
I live with cats. Nothing is unexpected to me.
For about a month now, I have been turning the thermostat down in order to save money on my electricity. Heating is by far the priciest contributor to my bill, so I thought it was worth a shot. I never minded adding a couple layers to stay warm... but eventually couldn't take having cold fingers while working, so I relented and went back to a more sane thermostat setting.
The cats never seemed to care one way or another about the lower temperature. Them having fur coats and all. But they don't have to worry about their fingers getting cold while they type.
They don't do much typing on their iPad.
I was reminded of this when I found an old memory card and ran across some photos I took of Jake and Jenny when they were kittens. My favorites being them goofing around on a video game made for cats...
Jenny is an all or nothing kind of gamer.
Jake would rather sit around being handsome than play games...
Some things never change.
I've been online since... well... before the internet was a thing, really. Back when it was all bulletin boards and CompuServe and modem-to-modem and stuff like that. In oh so many ways, things have changed radically from those early days. But not everything. Some things haven't changed one damn bit.
Here is how online forums have worked since the dawn of time...
Poster: I am a bit confused about something and would appreciate people's experiences and opinions on this matter.
Me: Here is my opinion and my experience from having this opinion.
Commenter: YOU ARE WRONG! YOU HAVE BAD INFORMATION! GO FUCK YOURSELF!
For a goodly chunk of people, it's never about presenting their own opinions and experiences... it's all about attacking people who have opinions and experiences that differ from theirs.
Responding to some topics is more likely to invite an attack than others... like... say... "What's the best brand of mobile phone, iPhone or Android?"
Another example? As I found out last night, coming out against declawing cats is a topic that invites all kinds of attacks...
My opinion on declawing cats is pretty cut and dry... you just don't fucking do it. It's not like cutting your nails, it's like removing the entire tip of your finger down to the first knuckle. And if you're okay with doing that to a kitten, then you probably shouldn't have a cat. I would let my cats scratch the shit out of everything I own and still never consider maiming them like that.
Or...
I'd buy a shitload of scratching posts and cardboard scratchers, put them next to everyplace that my cats want to scratch so they have a more pleasing alternative, cover them with catnip to make them more attractive, put sheets of double-stick shelf-paper on things I want scratch-free to make them less attractive, then slowly remove half of the scratching alternatives once I figure out the ones they prefer.
Time consuming and expensive? Yes.
But it worked. My cats have their claws and me and my furniture are still in one piece.
Though some of my IKEA is sporting scratch marks from the training period. Oh well. Small price to pay.
Of course, there are people who have different opinions. And they are not afraid to attack you because of it. They call you names. They tell you that you're attributing human feelings to an animal. Provide "evidence" that declawing is not inhumane. Berate you for trying to make everybody hate them because they support declawing. Etc. Etc. Etc.
But whatevs.
All I did was provide my opinion and relate my experience, as requested. I don't really give a shit if people want to attack me for it. That's the risk you take.
I'm used to it. I have a blog.
We've hit a bout of above-freezing weather this week, which has the cats in and out of the catio all day and night. Especially Jenny, who just loves ripping it up out there. This has me forward to Spring when I'll start working on Catio: Phase Two, which will add even more cat-tastic fun! Though I'll probably be looking at installing gutters first, since the guy I hired never showed up and there's water everywhere.
I think the wet floor is why Jake would rather hang out with me on the couch...
Not that Jenny spends all her time outside. She likes to snuggle up from time to time too...
Or sit around watching television...
Also this week... I've started bribing them to spend time in the new cat carriers I bought for their vet visit next month...
Not something I'm looking forward to. At all.
I'm pretty sure the cats won't be thrilled with the prospect either.
Today was a horrific day for the country in so many ways. I cannot fathom what it's going to be like after four years.
As if that weren't bad enough, I woke up to an idiopathic angioedema attack (which causes random swelling of random places like my tongue, throat, face, hands, or feet). Fortunately, it was just my right foot this time, which is painful and inconvenient... but not life-threatening like other areas can be. I took one of my massive antihistamine pills and hung out until I could put on shoes, then went to work knowing that it wouldn't last. Angioedema fatigue on top of antihistamines is a recipe for falling asleep at your desk.
I expected to head home at noon, but lasted until 2:30. Go me.
After napping for a few hours, I awoke to find that my foot had ballooned back up. So much for some desperately-needed vacuuming.
Which was okay with the cats. Especially Jake, who snuggled up to watch YouTube cat videos for a couple hours...
He can't get enough of those "funniest cats" compilations.
Jake has always been the more affectionate cat... but he's really been ramping it up this past week. He's crawling around my legs whenever I'm standing still. And he's all over me the minute I sit down. I don't know what it's all about, but I don't mind the company. Jenny still likes to sleep next to me on my bed and cry for the occasional cuddle. I guess that's enough for her.
And now... time to take another massive antihistamine pill and hope that something else doesn't decide to go all angioedema on me in the middle of the night. Especially not my tongue or throat... for which I keep an Epi-Pen on my nightstand, just in case.
Though waking up alive in America ain't what it used to be, so who knows if I'll actually bother to reach for it.
Ain't nothin' going on but the cats.
Ain't nothin' going on but the cats.
Ain't nothin' going on but the cats.
A woman once called my cats "ordinary" after I posted a photo of them when they were impossibly adorable kittens. I'm assuming she was referring to the fact that they were "merely" American shorthair cats, and exceedingly common. Unlike the three Persians that graced her profile.
It was kind of an odd reaction, because I never said anything about them being "extraordinary." I think she was probably just jealous that so many people commented that they were cute.
I asked her if her precious Persians could solve quadratic equations, because MY CATS FUCKING COULD! She never commented back.
Anyway...
This is not my week. First The United States of America ends up in the shitter and now my cats won't let me dry my washing! Jenny loves the clothes dryer. I can never get my clothes out fast enough because she hears the buzzer and immediately runs to the laundry room. Oooh... nice, warm clothes...
Once I manage to get my clothes out, Jake decides to hop in too. It'll be at least 15 minutes before I can put the next load in now. But... awwww... look how Jake has his arm around Jenny!
Jake sure has grown up to be a big boy!
Speaking of Jake... all the photos I've been posting lately have been on him hanging out with me watching TV. But Jenny does that too...
The difference being that when Jenny sees something that upsets her on the television, she will run up and smack it. For example, here she is about to smack a 5ive Gum commercial...
Other times she will run up just to see what's going on in the world...
Smacking my television is a bit upsetting, but she's always really gentle about it, so I don't say anything. When it comes to cats, you have to pick your battles. So far as Jenny goes, she pretty much behaves all the time, and I'd like to encourage that.
Jake, on the other hand?
Well... when he's not going places he shouldn't go (like the kitchen) and getting into things he shouldn't get into (like the water fountain reservoir)... he's doing things he shouldn't do.
Like smacking pictures on the wall. Which he does every chance he gets for whatever reason.
In most cases, I just remove or move the picture. But there is one picture that I can't really move... my original Pulp Fiction poster. It hangs in the stairwell below the banister, and you can only see it going down the stairs. Jake likes to lay on the banister and smack at it. Until I admonish him, at which time he'll sit there pretending he's just innocently looking at it...
You can see that he's made it all crooked.
Eventually I can't take how adorable he is and call him over for petting, which he loves...
AWWWWWWW! What extraordinary cats I have!
My cleaning routine is fairly basic. I divide the house into sections, tackle a section each morning... then vacuum on Saturday... and finally handle any needed repairs or remaining cleaning on Sunday. Simple, really. Except not really. BECAUSE CAT HAIR! GAAAAAHHHH! Cat hair goes beyond dusting and cleaning because it gets into places that require you to tear apart your home to get to. And so I do this on the first Saturday of every month. Which is today. This morning, in fact. Which means my house right now is the cleanest it will be for another month. It's been completely ripped apart with all furniture moved and every crevice vacuumed out.
And then... just as I was sitting down to type this... a clump of cat hair goes floating past the window.
HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?!? WHERE WAS IT HIDING? WHY, LORD... WHYYYYY?!?
It's interesting how my cat's behavior is ever-changing.
As an example, I have a water fountain that I bought for Spanky to try and keep him from meowing for the bathroom faucet. I've had it out for Jake and Jenny since day one. But, unlike Spanky, they never drank from the water spout... they just lapped from the bowl at the bottom...
Then today I noticed that Jake has started drinking from the water spout instead of the bowl, just like Spanky did. Jenny looks like she's trying to do that, but she goes in sideways and gets more on her face than in her mouth. Oh well. I'm sure she'll get it eventually.
When it comes to ordering pet food and supplies, I bounce between Petco, Amazon, and Chewy. Chewy was recommended by friends, and they've got the best prices on most things, so that's where most of my stuff comes from now. Especially food. You can tell when my bi-monthly shipment arrives, because the cat cupboard is full-up...
If there's one place in my house that's organized, it's the cat cupboard.
And then...
STEP ONE: Sniff at the box!
STEP TWO: Step into the box!
STEP THREE: Get in that box!
And that's the way we do it...
It's a cat in a box!
At least they're taking turns...
And now, in security camera theater...
Listen to this and tell me that Fake Jake isn't possessed by Satan! It starts out mournful, but then goes full-on crazy. Note that when Fake Jake smashed into the catio fencing, Jenny ran inside. BUT THEN MY LITTLE TROOPER WENT RIGHT BACK OUT AGAIN! And... can anybody tell if Real Jake is growling back at Fake Jake? It kinda sounds to me like he is!
I have two sets of security cameras. One has video history, the other does not, and only stores a few clips at a time when it notices motion. I had an extra clip camera, so I decided to put it in the guest room, which is where the cats are always getting into trouble. A couple nights ago I heard a crash from the guest room while I was on the phone. When I got off the phone, I go running in and see this...
I check the clip camera and see this waiting for me...
Turns out Jake knocked another rabbit off the shelf. I'd be mad, but he's been playing Jungle Panther Cat lately, and he's too cute to be mad at...
Alrighty then... until next Caturday...
You might remember Fake Jake... the cat who looks a little bit like Jake, which resulted in my brother accidentally bringing him in while housesitting because he thought Real Jake managed to get out. He's also the cat that has been routinely terrorizing my cats when they're out in the catio... though they aren't so scared of him now that they realize he can't get in.
Anyway...
Fake Jake has learned my daily routine, which makes for some interesting times.
In the evenings, he knows what time I get home and will wait for the garage door to open so he can dash in before my car rolls up. This means I have to walk him out before closing the garage door so he doesn't get trapped... or, even worse... follow me into the house.
In the mornings, he knows what time I leave and will wait for the garage door to open so he can dash in after my car rolls out. This means I have to get out of my car, walk him outside, then "distract" him with some petting until the garage door closes...
He really is a sweet cat... even if he doesn't get along with my cats very well. And, despite living outdoors (even when it's freezing cold out) Fake Jake seems to be a happy, healthy kitty.
Probably a good thing my cats don't get along with Fake Jake... I'd be sorely tempted to steal him.
This is a long one, so strap yourself in.
When I adopted my cats one year ago today, I was supposed to take them back to the vet in six weeks as follow-up for their spay/neuter surgeries and to get a booster for a shot they had just gotten. It was never going to happen. As feral rescues, they were still hiding under the couch most of the time at six weeks. I called the vet and was told that since they were indoor cats they could probably get away with waiting for their annual check-up in a year.
Which was today.
This was something I absolutely did not want to do. In preparation I had read several stories from people who had said that their cats became hostile towards each other after their first visit. Something about the vet smell screwing them up or whatever. Jake and Jenny are so sweet to each other that this would kill me, so I was about as nervous as I've ever been. My first time having sex was not nearly as nerve-wracking as this. Needless to say, I did not get any sleep last night.
And then, before I knew it, it was time to go.
Months ago I bought new pet carriers that had doors on the top. I had numerous people tell me that it was the best, least traumatic way of loading your cat for transport.
Thank heavens I did.
I had been training them to go into the carriers for the past several weeks by bribing them with treats. It never failed. Until today of course. Jake went right in. Jenny refused for some reason.
My whole plan was to lock Jenny in first, because she was the one I was most worried about getting to stay in the box. So I grabbed her, with the intent of dropping her through the top of her carrier. She put up a fight, but I got her in on the third try. The commotion agitated Jake, but I was able to shove him in his carrier before he could back all the way out of the box. I quickly locked all the doors, sprayed a shot of Feliway to calm them down, and... voíla... two cats, ready for transport...
At first, they were quite calm about the situation. Yes, they were trying to open the doors and get out, but they were more curious than upset about their predicament. After giving them a few minutes, I hauled them out to the car. I had put a 2x4 in the back seat so they wouldn't be at an angle, then faced the doors towards each other so they could see they weren't alone.
Two minutes after pulling out of the garage, I honestly thought I was the luckiest person alive. My cats were still calm and collected. This was going to be a piece of cake!
Three minutes after pulling out of my garage, Jenny started crying. Seconds later, Jake had joined in. Guess I wasn't going to be so lucky after all.
But the real drama began once I hit the highway. Jake started yowling. Then he was thrashing in the carrier so violently that I was worried he was going to hurt himself. Jenny went catatonic and just laid in her carrier frozen in terror.
Eventually Jake calmed down, but still went into howling fits from time to time. Jenny was in some kind of shock and didn't make a peep.
22 minutes after leaving my house, I pulled into the veterinary clinic. It felt a lot longer than 22 minutes.
When I got out to check on the kitties, I noticed Jake was panting hard and his bedding was flipped on its side. On top of that, his nose was scraped up, the poor guy. His efforts to escape had him in a sorry state. But by the time I had checked in and came back out to get him, he was calm again.
The nurse weighed and took Jake's temperature first. He took it like a champ, then went exploring. Jenny had to be dragged out of her carrier, but managed to be weighed/temperatured without too much of a struggle.
The nurse left, then the adventure really began as we waited for the doctor. Jenny ran to hide immediately. First trying to hide under the paper towels...
But eventually finding a much better spot...
She would stay there until forced to leave.
When the doctor came in, he let Jenny be and took a look at Jake first. The good news is that Jake is in perfect health... but, not surprisingly, could stand to lose 3 or 4 pounds. While I distracted Jakey-Bear with head rubs, he got the vaccinations he needed and didn't even flinch. Then he tried to escape by jumping to the TOP SHELF of the cupboard, and failed miserably. Lucky for him, the doctor had quick hands and caught him before he hit the sink. "Wow. That was pretty good for a cat his size! If he was four pounds lighter he would have made it!"
For safety's sake, we loaded Jake back into his carrier.
Then it was Jenny's turn.
Bless him, the doctor was really sweet in trying to calm her down and make her comfortable. He even let her stay put for the first half of her exam...
He finally had to pull her down to give her vaccinations. It wasn't too bad... though I did have to hold her down because she was just not into being exposed in the open like that. The doctor said "you have beautiful cats," and then... $200 later... it was over.
Jake started yowling a bit as we were half-way home, but he wasn't thrashing around hurting himself this time. Jenny never made a peep, but I think she was just exhausted and not catatonic again.
When we got home, Jenny immediately ran upstairs. Jake started walking around the room smelling everything.
Eventually Jenny came downstairs to forgive me for such a betrayal...
Jenny usually likes gentle petting. But the harder I scrubbed her, the more she liked it. This left her looking a mess, but I think it helped get the vet smell off of her, which I'm guessing was the goal...
After twenty minutes or so, Jenny hopped off so Jake could have his turn. He was still pretty freaked out...
But calmed down after five minutes or so...
So... probably more traumatic for me than them, all things considered. Or so I'm guessing. What I do know is that =knock wood= I am so very glad I won't have a vet visit for another year...
In the meanwhile... all is well...
It's a lazy Saturday.
Which is fine for the cats, but I've got stuff to do. Which would be fine except the cats are lazing all over me as I try to get my work done...
Or begging for attention...
Eventually they decided the floor next to me was close enough...
And now? Back to work for me...
My life with cats.
Which is probably better than my life without cats, I'm guessing.
And so Fake Jake has a new friend.
Kinda.
When I opened the garage this morning, it was two cats I found waiting for me. Introducing... MINI FAKE JAKE!!
Mini Fake Jake likes to follow Fake Jake around, which Fake Jake finds very irritating. Poor Mini Fake Jake is constantly being swatted away...
Mini Fake Jake is shy, but completely adorable.
And now I have to chase two cats out of my filthy garage each morning...
I sure hope that Mini Fake Jake has a home to get back to. It's still fairly cold at night.
And so here I am back in California for another quick work trip. Though, unlike my previous trip to San Diego which was a breezy nine hours, I'm sticking around Los Angeles for a couple extra days to decompress a bit. I haven't had a vacation in over a year, so it's the least I can do.
The good news is that the weather is supposed to be beautiful for the length of my stay. Given the flood of rains that have been pelting SoCal, that's a pleasant surprise.
The bad news is that I couldn't fly out yesterday, so I had to take an early morning flight to make my meeting...
"Alexa? Set an alarm for 3:30am."
"I've set an alarm for 3:30am."
"Alexa? Kill me now."
I don't sleep very well these days, but I do like laying around in bed. Even if I'm working in bed. Having to drag my sorry ass out of bed at such a heinous hour makes me stabby.
Just ask my cats.
Not that they're happy about it either.
Jenny brings me toys every morning as some kind of tribute. I think that she thinks she has to bring me stuff so I'll get up and feed her. Some mornings she brings one toy... other times she'll bring a half-dozen. The hungrier she is, the more she seems to bring.
This morning when I got up at 3:30 to take a shower, Jenny flew into a panic and ran downstairs to start dragging toys up to me. Since I wasn't in my bedroom, she was confused as to what she should do, so she started making a pile in the upstairs hallway...
Poor thing probably thinks she overslept!
Though my cats definitely have a better sense of time than I do, so who knows what goes through her fuzzy little head.
Anyway...
After having made sure that the Litter-Robot was emptied, the Feed-And-Go was filled, the television was turned on with the brightness lowered, and the extra litter boxes were set out, I was off to the airport.
Two flights later, and I was back in L.A.
A city for which I have mixed feelings.
Way back in the day, I worked on a project here over seven months. It was nice money, but having to fly back and forth every other week was tough. Even tougher was having to deal with the business behind showbusiness, which was awful to a mentally-debilitating extreme. Turns out I just wasn't cut out for the Hollywood lifestyle... nice as it was to live it for a little while.
But hey... after work I get to go to Disneyland, so there's that.
Last night at a wonderful early birthday dinner with friends, I had told them how proud I was that I finally managed to get Jake and Jenny trained to not jump on the kitchen counters. Yes, Jake still wanders into the kitchen from time to time but, thanks to sticky mats, his days of climbing over my kitchen counters was over.
And then... less than an hour after getting back to the hotel... I get a motion alert on my iPhone that there's movement in the kitchen. A quick check of the security cameras and, sure enough...
I rewound the footage to see what made Jake suddenly revolt, and was surprised to see that it was actually Jenny who was the instigator. You can see her beady little eyes reflecting in the dark on the refrigerator return before she makes a spectacular leap across to the kitchen counter...
Jake hopped up a minute later...
I thought Jenny had hopped back down, but nope... she was over digging in the sink...
Eventually I started talking to them from the speaker on the security camera, which was all kinds of confusing for them as they started looking around trying to find out where I was. Jake seemed to think I was on the ceiling, but Jenny seemed to figure it out eventually...
What's weird is that A) The motion alarm did go off, which usually scares them away, so apparently they are immune to that now, and B) My yelling at them to get off the counters through the camera speaker was equally ineffective. Eventually I rang the doorbell, which finally did the trick.
Guess I need to figure out how to tie the motion detectors to the doorbell when I get home.
It also looks like I will be disinfecting my kitchen counters when I get home.
Blargh.
I was pretty much Disney-ed out half-way through yesterday. But the hotel kicks me out in an hour... my ride to the airport isn't here until 3:30... and I have another day left on my park ticket... so I guess I'm going back to Disneyland again today. Oh well. There are certainly worse ways to spend an afternoon.
Still... vacation goals achieved...
Until next time, Disneyland.
Traveling when you've got pets back home is the worst.
Not only are you missing your pets while you're gone, but you're worrying about any trouble they might get into as well. And so, even though I have spent a crazy amount of time cat-proofing my house and making sure there's no trouble they can get into, I'm still checking the security cameras several times a day...
...so I can watch them get into trouble.
Yesterday I posted about them jumping on the kitchen counters where they know they're not supposed to be.
But that was just the tip of the iceberg...
• Jenny dragged most of her toys upstairs, as expected. She also dragged up an iPhone cable, which one of the cats conveniently bit in two. No idea where she got it.
• I left my Hanes hoodie hanging on the back of a chair. It was pulled down, scratched up, chewed on, and dragged around the house.
• My upstairs office is now officially the cat's play room. I've had to pull all of my stuff out because they love to "play" with it. The only thing I had left in there was a desk, book case, and a box of envelopes. Now all I have is a desk and a book case.
• I'm working on a family photo collage in my stairway. Since it's an odd-shaped wall, I've used masking tape to section off where the photos go. Jake ripped down every bit of it he could reach.
• Which was a prelude to him ripping down a "DO NOT LET CATS OUT!" sign that's been in the catio for months. Apparently he's been hating it for a while and suddenly decided he'd had enough. So then, without hesitation...
Thanks, Jake.
When I got home last night after midnight, the cats went crazy ove me. Which was nice. Until Jenny decided she needed petting at 1:00am.
And 2:30am.
And 3:45am.
And 5:00am.
Neither her nor Jake have ever bothered me while I'm sleeping, so I'm guessing that she's just making up for lost time?
Anyway... today they had calmed down to their normal(?) selves and spent most of the day outside in the catio because it was just too beautiful out to be inside.
When I left, the weather was like this...
L.A. was like this...
Now that I'm back? This is the view the cats have from their catio...
Looks like I brought California skies back with me.
Which is great, because this snow can just go away any time now.
I've been getting up early each morning so I can catch up with the work that piled up while I was kicking' it in Disneyland. Even though I am not a "morning person," I seem to be most productive when I just wake up.
This morning I managed to make some huge headway... first while working in bed... then by moving down to the couch in the living room. When I got out of bed, Jake jumped up and took my spot. When I got off the couch to go into the office, he did it again...
Apparently he's taking advantage of my residual body heat, which is nothing new. When it's cold outside and he's been out in the catio, his first stop when he comes back inside is to glom off my body heat by lying across my lap... whether my MacBook laptop is there or not.
Jenny, on the other hand, seems to actually like chilly weather.
Today after opening the windows for the first time since winter started last year, she was all over it...
Never mind the pet door out to the catio that she's been using all winter... looking out a window is fun stuff!
As is looking down at me while work... silently judging me as cats are won't to do...
None too impressed, is she?
Honestly, I think that's her natural state.
She is a cat, after all.
In case you missed it, I took my cats to the vet for their one-year check-up last month.
Not that I wanted to, mind you, but it is required by Washington State law that your cats have current rabies vaccinations. And it is required by my pet insurance that they get an annual checkup. And I wanted to make sure that they got any other vaccinations that are recommended for cats to have so they stay healthy.
The whole ordeal was a traumatic experience for all three of us.
But mostly for me, and I was thankful that I could wait an entire year before having to go through all that again.
And then I get THIS emailed to me this morning...
After shitting my pants at the prospect of having to take my cats back for another vaccination when I was just at the vet less than a month ago... I called up to find out why in the hell Jenny didn't get this shot already.
Turns out that she did, it's just that the way they have to bill vaccinations sometimes causes erroneous emails to go out. I actually don't have to go back (knock wood) until 2018.
So...
Pants shitting aside, all's well that ends well.
Sometimes, anyway.
Thirteen minutes.
Thirteen minutes is the amount of time between when I leave for work in the morning and when Jenny starts hauling all the toys upstairs that I had just brought down before I left.
Twenty-seven minutes.
Twenty-seven minutes is how long for her to make the nine trips up and down the stairs to do it...
Which means I have to toss all the toys back down again before I go to bed so that she can "go hunting" for her "morning tribute" that she drops by my bed every day.
I'm happy Jenny is keeping herself busy... and all that stair-climbing is certainly good exercise... but I can't figure out what is compelling her to make sure all the toys are upstairs at all times. I had thought that dragging them up was a random process that she did throughout the day. But now, thanks to my security cameras, I know that's not the case. She starts in almost immediately and then keeps going until the job is done.
Guess I am going to have to buy more toys.
Adopting Jake and Jenny have me contemplating a lot of "What If?" scenarios.
The biggest "What If?" being... What if I hadn't adopted them? What would have happened? I came very close to not getting them because I didn't understand the rules at the Humane Society. If it wasn't me, I'm sure somebody would have adopted the kittens... they were tiny and adorable after all. But they likely would not have been adopted together, and I have a mild panic attack at the thought of Jenny having been separated from her brother at the beginning. Now she would do fine. But, as a kitten, she took a lot longer to come around. The only thing that helped keep her from being terrified for months was that she had her brother to lean on.
Another "What If?" that plagues me is... What if I had gotten to adopt Jake and Jenny's brother? I certainly wanted to once I learned there were three siblings. But somebody had "reserved" the third kitten, which was something I didn't even know was allowed...
The only thing I do know is that his name would have been Roger. The name I wanted to give Jenny before my mom forbid it.
Ultimately, two cats is what I wanted, and I do think that a third would have added some difficulty with my travel. Litter Robot would need to be emptied faster, so I couldn't be gone as long. Feeding would also be more complicated. So... all's well that ends well. At least I hope that's true for Could-Have-Been-Roger.
Anyway...
Jenny has become addicted to television. Every night she waits for me to head upstairs, then runs ahead of me... excited that we get to watch TV in bed. And heaven help me if I don't turn it on fast enough! She will start meowing at the television until I do...
Once it's on, she'll have a seat...
And watch for an hour or more...
She likes shows with people talking the best. The West Wing is a favorite. She does not like action-packed shows very much. The noise and fast camera swaps seems to be a turn-off.
If it's too late... or I am concentrating on work and don't want the TV on... Jenny will sit and stare at me with a disapproving look on her face if I ignore her meowing...
When that doesn't work, she throws herself down and pouts...
Other than TV time in bed, Jenny doesn't hang out with me very often. Could be because Jake has been really clingy lately. He's on me in the morning before I go to work. Taking a nap while Jenny hauls up her morning tributes...
And on me in the evening when I get home from work...
Covered in cats from sunrise to sunset.
There are worse ways to spend a day.
I mentioned a while back that Fake Jake has learned my schedule and waits for me outside the garage every morning when I leave to work and every night when I return.
Yesterday being Sunday, I didn't see him coming or going because I was on weekend hours. But this morning, sure enough, he was waiting for me as I opened the garage door... wanting to be petted...
Such a sweet kitty. To people anyway. He doesn't seem to get along with other cats at all.
Speaking of other cats... no sign of Mini Fake Jake.
Hopefully that kitty made his way back home.
There's one place in my home that my cats are not allowed to go... the kitchen. Partly because that's where the front door is and I worry about them getting out. But mostly because I don't want cat ass on my kitchen counters.
I had tied the kitchen motion detectors to an alarm to scare them away, which worked great at keeping the cats out. Until it didn't.
I had bought some sticky tape to put on the counters, which worked great at keeping the cats off. Until I removed it after a month because I thought they were "trained." But they weren't.
I was still able to scare them out of the kitchen by remotely ringing the doorbell, but tonight that failed too.
Well, it failed with Jake. He just starts looking around to see where the noise is coming from...
Jenny, on the other hand...
I just don't think Jake is smart enough to learn a lesson.
And so I've added anti-germ wipes to my shopping list.
Again.
I wonder if they sell remote-control water guns?
The cats know when I'm leaving.
Packing the suitcase. Emptying the Litter Robot. Filling the cat feeder. Cleaning and filling the water fountain. It all adds up.
And once they realize what's happening... they stick to me like glue...
Follwing me everywhere right up until I walk out the door...
Nobody lays down a guilt trip like cats do.
And I'm off.
And that was San Francisco.
Jester dropped me off at the airport and, before I knew it, I was on my way home. Via Virgin America Airlines, which I hadn't noticed on my ticket until yesterday... but, now that they're merging up with Alaska Airlines, I'm guessing this will be happening with greater frequency.
SFO had a display of Ouiji boards on my concourse, which was interesting but surprising. Given how freaked out some people are by them, you'd think they'd avoid putting such an exhibit in a public space like this. And yet...
The trip home was nothing exciting, which is the best kind of trip to have.
The cats were, of course, excited to see me. Jake was all over me from the minute I walked in the door, and needed a lot of attention before he settled back into normalcy. Or whatever passes for normalcy in a cat.
Jenny was a bit more reserved... until bedtime.
Then she decided to make up for lost time by bringing me a toy as a welcome back present. Or so I would imagine...
I started to pet her, but she was more interested in television, as usual...
So I guess we're good.
Nobody tell her that I'm leaving again tomorrow...
And now I'm off again.
Of course the cats figured it out, they always do.
Jenny was particularly upset by the news. So much so that she thought it a good idea to prevent me from packing my suitcase...
I distracted them with kitty treats and... away I went.
The drive over to Seattle was pretty bleak for March. Usually we're in almost-Spring mode here by then, but not this time...
Oh well. The roads were pretty much clear, which is all that really matters.
Las Vegas, here I come.
It seems as though my cats are getting more and more attached to me as time goes on.
Which means that it's more and more difficult to leave them when I have to travel. Despite their automated litter box, their automated feeder, and their automated neighbor checking in on them... they want me to be at home. And when I return after being gone a while, they cling to me constantly.
This morning while I was working in bed, Jenny laid right beside me the entire time...
And Jake was snuggled up wanting pets every ten minutes...
Poor babies.
The good news for them is that the weather is getting nicer, so I'll be able to start working on Catio Phase Two soon. They seem to spend most of their time out there now-a-days, so spicing things up a bit will make their days more exciting.
Hopefully exciting enough that they won't notice me being gone when I have to leave again.
Jenny?
Can I have your attention please?
Are you listening to me, Jenny?
Every morning you bring me a tribute in exchange for my feeding you. It's unnecessary, but I like to encourage this kind of thinking.
Over the past year, you've really put your heart into the task, and I want you to know how much that's appreciated. Hauling a bunch of toys upstairs every day in an effort to please me is dedication you should be proud of, right?
But lately I've noticed a decline in the quality of your morning tribute, and I'm a bit disappointed in you.
Did you hear me, Jenny? I'm disappointed.
I mean, look at what you brought this morning! Just one tired old toy, a ratty tan mouse, and that's it...
Sad! You're not a slacker, so why are you acting like one? You're better than this! If you're going to do something, don't you think you should give it your best effort?
Me too!
Are we agreed that you're going to step up your game? That you're going to take a little less time sleeping, eating, and pooping... and a little more time improving the quality of your work?
Alrighty then, I'm glad to hear it!
Good talk, Jenny. Good talk.
Oh look!
That cat I planted has finally sprouted!
Guess that means Spring is finally here...
Jake has started thinking he's the Alpha Cat of the house.
I don't know when the shift occurred, and it's not always consistent, but it's as if he realized that he's got four pounds on his sister and decided to take advantage of it. Sometimes. Other times he just can't be bothered...
Jenny was birdwatching and Jake snuck up on her. Surprise.
Mostly this Alpha Cat mentality manifests itself on the kitty tower.
Jenny always wants the top perch. If Jake's already on it, she'll take a lower perch, but it's the top one she prefers. Jake doesn't care which perch he's on. But 50% of the time when Jenny is on the top one, he'll knock her out of it just because he can. Sometimes she'll fight him for a little while, but eventually she relents.
This is not to say that Jenny is putting up with Jake's delusions of grandeur. She not only stands up to him when it suits her, she is not above jacking up Jake's shit on a daily basis...
She ended up nailing him good... he didn't know what hit him.
I just feel lucky that they still get along.
Needless to say, as the weather gets better and better the cats are spending more and more time out in the catio. They're even napping out there when the sun is shining. I only hope that if Jenny pukes from the bugs she's eating, that she pukes out there as well.
I think next weekend is the weekend I set up the garage as my wood shop. Then I'll be adding even more catio fun. The construction of which will be fun for me too.
Sure it's Easter, but there are other reasons to celebrate the day, because an all-new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Kitty! Everything I love about cats can be found in this one clip of a kitty trying to escape the field at a Marlins game...
What a trooper! Apparently a Marlins' employee adopted the cat, who was named "Don Cattingly" in a Twitter poll.
• Kedi! And, speaking of cats...
Can't believe I have to wait until November for this to come out on video!
• Atomic! Okay... putting aside the fact that the trailer for Atomic Blonde features music by both Depeche Mode and New Order... how badly does watching this make me want to see the movie?
Charlize Theron should be in a lot more movies.
• Ragnarok! Speaking of movie trailers... how amazing is the latest Thor movie looking?
I'm part of the minority who actually likes the Thor films. The first one was really great at establishing the characters. The second stumbled quite a bit, but was still entertaining. But this? Probably the best Thor yet. Possibly one of the best Marvel films yet.
• Spicey! Melissa McCarthy is hosting SNL on May 15th. I'm hoping it's just an hour-and-a-half of her impersonating Sean Spicer, playing out the best of his ongoing fuck-ups. Verbatim. In the meanwhile, we have yet another flawless sketch from last night's episode...
What a big, beautiful slice of chocolate cake.
• Politics! The more you know about how politics work in this country, the more you think that we should burn the entire system to the ground and start over...
Politicians don't act in the best interest of those they represent because they don't have to. That's the underlying reason we're as fucked as we are.
Now go eat some eggs, you animal.
My cats are frickin' adorable.
I mean, most cats are adorable, but every cat is adorable to their human in different ways. Jake and Jenny are very different cats with entirely different personalities and behaviors. And yet... they somehow still manage to get along. They still play together. They still groom each other. They sometimes still sleep together, though Jake has gotten so big that this isn't as practical as it once was.
While reading through a cat forum recently, I saw that people were posting things about their cats they find adorable. I came up with a list of my own, which I am re-posting here for Caturday...
And... I'm out of adorable for today.
Everybody have a nice Earth Day?
Good! Because an all-new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Sikh! Essential viewing...
The more you know...
Sikhism is a fascinating faith that I haven't studied nearly enough.
• Kingsman! Holy shit! Going back to insert this in Bullet Sunday because it's just too good. I loved the first film, and it looks like the second is going to be more of the same!
Very cool that the American version of "The Kingsmen" makes their debut... " The Statesmen!" I wonder if a spin-off franchise is at hand? So long as Matthew Vaughn is involved, that's fine by me!
• Krypton! Ooh a TV show based on Superman's home planet... Krypton. This could be interesting! Wonder how faithful they'll be to the source material? Will we get to see the Scarlet Jungle? The Gold Volcano? How about Vathlo Island? The Jewel Mountains? Or even the Red Ocean? Can't wait to find out. The series is being developed at SyFy but, for reasons too fucking stupid to comprehend, they're killing the trailer everywhere it pops up. So I can't share the trailer. I can only share this hilarious reaction video from Double Toasted, which only shows parts of it (NSFW)...
The trailer is getting pretty good buzz. God only knows why SyFy is keeping people from sharing it.
• Mountains? When your CAPTCHA tells you to select all the mountain images, so you do... only to find out that they must live in Nebraska and think hills are mountains, which they most certainly are not...
#1 and #8 qualify as "mountains"... alrighty then.
• These Days! "Take That!" is a band that didn't get huge success here in the US when compared to their home in the UK, where they are massively popular. Even so, I've always liked the band, and was surprised to find out that they released an album back in 2014 that I missed entirely called III. The lead single is a track filled with poppy fun that I can't seem to get out of my head...
Kind of cool how Take That! keeps chugging along even after losing two of their bandmates.
• Puppy! And, lastly, your weekly dose of "Awwwww... cute!" is right here...
Amazing how Mother Nature works.
And now... I could really use another day of my weekend.
Cats are still alive and doing well.
So I guess that's a win for me on Caturday then.
Probably a sign that I need more cats.
It's good to be home, because an all-new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Travel Day! Last night I was going to head into Denver for some dinner and bumming around after Howard's birthday party, but made the mistake of "laying down for a minute" and decided I'd rather order out pizza and watch TV. After pizza, I decided to pack up my crap, iron tomorrow's clothes, and get everything ready to go for today. Always a smart move, because I just love being able to roll out of bed, shower, and head out on a travel day. Why I don't do this more often I will never know. I guess that deep down I prefer the mad dash of getting ready in the ten minutes before my ride arrives? Who can say?
• Home! When I arrived back home today, the first thing I did was start unpacking. Jenny felt threatened by dirty clothes flying and retreated to her basket...
Jake kept trying to crawl all over me, so I grabbed his favorite blanket and finally gave in while I was sorting laundry...
Laying down was a mistake, as I fell asleep almost immediately. When I woke up, Jenny had joined in and I was covered in kittens. There are certainly worse homecomings.
• Things to do in Denver. Side-by-side on the Denver "Things to Do" rack at my hotel...
But which to do first? Hmmmm...
• Hope! As a huge fan of Greek mythology for as long as I could read, I've always had a soft spot for Wonder Woman. When George Pérez reinvented the character in 1987 by jettisoning decades of bad choices so she could be tied even stronger to her Greek mythological origins, Wonder Woman quickly became one of my favorite super-heroes. Which is why I've been awaiting her big-screen debut with absolute dread given the horrendously shitty movies DC has been churning out lately. And yet... there's hope...
Not bad. Not bad at all. I guess we'll know for sure on June 2.
• Spidey! And lest we forget that Marvel has a super-hero film of their own coming out this summer...
I mean, holy shit. I liked the first two Tobey Maguire films okay, but this... THIS... is Spider-Man! He moves like you'd expect Spider-Man to move, and it's a glorious thing to see. Cannot wait for July 5th!
• Neutrality 2. I have said pretty much all I have to say about the pig-fuckers in our government wanting to sell-out the internet to big media companies. But now that our corrupt asshole of a president is mounting a new assault, all I want to do is explode with rage. Here's a more rational response...
How the American people can be SO FUCKING STUPID as to put up with this FUCKING BULLSHIT is beyond me. But, hey... the American people elected a pussy-grabbing Cheeto Jesus as president, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.
And I'm fucking done.
Awwwww.
The kittens look like Jake and Jenny when they were little.
I am a hundred miles away from my cats this Caturday... which means I'm checking in on them several times a day via the plethora of security cameras that activated the minute I walked out the door. Usually they are out in the catio, but this morning they were nowhere to be found. In order to solve the mystery, I reviewed camera footage and found out where they went, but it's an area served by a battery-backup local camera, so I'll have to wait until I get home until I find out what mayhem they are up to.
The big cat-news this week that I didn't realize would be "cat-news" until it happened: I bought new couch pillows from IKEA.
Jake and Jenny were all over them the minute I set them down...
Jenny, in particular, just loves them. She will roll around on them... move them around... bite them... even attempt to tunnel under them like she's building some kind of pillow fort...
The first morning after I set them out, I walked downstairs to find all four thrown on the floor. I went back to the security camera footage and found that Jenny had thrown them off the couches in the middle of the night so she could sit on them. She'd even drag them from place to place so she would have someplace new to sit...
Most of the day she leaves them on the couch, thankfully, preferring to use them as a throne from which to survey her kingdom...
Jake likes to think he's the queen when Jenny is off eating bugs in the catio...
Speaking of Jake... the minute he sees that I've woken up each morning, he's been hopping up to snuggle. Usually with his butt in my face so he can get rump-scratches...
In other cat news... I noticed that there was kitty litter
Then it happened again. And last night I finally figured out why. Both cats are trying to climb in the Litter Robot at the same time... something that hasn't happened before... and it's making a big mess. Not sure how to handle this. But if it gets to be a common thing, I'll have to think of something, because kitty litter is expensive.
This evening when I got a text alert that the Feed-And-Go feeders went off, I didn't see either can running up to eat supper. I pulled up the cameras and saw that they were both out in the catio and must not have heard them cycle. So I use the speaker on the camera to tell them "It's dinner time! Go eat dinner!" which is usually all it takes. When I'm home. When I'm talking through the speaker, they get confused...
"HOW DID YOU GET IN THAT TINY BOX, HUMAN?!? WHY ARE YOU NOT HERE FEEDING US?!?"
And lastly...
Meet Barnaby, a cat I found on Facebook...
Barnaby is a 15 year old sweetheart who came to us as a stray. This super affectionate fellow shouldn't be spending his golden years in the shelter. Please come meet dear Barnaby at the VAO soon. He promises to melt your heart.
When I went to the shelter, this is the kind of cat I honestly thought I'd be walking out with. I told them I'd take whatever cat had an eye missing or three legs or whatever it was that was making them unadoptable. I was told "Oh wow... usually we love people like you... but we don't have any cats like that right now." And instead I ended up with two of the most perfect kittens you've ever seen. I hope this sweet older kitty finds a home.
UPDATE: And he has...
Thank you for the outpouring of love and concern for Barnaby. We are no longer accepting applications for him. Barnaby has already received multiple applications and will most likely be going home soon.
Sometimes people are good.
This has not been a very good day.
Last weekend I thought I had a kidney stone, but the pain subsided and I counted my lucky stars that it was gone. Turns out it was a temporary reprieve. Last night I started having pain again, and it only got worse as the evening went on. By the time I woke up this morning, the pain was stabbing through my back so badly that it was hard to walk.
But I had to go in to work, so I took some pills, put on my tough-guy pants, then headed out the door.
Only to find that most of my irises, pretty as they are, had all collapsed under their own weight...
What a stupid flower. I guess bees still pollenate them when they're on the ground, because otherwise I'm guessing they would be extinct. I suppose if they are still alive when I'm feeling better, I'll have to tie them up like last year. Still, those plants that manage to stay upright are as pretty as ever...
I anticipated that work would be agony, but it actually managed to take my mind off of things... for a while.
By the time noon rolled around I was D-O-N-E.
And so I went back home, took more pills, then had to spend some quality time with Jenny, who was upset with me for leaving her today in the first place. I'm guessing that shedding her winter coat is an itchy process, because she wants to be scratched all the time... and will start crying if you don't comply...
Eventually I managed to disengage so I could go upstairs where I planned to die in bed. It was a good plan... until Jake decided it was his turn for attention. Or maybe he was playing nurse, it's hard to tell...
I streamed a couple episodes of West Wing off Netflix, then decided to listen to some music in the hopes I would fall asleep. But Apple's streaming services were shit, as usual, and I couldn't never get my music to load on my AppleTV...
I don't understand why Apple doesn't spend some of their billions of dollars solving a problem that none of their competitors seem to have. I can stream to AppleTV without problem every time I try from Netflix, HBO, Showtime, Starz, Amazon, Hulu, Youtube, and the like... but Apple's streaming rarely manages to work without some kind of issue. If I can get it to work at all. Maybe Apple needs to hire other people to develop their shit since they seem incapable of doing it themselves. When I pay for stuff in the iTunes Store, I expect to be able to have access to it.
Anyway...
Today the heat got up to 86 degrees here, but I never had to turn on the air conditioner... even though I noticed many of my neighbors had. I'm chalking that up to my having installed a ceiling fan in my bedroom, which worked so fantastic for me last year. Such an energy-saver. I wish I had the fixtures in place so I could put them in every room of my house.
And now? Time for more pills and sleep. Fingers crossed. Really hoping that everything works itself out soon, because I can't keep missing work with all the stuff I have to do there.
Much as my cats would probably hope otherwise.
Shedding.
It's the one part of having cats I could really do without.
Because, let me tell you, Jake and Jenny have really stepped it up a notch when it comes to the amount of cat hair that's blowing through my home. I vacuum and vacuum and dust and dust but there is still loads of the stuff in every possible nook and cranny.
Which is why my most favorite thing ever is now THE FURMINATOR!
It pulls dead hair off a cat like a magnet and, while it doesn't eliminate cat hair in my home completely, it has drastically reduced what I'm having to vacuum up.
At least it was... for Jenny, anyway. She used to love it, but now she's resisting it. I've had to go back to a "regular" cat brush. Not nearly as effective, but it's better than nothing. And she loves it...
You know it's good when she wants her belly brushed.
Every once in a while I will assault her with The Furminator because she so desperately needs it. Hopefully one day soon she'll be back to loving it again.
Maybe if I get her high on catnip before Furminating her? Jake isn't much affected by the stuff, but it makes Jenny go nuts...
If there's good news to be had in the shedding department, my cats spend most of the time out in the catio as of late. They are out there from sun-up to sun-down most days. The sights, sounds, and smells are vastly more entertaining than what they can find inside the house...
By far the most exciting part of their day is when visitors stop by. Sometimes random dogs drop in, which is always exciting. Jenny wants none of it, and come charging in the house. Jake, on the other hand, is unfazed. Jenny doesn't have a problem with other cats though. Even when Fake Jake is being aggressive, she doesn't get to riled up anymore...
And speaking of Fake Jake...
The poor guy just wants some attention. Some days when I get home from work, he's over in the neighbor's driveway just meow... meow... meowing. My heart goes out to him, so I always call him over to get some pets. But no matter how long I spend with him, it's never enough. He always waits at the door wanting more...
This past week Fake Jake came over for some love while I was unloading groceries. After petting him for five minutes or so, I turned around and saw Real Jake glaring at me from the screen door. I was caught red-handed spending time with another cat, and he was pissed.
In proud cat dad news... Jake's diet has been paying off. He's down a pound since I changed to indoor food and started restricting his access to food! He's still a lovable lump of a cat, but somethings never change...
And... that's about it for cat news this week.
I've been doing some construction in my bedroom, which has been a source of much anguish for my cats. They don't like the smell of the paint. They don't like the dust. They don't like the noise of my power tools. They really don't like the noise of the vacuum cleaner running all the time. I try to keep the door closed so that Jake and Jenny don't walk in paint or get hurt on something, and that's the thing they seem to hate most. They are used to going where they please and telling them they can't is tantamount to tragedy for them.
The thing they do like is that the bedroom windows are open for ventilation. Never mind that they have an entire catio open to the outside world... they like experiencing the outdoors from up high...
It worries me that they might find a way to punch through the screen and escape, so I've been closing the bedroom door every day when I leave. But last week I realized I forgot, and had to rush home to make sure they hadn't escaped. Which they hadn't. Thankfully.
Speaking of the outdoors...
Fake Jake still comes running for petting whenever he sees me. One day this past week he got a little bit more... aggressively affectionate... when I was giving him a rubdown and split my thumb open...
I was taking photos of him, so I actually caught the moment when it happened...
He was undeterred by my pain and didn't let up on wanting more petting...
Such a sweetheart to people... well, he tries to be a sweetheart when he doesn't have you running for antibiotic cream. Not such a sweetheart to other cats though.
Real Jake is as sweet as ever, often laying down with me when I'm in bed watching television or reading...
He's not so sweet when he's busting the heck out of the last two crackers in the package...
But at least he eats what he kills...
Jenny has been really skittish as of late. Unless I walk towards her slowly and talk to her, she'll run off and hide. She hasn't acted like this since she was a kitten, so I'm not sure what's going on. Like Jake, she spends most of her time hanging out in the catio. Though with her it's a little more literal...
Along with being far more skittish, she no longer allows me to pick her up. And any touching has to be on her terms now. Fortunately, she wants a lot of attention, so I'm not deprived...
Such a pretty girl.
And, with that, I'm off to make more noise, dust, and stink in my bedroom.
Time to bask in the rosy glow of the blogosphere, because an all new edition of Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Batman! It's difficult for me to think about Sunday bullets when my head is trying to wrap itself around the passing of original Batman Adam West. It's even tougher to try and explain how his television show influenced my childhood. Yes, the show was cheesy as all get-out, but my love of comic books and super-heroes all goes back to Batman, which I faithfully watched in reruns every day after school...
But the thing that cemented me as an Adam West fan is how the actor totally owned his character, and leveraged everybody's love of who he was to get an entirely new career as an animation voice actor. While probably best known for the Mayor of Quahog in The Family Guy, he voiced dozens of roles...
There have been a lot of famous people rushing to express their condolences, but the one we've been waiting for is from Adam West's Robin, Burt Ward. And with that... godspeed, Adam West. You will be missed.
• Black Panther! And... we're finally getting a real look at the long-awaited Black Panther movie. Like everything Marvel touches, it's looking incredible...
And, to think, we've got the new Spider-Man: Homecoming and Thor: Ragnarok movies coming soon! So great.
• LEGO CATS! What happens when two of your favorite things get smooshed into one? There is a company making LEGO Cats!
AWESOME! Thanks to long-time friend and food blogger extraordinaire, Foodiddy, for the link!
• Nail Me! Of the many tools I've invested in, my pneumatic brad nailer is one of my favorites. Being able to BAP! BAP! BAP! nails into place is a time-saving bit of wonderful I can't get enough of. There's a price you pay, however, and that's having to lug around an air compressor. For this reason, I've been dreaming of buying a nailer that is cordless and tankless... like the Milwaukee 18-Volt 15-Gauge Angled Finish Nailer...
Problem is... it's like $400, which is a lot of money.
But then Home Depot sends me an email saying it's on sale at 40% off... just $240! And that comes with a new M18 Fuel battery! Sweet! I mean, I don't have $240, so it will have to sit on my credit card with my biscuit cutter, but it's still pretty great. If you're in the market for such a thing, the sale runs through June 21st!
• NEWSFLASH: A Studio Ghibli Theme Park Is CONFIRMED for 2020. — And... guess where I'll be going in 2021? There is no way to properly express my enthusiasm for even the idea of such a magical place.
• Humanity! I think it's awful we have to make commercials to explain lessons in Humanity 101 but, if we must, this is what it should look like...
This wonderful spot on foster homes for kids is not something new for Norway, they are also responsible for this amazing commercial...
And yet I live in a country that would rather build a useless border wall that will ultimately cause more harm than good (while doing fuck-all nothing to solve drugs or illegal immigration problems) instead of put any money towards those who need it most. That's how fucked up things are now, and how far we've fallen from the basic humanity that used to define us. Shameful.
• NEWSFLASH! Jeff Sessions says he’s ‘surprised’ Americans aren’t embracing his anti-marijuana stance. I'm betting a LOT of things surprise this dumbass moron. Like electricity. And indoor toilets. And being able to bring a woman to orgasm...
Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP
I am sick and fucking tired of wealthy old white men making decisions based on their idiotic, antiquated notions. Legalization of cannabis is a growing trend because THE CITIZENS OF THIS COUNTRY WANT IT, and I find it ironic that Sessions comes from a party who's all about state's rights... except when it comes to something he doesn't like. What a fucking hypocritical douche.
And... no more bullets. There's a new episode of American Gods to be watching!
Life with cats is never boring. Well, actually it's mostly boring. Cats sleep... like... an insane amount of time. But the bits where they are awake is interesting. Mostly because my cats do not exhibit consistent behavior. Just when you think you have a handle on them, they mix it up, and start doing something entirely different.
Jenny, for example, did not "meow" the first 8 months I had her. Unlike Jake, who seems physically unable to "meow," apparently it was because she just didn't feel like it. Then... it started. Just weak little meows from time to time when she wanted attention. That transitioned into this kind of forlorner meow (that was bordering on a wail) when she wanted attention, which breaks your heart. And now? When Jenny really wants your attention, the meows are unleashed. They still sound a bit "sad," but they are numerous and loud.
At first I went running whenever she exhibited this behavior, because I was worried something was seriously wrong. More than once I've gone tearing down the stairs worried that she's sick or trapped under a rogue meteorite that crashed through the ceiling. Nope. She just wanted to be petted, and didn't feel like climbing up the stairs for it.
Most mornings now she will patiently wait for me outside the shower. Apparently she loves rubbing against you when you're damp. Once the water turns off, the clock is ticking. If I take too long drying off, she will start meowing for me to hurry up.
That pussy ain't gonna pet itself, so it would seem.
As I've mentioned many times, Jenny brings me a morning "tribute" in exchange for me getting out of bed and serving her breakfast. She'll waltz in with a toy (or several) and drop them on the floor by my bed anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours before she's due to be fed. Here, for example, she's just dropped off Tan Mouse and is looking up at me in expectation of food...
Some mornings she will haul a tribute toy all the way upstairs, but discard it before she gets to my bedroom in favor of a different toy...
There are times this results in a kind of interesting art installation on my stairs...
Her favorite toys, these crinkle-fish that have catnip in them, are rarely offered as tribute. She prefers to keep them with her so Jake can't take them, especially when she's ready for a nap. She'll hunt one or two of them down, then crawl into bed. Like she did here with Blue Fish...
You can't tell in this photo (because I was too slow) but she's hugging Green Fish in her little paws...
Also new? Jenny has started moving furniture in the mornings while waiting for breakfast to be served. She starts by dragging all the couch pillows onto the floor then moving them around. Then she goes after anything she can physically move. Like the box I've been using for garbage while cleaning out my filing cabinet. Or the brush loop. Or her little scratcher lounge...
If I hadn't heard it going on and seen it on security camera footage, I would never have believed it. She will drag/push that thing across the entire house. And it's almost as big as she is! I have no idea why she's decided to become an interior decorator, but here we are.
As for Jake?
Still being Jake. Though a little bit grumpier because I've had him on a veterinarian-dictated diet. And since he's a fairly active cat, he's been losing weight quite nicely. His pronounced belly is almost gone...
Jake and Jenny's favorite place remains the catio. Now that it's warmer, they are out there all day long. Jenny will even stay out all night, because that's the best time for catching and eating bugs, apparently. Earlier this week they were both out there while I was working on the couch. All of a sudden they come dashing in the house, then take up residence on the loveseat so they can observe the catio from afar. Turns out the giant dopey black lab was back for a visit, which they do not like at all...
Though Jenny tried to make the best of a bad situation, as always...
More excitement was to be had this week because they are repairing the stucco on the condos. This included the stucco in the catio, which meant I had to finally use the pet door blocker to keep them from running out...
Jake was most definitely not okay with having his catio privileges revoked, because the catio is his favorite place to be. He decided to compensate for his disappointment by being a BAD, BAD KITTY and crawling on the kitchen counters, regardless of how many times I told him to GET OFF OF THERE...
Time for the Clorox Wipes. Again.
Why can't he stay out of the kitchen like his sister?
Oh well. Jake wouldn't be Jake if he wasn't thumbing his paw at authority.
And so I'm dead now.
When I went upstairs to watch Netflix in bed at 9pm last night, Jenny was still out in the catio. When I finally decided to go to sleep at around 11pm, I checked the cameras and saw she was still out there. This is not unusual, as she loves chasing bugs in the catio at night. Jake, I assumed, was off asleep somewhere.
When I woke up at 2am, I checked the cameras and saw that Jenny was still out in the catio. No Jake. I activated all the internal cameras. Still no Jake. I assumed that he was still off sleeping somewhere. So I started scrubbing backwards through the internal cameras so I could figure out where.
Jake was nowhere to be found. The last time he showed up was 7:15pm, when he was climbing down the cat tree.
Holy crap! Did I lock him in the laundry room?
No.
I can't find him anywhere.
No big deal, I grab the cat treats and shake the bag. Jenny comes running in from the catio immediately.
No Jake.
This is unprecedented. For Jake to not show up for kitty snacks is inconceivable. He loves those things. Loves them. The only reason he wouldn't show up is because he's trapped somewhere. Or dead.
And thus begins 20 minutes of total panic as I proceed to tear my house apart.
Still no Jake. He's vanished.
Either he has wedged himself somewhere I haven't thought of or... he got outside somehow?
Total panic becomes a complete meltdown as I start checking outside cameras. And there he is. Wandering around the back yard. At least he was at 1:28am, which was almost an hour previous...
What. The. Hell?
At first I thought it might be Fake Jake, but the more I watch the video, the more I'm convinced it really is Jake, and he managed to escape. Some way. Some how.
I am trying to think if I have ever been at the panic level I was at that moment.
I honestly don't think I have.
And so there I am, out in the catio with the door wide open, shaking a bag of treats. He shows up minutes later...
But... how? How did he get out? He was around when I got home from work, I'm sure of it. Did he escape when I took out the garbage? Did I leave a window open somewhere and he pushed out the screen? Is there a hole in the fencing on the catio?
Back to the cameras. And... turns out he pushed off the roof of the catio (video at 8x speed)...
A couple things to note:
From what I can tell, Jake was never too far away from the catio. He appears on the back porch several times throughout the night (video at 8x speed)...
Though he did circle the entire building once. He appears in the front yard at 11:45pm... goes out of frame at the bottom near midnight... then reappears at the top of the frame exactly 30 minutes later. Heaven only knows what he did along the way (video at 8x speed)...
More than once he tries to find a way back into the catio, and most times his sister is on the other side watching him...
So there you have it... Jake's big adventure.
And my nervous breakdown. Because all I can think about is how this could have happened tomorrow when I'm traveling and Jake would have been stuck outside.
Needless to say, I won't be getting any sleep tonight. If ever.
Maybe if I would stop checking the video cameras every 15 minutes to make sure the cats are still inside and safe...
Cats. What can you do?
UPDATE: Turns out my framing contractor (who also made the roof for the catio) used screws that were way too short. They were barely grabbing into the wood. So when Jake was walking back and forth pushing on the ceiling, the screws were popping out like rivets...
I'm replacing them all with screws that are 2-1/2" times longer.
And... Jake and Jenny can enjoy their catio once again.
And... I can have the peace of mind that the cats can't get out.
Until the next time.
Despite not having to get up early (my flight wasn't until 11:55am), I couldn't seem to get back asleep after waking up at 4:00am.
Oh well. It gave me time to iron so I didn't have to fly home wrinkled.
In regards to my Leaving Las Vegas... I love McCarran airport. Unlike the majority of US airports, it's very efficient and has been optimized to move people in and out as quickly as possible. TSA PreCheck line backed up? THEY OPEN ANOTHER PRECHECK LANE! WHAT A CONCEPT! And... ZOFG... plenty of gate seating! For all other airports I arrive 2 hours early because even with PreCheck you never know. With McCarran I am perfectly comfortable arriving 45 minutes before flight time knowing I'll be at the gate 15 minutes later and, not uncommonly, walking into the plane ten minutes after. I wouldn't hate travel so much if this was the normal at airports.
The flight home was great.
The drive home, however, was brutal.
True to form, WSDOT can’t concentrate their efforts into QUICKLY completing a single project... they have to sprinkle resources on several projects, which means they all drag on forever. On I-90 East, they have ripped out huge chunks of the highway and just left the holes there, meaning three lanes of traffic become one on a busy Friday where half of Seattle is headed over the mountains.
Which translated into 45 minutes added to my drive time home.
I'm guessing it's going to be left that way all weekend long. And I just don't get it. Light it up, double-shift that shit, and GET. IT. DONE!
How the hell is it that I am constantly seeing videos from other countries where they will replace an entire fucking bridge in two days... or replace an entire fucking intersection overnight that fell into a sinkhole... or rebuild a fucking washed out road in ten hours... WHEN EVERY DAMN PROJECT IN WASHINGTON STATE TAKES MONTHS TO YEARS TO COMPLETE?!?
It wouldn’t be so bad if they would focus on one project and GET. IT. DONE! But they don’t. New projects keep popping up all over the place while old projects sit incomplete. You don't stop for construction ONCE on your journey... you stop FOUR TIMES. I'm guessing I-90 is probably going to be fucked up for weeks... and apparently nobody at WSDOT gives a flying fuck that it’s summer vacation season and NOW is when the roads need to be fully operational. Why would they? It would seem there are -zero- consequences to having everything torn to shit all the time.
And speaking of never-ending construction...
When I pull into my driveway, I notice that my new ultrasonic mole repeller isn't doing the job.
On the contrary, the mole seems to be taunting me by DIGGING NEW HOLES RIGHT AROUND THE ULTRASONIC STAKE!
Ugh. No idea what my next step will be there.
And... apparently there was a power outage while I was gone.
The horrible part about it is not that all the clocks have to be set... but that the Litter Robot DOES NOT COME BACK ON WHEN THE POWER IS RESTORED. How fucking useless! I mean, seriously. WHY? They sell a battery back-up, but I always assumed that it was so your Litter Robot would run while the power was out. I don't care about that... but I care quite a LOT that it just stays off permanently if there's a power interruption.
And so... the Litter Robot was filled. The two back-up litter boxes were also filled. So nasty. And I feel terrible. Especially for Jenny. She is pretty particular about wanting to poop in a clean box. She will hold it and hold it until she can't anymore, and is forced to use it. I can't believe that she didn't poop on the floor. I would have. And so now I have to buy a $40 battery just to make sure Litter Robot works after an outage. This is on top of the already outrageous price for the unit and the accessories I had to buy that should already have come with it.
I ordered the battery so this won't happen again... but, wow. Still feel terrible. I should have been checking the security cameras to make sure it was running.
And with that... time to catch up on all I missed. Good thing I have a weekend coming up...
It's good to be back home.
On Thursday morning... the day before I was to fly back... I was awakened by my security cameras telling me there's motion in the kitchen. I get all ready to yell at Jake to get out of there, but when I look at the footage, and...
...it's not Jake, it's Jenny...
She has been a good girl and hasn't been in the kitchen for ages, so this is puzzling. It looks like she's trying to find food maybe?
So I go back through other camera footage only to find she didn't eat dinner last night. She was out in the catio when the feeder activated. By the time she got hungry and made it to the feeders at 1am, Jake had (of course) already eaten all the food. I activated the feeders immediately so she could have an early breakfast, but I still felt awful...
And I've been getting a stare-down from her ever since I got back.
And now... a mystery to solve.
Before I leave on a trip, I always buy new toys for the cats. Probably out of guilt. For this trip I bought a ball that makes noises... except it's too loud and the cats are scared of it. I also bought a ball with a little moving pole that has a feather on top. The cats are intrigued by it, but pretty much just let it slap them around in the face...
And now that I'm home? The ball is missing.
Gone.
Kaput.
Not under the couches. Not in the catio. Not in any closet. It's vanished. No idea where they dragged it off to, and I can't find out what happened on the security cameras. I'm guessing that the cats know where the cameras are and how to avoid them.
One more thing to do...
My cats are a never-ending source of entertainment. They are also not of this earth and defy all my attempts to understand them. That, in itself, should keep them at a distance, but the truth is that they have become intricately woven into my life in unexpectedly deep ways. Part of that has to do with the fact that I'm single and all my best friends and family don't live here, so the cats are acting as surrogates. Part of it has to do with the fact that, for the most part, I like animals more than people.
And part of it is because they're the closest things to kids I plan on having.
Which is why all y'all's horror stories about your kids has zero effect on me.
Sure, your baby may have exploded diarrhea at a McDonalds birthday party... but last night I had to chase Jake around with a paper towel because he had a pebble of poop stuck on his sphincter. His efforts to scrape/bite/rub it off only resulted in an inflamed butt-hole, so there I was. And then this morning I had to inspect his sphincter to make sure the irritation and redness had subsided, which it had. And thank heavens for that, because otherwise we would have ended up at the vet, and nobody wants that.
And sure your baby may cry because it wants to be held... but this morning Jenny was crying as I was trying to leave for work because she wants to be petted. And, unlike holding a baby where you can do other stuff, petting Jenny demands 100% of your attention. And since she knows I will drop everything when she's meowing, she will keep doing so until I give in. The good news is that she was so desperate for attention that I was able to spend 10 minutes brushing her with The Furminator.
And sure you spend your days and nights worrying about how you're going to afford to send your baby to college one day... but I'm spending my days and nights worrying about whisker fatigue.
And for those of you who don't know what "whisker fatigue" is... allow me to introduce Dr. Catsby...
Now, most probably like you... when I first heard of "whisker fatigue," I called bullshit. Cats have been eating out of tiny bowls for hundreds of years. This is just some lame marketing ploy, right?
But then I started observing my cats.
I've tried plates, but the food gets pushed all over the place. I've tried shallow bowls, but the food still gets trapped in the corners. =sigh!= I guess you win, Dr. Catsby...
Expensive little suckers.
But if they work? One less thing to worry about!
Though I do hope that Jake can keep a clean sphincter for at least a month before I'm worrying about that again. If I wanted this kind of stress I would have had kids
Temperatures finally breached 100° this week, so the air conditioner had to be turned on. Darnit. Odds are it's going to stay on because the forecast is up there for the next ten days. Probably longer.
So much for tiny electricity bills.
Even though I set the temperature between 74° and 76° and use ceiling fans, it's a goodly chunk of money to keep everything in the house from melting.
Including the cats.
And then...
Back in 2015 when Apple released the latest and greatest 4th generation Apple TV, I purchased one to replace my aging 2nd generation unit (which I moved to the guest room). Despite the remote being shit, I was happy with the upgrade. At first. Eventually I found out that the unit had horrible problems streaming video from Apple. Other sources... Netflix, HBO, Showtime, YouTube, Hulu, you-name-it, were all working fine on Apple TV, it was just my iTunes Store purchases that were stuttering and crapping out... or not loading at all.
So when I ended up winning a second Apple TV from an incentive give-away, I just tossed it in the closet. My bedroom TV has Netflix built-in, so I figured I'd just wait until somebody came up with a hack to turn the Apple TV into a web server or something. Since it had problems streaming my rather large collection of Apple media, it just wasn't worth messing with.
Until Game of Thrones Season 7 was announced to be arriving.
My bedroom TV doesn't have an HBO app, so I decided to dig out the extra Apple TV so I can watch Thrones in bed as God intended.
But first I had to find the thing, because I had no idea what happened to it during the move. I've been searching off and on for weeks to no avail. And then this morning I finally found it.
By accident.
My cats have been acting crazy, so I decided to start putting my iPhone charging cable in the tiny empty cupboard above my range hood and microwave where they couldn't get to it... and... voilà...
My "empty" cupboard contained an old phone book, a Hershey chocolate candle, and... my missing Apple TV. In all honesty, I do not remember putting it in there. I don't remember putting any of it there. I can't even think of why I'd have done it.
Probably so I wouldn't lose it?
Jenny helped me set it up...
And... ready for new Game of Thrones on the 16th!
When I went to bed on Thursday night, everything with my cats was fine.
Something happened that night and everything changed. It's as if they suddenly realized that there are no consequences for their actions... no punishment for their bad behavior.
Yesterday morning began with my waking up to Jake pulling my movie posters off the wall...
Iron Man is now crooked. I just left him that way since Jake will just try to pull him down again...
At least Jenny was being a good kitty, right? No. She was climbing around the kitchen where she knows she's not supposed to be...
After serving the kitties breakfast, I went back upstairs to get ready for work and slog through my email. It was then I heard cupboard doors banging...
...IT WAS JAKE WAS STEALING KITTY SNACKS OUT OF THE CAT FOOD CUBBY! And he had just had breakfast!
Then he and Jenny chewed it open to get at the yummies inside...
Clearly my cats have turned a corner and are completely out of control.
Thinking I need to start in on some tough love, I took the advice of Facebook friends and pulled out the squirt bottle. Much to my shock, Jenny was first to get sprayed. She didn't really react. It was like she didn't understand what was happening. Once she figured out she was getting wet, she walked over to the scratcher lounger and started pouting...
Then I felt bad.
Today things were better... though Jake did decide to pull my clean clothes down to the floor. Again.
Tomorrow's a full moon, I'm hoping the cat madness will end once it's gone.
I always feel sorry for animals having to endure the summer heat while wearing a fur coat. It can't be comfortable. Though my cats still like laying out in the catio when the heat is on, so maybe it's not as big a deal as I'm thinking it is.
Jake has his own way with dealing with the heat... catspreading.
I notice when it's hot out in the catio, he'll usually lay on the cool, shaded concrete... then spread out for maximum heat dispersion...
Yes, I desperately need to wash my windows!
Indoors is another story.
The cat tree sits right under the HVAC vent. When the air conditioning turns on, he'll immediately spread out for some cooling relief...
And then when it turns back off, he'll go back to a normal position...
Perfectly logical. Yet still odd.
But whatever floats your boat, little buddy!
I'd have thought that my cats would have settled into their personalities after a year-and-a-half... that no new big surprises would be on the horizon.
It certainly seemed that way. Until this past week, when big surprises did indeed show up.
When I first got Jake and Jenny, they were terribly frightened and shy...
It took a week before I could lure them out from under the couch to play. It took four weeks before Jake would let me touch him... five weeks before Jenny would allow petting. Weeks after that, the cats were fairly sociable and would climb on me if I lured them with a cat charmer. Months after that, Jake would be all over me... Jenny not so much. Eventually she came around, but there were always conditions. If she was laying near me, I couldn't touch her or she'd get scared and run away. Any time I'd be petting her, she'd nervously pace all around me, never laying down or getting comfortable. She'd hop on the bed and watch TV with me for hours... but at a comfortable distance. Every once in a blue moon she'd sit or lay for a few minutes while I'd scratch her ears, but anything more than that just wasn't going to happen.
Until this past week, when all of a sudden she's hanging out with me every morning like this...
Honestly never thought this would happen.
And then there's Jake.
He'll happily hop next to me on the couch or sit in my lap for an hour at a time. He's been doing this for a long while now. But yesterday it got weird.
I came home early from work around 1:30pm. The minute I walked through the door, Jake was all over me, following my every step... rubbing up against me any time I stopped moving. Then I sat down and he was immediately on me to take a nap...
He then stayed on me... for the next ten hours... while I worked, watched TV, and ate dinner. The only time he'd leave is to eat or go to the bathroom. If I got up for any reason, he'd start crying and cling to me. I was starting to wonder if he was sick...
Around 10:30 I went up to bed. He was right there with me until I fell asleep. When I woke around 3am, he was gone. And this morning things seem to be back to normal.
Well, as normal as things can be when you have cats.
I don't think that my cats have fully grapsed the idea that there are security cameras everywhere throughout my house and I can see most everything they do.
So when I come downstairs, walk into the kitchen, and see that the cupboard with all the cat food, cat treats, and cat toys has been ransacked, their attempt to profess their innocence by pretending to be shocked and saddened that such a tragedy has occurred doesn't do them any favors.
Nor does blaming "ghosts," which seems to be their go-to explanation.
Today I attempted to show Jake some camera footage which clearly shows he is guilty of breaking into the cat cupboard. Again. He remained steadfast in his innocence.
I'd say he's got a huge pair of balls on him, but he doesn't have any balls at all.
Even so, I'm too proud of him to be angry about it.
It's strange how much I worry about my cats when I'm not at home. Not over things like them tearing up the house or making a mess or anything like that... but worry over them being lonely or bored.
Right now I am checking in on them with the security cameras and they are exactly where I saw them when I left yesterday. Jake is on top of the kitty tree and Jenny is laying on the stereo receiver (I think she likes how it gets a little warm... even on the hottest days). She naps there most of the time now...
Seriously, she does.
I've been documenting it with my iPhone...
Awwwww... this one is my favorite...
She's making a pillow out of my Star Wars Blu-Ray collections!
As for Jake? He's busy being Jake. When he's not eating, pooping, or napping... he's destroying my expensive books by chewing on them... sometimes as I am reading them...
LOOK OUT SPIDER-MAN!!!
And... going to try and be inspired by my cats and get some sleep now.
Which would probably be easier if I were home with them.
My new cat sitter doesn't start until tomorrow, so Jake and Jenny are on their own for another day. Not a big deal, as I've been gone a lot longer than this and they've been fine. Thanks to Litter Robot, Feed-and-Go, and my security system, they are in good hands. So there's no need to worry about them. And, hey, if something comes up, I can always call a neighbor to check in. It's all good.
Except...
It's tough not to worry when you're 2,500 miles away and you've got all this crazy crap going through your head.
Take, for example, feedings.
In the past I'd fill the automated feeder to max levels so I was assured that the cats wouldn't go hungry while I'm gone. But then Jake had to be put on a diet, so that wasn't a good option any more. Now I put the exact amount each cat gets in the feeder so they aren't over-eating.
But then I started worrying that if Jake scarfs down his dinner... and wants more (which he always does)... will he push Jenny out of the way and steal her food? This is a genuine concern. He's a much bigger cat and, while Jenny doesn't put up with his shit, she's also not in a position to shove him back when she's such a petite little lady.
Last night I got my answer. The feeders activated and Jake and Jenny came running to eat...
As expected, Jake mowed through the bulk of his dinner before Jenny had even taken a couple bites. Would he force his sister out of the way to steal her food? Turns out... no... he wandered away...
That's a relief... but I know for a fact that when he's hungry later on, he won't hesitate to eat whatever food is left, and he doesn't care whose bowl its in.
In other news... Carl got stuck under the media center this morning. I heard three beeps over the security camera, which means he's sucked up something he shouldn't have. Probably a stray wire underneath. Jake was most concerned when his robot pal stopped working...
I asked Jake to pull Carl out and take him to his charging station, but that was apparently asking too much. Instead Jake climbed the cat tower and took a nap.
Which doesn't sound like such a bad idea. I've been up since 4:30am and work is just getting started now at 2:30pm.
I'm going to need a bigger Coke.
The smoke-filled air has become so bad that going outside for even a minute is like painting my lungs with glue. Most days now the haze is so bad that I can't even see the surrounding hillsides. The paper said air conditions would be improving, but that hasn't happened at all.
Which has resulted in my cats being upset at me for limiting their time out in the catio.
I only let them out when I can see through the air... and even then just for an hour. Any more time than that and I worry what might happen to their little lungs.
Needless to say I really worry about the animals (like Fake Jake) that are out in the smoke all day and night. This cannot be good for their health.
Ironucally, my Solar Eclipse viewing glasses and camera lens cover arrived today. Don't know if things will be cleared up enough for that to matter, but here's hoping.
Honestly.
I don't know what it is.
But he's a cat, so...
Thank heavens for cats.
Because, seriously...
Although it's not always sunshine and roses. Jake and Jenny are still evolving in their personalities. And their brother/sister relationship. Which is not always great. Now that Jenny has been more and more enthusiastic about hanging out with me, Jake has occasional fits of jealousy where he'll chase her off so he can have all the attention. Nothing violent... yet, and they are still mostly happy together... but it's a growing concern. Jenny can definitely take care of herself, but Jake is a big bruiser of a cat that has some pounds on her.
She makes up for it in attitude though. Just look at this grumpy face...
Jenny dragged Lion all the way upstairs as her morning tribute, then had to meow so I was sure to see it. Unfortunately, it was still an hour until breakfast time, so my ignoring her did not sit well. She started ripping into poor lion, then getting upset when the fur from his mane got stuck in her mouth...
She was triumphant in the end though...
As for Jake? Still loves being Jake. Which means every day when I come home from work, he's all over me...
Fake Jake has been hanging around more than usual, which provides endless entertainment for the cats. Jake is no longer afraid of his doppelgänger, which means they actually kind of "hang out" together from time to time. Though I know if the fencing were removed, Fake Jake would likely be on the attack, so catio containment is still critical. This often results in a "Cat Watching Cat Watching Cat Watching Cat" scenario...
Ugh. Unfortunately, they just power-washed the gutters and concrete, so my windows are even dirtier than usual. Such a pity that window-washing is not including with the HOA fees!
And that's it for Caturday Saturday... now I'm off to the other side of the mountains.
Well, the world may be going to shit, but at least I have cats to keep me sane.
Just like when they were kittens... but not quite so compact...
My inability to sleep has nothing to do with my cats. They've always been oddly respectful of sleepy-time. On those rare occasions I do manage to fall asleep, they leave me alone. Even if I just pretend to be asleep, they'll walk in the room, take a look, then walk right back out. It's weird them being so unselfish while being cats and all, but I'm not going to complain.
Except...
Every once in a while...
Something happens and they go all "cat" again.
Like last night when I woke up to armageddon happening downstairs. The cats were freaking out over... something... and the commotion was nuts. Is there a big bug in the house? Did a mouse climb through the cat door? What could it be?
Nothing showed up on the security cameras.
Until I reviewed outside footage.
A family of five raccoons decided to visit the catio, which caused quite a stir. I've sped-up the footage to double-speed...
Here's a zoom-in on the above footage to see them better...
I especially love the little raccoon at the end who is desperately trying to make friends with Jake, who just isn't having it...
Guess I need to look into getting some Raccoon Chow.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, my cats' behaviors continue to evolve.
It used to be that my cats would happily share my affections... climbing on me or next to me at the same time. Usually when I was n the couch trying to work while watching television...
This hasn't been the case for several months. Now if one cat is near me, the other one will avoid me. And they seem to have come to some kind of mutual agreement as to who gets to be where.
Jake gets the couch. Jenny almost never jumps on my lap while I'm sitting there anymore...
Jenny gets the bed. Jake will still hop on the bed next to me from time to time, but only if Jenny hasn't gotten there first...
Jenny is still claiming the stereo receiver as her personal space. It's a great spot to satisfy her television addiction...
For whatever reason, Jenny is particularly fond of Rick from Rick and Morty. When she hears his voice, she perks right up.
My efforts at cat-proofing the cupboard where I keep the cat food and cat toy supply has met with failure. My first attempt was a latch that adhered to the doors. It took Jake all of one night to figure out how to move the latch so he could get inside. My second attempt was with a plastic clip that added resistance to pulling open the doors. Jake just pulled harder and opened them right up.
Since he can't open the cans and pouches of food, he settles for stealing toys. I'm forever finding them... still attached to their cards... scattered around the house...
Ever since the eclipse, Fake Jake has been visiting with increasing regularity. He stops by at least once a day now, usually more. This is a source of great excitement for the cats. Especially Jake, who watches for Fake Jake out the side window, then goes tearing towards the catio whenever he spots Fake Jake headed in that direction. After visiting for a while, Fake Jake gets bored and wanders off. Jake will then come tearing back inside so he can follow Fake Jake to the guest bedroom window. Whenever I hear kitty claws running at top speed on my wood floors, I know exactly what's happening...
Jake is obsessed with Fake Jake encroaching on his territory, and will follow him from window to window to window to keep an eye on him.
And now it's time for me to set Caturday aside so I can see how big of a disaster the Netflix Death Note adaptation is. The original manga and animated series were pretty great, so my expectations are at an all-time low.
Thanks to things like "blogging" and "social media," I've made friends around the world. I know somebody who lives just about anywhere. In many ways, this is a very cool thing. Especially when it comes to travel, since there's a friendly face I can visit with no matter where I go. But there's also a down-side.
Because when disaster and tragedy strikes, odds are, I know somebody affected by it.
Such is the case with Hurricane Harvey. I have three blogger friends in the Houston area. I have a friend from work just east of there in the Beaumont/PortArthur area. I know other people in East Texas that could ultimately be affected too.
There's few things worse than watching the news and feeling helpless while seeing what's happening to people I care about.
Well, there's one thing.
Destruction from events like Harvey are terrifying and worrisome... and living with disaster looming in an uncertain future is a horrible thing to suffer through... but at least people understand what's happening.
Abandoned animals do not...
Photo by Ruaridh Connellan ©2017 Daily Mail (UK)
Photo by Ruaridh Connellan ©2017 Daily Mail (UK)
All animals know is to be hungry, scared, and confused as incomprehensible things happen to them. This poor girl was left tied to a telephone pole as the floodwaters started to rise.
I hope it was an accident.
I hope the dog was tied temporarily, and some emergency called the owner away temporarily and they couldn't get back.
I hope this is just a cruel twist of fate that has the owners as upset as I am that this could happen.
Because anything less than that makes me about as upset as I am capable of being.
Luckily the photographer, Ruaridh Connellan, has a heart and rescued the puppy from her plight...
Photo by Alan Butterfield ©2017 Daily Mail (UK)
Photo by Ruaridh Connellan ©2017 Daily Mail (UK)
I know the majority of people have kindness in their hearts for animals. I know there are a lot of people like me who would risk their lives to save their pets. But I also know there are people who would leave their animals to die if it was inconvenient to do otherwise, and that's pretty hard to take.
You can read the whole story of "Lucky" at the Daily Mail site.
Cats are so weird.
I would give just about anything to be able to climb inside their little heads and find out what is going on in their brains. I mean, I'm sure they act the way they do for a reason... I'll just be darned if I know what that reason is most of the time.
Sure some of the time it's just common sense. Like the way they act around meal time...
That kind of crazy I can understand.
Everything else? A mystery.
Jenny has gotten to the point where all she wants to do is spend the whole day in bed with me. She runs to hang with me the minute I head up to go to sleep... and stays with me until I fall asleep. Mornings are the same thing. Once I'm awake, she will hang with me wanting to be petted until I get up to take a shower. Then she comes and waits by the shower so she can lead me back to bed for more belly-rubs...
Jake has started getting very clingy when I get home from work. He will lay on me for hours... only wanting to leave when it's time to eat...
For anybody wondering... yes, Jenny does still bring me toys every morning as tributes. And she's getting good at making a whole production out of it, complete with drama...
"If you won't feed me, I suppose I'll just put my head down and die..."
Sometimes she manages to surprise me. Like when she brought DOUBLE PRETZELS as tributes. I didn't even realize that we had two of them...
And... that's enough cats for one day. See you next Caturday...
Don't let smoke inhalation get you down, because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• FIRE! Once again it would seem that the Columbia Basin is on fire. This is the view I had on the drive over the mountains...
• Chase! My... My... My pants! Jake chases Jenny. Jenny chases Jake...
It's the circle of life up in my house.
• Tolerance! A short but bittersweet article that's worth a minute of your time: The Christians Making Atheists. The decline of Christianity in a nutshell. But, in reality, it could also hold true for other religions that attempt to hide their bigotry in the guise of religion.
• Fresh! This is what happens when you travel a lot and keep forgetting to pack deodorant...
That's a lot of money tied up in antiperspirant products!
• Thrice! Hey! Did I happen to mention that the latest issue of Thrice Fiction has been released, and you can read it online or download it for FREE?!? Well, you totally can! Just visit the Thrice Fiction website!
If you like fiction and like to read... it's worth the price of admission. Which is FREE!
• All That We Share! Nice to know that while this country is tearing itself apart that other countries are making an effort to keep it together...
Viva la Denmark!
Have a good Labor Day weekend, everybody.
Well this sucks.
I think I might be dying. At least the smoke is making me miserable enough that I feel like I'm dying.
Believe it or not, the air quality is better today that it was yesterday... you can actually see the nearby hills. What you cannot see are mountains. The sky is just white when you go looking for them...
To see the full resolution, click photo to embiggen.
You can kinda see hills there... but that's it...
I've been keeping the cats inside to protect their little lungs... no catio for you! They are not pleased. They just sit at the window being mad that I won't let them go outside...
Jake eventually gave up and climbed on my lap for attention...
Though it seems as thought he's finally getting wise to my photographing him...
Silly kitty.
Here's hoping tomorrow's air quality is better than today. I don't know how much more of this I can take.
The air quality improved enough that I decided to let the cats outside for a little while. When I opened the catio door, they didn't last very long... coming back inside after only a few minutes.
I thought that perhaps the smoke was irritating or scary enough that it would keep them from going outside, but my hopes were soon dashed. After verifying that it wasn't a trick and they really could go outside if they wanted to, they started spending all their time out there, as usual.
This meant having to close off the catio again. The last thing I want is two cats with respiratory problems.
Because me having respiratory problems is more than enough. I've been coughing my head off since the smoke started rolling in, and have had just about enough of the stuff.
Given how my cats have been whining about wanting to go back outside, I'm sure they feel the same way.
As I had mentioned earlier, much of this week was spent with the catio closed for business because of smoke. This was met with much confusion and disdain by Jake and Jenny, who have become very much accustomed to being able to go outside whenever they want.
When not trying to bite the door... or trying to figure out how to open it... they would try to get out by other avenues. Jenny, for example kept clawing at the window. It's like she knew it was futile, but just had to let her frustration be known...
Eventually she gave up and tried to get into the laundry room instead...
I felt bad about it, but it just wasn't healthy out...
And so they spent all their time hanging around being bored...
Or beating up on Carl when he runs out of juice...
Or taking my spot on the couch...
The good news is that, now that they can go outside again, things have returned to normal. Or what passes for "normal" when you have cats.
Jake is back to glomming all over me while I try to work...
And Jenny? Well... she's back to being the best bedtime snuggle pal you could hope for...
Hoping for the best for all my friends, family, and co-workers facing off fires and hurricanes. Stay safe, people.
Wildfires and hurricanes got you down? Sorry to add to your troubles but another natural disaster has arrived, because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Charitable! IF YOU HAVE A KIND HEART AND ARE ABLE TO DONATE TO FIRE/HURRICANE RELIEF... PLEASE VERIFY THAT THE CHARITY TO WHICH YOU ARE SENDING YOUR HARD-EARNED DOLLARS IS GOING TO MAKE GOOD USE OF IT. There are all too many charities which do not. A good place to start is to head to Charity Navigator, which reports on what charities do with their donations.
• Orville! The geek reviews for Seth MacFarlane's new sci-fi show The Orville were pretty bad. I decided to tune in anyway, just to see how awful it really was. Except... I actually ended up liking it. No, it's not Galaxy Quest like everybody expected... it's actually a faithful clone of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but with some funny moments scattered amongst the drama...
Actually, I'd argue it's superior to Next Generation, which I never really got into. My favorite part of the show is the helmsman and navigator (Scott Grimes and J. Lee) who have amazing buddy chemistry. Other characters are a bit glossed over, but the previews of upcoming episodes looks like they'll get their day. Is it a perfect show? No. It's a bit uneven and the pacing drags a bit in spots. But those are things that will improve in time as the writers, actors, and directors get everything figured out. The one thing they've nailed though is the special effects, which are pretty great. I've gone from zero expectations to high hopes over the course of just this one episode. May the rest of the season be worth my valuable time.
• Intermission! Of course, this was back when a candy bar was 5¢ and you could actually afford to GO to the lobby and buy a treat...
It just gets crazier as the video goes on. I remember some of this from the movie Grease where John Travolta has been stranded at the drive-in... branded a fool. What will they say Monday at school?
Oh Sandy.
• Danger! Just when you think you've seen it all, Delta Airlines has to come along and prove you wrong...
Delta claims that the flight was never in any danger. Weather radar implies otherwise, but okay.
• Polydactyl! Speaking of hurricane Irma close calls... I was very happy to learn that all 54 cats at Hemingway House in Key West were sheltered and made it through the storm. I haven't been there in over five years, but the place sure made an impression on me...
Kind of a cool place to visit if you're ever in Key West.
• Orlando! As I type this, Irma is headed to Walt Disney World. Here's hoping Mickey Mouse, Pluto, Buzz Lightyear, and company all stay safe!
And that's a gale-force Bullet Sunday... over and out.
I've been coming to Spokane for work for decades. There are a lot of memories in this city for me.
Most memories are easy to recall here because so much of the city is unchanging. Spokane is a relatively big city that feels like a town. Small businesses in old brick buildings go on for generations. Today I passed by a block of these buildings and remembered that it was where I had my first driving accident. I was coming up to a stoplight when the driver behind didn't stop in time and bumped into me. After we pulled over to survey the damage (surprisingly, there wasn't any) he said "I'm so sorry. I was trying to answer a call on my cell phone." Back then mobile phones were a new technology and I had never even seen one in person. I remember being surprised that Spokane even had cellular service. I was shaken, but sympathetic towards the man's plight because he let me hold his bulky cell phone. It might as well have been magic to me, I was so fascinated by it. I was tempted to ask him if I could make a call, but I knew the pay-per-minute rate of the day was astronomical, so I reluctantly handed it back without comment.
This was not the first time I was rear-ended in Spokane. The second time I was coming up to a stoplight next to Safeway and a woman plowed into me. This time there was damage... albeit minor. I got insurance money to repair my bumper and it looked good as new. The second and third times I was rear-ended, I took the insurance money and went on a trip. Because eventually my priorities shifted. I'd rather travel than have a nice car.
The hotel I stayed at last night is a beautiful restoration property in downtown Spokane. Everything from the public spaces down to the paint on the walls of my room is lovely. Except... holy crap is it noisy.
There is a central atrium where people gather, and everything from quiet conversation to children screaming echoes throughout the entire hotel. And when those children are running around screaming until 2am? Just try sleeping through that. Then... then... there's the air conditioning. Every time the air starts up, there is a loud "snap" followed by a huge "bang." It literally sounds like somebody is trying to break into your room every time it goes off. Especially as you're attempting to drift off to sleep at 3am.
And so I am sleep-deprived and exhausted.
Which made for a fun day at work, I'll tell you whut. I'd best describe my demeanor as "punchy."
C'est la vie.*
Work went exceedingly well and, before I knew it, it was time to grab lunch at David's Pizza (my favorite pizza in the known universe) and head home.
Which was a much better journey than yesterday.
Yesterday's drive across Washington State's Central Basin was long and boring as always... but augmented with the excitement of asshole drivers. The speed limit is 70mph. I drive around 75mph. Occasional I would pass a truck doing 60mph only to have some asshole jam on up to my bumper doing 90mph... who then flips me off when I jet back over to the right-hand lane. Sorry that I interrupted your illegal driving speed, asshole. In what universe do I deserve to be flipped off for that? If I had psychic powers, I would be telekinetically ripping off middle fingers, no lie.
On my way home I stopped at a mini-mart gas station outside of Quincy (home of the best corn in the nation!) to fuel up and grab something to drink. When I went up to the counter to pay, a kindly elderly gentleman leaning on a cane (surely 90+ years old) was in line ahead of me. He was buying a single ice cream sandwich... nothing else... with a credit card. He talked in a whisper, but I could hear him tell the cashier that he couldn't open the package on his ice cream and asked him to do it. They cashier grabbed a pair of scissors and did so, after which the old man said "thanks." He then had to put away his credit card, put his wallet in his pocket, grab his ice cream bar, and shuffle off to destinations unknown. The process took forever but I actually found it fascinating to watch and didn't mind at all. We'll all be there someday, if we're lucky.
Or unlucky, depending on your perspective.
After paying for my Gatorade and a Coke, I pass the old man eating his ice cream sandwich when a thought flashed through my head.
"Holy shit! He's not driving is he?"
I was beyond curious to know if the empty car parked by the mini mart was his, but didn't want to wait ten minutes to see if he drove away in it... or if somebody else was driving... or if he was being picked up... or if he actually walked to the mini mart from somewhere miles away.
After starting up the car, I noticed the MAINTENANCE REQUIRED light had come on. Apparently all those oil change email notices that I had been ignoring had come home to roost. And so I detoured to Jiffy Lube to take care of that, because heaven only knows when I'd ever have time to drive there again. Hey, it was on my way home anyway... so might as well.
As I pulled into Jiffy Lube, I noticed that the air quality in Wenatchee was more smoke-filled than I had seen it all year. This made me very concerned for my cats, so the first thing I did when I got to the waiting room was check my security cameras...
OF COURSE they're both outside. Why wouldn't they be?
And then I noticed movement in the corner of the security camera. What the heck is THAT, I wondered.
Oh... it's just a GIANT FUCKING MURDER SPIDER DISPOSING OF IT'S DEAD LOVER'S BODY!!! I think I actually said "Holy shit! out loud when I zoomed in...
THE HORROR! I mean, come on... she just dumped the dead body into her web and went back to hiding in the door frame...
To say I was in a panic is an understatement.
My cats were outside in the catio WITH A GIANT MURDER SPIDER! And since GIANT MURDER SPIDERS are always poisonous, their fate was in serious doubt. Because there is nothing... nothing they love more than to play with bugs. If either one of them saw the thing... my guess is that I would arrive home to a cat in respiratory failure because it had been bitten and poisoned.
So I wait for an agonizing 20 minutes while my oil was changed.
I drive home through work traffic, which is another 30 minutes of torture.
I get home, tear into the house, lure both kitties in from the catio, close off the catio door so they can't get back out, run and grab the bug spray from the garage, run around the house to the catio door, then soak... soak until dripping... the entire upper corner of the frame.
Eventually a tiny little spider crawled out, fell to the ground, and died.
"Huh. I guess when a little spider is close to the camera lens on a security camera, it only looks like a GIANT MURDER SPIDER.
And then I feel so awful. If I had known it was just a little spider, I would have left it alone. I am not a spider murderer. If I find a spider in my house, I catch it and take it outside. I try to console myself with the fact that she murdered her little spider-boyfriend after mating, then dumped his body without a care, but it didn't work. Then I tried to console myself with the fact that the little spider won't be laying millions of eggs which would hatch and fill up my catio with tiny spider babies. Somehow, I was able to make my peace with being a spider murderer after that.
Of course... there's nothing to say that she didn't lay those millions of eggs before she dumped the body.
Which means millions of spider babies intent on revenge for the death of their mother. That's all I need.
* Will it impress you to know that I can spell "C'est la Vie" without having to Google it? No? Okay.
Jenny is turning into one of the most bizarre cats I've ever known. Which is to say she's an average cat. On one hand, she is terrified of everything. If somebody rings the doorbell or there's a loud noise, she vanishes in a flash. Needless to say that if I have a visitor, she hides until well after they leave. If I walk into a room... even carefully, she bolts. She is the very definition of a scardy cat.
And yet... she is demanding as hell. 20 minutes until breakfast? Screw that. She wants to be fed now. You want to work when she wants to be petted? Screw that. She wants to be petted now. She has discovered how to meow, and she uses it when you displease her. And she's completely manipulative about it. If her first meow doesn't work, she will try different meows until she gets results. It's totally adorable, of course. Well, it's adorable so long as you pet her in the way that she wants to be petted. And she will totally supervise your every move to make sure you are doing it right...
And speaking of supervision... Jenny will show up to lord over you whenever you are working on something interesting. When I was rewiring my media center, she sat staring at me for a full 20 minutes...
In other news... Jenny rules my entire house now.
After getting Carl the RoboVac, I had to remove the electrified "Scat Mats" because Carl liked chewing on them. Jake would always hop over them when sneaking into the kitchen, but Jenny rarely crossed over. And, on those rare occasions that she did, it was never while I was around. But now? She puts her little foot out to make sure she isn't going to get zapped... but she goes into the kitchen whenever the hell she feels like it. And that's whether I am there or not. She is fascinated by the refrigerator, and makes a bee-line to the kitchen any time I dare to open it...
Jake, on the other hand, won't go into the kitchen unless I'm gone or upstairs. And if I ever catch him in the kitchen, he bolts the second he sees me. Jenny, on the other hand, has zero shits to give any more.
And speaking of Jake in my kitchen...
I finally got around to painting two doors that I've been putting off for months. I knew I'd need a third coat, so I just left the paint can on the kitchen counter with the lid barely on and the paintbrush nearby. But then... as I was in bed typing this... I hear a big crash that sounds like it's coming from the kitchen. I take a look at the security cameras to see what the heck is going on, and...
I didn't even wait for the video to finish playing. I tossed aside my laptop and went running downstairs expecting to find my kitchen covered in paint. Except, luckily, didn't happen. Jake walked right by the paint can... went to the cupboard... and pawed a can of PAM cooking spray onto the floor... and that's what I had heard.
In other Jake news... he's been stealing Jenny's new favorite spot on the stereo receiver lately. Though sometimes they do share it. Usually when it's getting close to dinner time and they feel like staring at me in an attempt to get an early meal...
At least until one of them passes out from hunger...
And, since I mentioned Carl the RoboVac earlier...
Apparently Carlthe RoboVac has declared all-out war on Litter Robot. It's robot vs. robot...
I attempted to tell Carl to be nice since his fellow robot is literally cleaning up shit all day long... but Carl is having none of it.
Probably because he's cleaning up shit every day too.
Though, not literal shit. That would be horrifying.
I love my cats... honestly, I do. 99% of the time they are a wonderful addition to my life, and I can't imagine living without them.
And yet...
This morning I got out of bed and was surprised that neither Jake and Jenny were hanging around trying to convince me that they needed an early breakfast. Even weirder? There was no "tribute" from Jenny waiting for me (she brings me toys each morning... in exchange for my feeding her, I'm guessing). These unprecedented events had me worried that they had broken out of the catio or something, and I would be spending my day tracking them down.
Except...
When I turned to go downstairs, I saw them both at the bottom waiting for me.
Ominous.
Then, as I walked into the kitchen to get their breakfast, the pieces of the puzzle started sliding into place. The wild running around this morning was apparently due to a bird in the house. I knew this because there were feathers in front of the cabinet where I keep the cat food...
And so I go rushing back upstairs to check the security cameras and... sure enough...
I start going back through camera footage in an attempt to figure out how long this has been going on. Here's from an hour prior...
It's amazing how stealthy cats are. Jake hopped up and was practically on top of the bird before he flew away...
Here's an hour-and-a-half prior...
Poor bird! This footage (featuring Jenny making a spectacular leap to catch him) was from almost two hours prior...
And here's her leap from from a different angle...
So proud of her... but also horrified.
I scrubbed the cameras from the time I went to bed until the time I saw the bird feathers. I was expecting to see footage of one of the cats coming in from the catio with the hapless bird in its mouth... but I never saw anything of the kind. It's as if the bird just magically appeared around 4:45am out of thin air. I suppose it's possible that the bird flew into the garage while I was cleaning it and followed me in the house when I had the door open... but wouldn't I have noticed that? No idea.
Meanwhile... I have a bird in the house.
I go back downstairs to look for it and, not two minutes later, Jake and Jenny go tearing through the house, chasing the bird upstairs. I go running after them just as the bird goes flying in my bathroom. Poor thing saw the skylight in there and thought he could escape through it. Not knowing what else to do... I close the bathroom door.
And now what?
Do I sneak in the bathroom and try and catch it?
Do I wait for the bird to become exhausted and hope I can scoop it up and take it outside?
My mind is reeling. About the only thing I know for sure is that I won't be hurting it or killing it. So... What about building a tunnel from the bathroom to the cat's bedroom and opening a window? THAT JUST MIGHT WORK!!!
So I start at the bathroom door...
And build it to the cat's bedroom door...
And... here we go. I apologize for shooting vertically (something I never do for video, because WTF?), but it was the only way to get the important information in-frame...
A few notes...
And that was that.
Earlier this month I had posted this on Facebook...
And now?
I think that might not be such a great idea after all.
At 1:12am this morning, I was awakened by Jenny hopping on my bed and meowing. This is highly unusual. My cats never bother my while I'm sleeping... or even when I'm pretending to be sleeping. I pet her for a little bit, then rolled over and ignored her so I could get some sleep.
At 4:36am this morning, Jenny was back on my bed meowing. This had me worried that Jake was hurt somewhere and she was wanting me to follow her like Lassie. But then... I heard something. The television was turned on with the sound blasting. This happens every once in a while when my DirecTV gets a software update.
And this was what Jenny was trying to tell me all along. So I found my iPhone, fired up the DirecTV app, then turned off the television.
Jenny immediately ran back downstairs.
Where presumably she went to sleep now that the television wasn't going to keep her awake.
The next time Jenny came up was to deliver her morning tribute around 6:30am. Usually I barely notice because she's quite stealthy... but this morning I heard what sounded like a rock being dropped on my floor. Turns out it wasn't a rock... it was a small screwdriver...
Note how she dropped the soft mouse toy on the carpet... but the hard screwdriver on the wood floor. I still have no clue how she managed to carry the thing upstairs. I had left it on the kitchen counter, which means she would have had to knock it to the floor first. I check the security cameras and, sure enough, she was there...
But Jake was as well, so maybe he knocked it on the floor...
The little shits... they know they're not supposed to be on the kitchen counters!
Speaking of Jake... he still likes hanging out with me when I get home from work. Usually he likes to curl up next to me when I plop down for some television. What's new is that if I start to get up when he's not ready to get up... he'll put a paw on my leg to stop me!
The smarter move is to lay on top of me so I can't get up so easy...
So soft and fluffy!
Until next Caturday then...
I keep thinking that the cats will stay indoors now that the weather is getting colder, but they're out in the catio as often as they ever are. Which is all the time.
They do tend to huddle closer together than usual, however...
I haven't turned the heat on yet, so the cats are still vying for the warm spot on top of the stereo receiver. Sometimes this ends up in an awkward pose...
Though they often end up in awkward sleeping poses even when they're alone...
The couch is cold to lay on, which the cats Do Not Like, so I put towels and blankets down to make them more comfortable. They start out nicely-arranged each morning when I straighten everything out, but they don't stay that way for long...
Jenny, who loves to watch television more than any cat I know, is particularly happy to make herself a "nest" in the towels and blankets so she can watch TV with me. She was particularly interested in the season one finale of The Good Fight (fantastic show, by the way)...
At least she was while the show was on. The second the started rolling the credits, she was out...
Speaking of Jenny... I've mentioned how she just loves to have her tummy rubbed... but also resents it at the same time. I just got the best photo to date of how she'll grab my had with her front paws to get that good rubbin'... but will push my hand away with her back paws at the same time...
Even when I manage to get in a position to rub ONLY the spots she wants rubbed, she will change her mind in a second for any reason and every reason at all...
Even with all their antics, they are still the sweetest cats ever...
Until next Caturday then...
Last year I was young and foolish and unaware of how expensive home heating was. I turned the thermostat on come October and never looked back.
Until the electric bills started rolling in.
Once I realized how insanely expensive it is to turn the heat on, I tried to be much smarter about it. Having a "smart thermostat" helped, because I could program it to adapt to my schedule and not be wasting energy when I wasn't home. Not that I could just turn the heat off completely... because I've got cats. Sure they have fur coats, but I don't want the poor things freezing.
This year I decided to use my electric blanket so I'm not spending a ton of money heating my home at night, and today was the day it got turned on.
Jenny had absolutely no idea what to make of it.
She walked around poking it and sniffing it... then flopping down on it because it was oh so warm! For the longest time she just kinda laid there in disbelief at what she was experiencing...
Once she understood that it was indeed toasty heat eminating from the blanket, and not just her imagination, much rolling around and purring ensued...
Now she's completely passed out from the joy of it all...
Guess I'm going to have company at night now.
I haven't posted about my cats in a couple weeks, so let's get caught up then, shall we?
First of all, my efforts to keep my cats out of the cat food/treat/toy cupboard continue to fail. If I tape it, they paw at the tape. If I buy a child-lock, they chew it off. I'm beginning to think that nothing short of a deadbolt is going to do the trick. Especially when I wake up and find this waiting for me downstairs...
I know it's Jake who does the breaking in, but every time I check the security camera footage, Jenny is most definitely sharing in the spoils.
Second of all, Jenny continues to love the electric blanket. As I mentioned a while ago, she just can't seem to get enough of it. Even though she's perplexed as to how it works. For some reason there's a disconnect between her brain telling her it's not possible and her body sensing its glorious warmth. She still walks around on it like she can't believe what's happening. Though most of the time she's sleeping...
The only thing that will wake her up is when the local high school football team scores a touchdown and they fire off the cannon...
Just look her crossing her legs like the little lady she is!
Well, except when she's torturing bugs, which seems to be her favorite activity after sleeping. When the painters had to leave the doors open, a LOT of bugs who were looking to find a warm spot for the winter came crawling/flying in. I try to capture as many as I can so I can take them outside, but sometimes Jenny has other plans...
The little monster.
Speaking of Jenny...
People keep asking me if she still brings me tributes in the morning. The answer is, yes. As you can see from this photo I took last week where she was particularly industrious that morning...
Eight... eight... toy tributes. Which has to be some kind of record.
As if that wasn't enough Jenny for this Caturday, I have to share that I think that she has joined in the WAR OF THE ROBOTS that's been going on in my home between Carl the RoboVac and Clay the Litter-Robot. I caught her throwing towels on the floor for Carl to choke on just as he was headed to clean around the couch, THEN SAT THERE WAITING FOR HIM TO ARRIVE...
Clearly Jenny is Team Clay (whom she loves) and not Carl (whom she seems to hate).
And, speaking of Carl, he may soon have a little brother hanging around! More on that next week!
And speaking of hanging around, I think I might have a ghost. I haven't seen them... but will admit I've noticed weird noises going on from time to time. Like one of the cats is walking towards my bedroom, then I look and they are both already in the bedroom. So maybe not just a ghost... IT'S A GHOST CAT?!?? Jake and Jenny seem to spot Ghost Cat often, as sometimes when I check in on them throughout the day I see them acting strangely (well, more strangely than usual). Like they'll be eating and suddenly turn around to look at something...
But when I check the other cameras, there's nothing there. When I captured the above footage, I came home and checked the secondary security camera system (which is on battery back-up and stores locally in case the internet and/or power goes down) but they didn't spot anything either. Then I started scrubbing through the audio thinking it might have been a creak from the house settling or something, but... no. Which is strange, because the microphones are very good at capturing even the softest noises.
So I dunno. Hopefully one of these days I will spot Ghost Cat so I can come up with a name that suits them.
In final Caturday News... it is raining hard while I type this. Really hard. Which has Jenny very upset and confused, as she's raging at the rain she can hear everywhere, but not see (turn your volume way up)...
Jake, however, doesn't seem much bothered by the rain. Here's him "helping" me type up this blog entry...
See you next Caturday.
I am Sundaying so hard right now, because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Feral! This past Monday was "National Feral Cat Day." My cats, Jake and Jenny, were feral kittens when they were found. I don't think they quite adapted to foster care, and were still very much feral little scrubbers when I adopted them. Weeks of patience turned into months of building trust which has turned into 1-3/4 years of the best furry friends I could hope for. They are still, in their hearts, feral cats who are very slow to trust. And they hide the minute anything out of the ordinary happens. Sometimes, on rare occasions, they are even wary of me. But most of the time they love crawling all over me for pets and attention and I've never been lonely since they took over my home. Feral cats are more work than those kitten raised around people... but I wouldn't trade mine for the world. If anything, I think I appreciate them more than I would other cats because I had to put effort into getting them to accept me. And once they did? There's no better feeling...
If you have the opportunity to help out a feral cat, the work is definitely worth the reward!
• Dimensions? And so... it would seem that LEGO Dimensions is no more. Typical. Oh well. The gameplay was getting tired... but it was kept fresh by the licensed properties they kept bringing to the table.
Wish they would have got LEGO Star Wars in the mix before signing off... after Disney Infinity dried up, it seemed a natural.
• Get Help! The reviews for Thor: Ragnarok have been stellar. And with each new clip released, I just want to see it more...
Cannot. Wait.
• Lucifer! Right now there's a lot of good television going on. In addition to The Good Place, which is the best show on television right now, we've also got Star Trek: Discovery, The Flash, The Orville, and Supergirl... not to mention some of the indy oddball stuff (like Dirk Gently), which makes it tough for me to keep up with my shows. But that one show I will always make time for? Lucifer!
Last season was fantastic because "Mom" came to visit, which led to some interesting directions for the show. Now they seem to be focusing on fleshing out secondary characters instead of bringing in new ones, and I couldn't be happier. Maze is probably the best character on the show after Lucifer, but has been largely marginalized. But this last episode (S03:E03 Mr. and Mrs. Mazikeen Smith) puts her in the spotlight and the results are so amazing I find myself wishing they would spin her off into her own show. If you're not watching, you really should be.
• Jack! Another show I've been very much enjoying has been the revival of Will & Grace. Though I strongly dislike the two main characters, secondary characters Jack and Karen always seem to salvage the show. The latest episode (S09:E04 Grandpa Jack) is no exception. Jack, who discovered he had a son (thanks to a sperm bank "donation") gets an even bigger surprise when he discovers his son had a son, so he's now a grandpa!
I will not spoil the story except to say... it's both hysterically funny and emotionally devastating at the same time. And it has two guest appearances that are absolute gold. When they restarted the show, I was hoping that we'd see Jack's son again. I never expected that his story would be this good. Well worth a look.
• Decor! When I moved into my home, I noticed that the previous owner had left a lot of decor scattered about. None of it was too my taste, so I made it my mission to toss it all out. The only thing left is a lion head above my doorbell and a weird dried flowers plaque with hooks I use for my keys and hats. The plaque was useful, but I vowed to replace it when I found something better... I never did. The lion I was going to ditch when it was removed for painting... but I ended up putting it back. Don't know why. I kinda like him, I guess...
I suppose one of these days I really should go shopping to find a replacement for my key hooks.
And... Sunday is over. So too are the bullets.
It's been getting colder. I know this because the heat has been coming on from time to time. And last week I was mostly freezing from the minute I got out of bed... all the way to work... most of the day at work... all the way back home... then right up until I crawled under my electric blanket at night.
But yesterday and today?
Heatwave!
Well, not really, but it's been unseasonably warm out. My cats have been lapping it up... hanging out in the catio as if they know that the warm days are numbered. They are not always easy to spot out there, however...
Enjoy it while it lasts... enjoy it while it lasts.
It's Halloween again!
This past week when I was at Home Depot, all their decorations and spooky stuff was on sale for 50% off, which wasn't tempting to me (what a waste of money!)... until I saw two cat skeletons for $9 each. Now that I'm interested in.
Jake and Jenny? Well... not so much. They sniffed around for ten seconds, then went on with their busy lives...
Hopefully my trick-or-treaters will be more intrigued with Dead Jake and Dead Jenny than the live versions were...
And don't forget my awesome wreath addition...
Now that decorating is done, all that's left to do is pass out the candy...
Guess we'll see how many trick-or-treaters I get this year. Last year it didn't top 60.
Tonight is when the clocks get set back in the USA for Daylight Saving Time ending. You would think that I'd be happy because it means an extra hour of sleep, but I most decidedly am not. First of all, dicking around with the clocks is just plain idiotic in 2017. Second of all, my cats... who don't give a crap what a clock says... will be in my room at 6am tomorrow wondering why in the hell I am not getting my ass out of bed to feed them. What am I supposed to do? Explain to them that they will have to wait an hour because of stupid Daylight Saving stupidity? I suppose I could try, but odds are THEY WON'T UNDERSTAND ME BECAUSE THEY ARE CATS!
Though... the are very smart cats, apparently.
A couple times I've come home and found the television powered on in my bedroom. Each time I didn't think I had left it on, but maybe I'm going senile. On Thursday when I got out of the shower, I head to my bedroom and see my TV on again. This time I KNEW I didn't have it on, so I figured that it is somehow turning itself on. When I go in to turn it off, I notice Jenny laying on my bed staring at the television. I then look at my nightstand and see the AppleTV remote. Suddenly... 2 + 2 snaps together in my head. The AppleTV remote is so overly-sensitive that it will activate if you so much as fart on it. It would be easy for a cat to step on it... even bump it... and turn on the TV. JENNY IS TURNING ON THE TV SO SHE CAN WATCH IT! Except she hasn't figured out how to start up a video, so she ends up staring at the AppleTV menu. Then she gets bored because there's no action, and leaves. Which would be fine, except she doesn't turn the TV off when she's done. I dunno... maybe she comes back when the screensaver activates? Who can tell with her. She's a very private feline...
And then...
After the TV incident, one of my Facebook friends was joking about the cats finding the thermostat control. I laughed it off... as anybody would... BUT THEN I CHECKED ON MY CATS WITH THE SECURITY CAMERAS ON FRIDAY AND I SEE THIS?
Yep. That's Jake. Messing with the thermostat.
While Jenny watches.
CATS!!!
That same morning while I was getting ready for work, I find Jenny biting at her back-right claws over and over again. She was walking on that foot just fine earlier, so I go into a panic thinking that something is wrong with the nails. Then I film her in case the vet wants to see it. THEN I Google the issue only to find out that nothing is wrong... she's just giving herself a pedicure...
She hops down and walks away, her foot looking perfectly normal. I wonder how long until I stop panicking at absolutely everything my cats do that's new to me?
Jake has been especially friendly lately. Though I think it's because he likes my body warmth, since he's been sleeping on my chest while I work and watch TV almost every night. Unfortunately, my need to sing along to 80's music is not compatible with his ability to sleep (which is substantial).
Madonna's Holiday...
Thompson Twins' Hold Me Now...
Poor Jake.
I can't be an easy roommate to live with.
Checking in on the cats via the security camera system is always a mixed bag.
Most times, they're sleeping or looking out the window. No big deal.
But other times? Not so much...
Okay... let's unpack all that's wrong with what's going on here.
First of all, Joy the RoboMop has violated her "boundary" and has left the kitchen to mop my hardwood... something that's fine, I guess, but not what I wanted her to do.
Second of all... do you see those neatly-stacked, carefully-sorted piles of dirty laundry? Oh... neither do I... my cats tore into it and made one giant mess out of it all. Glad some cats and robots are having fun breaking all the rules today.
Lastly... Where are my frickin' cats? I have checked every camera and haven't seen them! My guess is that there was a loud noise and they're hiding under the couch or under the bed or something. Either that or they've totally escaped, and now I have a new adventure awaiting me after work.
Can you imagine how boring my life would be without cats and robots?
Happy Veterans Day, everybody! Thanks to all the men and women who have served or are serving now.
I've been over the mountains since Thursday, letting my robots take care of my cats. For the most part it's an arrangement that works well. Sure my cats miss me, but not enough to keep out of trouble. Like climbing on the kitchen counters so I have to clean and disinfect them when I get home...
Since the kitchen counters are now the only place the cats are not allowed, it's where they seem to rebel the hardest when I'm gone.
Speaking of not being home...
Jake kept going missing from the security cameras when I checked in. I thought he found a new place to crash in the guest bedroom, but it turns out that wasn't the case at all.
Before I left, I washed a rug and set it across the downstairs bathroom vanity to dry. Jake must have walked across it and sunk it into the sink. Making the perfect place to sleep...
Whenever Jake isn't sleeping on my lap, now he's sleeping in the sink.
I guess I have to buy a new rug since Jake's claimed this one.
Which won't get any complaints from me. Lately Jenny likes to sleep on my arm so I am trapped...
But you can't be upset when you have a cat this adorable...
The drive back across the mountains was uneventful and snow-free (though I had my snow tires put on just in case). Exactly what you want a trip to be when winter has come.
The first thing I did when I got home was to put together a new IKEA wall-cabinet I bought so I have somewhere to put my keys and stuff next to the front door. My cats decided to help...
Good thing they're so cute. They're completely worthless when it comes to assembling furniture.
Until next Caturday then...
Preparations for my pending vacation have been insanely expensive. I thought I was making it less painful by buying clothes for my journey ahead of time (I started nearly a year-and-a-half ago), but then I went and lost 17 pounds, so all that did was add more expense as I had to replace clothes I'm now swimming in.
But the harder pill to swallow is that I have no money left over for Black Friday clothes shopping, which is one of my favorite things. I loathe having to spend money on clothes (and good quality clothes are pricey), but today is when all my favorite brands go on sale and I can chop 60% or more off my budget for the year. Oh well, just my luck I'd buy a bunch of stuff, lose more weight, then have saved money on clothes I can't wear.
But it's hard to feel sad when next Friday this time I will be in Argentina awaiting the start of my trip.
Though, to be honest, I am a little sad. I just got home to my cats... who were so happy to see me after a week gone... and I'm going to be leaving them again...
Yeah, if there's a downside for being 8,000 miles away from home... this would be it.
Life has gotten pretty much back to normal after my having abandoned my cats for a week.
Jake acts like he missed me the most... he's been crawling all over me since I got back. He also meows from downstairs when I'm upstairs and waits for me to answer so he knows I haven't left again. If I don't answer, then he meows again until I do. Why he can't just haul his furry butt up the stairs to check in person I don't know. Maybe because he's not a person.
But if you were to ask me which cat actually misses me the most, that would be Jenny. As usual, she runs upstairs when I go to bed so she can hang around and get petted while I watch TV... but she rarely sleeps there. Now, however? When she's done getting petted and has had enough television, she paws at my arm until I lower it so she can wrap herself around it and fall asleep...
Guess she wants to make sure I don't take off in the middle of the night?
The interesting thing about having nobody home except the cats to any dirty dishes is that the first load tends to be pretty light when I get back...
If only they were responsible enough to load the dishwasher themselves, I wouldn't have to hire a cat sitter.
Well... they would need opposable thumbs to pick up the dishes, I think.
And to be three times larger so they'd have the strength to pull the door down.
And not gorge themselves on all the food in the first day so they don't starve.
Okay... a cat sitter it is then.
It seems like I just got back home.
And now I'm leaving again.
Tomorrow morning I'm off to Argentina followed by a trip to the bottom of the earth (unless you're a flat-earther nut-job, in which case I'm off to the giant ice wall at the edge of the world). I've been looking forward to this trip for decades... have been planning it for a year-and-a-half... and yet I'd be lying if I said I wasn't sad to be leaving. I'm actually really broken up about leaving because my heart aches at the thought of abandoning my cats for 16 days.
Especially when Jenny is laying next to me here acting all adorable...
Of course they're not really abandoned. I've got a cat sitter checking in... neighbors checking in... friends and family checking in... a local security system... an internet security system... a home security monitoring service... they'll be well looked after.
And yet...
It's hard not to worry.
Be well, my furry friends.
Having two cats complicates my travel a bit.
Having two cats I love more than just about anything complicates my travel to a terrifying degree. Despite having automated feeders, an automated water fountain, automated litter boxes, two camera monitoring systems, a home security system, and a catsitter to keep it all running while I'm away... I still spend a lot of time worrying about Jake and Jenny every waking hour of every day. Are they doing okay? Are they lonely? Are they safe? Will they forget me? Will they forgive me?
Yesterday when I got home, Jake came running to greet me. He couldn't get enough petting and cried every time I stopped. Jenny kept her distance, but eventually wanted in on the action. The rest of my day was spent making it up to them. Which wasn't difficult because they followed me everywhere, Probably trying to make sure I didn't abandon them again...
I turned Carl the RoboVac off while I was gone. Turning him back on resulted in exactly what you'd expect... a lot of cat hair and kitty litter filling up the bin...
I went to bed at 4:30 yesterday and stayed there until 7am this morning when it was the cat's breakfast time.
Today I was planning on unpacking, washing clothes, cleaning house, posting all my blog entires from my trip, and running into work. But my cats had other plans for me. It's rare that they both get this clingy at the same time... but it's been like this all day. Guess they really missed me?
Coming home to this makes it very hard to think about leaving them again. Especially to a place like Antarctica where I have no contact with the outside world and no way to check in on them.
Fortunately, I have three months before I have to worry about it.
My cats have been very glad to have me home.
Though they are never shy on having me make up to them the three weeks I was gone. Many a belly rub has been demanded since my return...
Not that I blame them. I could go for a nice belly rub every once in a while.
I just got back after three weeks away a week ago.
Now I'm getting ready to head out again.
It's really tough to leave my cats... especially given how attached they've been to me since I returned. They're all over me night and day...
I wouldn't have it any other way.
I don't celebrate Christmas, but my family does and I do my best to keep up.
This includes a Christmas gift exchange where I ended up with a beautiful new faux fur blanket.
Alas my cats are scared to death of it. For the first half hour from when I pulled it out they wouldn't come near me. Eventually Jake decided to investigate, but was still leery of the thing...
He left for about 15 minutes, but eventually came back... a little braver this time...
At least he was until Jenny clawed him on the butt while he was "investigating" the strange furry thing that had invaded his home. He much have jumped two feet straight up in the air and then ran off...
Jenny herself was considerably braver. She hopped right up to sniff out the blanket monster, but left unimpressed...
After Jake regained his composure, he saw how brave Jenny was and followed suit...
He eventually ran away again, but returned about ten minutes later. This time on the couch next to me...
You'd think that would be enough to convince him... but no. He left soon after and has been observing the blanket monster from atop the cat tree.
While I was gone one of my cats (Jake) decided to confiscate the cat treats I've been giving to Fake Jake. He's pretty crafty being able to open a sealed plastic container with nothing but paws and teeth...
And he ate the whole dang container, the little butt-head.
Guess it serves me right. Good thing I don't have plans to leave again for the rest of the winter.
Living in the upper latitudes as I do, winter makes for crappy weather. It's cold, wet, and dark. And its dark for a really long time each day. When I get up to feed the cats at 7am, it's still pitch black out. Luckily, I have an Alexa Echo Dot in my bedroom upstairs to illuminate my home on command.
Or not.
"Alexa, turn on morning lights."
= nothing =
"Alexa, turn on morning lights."
= crickets =
"ALEXA! TURN ON MORNING LIGHTS!!!"
= nothing =
ALEXA? ALEXA? ALEHHHHXAAAAAAHHH?!???
It's then I notice a red glow coming from Alexa over on my dresser. That can't be good.
So I get up in a dark room... stumble over all the cat toys that have been dropped on my floor... nearly tripping into the dresser as I step on a hard compressed catnip mouse toy... then make my way into the hallway.
NOTE: Had I taken a header into the dresser, I could have been killed!
Sure enough, Alexa is all red glowy angry and ignoring me...
"Why U Mad, Alexa?" I mumble as I head out into the darkened hallway... where I trip over Jake on the landing and nearly fall down the stairs.
NOTE: Had I tumbled down the stairs, I could have been killed!
I have been letting Alexa control everything for so long I forget that there are light switches... somewhere... around this place.
Eventually I make it downstairs where my "Smart Home" has turned on the lights for me and I can see again. Jake and Jenny stare at me impatiently as I dish up their breakfast, then chow down while I absent-mindedly ask Downstairs Alexa to turn on the stairway lights... and she does!
Apparently it's only Upstairs Alexa who is broken?
So I Google "ALEXA RED LIGHT" and find out she's not broken at all...
If the light ring on the top of your Echo is solid red, you have disabled the microphone feature. Alexa will not be able to respond to your requests until you have enabled the microphone feature, which will turn the solid red light off.
I missed the little microphone button with the slash through it on top of Upstairs Alexa.
THEN I remember.
Last night as I was falling asleep I was playing Jeopardy with Alexa (totally swept Tuesday's clues!). My cats wanted attention, but I was too tired to do anything. All of a sudden Alexa stops playing and I catch a glimpse of Jake on top of the dresser. I assumed he was laying on the speaker so Alexa couldn't hear me... then I fell asleep.
But that's not what happened at all!
Clearly Jake turned off the microphone so he could kill me in the morning! Remember how he tried to trip me on the stairs? Remember that? Remember? I COULD HAVE DIED!
And so... I am guessing he's more upset over the furry blanket I brought home than I realized.
Looks like I need to be watching my back for a while...
For those who only read one of my posts each year... or anybody wanting a recap of the past year here at Blogography... this post is for you! As customary, I've jettisoned loads of the usual junk so this entry is "mostly crap" instead of the "total crap" they usually are.
2017 was far from ideal. And yet... compared to the bucket of never-ending suck that was 2016, it was a vast improvement. So I can't really complain.
JANUARY
• Said goodbye to President Obama, a president that I never learned to truly appreciate until the total disaster that's now occupying The White House moved in...
Official White House Photo by Pete Souza
FEBRUARY
• Took my cats to the vet for the first time, something I am definitely not looking forward to doing again in the New Year...
MARCH
• Went to Disneyland for work, then ranked my all-time favorite Disney attractions.
• Yesterday I listed my favorite albums of 2017. Last March I listed my all-time most hated songs that everybody else seems to love.
• Flew to San Francisco to see one of my favorite new musical artists, Wrabel, with my (literal) rockstar friend Aaron.
• Headed to Las Vegas, where I finally ziplined down Fremont Street, among other things.
APRIL
• Said goodbye to Lil' Spicey...
• Built a built-in desk... for my cats, apparently.
MAY
• Flew to Denver to celebrate my good friend Howard's 50th birthday with the Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 2!
JUNE
• Built new built-ins for my bedroom closet, which turned out amazing...
• Had one of the biggest scares of my life during The Great Jake Escape...
• Back to Vegas again (for work this time).
JULY
• Said goodbye to my long-time blogging friend, Anissa.
• Welcomed Carl the RoboVac to my family...
• Flew to Maine for blueberries (and for work).
AUGUST
• Said a painful goodbye to my good friend and long-time blogging buddy, Howard.
• Lived through Raccoonageddon.
• Live-blogged my photographing the eclipse (with my cats).
• Read The Nashville Statement so you don’t have to.
SEPTEMBER
• Lived through another round of wildfires in my neck of the woods.
• Built a tunnel for a bird to escape my home before my cats could murder it...
OCTOBER
• Wrote "Second Amendments and Horse Shit" which surprised some people, I'm sure.
• Had some extra money that came my way and wrote about what I did with it... which included getting some old negatives scanned...
• Added Joy the Mopping Robot to Carl the RoboVac and my growing family.
• Got my cats into the Halloween spirit...
NOVEMBER
• Had a colonoscopy... and posted photos of my beautiful colon (you're welcome!).
• Flew to Maine and finally visited Acadia National Park...
• Visited the Eastern-Most Point in the USA at West Quoddy Head Light on a bad weather day...
• Was first in the USA to see the sun rise at Cadillac Mountain...
DECEMBER
• Flew to Buenos Aires and visited Evita at Recoleta Cemetery...
• Took in the view at The End of the World...
• Headed out across The Drake Passage in some of the roughest seas on earth...
• Fulfilled a life-long dream when I finally set foot on Antarctica for the first time...
• Photographed Antarctica icebergs at "night"...
• Explored the lives of penguins...
• Had one of the most amazing days of my life when I stepped foot on the seventh continent...
• Got up-close-and-personal with some whales...
• More penguin photography at Half Moon Island in Antarctica...
• Used Apple's new "iPhone Update Plan" so I could buy an iPhone X and post my thoughts on the astoundingly expensive thing.
And there you have it, the year that was the major events in my 2017.
Well, the ones I shared on my blog, anyway.
Thanks once again to my cats, family, and friends for making life bearable through the not-so-great times. Though, I have to say, closing out the year with my bucket-list trip to Antarctica certainly had it ending on a high note.
Here's to a good 2018, everybody.
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