Month: March 2009

Sometimes governments get it right & more cat interactions

Food in Belo Horizonte

I know that I have taken on a lifelong commitment (hers, not mine) to brush her daily, clean her face daily, bathe her monthly, trim her claws every two weeks as well as shots and the rest of that stuff.  She’s had her daily brushing (mewing piteously but almost silently as I tried to get the willnots off her back end) and Eddie was so concerned that he waited outside the bathroom door until she made her appearance.  Poor guy, he came into my room tonight and cried for a while, then jumped up on the bed and got within a foot of Miss Margot, then casually sauntered away.  But I knew he wasn’t happy, so I picked him up and cuddled him, an activity that usually makes him squirm, but this time he was soaking it up and started purring.  I immediately fed him, but of course the second the feline intake valve known as Miss Margot heard the food hitting the dish, she was in there and Eddie got all pouty and walked away.

Katie’s going to meet her tonight.  I can hardly wait.

I know this is going to sound like I’ve lost my mind, but she is everything I ever wanted in a cat.  She’s going to be high maintenance, but I fell in love with her picture and in real life – snoozing where she drops, negotiating a sticky bit with one of the other cats, falling off a kitchen chair, eviscerating carpets, purring madly while eating oatmeal (oatmeal?), sleeping next to my head, playing quietly for half an hour by herself with one of the cat toys, nibbling on Jeff’s toes in a tentative way, sitting in the empty take-out container, playing noisily by herself with one of the cat toys – she is completely adorable.  While she may not be the Einstein of cats, she’s smart enough to get a sap like me to look after her.  And at 14 weeks she is very, very far away from being the stupidest cat I ever met, so she may have a pedigree like a queen, but she’s not all beauty and no sense.

The single most adorable thing she’s done today is attack a Mac icon on my computer.  When you select a program, the icon bounces up and down a couple of times and this triggered Miss Margot’s I must kill it reflex.

Yesterday I had to get her off the kitchen table half a dozen times. Each time she raced back to the table and continued her explorations, which involved a lot of rustling around in plastic bags that once had meat in them.

This week I get fitted for contact lenses by Keith, yeah! and also Miss Margot gets her boosters, bo0, and I think I need to start paying for cat litter…. we will be going through it faster….

Eddie is expressing dismay

As soon as Eddie saw Miss Margot, he barfed.  I mean, barfed.  It’s emotional barfing in a cat.  As Miss Margot expresses Her Divine Will upon him, he barfs less and less.  He’s now in the meowing piteously stage, all about the interloper who is living in the food dish, occupying the kitchen, wandering at will through the rest of the house (although she has stayed out of two of the older cats’ strongholds), moving swiftly towards the “I will walk by the interloper with my tailing casually waving from side to side’ stage.  Miss Margot’s attitude is definitely, “We can all get along if you just loosen up a bit,” this will probably result in play.

Holy $hit she just climbed onto my mandolin, played a few notes and then wandered back to see me.  Did I mention she’s a tortie?  She does the crazy tortie stuff as well as having her visiting dignitary side.  She will have to be fixed, a prospect that causes me no sadness.  Her entrance into the world was by C-section. Oh, great, now she’s walking up and down on the keyboards. Is she trying to tell me something?   The first time I played something for her on the mandolin she flopped on the bed and attentively watched.  It was like having a cat who was somehow channeling Winston Churchill watching your performance.  Unlike other cats, she does not flee the room when I play.  The breeder mentioned that she loves music but I didn’t figure that could possibly be right.  I’ve never met a cat who showed anything but disinterest in music.

Earlier she was killing the kitchen rugs for the nth time when she made this total ninjaclowncat move and whacked the drawer on the oven with both back feet simultaneously and quite hard, making a beautiful hang drum ringing tone which she immediately popped up to investigate.  Popping up describes her method of appearing on furniture and righting herself when she wants to get mobile from any of her legion of contortionate positions. Twice now she’s climbed my knees, put her face over the top of the laptop and then leaned her two front paws over as well, presenting a LOLcat pic of some charm.

After more rug killing activities, she’s back up on the bed, investigating things.  Liveblogging a new kitten is so much fun.

If somebody had told me when I was thirty that I’d ever pay for a Persian, I would have laughed no end.

Little Miss Margot

She spent the night in the room with me and apart from her noisy eating, didn’t keep me up at all.  She jumped up on the bed and kept me company, and her purr is like the ticking of a watch.

Without getting into all the reasons she had to move households, I think she’ll do fine here.  Now it is time to open the bedroom door and reacquaint her with the boys….

Little Miss Margot is in her new home.

Yes, I have gone sane and added a 14 week old Persian to my life.  She’s on my bed right now, walking up and down, and she just jumped on my knees and is checking out the laptop.  Her little face popping up over the top of the laptop cracked me up.

She magically appears.  The two boys are poleaxed, but already starting to get used to her.

wendy-bird and sheep and other schtuff

Cousin Gerald, may he live forever in song, story, fable and myth, emailed me this.

Last night went to Earl’s for a lavish and well irrigated meal with Katie and Wendy.  Wendy is a friend of Katie’s from the Augur Inn days.

I have injured my left foot and left pinky in two separate incidents so I’m walking really oddly and typing rather slowly,

The final song at the singsong Wednesday night was Pretty Little Polly Perkins of Paddington Green, done English music hall style.  The evening also included The Frozen Lover, a gorgeous creature from Catalonia singing a love song of her own composition in Catalan, Un Canadien Errant, an acoustic version of AC DC’s Ride On, and Bob Bossin singing It’s So Nice not to Be in Nanaimo, which is so much a part of the BC psyche that when Bob was introduced to the then Lt Gov Iona Campagnolo, she SANG it to him, and the whole thing started with Sublime’s version of By the Rivers of Babylon. Oh yeah, and I sang the Merman Lover but next time I’ll do something trad with Choruses, like the Eddystone light, because it’s really a group singing experience and I should go with the group.

Katie protected me from a pickpocket on the 99 bus yesterday.

I turned in a steel and diamond men’s ring on the 135 bus the other day.  The bus driver said it was nice of me and I said, apologetically, “Well you know how it is, somebody was watching me” and he burst out laughing.

I’ve changed my route in to work to shake things up a bit.  I go 25 130 135 instead of 25 Skytrain 145.

I’m off to White Rock for a meal with my new friend on Saturday and off to dinner with Paul and kinder tonight, which means I have to remember to bring my mando.

The clinic didn’t get enough blood, apparently, so I have to go back Saturday morning.  Sunday night Guy the finance dude will be by with some paperwork.  At some point Saturday my two new beds will show up and I will have to rent a truck to get the old bed and a bunch of boxes out of here.  I mean, there’s no point, I’ve sadly realized, to having a queen sized bed if I’m not (this part edited out on advice of counsel) and besides it’s just wrong to be sleeping with a computer, so out it must go, which will be easier if there isn’t a person sized space to fill on one half of the bed.

When is a religious slur humour?

When I’m the one telling the joke.  Finally, a good use for theists – guinea pigs.

Now, I guess I’m going to go the long way ’round, about this whole religion vs. atheism thing. After the cut, more about religion and atheism.  But just think, if it wasn’t for the many sacrifices of religious people, how much worse medicine would be.

Continue reading When is a religious slur humour?

Ooh, quoting the Oprah post on CNN. How low has I sunk.

Now I know I’m at the bottom of the internet…. but as I was reading it I thought, “I do that.  It’s called songwriting.”  Half a dozen times in my life I’ve predicted what was going to happen in a song.  I will write a song about a hoped for event or individual, and several years or months later, boom.  Did I ‘sing the world into being’ or did I just think about what I wanted?  I wrote Miss Manners has her say about a specific situation and … well let’s just say the song was a spectacular success.  Many, many times in my life I’ve known what was going to happen next, not because I wanted it to happen (some of the things were bad) but because thought about it and I prepared for it mentally and so when the question arises I am the crazy woman who actually thought about it in advance.

This is what is making the next part of my life so hard in my own mind.  I know what is going to happen next, and I know how to prepare for it, but I’m old and fat and tired and I don’t want to.  I want to pretend I haven’t known for years that a global crash was coming.  That it’s going to get worse.  That we will all be affected.  That people I love will be hurt.  That lives will be stunted.  That people will die. That ethnic and sectarian violence will blast through every aspect of human life; Archduke Ferdinand is walking around right now and his murderer is too and we don’t know where they will come together in blood and shrapnel and blow the world into another war.  Every day I get up and look at the mountains and wonder how much longer I’ll be here.  I wonder how much longer I’ll live with hot water, the internet, the organic coffee, the company cafeteria, the job, the sushi.  I wonder how many people I’ll be living with, if I’ll ever own my own home again, if I will ever have grandchildren, and who I should adopt if I don’t. I wonder if I’ll ever own another pet.

Having said all this, I still think love is more important, so I guess that’s what I’d prefer to try to get ready for.  I believe I will have to work on my luck.  But right now I’m all sad face about how I would like to wind down from all of life and just think and be and sing and create, and not worry, when worry seems to be my only friend and constant companion.  If I really want love I have to quit worrying by sheer force of will – or at least set it aside for a moment – and get the hell out of the house, and I shouldn’t need an article on the internet to tell me so….

Fashion tip

I own the matching t-shirt.  I am amused that something that’s in my closet would show up on boingboing.

David JD called last night, long distance.  I told him he should meet Doug, who just moved to Toronto and will probably be looking for people to go to concerts with.  Me and my meddling.  It was good to hear his voice.

I am still very pleased with my haircut, but this morning I will subject it to the rigours of a washing and see what happens.

My current plan is to go to a folksinging event tonight.  We shall see.

Although I’m very bossy around my intimates, I’m pretty much a sheep when it comes to other people, and so it is with great happiness that I announce that I was assertive recently, and it kinda worked out to my benefit.  I didn’t think my vacation entitlement was set properly, so I looked into it.  To put it more concretely, my vacation balance for the rest of the year went from 88 to 144 hours.  I’ve had people tell me I should go after my previous balance.  I could. I’m not going to.  To get something annoying fixed so fast is great.  There was no dispute about who was right or how to fix it.  Anything else would be, especially considering the hours I’ve spent in the caf when I should have been upstairs working, just not appropriate.

Recently I have changed my work attitude so that I wander around less and spend only the allotted time in the cafeteria.  I still do wander around, but usually in the late afternoon and not so much.  Fewer massages :(.