Chai Goodness

So..

This morning I had to crawl out of bed early to take my cat, Cinder, to the Vet to have her fixed. I was not going to go through another Heat or another batch of kittens with her. So I was up at the crack of dawn (7:30 a.m.) to begin the cat-wrangling.

Thankfully, she often sleeps at the foot of my bed so she was easy to catch. I snuck up to her and offered her a head-scratch before I figuratively threw a black bag over her tiny head and stuffed her into the box. Well, that's what you would have thought by the noise she was making. While she yowled in her cat-crate, I tried to get myself together and get going.

Here's the interesting part:

My roommate Josh is heading to Yellowstone National Park for two weeks for a school trip. He leaves today sometime in the afternoon. They are going to drive straight through and switch out drivers as necessary. Since he's going to be one of the drivers, he stayed up late last night so that he would sleep in today. I, foolishly, stayed up with him - to a point.

With yowling cat-crate in hand, I stumbled out of the house and immediately remembered that I needed to get gas. Gas here is up to 3.79 a gallon. So while I'm not-filling up my tank, everyone around me hears the painful yowl of my cat in the carrier.

I get a few strange looks (she was yelling so loudly that she could be heard through closed car doors), but eventually got back on the road.

Dropping the cat off was much like going to a doctor's office. They ushered me into a small waiting room and asked me about this and that for the procedure.

They offered meds for the cat. They offered shots, and boosters and a number of other services even though I told them I was just there to get her fixed. The vet-tech was nice and personable but really was pushing their other services and I was only half awake so I numbly sat through her recitation of how many flavors of topical antibiotic they had. (I think she said flavors)

I just kept repeating "Just fix her..."

Once that bit of joy was finished, I was on my way back home and remembered that, as it was Friday, I was going to run by and grab some chai for my mother and I. There's only one place in Portsmouth that serves Chai - Hatti Beasleys. They're really attempting to make their shop work, but I think that it would have a better market if it was closer to the University. Right now, their only real market is the nearby Hospital and all of the "Tomb Walkers" who walk around Green Lawn Cemetery around dusk.

Well, now I'm home and I'm out on the front porch so I don't wake up Josh.

Finals are over.

I have Chai.

I'm on my laptop.

Life is sometimes not so bad.
-T

Snow, not so much

Most of yesterday and last night all of the news channels were broadcasting that we were under a Winter Storm Warning with snow on its way; like it was a plague or an invading army.

The snow was supposed to arrive early in the morning and really be in full swing by the 7-8 o'clock rush. However, the snow that we -actually- got was rather... limited.

We did not have 1-2 inches of snow on the ground. We did not awake to the sound of 'crunch' 'crunch' on the roads. Nope, the first thing I heard when my eyes flitted open was the sound of a car ripping down our road. Definitely not something that you'd hear if there was real snow on the ground.

So the cats decided to crash out in front of the windows and watch the flakes fall where they may.

So disappointing.

-Me

Kitten Update

And finally there was none.

"White Nose", the last of the kittens from Cinder's litter, is gone.

I conveyed the 'Vessel of Sacrifice' (a plastic crate) to Ashland to make the exchange. So long as it's gone I'm fine.

The kitten was the instigator of so many messes in the house it wasn't funny.

-Tom

And then there was One

This, is the last of Cinder's kitten - tentatively given the nickname of "White-Nose". Her twin sister, another black&white, was called "Black-Nose". It was the easiest way to tell them apart.

As there's only one kitten left, I've let White-Nose out of the box (aka: the cardboard prison of doom) and let it wander around the house with its mother.

You can see here the white flash up the nose of the kitten that SHOULD make it easy to give away.

And even though it's eating solid food and has for several weeks now, it can't resist grabbing a quick snack from Cinder.

Yes, this is the obligatory cute kitten shot. I couldn't resist grabbing the picture once it was half-asleep and nursing.

And... one last thing.

But be prepared...

Do not watch if you have problems with your sugar.

Do not watch if you have a stomach that doesn't handle sweets well.

Do not watch with others around you if you don't want to hear the obligatory "awwwwwwwwww" sound.

No really,


Don't do it.


Just ignore it.

Ok,

Last warning.

Free Kittens

No really.

Free.

Got a lab experiment and you need a subject?

Need to pay off a Sherago demon?

Just need something to torment you for a while?

I've got your solution RIGHT here.

I have 4 kittens; 3 females and 1 male.

The two, all black kittens are both female.

Take them

Remove them.

Or I will.

@&%)@($*!~_)@)*@#$)(*~+)_(@#$)(&*!)(&~@)#*(_#$)(*!@#$) (ancient curse)

... And I hate chaos!

FEH!

Kitten Pics

Now that I've gotten them into a box and Cinder has accepted that we're not going to play the "hide and go seek the kitten" game, I've got a pic of the remaining 3.

This morning, my mother came over to pick up one of the kittens, one of the all-black ones, and take it to her house to keep the first one company. So now I have three kittens for Cinder to nurse which should be easier for her. A running theory between my mother and myself is that Cinder may have pushed the first kitten away and ignored it because five kittens were just too much on her system.

That's a theory at least.

-Tom

Ref: Phantom Kitty, Phantom Kitty My Ass

Phantom Kitty My Ass

Ok,

So it's 1 am and guess what I found?

Not one,

Not two

Not even three

but FOUR kittens in my living room.

I left the basement door open enough that Cinder could move them through and they all decided to mew at once and I heard them.

So apparently when Cinder just watched the first kitten with distaste, she was being all catly or something and refused to give up the location of the others.

Pics to follow.

Kittens.

Ugh.

FIVE of them.

Ugh.

-Tom

Ref: Phantom Kitty

Phantom Kitty

So there I was on Friday afternoon working on the house so that it can be painted. I was scraping and ripping down ivy and all that while trying not to think about my tooth since there were no dentists in or any who could see me until sometime next week.

I hate not having insurance.

So when I sat down that evening, I heard a very odd sound. A kitten was mewing in the basement - in that "I'm lost come find me" kind of way.

So I went downstairs and figured that it was coming from the same place that Cinder had her litter back in August. I knew that she had two and one was dead immediately and the other died within a day or so. What I saw was a black and white kitten around two weeks old. So then I thought: "Did she have another litter?"

Well, I pulled it from the basement and found a box for it. Since my cats are quarantined into the basement for a while, I left the kitten's box under a table so that it would be somewhat out of the way. After about two hours of it crying, I started to wonder where Cinder was. Since she can't get out and she has plenty of food - I couldn't figure out why she was letting it whine so much.

I went down to check on things and saw Cinder and Rusty looking down on it as though it were some kind of alien life form that was disrupting the harmony of their basement kingdom.

So I picked up Cinder to try and coax her into the box, and that's when it hit me. She's not lactating. Her nipples are flat and dry.

This was somewhat confusing but since I don't know that much about the care and raising of cats I called in my expert; my mother.

Since the 'Time before Times' she's been caring for animals. It is this quality of hers that earned me my first nickname while I was still en utero. She had always been taking home stray cats and such and nursing them back to health so I was simply another 'Tomcat' that she had found. At least that's one of the stories I've heard on the topic.

She suggested that I show some attention to the kitten in hopes of getting Cinder to take care of it - some kind of maternal jealousy thing I think. That didn't work. The kitten mewed and cried all night long without so much as a five-minute break between bursts.

Saturday morning came and it was still screaming for attention or food or both. I went down to check things out and Cinder was no where to be found and Rusty looked like a new father who had been up all night long with a screaming baby. Not a happy camper. I got a hold of my expert and asked for some advice. She said for me to bring it over to her house so I bundled up the meow-machine and headed over.

She has a few cats at her place (to put it mildly) and one of them had just finished nursing a litter of her own. The hope was that she might adopt this new kitten. While we were waiting to see if her cat would adopt the strange kitten, I had a chance to look through my journals to find out some dates. There was simply no way for Cinder to have gotten pregnant after her litter and had this kitten that fast. It's only been a month. Maybe 5 weeks at best and the kitten is, itself, at least two-weeks old (due to its eyes being open).

So I have no idea where the kitten came from. I did have a hole in my basement window's screen for about three days so it's possible another cat dropped it off down there - but I would have thought that Rusty - who almost never leaves - would have informed her that it was a bad idea. Also, I sealed the screen gap on Wednesday morning and didn't start hearing the kitten until Friday afternoon.

So where did the thing come from?

Phantom kitty.

Kitten Bulletin

Well, I went to the store last night to get some things and when I got home the kitten had been moved from the basket.

So I crawled under my bed to look for it since that was the place Cinder had taken it the past two times but this time it wasn't there.

I've watched Rusty, who was my spy yesterday - indicating the location of the kitten, and Cinder and neither of them seemed to even acknowledge that there was a kitten.

Cinder's shown no concern for where it might be and she slept on the floor of the office all night. I figured that she would probably return to the kitten at night or hear it mew or something. So far nothing.

I have a feeling that 'Miracle' is either dead or will be shortly and I have no idea where it is.

-T

Sole Survivor

Oh and get this...

I thought that Cinder was acting up this morning before the roofing project started but I couldn't keep my eye on her since I was hauling shingles. Both she and Rusty disappeared once people showed up around the house as usual so I didn't think that much about it.

When I got out of the shower and enjoying the freshness of getting all the sweat and shingle-grit off me, I saw that Cinder was considerably thinner and her rear legs were covered in mud.

I knew it. She had the kids while she was off hiding from the strangers. After crawling through all of the unfinished sections of the basement I found that there were a total of three births but only one survived. Cinder seemed to have no clue what was going on and once they were out of her she left them alone.

The kitten is not mewing now - probably exhausted from screaming its tiny lungs out so that Cinder (or me) would hear it and rescue it from the big brown spiders that patrol the basement. Right now it's curled up on a towel in an old laundry basket in a corner of my office. The sheet is an attempt to convince her that the kitten is 'hidden' from prying eyes.

Rusty, however, had other ideas.

He crawled in to the room like a ninja from the Nikotashi clan (hey, can I help it if I have weird dreams?) . Slowly, he extended his head to peer through the holes in the basket and examine the kitling. Cinder wasn't having none of it. When he got too close, she rared up on her hind legs and went after him with the infamous Northern Mouse Fu (somehow learned from the most honorable master Mouse who lived in Athens Ohio. Rusty was more confused than injured and attempted to evade but only fell over his gut in the process.


His curiosity was stronger than his wit and he tried to peer in once again and this time Cinder decided that she was just going to shove him out of the way with her shoulders.

I have no idea if the kitten will survive or if Cinder will try and play the "Let's Move the Kitten" Game a few more times.

Ugh.

For a Tuesday this has been quite an active day. I'm tired.

-T

Almost Forgot

Resees Minis - 6 (Damn!) , Situps - 40 (Ugh.), Pushups - 30 (Better)

Have you ever taken pictures on your camera and then forgotten that you had them? I take a lot of pics on my digital camera and will download them into my "raw" folder to be processed and reviewed later. I found these pics as I was cleaning out some of my photos and wanted to post them.
I had taken these pics in my grandfather's garage probably about a month ago. There, sitting in a funnel-shaped web in a pile of old flower pots, was this odd spider that didn't retreat from me. Immediately I grabbed my camera from my bag and tried to get some close shots of it. Normally I don't get the opportunity to take such detailed pictures so it was nice to try out that function on my camera. I zoomed in and took several shots and still the spider did not move. I began to think that it was dead but it would move a little if I blew at the web.


It was patient.

So, while speaking with my mother about the latest batch of job searches, I continued to take additional pictures and still the spider would not move.

This is the best shot, I think. It shows the legs bunched up so the spider can either retreat or pounce forward on whatever might enter its' web. Very Shelob. The image of the spider, immobile within the 'tunnel' of the web created reminded me of Xenomorphs from Aliens and all those early D&D games when I was a kid. A monstrous spider was never an encounter that we worried about. Unless someone got poisoned from a bite or tangled in a web there wasn't much of a problem. However, now that I look at this picture, I think I would be a bit less brave to hurl a fireball down range at such a thing. It has only two directions to go - backwards and forwards. As the "fighters" charge forward to engage the legs and fangs, I, as a Mage, would attempt to deal damage at range.

Only once did our Dungeon Master think that my fire spells would also catch the web on fire and cause us additional problems. Burning webs would fall from the ceiling like napalm and the silken floor would combust under your feet. I, like many Magi, quickly learned never to attack with fire in such cramped quarters.



It's still a cool picture of a spider.