News: Boss Kitties, Part n

I don't know about you, but I need some cute kitty overload to battle stress right about now.

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  see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!
  This cat has evolved beyond needing paws with opposable thumbs.
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  see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!
  I still like the Enterprise from some time ago more, but that's one boss kitty hangout.
• I nearly died laughing when I saw this greeting card, because it reminded me of Pandora. The biggest boss kitty of all time.
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  That kitten would totally pwn me. Little spotted kitty belly!
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  This cat is most definitely not feeling in charge. That's pretty much Dip's take, too, by the way she howls the entire way *anywhere*. (Granted, I think she's reacting more to being in the carrier, but she'd just freak if I let her out.) Spoon, being rather doglike to some degree, is pretty damn mellow in the car as long as he's not closed in a carrier and can see me. He'll just lie there, meowing once every few minutes to remind me he's there.

Air Journal: Heather'n'Dave'n'Noelle-a-thon

A month ago, I took a very long weekend to visit Heather'n'Dave in the Seattle area. Here's a rundown of the visit:

• I took the bus to the airport. I cut the schedule a little close, and then my first bus was a little late, so I missed the connecting bus. I got there with plenty of time to check in, but apparently my bag didn't. When I got to SeaTac, my bag didn't. Plus, there was additional confusion because there were big snowstorms throughout the Midwest, down into Texas. It was the day American canceled something like 600 flights, and while I wasn't flying American, the delays were affecting all the airlines. So, they didn't know exactly where my bag was or when it would get to the dreary Pacific Northwest.
• I took a bus to Bellevue. Whee! (Some people may be thinking it was about time I ended up in Bellevue, but that's the wrong one.)
• I warned Heather I was really braindead. Because work is perennially crazy these days, and, well, I was braindead.
• I had not quite managed to finish my baby shower gift for H'n'D before getting there, but I managed to finish about an hour after sitting down on their couch:
  
• I officially presented it to them the next day (like they didn't know what was coming), along with a gift for their first-grader, Noelle:
  
  Later I had to impersonate a jellyfish, because apparently that's what sea turtles eat.
• Noelle really liked watching me play Minecraft. She especially liked watching sheep get dyed various colors.
• The second evening, we went to the International District. Heather and Dave and found a promising Chinese restaurant on-line called the Red Lantern. We parked a few blocks away and when we got to the street it was on, Dave said, "There are red lanterns in that restaurant. That must be the place." Then I pointed out that there were also red lanterns in the place two doors down from that one. Turns out that neither one was The Red Lantern, which was on the next block.
• Afterwards, we went to Daiso, which is kind of a Japanese dollar store. I had heard of them before, but there aren't any near LA, so I'd never been. It was awesome. They had yarn, plus cool pill boxes which are great notions carriers, and these adorable little 3"-long pound cake tins.
  
• I now can't walk over a zebra-striped crossing without going, "White line! White line!"
• We reminisced about Pandora, who had delivered herself to H'n'D all those years ago in Glendora so she could then take over my life. I miss that cat.
• They have a big tuxedo cat named Marmaduke. He's about the same temperament as Spoon and about the same weight, but somehow he looks bigger. I think it's because Duke has a big paunch which makes him look like he swallowed a cantelope whole, whereas Spoon's avoir dupois is more evenly distributed along his body.
• It rained a lot.
• Dave showed me their backyard, which is on a hill, so they're having it terraced. Right now, it's mostly a big pile of dirt. Basically, they're playing Minecraft in their backyard.
• I got to hear all about Bellevue infrastructure politics. It sounds dirtier than Dave's backyard.
• Monday morning, I took the bus back to SeaTac.
• At the security checkpoint, the person in front of me and the person behind me were sent through the pornoscanner, but I got waved through the regular X-ray machine. Score!
• When I got to BUR, my bag was once again not at the claim. Ugh. Apparently several people from my flight had the same issue. Lucky for me, my bag had actually beaten me this time and was waiting for me. The others were not so lucky.
• Dipity was insanely happy to see me. Spoon was confused because Dipity was insanely happy to see me and that's usually his job.

All in all, I had an excellent time. It may not have been exciting, but I didn't need excitement. I needed Minecraft spectators and Japanese dollar stores and the like.

And congratulations to Heather and Dave, who welcomed their daughter Lily on Monday.

News: 'N'Stuff

Tranportation:

• An infographic of pedestrian deaths in cities around the world. Atlanta of all places is #1 at nearly 11 deaths per 100,000 residents. LA is only #3. (It's not clear if this is an absolute list of all cities or just a random sampling.)
• Amtrak and Greyhound are both actively adding wi-fi to their buses and train cars.
• Interesting take on the inconsistency and poor training of TSA agents (probably not their fault -- regulations seem to change every 5 minutes and who can keep up?) by someone with large amounts of titanium in his body.
• Some people are pushing for child-free flight options, but I'd be satisfied if parents just had to pass a simple common-sense child control test first.
• And an extremely catchy song about the TSA:
  

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I firmly believe that cats possess a genetic knowledge, and this is one of the items. The call of the can opener (not as used now that most cans of cat food and tuna have those pull-tabs) and fear of the vacuum cleaner (something Pandora refused to have) are two others. This one is in the same vein:

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The Stupid:

• In this article about America's obsession with smartphones, this guy Doug seriously has issues, proving once again that modern technology is affecting the course of natural selection, because I don't see how he would have survived this long without the thing. I fear for his offspring if the battery ever dies.
• And today's stupid criminal, courtesy of Ohio... Also unlikely candidate for prolonging her gene pool.

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Not having a hard time imaging Spoon if I actually baked a turkey...

Pandora's Litter Box

Pandora's been gone a year and a day now. I thought about her a lot yesterday, but then again, I think about her every day.

I miss my girl.

News: New News

On the road:

• General Motors is closing their commercial Hummer division after failing to find a buyer. Aw, now who's going to fill the gas-guzzling, road-hogging, male-compensation car niche? (The building next to mine has a parking space that seems to be reserved for undriveable cars. A couple years ago, it was occupied for several months by a black Hummer whose left front end was so crumpled it made me shudder for whatever it had hit.)
• Some cash-strapped cities are supposedly shortening yellow lights in order to increase revenue from people running into the red lights.
• And remember...

Random stuff:

• A new website features a virtual Hollywood stock exchange, à la fantasy sports sites. I could make a virtual fortune just by betting the most on the movies most likely to cause me physical pain.
• Apparently that unintentional creep-fest Polar Express gives monkey the heebie-jeebies, too!

Kitty funnies:

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When I first got Pandora, writing utensils would disappear. As that happens to everyone, I didn't think much of it, until one day when I was looking in a closet and found a cache of pens in the corner. Dipity also likes to carry stuff around, including the AAA battery I saw her with last night, but she doesn't have a hiding place for stuff. She'll just drop the things in random spots.

WTF stuff:

• A South Korean couple spent so much time in Internet cafes caring for a virtual child that their own infant died of neglect. WTF is wrong with some people?
• Let's finish off on a humorous WTF (although perhaps not so humorous to someone who got that message during a corporate meltdown with the boss breathing down their neck):
  

Pandora's Litter Box

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I'm pretty sure that's not true. I only ever found cat litter and the stuff that you use cat litter for in Pandora's box. I think it's safe to say I'd've gotten an earful if she found anything else in there.

Pandora's Litter Box: Ridin' the Bus With Pandora

Today would have been Pandora's 18th birthday (observed). The night before last I had a dream where she was following me around, like she used to do when we were young and foolish and lived on campus. In the dream, she got on the bus with me and curled up in my lap. I remember being worried that she was walking around with me on city streets, but she stayed with me.

I miss my girl.

Spoonerisms: Kitteh Update

Oh, you weren't trying to read this, were you?

The little kitty seems to be recovering well. She really, really doesn't like getting pills shoved down her throat, but she only has a couple more days of antibiotics. She did throw up this morning, but she seems to have gorged herself when I fed her this morning, as she had run out of food during the night. I can't imagine how she thought she could fit that amount of food in her little belly. But she hasn't spent the night meowing pitifully at the open window for three nights running now, so I think she's getting used to the idea of being an indoor-only cat.

Spoon is getting antsy to meet her, but she still seems scared of the idea. I'm going to give her a few more days, at least until she finishes the trauma of twice-daily pilling and gets over any remaining sluggishness, as cats tend to be even more defensive when they don't feel well. I hope she adapts to him; Pandora did, although it took awhile, but she had the advantage of being here first, so it was her territory, and, well, of being the indomitable Pandora. Spoon just wants a buddy, but he's a big cat and he's so overeager that I can see how he'd be scary to a little kitty. I know he's a total pushover, but she doesn't.

And, well, I've decided that I guess she's pretty much mine. Even if someone came forward at this point, I did have that one caller who said she'd seen her for at least a month, so I could easily make a case of abandonment. So, meet Serendipity, the little Dipity Kitty.

Pandora's Litter Box: Pandora's Shanty

As I've mentioned before, I play the MMORPG Puzzle Pirates, where you're basically a little nose-less cartoon pirate who plays puzzles. A couple years ago, for one of their "Pimp My Sloop" forum contests, I came up with the following. I was bored, and I do strange things when I'm bored. Like email CNN and tell them they need to stop making Michael Jackson their top news story or else change their name to "Celebrity News Network." Anyway, here's The Ballad of Pandora. I can't even tell you now how long I spent trying to extract fuzzy Pandora from pictures so I could paste her into screen shots from the game.

The Ballad of Pandora

There now is a cat named Pandora
Who truly did come from Glendora
She looks at her person
Wonders if there's a worse 'un
And dreams of sailing to Bora Bora

She'd take to the high seas in style
Her fuzzy lips they would curl in a smile
But without a sweet sloop
She can't fly the coop
She'll just have to keep dreaming awhile

She wants the wind to ruffle her fur
Go so fast that the sky is a blur
She'd slosh in the rum
Though the crew might get some
But left at home she'll think you're a cur

Under the sun she'd pad on the deck
Shoot some ships until they're a wreck
She'd give orders and bandy
Plank lazers someplace sandy
And she'd really keep those brigands in check

But some cheap sloop won't do for this kitty
Because really she is much too much pretty
Her ship needs to be sleek
Anything less is just weak
And her ego is not itty-bitty

Taking to the high seas is a great leap
But my kitty locked at home I can't keep
She must rule the waves
Hide her treasure in caves
Or else she might kill me in my sleep

Pandora's Litter Box: The Training of the Human

(This post is dedicated to my fuzzy butt kitty, who definitely had me trained.)

The June 2009 issue¹ of Scientific American has an article titled "The Taming of the Cat." After reading the article, not to mention living with cats my whole life, I really think it would have been more accurate to call it "The Training of the Human." It really gives the impression that humans didn't domesticate cats as much as the cats just kind of decided to move in. "Well, there are mice over there and the humans seem too stupid to catch them. They also throw out all the good parts of the big animals they eat. They're pretty dumb, but they don't seem too bad overall, although the smaller versions are much scarier than the big ones, always shrieking and running and pulling our tails. Ouch! Ok, time for some claw-point corporal punishment! Teach you to do that again!"

And according to Heather, that's pretty much how Pandora showed up at Heather'n'Dave's, a filthy, undersized, 5-month-old ball of fur. (She was, at that time, one of the ugliest cats I had ever seen. She grew into one of the most beautiful.) Her appearance was so mysterious, I thought of her as being sui generis, the result of spontaneous generation. If any creature could will herself into being, Pandora was it.

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¹Which I have finished, which means I am on the July issue and it's still July! Of course, I probably won't actually finish the July issue in July, and of course the August issue has already arrived, but at least I'm almost caught up!

Spoon'n'Me After Pandora

Spoon seems almost as out-of-sorts as I feel. He seems even more confused than normal, if that's possible. He kept a close eye on me the first day, engaging in extensive weather-inappropriate snuggling, and for once, I welcomed it. Pandora never let him be a buddy, but her presence was inescapable for him as much as for me.

I am, of course, second-guessing myself. The choice to put my little calico Clio to sleep nearly three years ago was patently obvious, if terribly painful. She had an aggressive cancer which was not responding to chemo. Further treatment options remained, but they were terribly invasive and painful, with a very low chance of success. I could not put her through that.

Pandora may have had a better chance at recovery, but I have to believe that, even if she did, it was slim and would have been terribly painful and painfully terrifying to a creature that cannot understand what is happening and why. But I don't think she would have made it. I hope I'm not just rationalizing my decision. The vet said she would need a transfusion in the immediate future, as her blood pressure was so low and the fluids were diluting the blood too much. Feline transfusions carry a higher risk of serious complications than they do in humans. She was almost certainly bleeding internally. The radiologist would not get in for several more hours, so a crucial sonogram was effectively far in the future. If she was bleeding internally, surgery would have almost certainly been necessary. If she had even survived surgery and they found the problem and repaired it, recovery at her age and in her extremely weak condition would probably have been long and difficult. And if she were septic, as they suspected, that had a good chance of killing her and painfully.

With her prospects so grim, I played the odds that she was just not likely to survive this ordeal, and as her condition steadily worsened, I just didn't want her to suffer more. She literally went from able to walk around, although with obvious difficulty, to being unable to hold up her head in a matter of hours. She was so weak when I went to say goodbye. And above all, if she was going to die, I wanted it to be painless and I wanted to be there for her to provide any comfort I could in her last moments.

I was raised in a home where pets are a treasure but where we have a lifetime responsibility to them. That responsibility extends not only toward making sure they have a good life, but also toward making sure they have a good quality of life. I am very grateful that veterinary medicine has made so much progress during my lifetime, but I also am acutely aware that keeping a pet alive as long as possible is ultimately not as important as making sure that I am not keeping a suffering animal alive for the wrong reasons. Allowing an animal to suffer for my own selfishness would cause me more pain in the long run than the loss alone.

I hope I did the right thing. I declined a necropsy because knowing the root cause would not only not change anything now, but I just don't want to know. And, honestly, the thought of having them cut into my kitty for what seemed like a pointless exercise was unbearable.

I will eventually get Spoon a new friend, hopefully a cat who will welcome his presence more than Pandora did. I got Spoon less than two weeks after I lost Clio. I knew that I couldn't replace her (she was, in her own way, as singular as Pandora), but at the time, I needed to feel like I was making a difference in another animal's life. Pandora, though, she so pervaded my sense of self, I'll need more time. I know no two cats are alike, that they all have unique personalities, but hers was fantastic and extraordinary, and I need to wait longer until I can appreciate a new kitty for who they are.

Pandora was an iconic figure who ruled my life (but was more than welcome to do so), but she was also my pet, my companion, and the best lap kitty. I simply cannot express how grateful I will always be that I had over 17 years with her.

Miss Pandora

Pandora Fuzzy Butt Awesome Kitty
August 1991 - July 22, 2009

Picture from our 17th anniversary, plus 12 days

I will always miss my girl.

Pandora's Litter Box: Feline Dental Hygiene

Note the little "here's where we put the IV" bald spot on his right leg

Spoon got his teeth cleaned today. Because it's impossible to keep one cat segregated from food and water¹ in a one-bedroom, two-cat apartment, particularly when one of the cats is Pandora, and expect to get any sleep, I boarded him at the vet the night before. Pandora had a 24-hour, Spoon-free party zone. It felt weird without him, though.

And, of course, I felt a little guilty. He doesn't really have a favorite non-wand toy that I could send with him. I decided I should make a mini-version of the squares blanket with the leftover yarn so he can take it with him when he's not at home. Or something. I'm still so burned out from finishing the big one that it's going to be some time before I can face even a small one.

Pandora sheds on Spoon's blankie while he's gone

I picked him up this evening. As part of the discharge instructions, the assistant told me to keep his activity level low for the next day. "I'm not sure it can get any lower than it already normally is." He was actually pretty excited on the drive back, when normally he'll just lay in the carrier as long as I keep the lid open. He really wanted to get out. He wanted some love, dammit!

For a cat who was supposedly going to have a sore mouth, he sure is talking up a storm, demanding lots of attention. Pandora was less-than-thrilled to have him back. He's a little lethargic right now, even for him, but he seems to be doing fine.

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¹For those who've never had dental work done on their pets, the animals must be anaesthetized during the procedure to keep them comfortable and pliable.

Pandora's Litter Box: My Highly-Specialized Lobe-Finned Fish

For reasons which now elude me (oh, I remember now¹), I ended up perusing the wikipedia article on tetrapods. While discussing classification of various tetrapoda (Greek for "four-legged critters") throughout various geologic periods, the article throws out the note, "Each of these lineages, however, remains grouped with the tetrapoda, just as Homo sapiens could be considered a very highly-specialized kind of lobe-finned fish."

As Pandora was draped across my lap (part of the reason I was perusing wikipedia articles at nearly 2 in the morning -- she was too cute to disturb), it struck me that she is just as much a highly-specialized lobe-finned fish as I am. I suspect that will be my new pet name for her, replacing the current favorite of Ms Fuzzy Pants ("Ms Pants" for short).

Added: Things I would have mentioned originally had I actually been awake when I posted.

• Green Dam's full name is "Green Dam Youth Escort." The Chinese government claims the software is necessary to keep their youth clean ("green") from exposure to pornography, except, well, that's not all the Great Firewall of China is blocking at the moment, is it? The computer's user also has no way of finding out which sites are on the software's internal (and remotely update-able) black list.
• American PC makers Dell and HP⁶ still have not agreed to pre-install the software, although they also haven't categorically refused to do so. There are plenty of places you can go to sign petitions telling them not to cave in. You can find one here, complete with a typo in the first line of the message. (I'm sending them an email right now to tell them to, oh, send another set of eyes over those things before posting syntactically incorrect notices in an attempt to change the world.)
  
• Spoon is not so much a highly-specialized lobe-finned fish as he is a highly-chubby lobe-butted cat.

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¹How I ended up reading the wikipedia article on tetrapods:

1. This article on "Green Dam," China's software for Windows PCs that would allow them to restrict and spy on their citizens' Internet usage with greater ease than their border firewalls do today², had a "Most Popular in Science" sidebar, where...
2. ... this article on the long-beaked echidna was #3! Take a look at that picture and tell me that's not some creature out of Doctor Who! Anyway, the long-beaked echidna is, with the short-nosed echidna and our wacky pal the platypus, one of three surviving monotremes, extremely archaic mammals. I was trying to figure out where they (or we) branched off in the mammalian family tree, so I started poking around to see if I could find an actual, well, pictorial family tree. That's when I came across
3. The Tree of Life Web Project, and working backwards from the Mammalia page, hit the terrestrial vertebrate ("Stegocephalians") page, and
4. Actually, I'm really tired, but moving even one limb lower on the tree came up with a lovely picture of our wacky, great-great-...-great-great-aunt, the ovoviviparous coelacanth, and I said, "That's wacky!" (it was really late, but not as late as it is now). Anyway, you and I and great-aunt Coel³ there are all sarcopterygians, so deal with it.

²Note the NY Times article nowhere mentions that the software is Windows-specific. Those goddamned Apple (Steve Jobs is seriously the antichrist, and no, your only other computer choice is not Bill Gates) commercials aside, I see "PC" and my brain automatically assumes that, were I given access to the box, Linux and/or FreeBSD would be installed on the thing forthwith. Vista even makes it easy to shrink existing partitions so you can have space for another OS without needing third-party disk management software! Does the Chinese government also block sites from which one can download Linux or FreeBSD? Because you can put all the nasty software on the Windows partition that you want, and it's not going to matter if you're running another fucking operating system.^4
3I actually have a (twice-over) great-aunt Ceil, although I actually have no idea how she spells her name. (I'm guessing.)⁷ But she doesn't look like that great-aunt Coel, at least no more than you or I or Pandora.
⁴Yes, I'm cranky. Just because you may have to water a few things down (notice I did not say "dumb down") to make science writing digestible by a nonspecialized audience doesn't mean you, the writer, have a right to be, well, dumb. The absence of mention of a specific OS actually confused me further, because then I had to start wondering if they were confusing "software" with "firmware" and meant the filtering took place at the hardware level. I had to look up Green Dam elsewhere to figure it out.^5
5Note that if I didn't believe Intelligent Design was created by morons, I probably would have been in bed an hour ago.
⁶Smack yourself if you saw that and immediately thought "Harry Potter."
⁷Answered: I asked my mother and it's "Cile."

Pandora's Litter Box: The Spoon and Pandora Show!

I was hanging out on the sofa with Pandora again today, and Spoon did the whole "wedge your oversized butt in between us even though there's plenty of space on the other side of the sofa" thing. Fortunately, I had my camera handy.

(Spoon has a total inability to settle down right away. He usually has to go through about three or four arrangements before deciding on one.)

Pandora doesn't usually trust having Spoon that close, but I think she was actively refusing to be disturbed and knew that if either of them made a fuss, I would most likely kick them both off the couch.

Bonus Pandora belly pic!

Pandora's Litter Box: Mini Kitty

It's hard to get an idea of just how small Pandora is. I'm always shocked after she gets her clip. I've said she's 50% fur by volume, but it may be even more than that. It's hard to show a side-by-side comparison of the Pandora and Spoon because they aren't exactly snuggle-buddies.

Here's a picture from last night where Pandora was curled up on the couch and Spoon had to insert his monster butt between us. After he stuck the tail in her face, she picked up her head, then put it back down, deciding, I guess, that at least he hadn't actually planted his big ass directly on her head. Note that largeness of the butt and you'll understand why she might be worried.

Here's a size comparison. Their bodies are in approximately the same somewhat-curved pose, and I approximated where Spoon's head would be if he put it down. Note also the difference in girth compared to the width of the yardstick.

I also measured around their bellies. Pandora is a petite 15" (how in God's name did Victorian women cinch their waists down to 17"?). Spoon is more like 23" in circumference.

I hope this has been educational.

Pandora's Litter Box: The 4th Annual Defuzzification

Ever since Pandora hit her teenage years, the joints have gotten a little stuff and she just can't keep up with the grooming while her winter coat is shedding. To prevent serious dreadlocks and keep her cooler in the summer, I started getting her a "kitten clip." Today, she had her fourth clip.

Last week...

Now...

Added! Aerial view:

Ok, Spoon didn't get clipped. I'll let him hide behind the "I'm not fat; my coat is deceptively thick" story.

Oh, and here's Pandora's little bow:

Knittin' Crap: Cute In Any Language!

Last weekend I made my first amigurumi off a Japanese-language pattern. It was a monumental feat, but I pulled it off:



Yes, thank you, I was amazed with myself, also.

For an encore, I decided to move up in complexity from two crocheted parts to... a lot more.


... which becomes...


(Gratuitous action shots with cats clearly not in action:)

I also made this little baby seal. The baby seal has a few technical problems. There were weird short rows to do the snout shaping. I sat for about 20 minutes looking at the chart, saying, "um, that row ended here, so why does the next row start all the way over there?" and then decided I should just try it. My snout ended up all puckered, unlike the pattern photo, so I either didn't do it quite right or just not very well. I'm not sure if actually being able to read Japanese might or might not have helped in that situation, but it's a moot point since I can't and staring at it for 20 minutes didn't magically make the small amount of text pointing at the snout make sense. Oh, and the yarn I used for the grey nose was too thick, but it was all I could find, so that probably didn't help. Also, my seal's belly isn't as flat as it should be, so he tips over onto his nose. Oh, well. He's still really cute. I just hope the bunny costume I make will fit. (I'm not joking. The book has a bunny costume pattern for the seal, and I am going to make it. I think I'll pass on the baby chick costume, though. No, I'm serious. How many costumes does a baby seal need? He's not Elton John.)

And let's not discuss why, but I've also set up to make two garments from Japanese patterns. Actually, the first one is a tunic I'm sort of designing on the fly from a Japanese crochet block pattern. (Yeah, good luck on that one.) The second one is from this book's cover pattern, if you can see it under the glare. I'll need even more luck on that one.


Oh, I almost forgot to give Pandora her shout-out for helping me by keeping the pattern book open to the page I needed. Actually, this photograph shows the one time she managed to keep the book open without lying on top of the page I needed.