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      Saturday, March 05, 2005

01:36 PM - 03/05/2005 The topic: Cats, it’s about cats ---------------------------------------------- Saturday, March 5, 2005 Feh.  Declawing.  Feh. :banghead “Some people have their reasons, reasons other people may not understand, but their valid reasons anyway”....Yeah, like the email I got from someone expecting kudos because they declawed their cats so their cats could hang with them in the backyard and not go over the fence. :B-no Reasons?  Nah, excuses, justifications, trying to make themselves feel better about themselves because they mutilated their cats.  Ignorance, I understand, because vets push it as a side order to spay or neuter surgery.  I’m so glad that more and more people are starting to do some investigation into in before having it done. Save the furniture?  We’ve got thirtyfour cats for pity’s sake.  Our furniture isn’t in shambles.  The cat trees are, but the furniture isn’t.  For one thing, the cats DO have plenty of their own furniture to tear up.  And another thing, I keep our furniture covered, unless company is coming over.  Hey, it’s not lovely, but it saves the furniture from dust, cat fur, cat puke, pee, whatever…and it also keeps it from getting scratched.  Not that they try too much on the furniture. If it’s not done for the direct health of the cat, if it’s done exclusively for owner convenience, it’s a bad thing.  And I ain’t gonna change my feelings about that, ever. And don’t try to convince me that it’s comparable to spay/neuter.  Did I mention we have thirty four cats?  Someone, somewhere, didn’t spay or neuter in the past and let their cats roam and that’s why there’s so many cats at our house.  We did start to spay and neuter those roaming cats and now the population is down.  Figure Little Bit had eight kittens last year, all by her little old self.  Lord knows how many more Carla would have had.  Doesn’t take long for the population to get up there again. Spay/neuter also has some direct health benefits for the cat. Declaw only causes problems, doesn’t fix anything. Except the owner having to take a little more time with kitty. Feh.  Absolutely disgusting.  Which reminds me, I have quite a few stories to put up, I haven’t updated those in a while.  Maybe today is the day. DeeJay is regaining some of the weight he’d lost.  He was back up to 6.12 yesterday, up from 6.08 last week.  I sure wish the glucosamine/chondroitan would kick in.  I know it can take up to two weeks to show any improvement.  His back legs are just so weak. I wonder if maybe he might have hurt one by jumping up or jumping down on something.  I trimmed his front claws last night, I still need to do the little side claws on each of his front paws.  I noticed him getting caught in things, so this might help a little.  His mind is as sharp as ever, it’s his body that’s not doing so well.  What timing.  I just checked my email, got a rant from someone who disagrees with my views on declawing.  Started out nice enough, then started in and I hit delete without even finishing it.  Moron. And according to the stats, they only hit two pages before deciding to tell me off.  It seems almost like they angrier they get with me, the more okay it makes what they’ve done to their cat. Oh, well, they’ll get theirs someday, Karma is pretty good like that. We haven’t seen Carla in a couple of days. There were a few mornings I went out and hardly any food had been eaten, but KittyMeeze was there waiting for breakfast.  The past two mornings the bowls have been cleaned out, but still no sign of Carla.  I hope she’s okay. And it’s so good to see KittyMeeze here.  He’s my morning miracle, I swear.  If I don’t see him snoozing on the bank, I’ll usually see him up in the cathouse. Mickey and Sammy got dosed with Advantage this morning.  They’ve both been scratching and biting at themselves, so I figured it was time.  Mickey has been doing so well, his fur was almost all grown back in.  I hope I caught it in time.  Something else I just thought of is mosquitos.  With all of the rain we’ve had, they’re going to be a definite problem.  They’ve already started and it’s only March. The other day, the doors were open and Opie came flying through the yard and into the house.  Curious, I went looking for him and saw him in the bedroom, next to the bed, licking quickly at his right haunch.  My guess is he laid on a bee.  He tore out of the bedroom when I went in to check on him and I later found him up in the rafters in the garage where he was none the worse for wear.  Good. And speaking of bees, Jackson was very involved with something at the sliding door.  I just ignored it for a while, but when there were five cats checking it out, I had to see for myself.  It was a bumblebee.  In the house, between the open slider and the fixed panel.  The problem would be getting it out without hurting it or having a cat go after it.  I ended up getting a big plastic cup and a heavy piece of paper, quickly cupping the bee with the cup against the glass and sliding the paper between the glass and the cup.  I took it outside and tossed cup, paper and bee onto the lawn.  The bee flew away, I brought the cup in and threw out the paper.  Whew.  It’s a pretty nice day today and to celebrate, the doors and window are opened.  Little Bit knows I open the door for her now and she waits in her hole, head sticking up, until I back off enough for her comfort, then she climbs up, walks over to the door and walks outside.  A far cry from the dashing she used to do.  She doesn’t much dash anymore. And when she walks I’m seeing things about her I didn’t know.  Like she has a little limp.  I’m not really surprised, because she spent so much time crossing the street and this could be why KittyMeeze went missing at one point (I’ve found that cats can be very protective and comforting of an ill or injured cat friend and KM is no exception).  Yesterday morning I watched her stretching out on the cement of the patio, going over to her back and just rolling back and forth, back and forth.  She looked really, really happy, content.  It made me smile. Well, that’s cat stuff for now! | Permalink

      Sunday, March 06, 2005

05:55 PM - 03/06/2005 The topic: Allergies.  Gotta love ‘em. ---------------------------------------------- Sunday, March 6, 2005  Well, after a week of waking up with a headache (no, not Brian) and being extremely tired throughout the day, I finally realized what it is.  It’s the same thing that hits me every year at this time.  Yes, I believe I’m a victim to what the marketing folks on Madison Avenue refer to as “seasonal allergies”.  Gah.  With all of the rain we’ve had and no chance to dry out, the lawns are spongy.  And I’m sure we’re getting quite a bit of mold spores in the air.  The pleasant little breezes we get in the afternoons carry more with them than fresh air.  Bleh. Last Sunday, we went to Trader Joe’s early in the morning.  We planned on going there, then out to breakfast, then home, or if it was late enough, head on over to CostCo.  There was no milk in the house, so I couldn’t have cereal and there weren’t enough eggs for the two of us.  That’s why we decided to go to breakfast.  Of course, there aren’t too many restaurants open for breakfast at that time of the morning, on a Sunday (a little after eight).  Brian suggested going to a little place out on Olde Highway 80 by the name of Marieta’s.  He used to eat there on a regular basis when his shop was in that area.  It had been years and I said “sure”.  Well, there was no place to park at Marieta’s.  So, we decided to head out to the little restaurant in Descanso.  I had the French toast combo (a piece of thick bread cut into two, dipped in batter and fried), two scrambled eggs and hash browns.  And a biscuit (good thing I ain’t afraid of carbs). Breakfast was purty good. Brian made the observation that this is one of those places that’s only good if you only go there on occasion.  When we left, he asked if I wanted to go home, or maybe just go for a ride.  It was too early to go to Costco, we had plenty of time to cruise through the back country.  It would be nice to see what the recent rains had wrought.  And what a coincindence, I’d just put my old camera in the car since I have two in the house to use.  I’ve been talking about doing this for months and more than once I’ve thought “geez, I wish I had a camera”. Well, now I did.  So, I took pictures.  I took quite a few and I put up some of the better ones this afternoon.  I put them in the road trip section of the family album.  I haven’t had a chance to label them yet, but they’re up past Lake Cuyamaca.  There are a couple that are pretty big, because I didn’t want to lose any clarity.  Apologies to those of you on dialup, but at least the size is listed in the thumbnails. I haven’t gotten much done lately, because I’ve been so tired.  Friday, I went into the bedroom and laid across the bed, smurgling the cats and looking out the window.  It started to rain and it was really relaxing.  I told Brian he should come check it out.  We were still in our walking clothes, stretched out on the bed, watching and listening to the rain.  And we fell asleep.  My mom called a little before nine, worried that there was something wrong.  I just laughed and told her I’d fallen asleep.  After our short conversation, I laid back down and went back to sleep.  At nine thirty, Brian jumped up and started undressing, headed for the shower.  It seems he was supposed to have left something out at his shop for pickup.  Oops. But it was really nice to just lay there, sleeping. Then Friday evening, the rain started again.  We had over an inch from six Friday evening to six Saturday morning.  And the lawn is spongier than ever. I like the day after the rain, because the air is so clear and you can see forever.  But as the days go on, it starts to get hazy from all of the evaporate in the air.  Next week, it’s supposed to be pretty pleasant, even start getting warm. That will sure be nice to open up the house again.  If I can find something to lessen the effects of my allergies, I’ll be doing some much needed housecleaning.  Or maybe some much needed paperwork.  That’s been falling behind, too. Thursday night we went to Applebee’s for the first time since Stephen and Joanne were here.  We sat at the bar and I must say, Boston and Nick (the barkeeps) are two really nice kids.  You know, I honestly think if it weren’t for them, we’d probably hardly ever go out. Which we do less now than we did last year, now that I’m cooking on a regular basis. Last week, I noticed that my SpamEaterPro mail program kept hanging up.  I narrowed it down to one of the websites I made for Brian.  I checked it out, the website was gone.  I figured the host was just having a glitch when I noticed the same thing for ranchita.com and ranchitaranch.com.  I contacted the host, their server crashed and they were moving files over.  A few days later I’m notified they can’t reconstruct my websites.  They’ll move them to the new server, upgrade the accounts for my “inconvenience” and let me know the login/passwords when they’re set up.  They send me the new information and I can get into one of the sites with no problem.  Turns out I forgot to change the name servers on the other two.  I get that done and a day later, they other two sites still aren’t coming up. I play with the passwords and it turns out the login/password for ranchita worked for ranchitaranch and nothing worked for ranchita.  I contact them again.  “Sorry about that, here’s your new information.”  *sigh*  That worked.  But what a pain in the arse because I didn’t have any of the sites backed up.  At least, I didn’t realize that I did.  One, I had to go over to the wayback machine to find the graphics of the site (I guess I got rid of them when I reformatted my old hard drive).  The other, I tried patching the pictures together, then found a directory on my computer that held all of the information.  Whew. That was close.  I still have to put up ranchita.com, but it was only one page and I’m not real worried about it at this point.  The booger was ranchitaranch.com.  But it’s up and running and I even got the counter working on it.  Big woohoo. So, that’s it for now.  Got some laundry in the laundry room that needs to be dealt with.  You know, take the dry stuff out so I can put the wet stuff in.  And put the dry stuff on the sofa where it belongs, to keep the sofa free from cat stuff. | Permalink

      Monday, March 07, 2005

07:47 AM - 03/07/2005 The topic: Walking tally ---------------------------------------------- Monday, March 7, 2005  When we first started walking a couple of years ago, we didn’t notice the money.  But as we walked, we started to see it.  A penny here, a dime there.  The more we walked, the more often we seemed to find money.  Never any paper money, always change.  And last month, I ‘coined’ the term “coindar”.  Now, my coindar seems to be a little better than Brian’s on average.  One day, I found two quarters.  Another time, I find nine dimes.  And there is usually a couple of pennies to be found each day.  Some days more, some days none.  Something we noticed when we first started finding money, was when one of us found something, the other started scouring the streets and walkways with our eyes, looking for more.  We both do it.  And we laugh about it. This morning started out nicely.  I found two pennies before we turned the third corner.  Then, much to my amazement, Brian found a quarter in the gutter by the school over on Greenfield.  Gutters in front of schools are a good place for finding coins, as are parking lots in front of bars.  *grin*  Then, walking up Royal Road, I found another penny. Today’s tally was .28.  Almost enough for a half of a doughnut at Rose Donuts (in my opinion, so much better than a Krispy Kreme). And I woke up with a headache again.  Took three Excedrin before our walk.  Came home, had my cereal and now my tummy is upset.  I think today I’ll drink lots of water and do what I can to flush the allergy toxins out of my system.  What a great way to wake up. On our walks, sometimes we talk about the way things are.  Last week, there was an article in the newspaper about public transportation in San Diego county.  Ridership is down.  And they found it’s down because the transportation doesn’t go to where people live or where people work.  My opinion is because the area has gotten so built up.  And in the summer, who wants to walk a mile to a bus stop when it’s freaking hot outside?  You need to take a shower once you get to work.  Brian made the point that places like San Francisco and cities back east do okay with public transportation.  And I pointed out that those places also have corner stores in neighborhoods.  But here, where we live, there are no corner stores.  There are in San Diego, but not out here in the county.  See, they zoned them away back in 1974.  Sure, if you had a store, you could keep it, but once you died, that store was gone, too. The only corner stores around here, and they’re not on the corner, but on the main street, are 7/11 stores.  Or strip malls, but the little corner store of yesteryear is long gone.  The nearest grocery store is a couple of miles away and perishibles would most likely be perished by the time you get home if you took public transportation or walked.  The ice cream would no longer be ice and the milk would be warm and probably wouldn’t last as long. They’re zoning away America. It’s really kind of sad. | Permalink

10:21 AM - 03/07/2005 The topic: This is disturbing…. ---------------------------------------------- Monday, March 5, 2005 This was posted over at one of the forums I visit “Hunting proposal targets roaming cats”. This is in Wisconsin.  Now, is the hunter who is proposing this so hard up for things to kill that he needs to shoot cats?  We talk about hunting every once in a while and Brian firmly believes the only reason you should kill an animal is if it directly threatens you or you need to put food on the table.  In other words, sport hunting is a bad thing (I’m not a fan of hunting, either). Gah.  I say make it open season on people who speed on residential streets.  And land developers.  Developers do much to decimate the bird population. Let’s make that a law.  Geez…. Deer, elk, pheasant, ducks, they’re not enough now, let’s start shooting at the friendly neighborhood feline.  The one which is owned by no one, but owned by all.  There is a website up for Wisconsiners who disagree with this.  It’s http://www.dontshootthecat.com/.  The word has to get out about this impending atrocity.  Spread it.  Contact news agencies.  Contact humane associations. Hell, contact PETA.  If it’s bowing to public pressure then put the pressure on. Damned idiot sport hunters. What a bunch of big frigging men. My mom had some sad news last week. She finally was able to catch Patch.  I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but Patch (I think she’s one of Lisa’s siblings) had a problem with her ears.  Patch was a white cat with a spot of grey on her head, between her ears.  She’d have been better off if the grey had been on her ears, because she got cancer on her ears. She’s had a problem with them for a couple of years now.  I told mom it sounded like cancer to me.  Well, last week, mom was able to pick Patch up and take her to the vet.  And the vet said there was nothing that could be done and Patch was dispatched to the rainbow bridge.  Mom said that she’d been worried for a while, not able to sleep at night because of the coyote sightings in her neighborhood.  Well, she worried mostly about Patch. Patch was feral.  Not like KittyMeeze is feral, more like Jackson is feral.  Patch had been fixed, but didn’t get very much human socialization at a young age and wasn’t amenable to being picked up.  She’d run first. That’s how mom knew it wasn’t a good sign when she was able to pick up a weakened kitty. And she spent the next couple of days cleaning blood off of the areas where Patch would sleep.  Even in her car, since mom had put blankets down for Patch inside and would leave the window cracked for her to get in.  It was a safe place for Patch to sleep at night. This past weekend, mom was wakened by a gawdawful racket on her driveway.  She turned on the light and looked out. There were three coyotes on her driveway, howling and yipping and turning her blood ice cold.  She didn’t go outside, but yelled at them to get away.  She said she’s going to get some sort of spray to shoot at them. She doesn’t care if it hurts them, she wants them to stay away from her place.  I’m sure glad she started keeping her cats in when she did.  And she is, too.  She knew they were safe. What a nightmare. Hey, maybe we could get those Wisconsin hunters to hang out around here and do something good and get rid of the damned coyotes. KittyMeeze spent the night elsewhere Sunday.  He was here Saturday night, but not Sunday morning.  I did see the motion detector lights come on early Sunday morning, so I would think that’s when he and Carla were here, finished up the food, then went over to her place.  He was here last night and this morning.  And when we got back from our walk, he was sleeping next to the gate by the entry way. I took some pictures yesterday, just playing around.  It was a pretty nice day.   DeeJay Richie and Little Bit hanging out in the weeds by the pool Which is something we need to take care of, and soon.  The ground is close to perfect for weed pulling.  Well, that’s about it for now.  Hope you have a great day. | Permalink

      Tuesday, March 08, 2005

10:08 AM - 03/08/2005 The topic: Today’s take… ---------------------------------------------- Tuesday, March 8, 2005  Well, we went up to the top of Icky Hill this morning, then over to the school that’s behind my mom’s house.  I was pretty happy with the way the walk went, happy that getting to the top of the hill wasn’t as bad as I feared it would be.  (You know how a couple of years ago, I lost 48 pounds, well, I think I’ve packed most of that back on.  I’m not sure, because I haven’t gotten on the scales, but I did have to buy new pants for the Disney trip last October, those size tens from the previous year were getting stretched to their limit.)  I thought we’d find some money by the school, I figure kids and drunks aren’t really careful, but we didn’t find a thing. Today’s tally: .00 Brian came home early yesterday, washed my car, then we went shopping.  We were low on pet food, so we hit the pet store and $140.00 (plus change) later, we left.  Then over to CostCo where I had a slice of pizza for lunch.  When we got home, I put away the groceries and Brian emptied the cat food bags into the container.  I still have to stack the canned. I wasted the afternoon trying to find a new stat tracker for the websites.  I have a really nice log analyzer, but my current host doesn’t have the access logs in the format needed for the analyzer. I did find one that will work with the .gz format, but it isn’t real time.  I do like it, though, much more than the one that my host provides. And unlike many of the analyzers I found, I can use this on all of my websites, since it’s run from my computer.  There’s a thirty day trial and I’ll most likely buy it at the end of the trial.  I’ll keep my current stat tracker on the websites, too, because that one is real time.  I checked the website where I got it to see if there were any updates.  He no longer supports this version and it would appear he’s no longer doing anything on his most recent incarnation.  I really can’t see paying $250.00 for something that doesn’t get upgrades. I haven’t had the heater come on the past three mornings.  Today it was okay at first, since my body was pretty heated up from the walk, but about forty-five minutes ago, I started feeling really cold.  Doors, windows were shut (once I realized Little Bit was in, for some reason, that mattered) and I turned on the furnace.  It was only five degrees cooler in the house, but that really made a big difference.  It might be that it’s so foggy and wet outside this morning.  I never did get paperwork done yesterday, although I started getting it ready last night by stacking unopened mail on my desk.  A big mistake, because some kitty puked on it last night.  *sigh*  And this morning, when I hit the “print” for employee checks, the daggum printer wouldn’t print.  So, Brian left without payroll.  I ended up uninstalling the HP and re-installing it.  First time I chose the wrong software and the check printed out wrong. Oops.  So frustrating when I’m in a hurry.  I ended up going into the kitchen and making Brian’s lunch while the computer rebooted. As for his lunch, the last time we had roast beef, there was enough left over for a sandwich, so I made him one.  I cook my roasts in the crockpot and they’re usually nice and stringy.  When I was a kid my mom made roasts in the oven that were like that, big chunks of meat, not sliced like at restaurants.  And I’ve always liked those better.  But that doesn’t make very pretty sandwiches.  I’ve found if I use less water while it cooks, the roast is drier and doesn’t fall apart quite so easily, better for slicing.  Well, Brian raved about how good that sandwich was, so the last time we bought meat at CostCo, I bought some roasts to make just for his lunch.  And yesterday, I cooked one, took it out last night and wrapped it good in aluminum foil and sliced it up this morning.  All the while grouching about the damned printer not working.  I used the electric knife since I don’t have any serrated edge meat knives and my thumb started to hurt, holding down on that button.  If I make a habit out of this, I’ll have to get a decent knife (my thumb still bothers me from the time I fell on it trying to get the cats in the house one night; I jammed it pretty badly and the area that hurts is actually more towards the side of my hand-I know one day it will just stop hurting). It was kind of killer, to smell that cooking and not be able to have it for dinner.  We had rolled tacos and guacamole I’d made up for Sunday dinner (we had bean and cheese burritos).  But the cats got quite a few morsels this morning and I even nibbled on it. Then I came back and cursed the printer some more :cussing and decided to do the re-install.  Well, that’s about it for now.  Got all that paperwork to do, but first I’ll read the newspaper and maybe even take a little nap.  I’m old, I’m entitled. | Permalink

      Friday, March 11, 2005

09:58 AM - 03/11/2005 The topic: Today’s tally ---------------------------------------------- Friday, March 11, 2005  Today’s tally is the same as yesterday’s. And Wednesday’s.  And Tuesday’s.  Nothing. Zero. Nada.  Tuesday we didn’t find any money.  Wednesday, Thursday and this morning, we didn’t walk. We didn’t walk because there no sidewalks and we have to walk in the street and the heavy fog we’ve experienced just doesn’t make walking in the streets a very safe thing to do. You’ve got those morons who believe the “m” in 25mph, means “minimum” and they aren’t safe in perfect weather, no way I want my butt go flying and having the pavement stop my progress.  So, we haven’t been walking.  I’ll be glad when the fog is gone. Yesterday, I went over to the vet’s office to pick up more fluids for DeeJay.  (I poked a hole in a brand new bag Wednesday afternoon, my last bag and it isn’t a good idea to use them once they’ve been exposed to the air, no longer sterile.)  I got two bags, then came home and checked my email. I use SpamEaterPro which checks all of my email clients.  Well, I’m getting a message that I’ve been locked out of my lisaviolet.net mailbox.  I go over the site and instead of my website, I see a huge message that my account has been suspended, to contact support/billing.  I call billing.  “It’s not a billing problem, you’ll have to fill out a ticket.”  Great.  I fill out a ticket.  “Account suspended?” was the subject.  “What happened”? was my message. Within ten minutes, I get a response. “An Admin will update you on this shortly.” I respond. “Can I have a hint? All I have on that site are pictures or my cats and our vacations/trips.” Twenty minutes later, no message (but my site is back up).  I add to the ticket. “Well, it’s back up, but I’m sure you can understand my concern, especially since three of my sites hosted by ace-host.net were lost when your server crashed. *sigh*” Two hours later, they respond. “We will let you know if we experience any other troubles with your site. If you are not running any scripts that are resource intensive and are not sending more than 200 emails per hour, you should be fine.” Fifteen minutes later, I let them know I’m not a happy camper. “I run one script, emAlbum pro and I don’t think I send 200 emails in two months time. And I don’t send them via any of my websites, I use XXXXX.net, who is my internet service provider. So, I’m not sure what the problem could have been. I have no message boards, no chat rooms, no forms that can be filled on lisaviolet.net. I’ve had the same photo software since January 2004. I was at a loss as to why I was suspended. My first thing I did was to make a long distance call your billing department, since I couldn’t think of anything else it might have been. They couldn’t help me and told me to create a ticket, which I did. Looking at my stats, my site was fairly busy on Tuesday, but visits were down yesterday and so far today. This is very frustrating, since I don’t know what I did wrong and not knowing that makes it kind of hard to fix, don’t you agree? It was nice that you got the site up so quickly after my first contact with the helpdesk, I appreciate that.” It took them six hours to come up with an answer, very unsatisfactory. “We appologize that we cannot provide more information. However, we will provide any information in the future if more arises.” So, why can’t they just tell me they screwed up?  Well, you pay for cheap, you get cheap.  You can bet your ass I did a backup of the site, though.  Just in case. And I started getting orders for free samples of Benny’s nip. Months since the last one.  They started trickling in, then this morning, there were thirty mails, then another fifteen, then…. Then I checked my tracker.  Seems that the page for the free nip had been put up on a freebie forum. And from there, it got put on other freebie forums.  Uh, sorry, that’s not the point of the free nip.  The point is for people to see the other merchandise I’ve got, look around the store a little.  Not to just come in and say “send me nip!”  I have to pay for the bags it’s in, I have to buy the envelopes I send it out in and I have to pay for postage.  Besides the fact that the supply is running low.  Since midnight, there have been 275 unique users to the lvdesigns.com website.  A week ago, Friday March 4, from midnight to midnight, there were only 16 unique users.  Well, I do have a disclaimer that “supply is limited” and I stopped the free samples.  You only get a free sample if you order something else.  And guess what?  Nobody has ordered anything.  And very few have even looked at the other things I’ve got offered.  Well, at least that helps me not feel too bad about pulling the freebie offer. Remember the Ranger’s transmission breaking last year? Well, guess what?  A couple of weeks ago, Brian was working on his old tractor, he had to go to an auto parts store to get a bolt or something and he called me to come get him, that Ranger was broke.  He thought it was the transfer case, turns out it’s the tranny.  Not even a thousand miles on it.  The guy who rebuilt it, well, did a bad job.  So, Brian takes it up to his friend’s house (the guy who put it in, not the guy who rebuilt it) last Sunday.  And earlier this week, he called and said “did you know there’s a scratch on the side of the truck below the driver’s window?”  It wasn’t there before.  This just isn’t good.  I finally got all of my ironing done yesterday. Still have laundry to do.  I wash those towels I put down on the laundry room floor about every other day.  I realized that DeeJay isn’t the only cat using them as a pee area.  I’ve even seen the kittens squatting on them. And I can’t let them pile up in the laundry basket because they really start smelling like ammonia. But I’m getting caught up a little at a time.  The headaches aren’t as bad and I haven’t been as terribly tired as I had been.  I think catching up on paying bills might have helped there, too. Speaking of paying bills, our mail is very screwed up.  You don’t know what time the mailman will be here from one day to the next, there is absolutely no continuity.  We’re on a crummy route, a large route and when mailpersons have a chance for a different route, they jump at it.  Sometimes, we’ll have two different mail carriers on our street on one day.  One does our side, the other does the other side.  Earlier this week, when I had all of those checks to put in the mail, a carrier came to the door in the morning, before the checks were ready.  He handed me a package.  No, he wasn’t delivering the mail, he was just doing packages.  (???)  The mail would be delivered by someone else.  Imagine my surprise to find mail already in the box when I took the mail out.  So, the checks didn’t go out until yesterday.  Because of the trees, I can’t see the mailbox in front of our house. I have to go out and check it.  It does help when the neighbors put out mail and the flags on the mailboxes are up.  I can see those. But Wednesday, the mailman apparently didn’t put the flag down after delivering the mail.  At eight that night, I went outside and brought in the mail I had that needed to go out.  Frustrated, I did a little searching and found this.  A wireless mail alert.  Now, I’ll be able to tell when the box has been opened without going out to check a hundred times a day.  Garage-Toys had it for the best price and I’ll be glad when it gets here. I hope it works. I would like to move the office stuff around a little.  Move Brian’s monitor over to his corner instead of in the middle of the desk (a piece of glass goes from one wall to the other).  Bring the fax machine back over to the middle.  But I’ll have to move some of the binders I don’t use from the bookshelf and put the pricing catalogs that he never uses to wehre the binders were. Then I can start doing some major reshuffling.  Maybe this weekend.  I’d like to open it up a little more in here.  So, if the cameras are doing weird things this weekend, that might be why. I guess that’s it for now. | Permalink

      Tuesday, March 15, 2005

11:13 AM - 03/15/2005 The topic: The sucker lamp is on… ---------------------------------------------- Tuesday, March 15, 2005  Yesterday morning, I was cussing out irresponsible owners who let their pets (around here, it’s mostly cats) run free range. And, even worse, these cats aren’t fixed. For the second time in less than six months, there was a strange cat in our backyard. I let our cats out at four that morning. A little before six, I got up and checked on the cats. There were many just sitting on the patio, looking into the backyard, back by the shop. I saw Jackson sitting on the steps next to the side of the shop, next to the fence that Brian put up to keep the damn dogs next door from charging the fence. Curious, I go back there. Oh, my. I chase all of our cats into the house (except Jackson, he was gonna do a little butt kicking, or so he thought) and Benny ran under the pool pump. I call into Brian, who is still in bed, that we have an intruder kitty in the yard. To get Jackson in, I have to get out the hose. Jackson knows the hose, knows he doesn’t like it and when he hears the water turned on, he hightails it into the house. That leaves Benny. Brian comes out, I’m able to get Benny and there’s no sign of the intruder. Now, I know I wasn’t hallucinating. Finally, he comes out from under the pool pump where Benny had been. I open the side gate for him to run out. He doesn’t go that way. He’s over alongside the fence, next to the shop. I walk over there, start talking to him. This cat ain’t feral. I’m able to slowly walk up to him and pet him. During the course of the next hour, he eats two cans of Fancy Feast. I pet him. He headbutts me. He’s skinny. He’s tender back by his tail. His head smells like motor oil. There’s some crud on his back paws, dried on ick. I wonder if it might be blood. He doesn’t let me touch him there. He’s not limping or anything. He is sniffling pretty badly. A URI? I wonder how hard he’ll be to pill. Brian kind of thought I’d take him down to the place we took Marco, but I really don’t want to go down there and sit for hours in a waiting room with a cat I don’t know. I waited until my vet’s office was open and call them. I explain the situation, that I can’t let our cats out until we know the status of the intruder. And I’m certainly not letting him go back out into the street if he’s not fixed. They don’t have an opening until two this afternoon, but if they get a cancellation, they’ll call me. So, until two yesterday afternoon, the resident cats were inside, which really wasn’t a problem since we’ve got a couple of gardeners working down by the pool. I don’t know what to do with the intruder, but he’s not getting released back into this street. We’ve got coyotes. And it pisses me off that someone would let such a sweet cat loose in the neighborhood. So, I get to the vet’s end up waiting over a half hour.  The regular vet is on vacation, a cruise and he won’t be back until the 28th.  He had hired an additional vet earlier this year who comes in on Fridays and days when he’s gone.  No problem.  I wonder how long it will take Handsome, as I’ve decided to call him, to get over this respiratory infection.  I know the vet won’t want to neuter with his breathing this bad.  We finally get into an examining room and Handsome is weighed.  10.05 pounds, not bad at all for a cat this skinny.  He’s taken into the back for blood tests. A fair amount of time passes and he’s finally brought back in to me.  I’m told what a sweet cat he is.  He jumps down from the table and starts sniffing around.  The the vet comes in and gives me the bad news.  Handsome is FIV+.  She says it’s really too bad because he’s such a nice, friendly cat, but she just doesn’t advise bringing him into an FIV- population.  She says he should be put down.  We discuss it a little more, and she leaves the room to see if anyone knows of anybody who is taking care of FIV+ cats.  While she’s gone, I pull out my cell and call my friends in L.A., the ones who came down and got Rachel and Ross’ siblings last year.  I talk to Jen and tell her what I was told.  She said “bullshit.  Don’t put him down.  FIV+ cats can live for years and years.  How old is he?”  I tell her the vet put him around ten years old.  “Then he’s as strong as an ox.  Don’t do it.  There’s no problem with FIV+ cats living with cats who are negative.  It’s a really hard disease to transmit, it has to be a deep bite wound. They don’t get it sharing litterboxes or food dishes and bowls.  He should do fine.  Just make sure you keep him free from URIs”.  Well, he’s got a URI right now, I tell her.  “Treat it aggressively.  It’s like a cat with a herpes virus, you don’t want them catching a cold because their immune system just has a hell of a time fighting it off.”  Ciara has a herpes virus and I’d never even dream of putting her down because of it.  I thank her.  The vet comes back in. “I’m not putting him down.  I’m keeping him”, I tell her.  She seems a little disappointed. She’s worried about the other cats.  But I trust my friend Jen.  Vets see disease, but they don’t see the colonies and they don’t deal with the rescue that people on the outside do.  Handsome has shown himself to be a mellow, friendly cat.  Even yesterday morning, he was running from Jackie, not defending himself.  He just wanted to be gone from this situation.  I think we’ll do fine.  So, Handsome got Droncit for tapeworms, Strongid for roundworms while I was there.  I was sent home with a bottle of Baytril for the URI and two tubes of l-Lysine paste (supposed to be tasty).  The bill was close to $250.00.  And he doesn’t need to be neutered, because he already was.  I can’t imagine how I missed that, but I wasn’t really touchy feelee with his testicle sack.  I just looked at it and they looked big.  Maybe because of the coloring, I don’t know, but he looked intact and he does have the gigantic jowls of an intact male. I called Brian before I left the vet’s office and asked him if he’d get the crate down, the one we used for Little Bit, the one with the wood shelf in it.  He asked me why.  I told him we were keeping Handsome. Usually, there’s a little discussion about bringing a new cat into the clowder, but not this time.  I’d made the decision.  After all, what options did we have?  None that I could think of. He wasn’t really happy with this, but then, he wasn’t in the best of moods anyway.  He’d spent the day doing quotes on the internet, using the software from one of his suppliers and he wasn’t having much success.  Well, he was, but it was harder to do than he thought it would be and he’d lose what he’d been working on and was getting very frustrated.  I’m sure we all know how that can be. Brian still hasn’t looked at Handsome.  That’s okay, he’ll have plenty of time when Handsome comes out of the crate.  I think the crate is a good place for him now, because he doesn’t have too many options of what to do.  Eat, drink, pee, groom, poop and sleep is about it.  No stress.  So far, he’s peed twice (and it was really strong, which makes me wonder how long he’s been neutered) and I’ve seen no poop.  But I don’t think he’s really had too good of a diet for a while.  He did eat quite a bit of Felidae dry last night and he drank water.  His appetite is good, but he doesn’t go overboard.  Obviously, his URI isn’t bad enough to interfere with his sense of smell. The other cats are curious, of course, not any hissing, though and no redirected aggression. They aren’t looking at him and smacking the cat next to them. This is good.  And, honestly, they should be so used to new cats, that it’s no biggie.  I haven’t noticed Jackson showing any interest at all in him.  I wonder why he showed so much yesterday morning.  Anyway, without further ado, here’s Handsome, yesterday morning.        (Click on the picture to be taken to the first in a series of Handsome pictures) Well, that’s it for cat stuff for today. | Permalink

      Monday, March 21, 2005

11:59 AM - 03/21/2005 The topic: Headaches ---------------------------------------------- Monday, March 21, 2005  I feel like I’m sitting here with an invisible axe in my forehead, between my eyes.  My God, I can’t believe how bad it hurts.  I think it’s a combination headache.  Stress (the new guy) and allergies (the pine trees).  I took two Excedrin about ten minutes ago, they should kick in before too long. Last week I had a cold.  It never got really, really bad, which was good.  Sore throat, slight cough, runny nose, a little sneezing, not much more than that.  We also had gardeners out, a couple of gals that my mom recommended.  Brian asked “how much will you charge to do these areas?”  The owner says “let me check with my partner.”  She does, comes back, says “how about $240.00?”  Brian just looks at her.  She drops it.  “$200.00?”  Brian says “how about $300.00?”  She just stares at him. Then she remembers to answer.  “Okay!”  Brian can be so hard to read if you don’t know him. They worked their butts off.  Got all of the weeds pulled around the pool, behind the shop and up on the bank.  It’s looking real good out there.  Brian wants to order the new ground cover and have these ladies put it down.  And he wants to see about replacing the wood retaining wall on the bank with brick.  The wood is rotting and won’t be much of a wall for long. I came online this morning to find that my router died. From the last updates on the weather page and catcam page, it would seem that it died when I turned on my computer.  The last catcam picture that went up was at 5:46am this morning.  Of course, my first thought is that the cable was out.  I called our provider and there was no outage in the area.  I disconnected the ethernet cable from the router and put it directly into my computer and voila! I had internet service. This was really frustrating because this was one of the first things I’d tried earlier.  Doesn’t it always go like that?  And I couldn’t see the other computers on my network.  So, it was the router.  I unplugged the router and attached the modem to my computer and started checking out who had the better prices, Best Buy or Office Depot.  They had the same price on a modem that was a level down from the one I already had.  I figured that I’d be able to keep all of my settings for the cameras.  I didn’t need the printer server that the dead one had, so I figured that’s the one I’d go with.  It was $49.99 at both stores, so I check their hours.  Office Depot opens at seven and when I order through my store affiliation (at the top of the page I’ve got a link about “if you like the page” or something similar that will take you to my store affiliations, I always use those links when I order via Amazon or Office Depot) I get a little commission.  I order it online for store pickup.  The receipt page comes out.  “Your order should be ready in 4 hours for pickup.” Four hours!  I can’t wait four hours.  I call the store (it was a little after seven).  They weren’t busy and I could go in and get it now.  Which I did after I took a quick shower. So, I come home, pull the old one out from its spot, put the new one in, connect the power, the computers and plug it in. It lights up.  But I don’t have internet yet because I have to get the computers to recognize the new router.  And my computer just wouldn’t do it.  It worked on the Gateway. It worked on Brian’s.  But no luck on mine.  So, I tried it using Netscape as a browser and we were online by nine. While I was at the store, I checked the notebooks and notepads and guess what?  I found some little notebooks called “mini composition” books and bought three of them (I never did have any luck previously and I just gave up looking online).  They’re a little thicker than the ones Brian used before, but they aren’t spiral bound.  So, that was pretty cool. The past couple of weekends, I’ve spent my time trying my hand at making DVDs.  Transferring stuff over to DVD that’s on tape. I’ve got VHS video of Disneyland, rides that are no longer there.  The People Mover.  The Skyway.  The old Autopia (the new one kind of runs both Autopias together, the one in Fantasyland and the one in Tomorrowland).  I’ve got so many different applications for making movies, I used the MyDVD, since it seemed pretty simple. When I get better at this, I’ll try the ULead video maker.  It does lots of fancy stuff.  Last weekend, I burned one disk, then fussed around with stuff and started getting a message that my hard drive was running out of space.  I should have had an easy 10GB open, so this was just another annoyance in my life that sometimes seems to be built on one annoyance after the other.  I searched my hard drive, looking for some humongous files, but I had no idea where to start. And you know what? You can find just about anything you need on the internet.  I found this software called foldersizes, downloaded the trial version and found those big files.  I moved them over the the external hard drive and got my space back. They were some sort of temporary thing for the movies I was trying to make that didn’t get cleaned up properly.  So, that took up most of a day (I spend so much time looking for stuff on the computer). I made one DVD on a RW disk (I learned this when I was first burning audio CDs) and copied the info to a disk that wasn’t rewritable.  I got some Verbatim disks last year that I’d never used. The first two worked, but so far, none of the others I tried has.  Another annoyance.  I got these as a buy one stack of 25, get one stack free deals.  I don’t even remember where I got them.  Office Depot?  CostCo?  Whatever.  When I’d put one in, my computer would quit running.  I guess it was trying to read an unreadable disk.  Luckily, I had some other sample disks as well as the printable ones I got earlier this year.  When I finally was successful, I was really happy.  So, this weekend I tried making a DVD with pictures that I had from the Disney meets in October.  I didn’t have anything for the years before 2002 and only a few from 2003 (which I’d have none if it hadn’t been for Allyson…same for the year 2004….I took a little video, she took still photos, which she burned over to a CD for all of us who were there).  Then I discovered the “add music” option.  At first, I didn’t realize I had to burn the songs onto my computer, where they’d be saved in the MPEG format.  Copying directly from the disk didn’t work.  So, I spent a little more time in the learning mode and got that going.  Saturday night, I had a completed DVD.  Video, slideshows and music.  Brian sat down with me in the family room as I played it on our older DVD player.  And it was good.  It was really good.  There were a few things I needed to fix, but overall, I was pretty happy with it.  I came back to the office after nine that night, made the corrections and reburned it.  I watched the problem places which were no longer problems and burned ten copies.  One for us and the others for our friends.  Oh, and I’m going to give one to my mom.  Now I have to design the disk cover and the insert for the jewel case and I’ll be ready to send them out. One of the things I found extremely frustrating was the limitation of the buttons available in MyDVD.  Now, from what I understood, there was some plug-in that would allow me to make my own.  Yesterday afternoon, I started trying to find out how to do it (hey, my headache’s almost gone! Yay!).  I’d spent some time last week searching for this mysterious Sonic Style Plug-in for Adobe.  I couldn’t find it anywhere.  Then I clicked on the “Sonic University” link in MyDVD and there was a teaser at the side “Use your own images in MyDVD menus”. Well, this was just what I wanted.  But the only way to get it was to join the university.  I figured what the hell, I want to make my own buttons.  So, I join.  Guess what?  Another annoyance.  The University is no longer the University.  It’s some sort of media learning center.  I spent $70.00 for a year’s subscription to something I most certainly wasn’t the least bit interested in. There was nothing about using my own images for MyDVD buttons and styles.  I want my money back.  I emailed them last night with no response.  So, this morning, after I got the router working, I started making some phone calls.  The man at the media center was super nice, he was really apologetic, said that Sonic just bought out Roxio, who is a much bigger company than Sonic.  Think Jonah swallowing the whale….  And things just aren’t running smoothly at all right now.  He tried to get me one of the plug-ins, but he said they’re for developers and the styles are really hard to make.  And you need the full versions of Adobe, not just the Elements, like I have.  But, he said, the next version of MyDVD will have this capability and it should be out by the end of the year. He gave me a couple of Sonic phone numbers and I called them both.  The first one was for paid tech support.  Well, I can’t see paying money to tell someone I want my money back. That was a no brainer.  So, I called the other one and they wanted an extension number or just leave a message.  I left the message of my phone’s handset being placed back in the cradle. Then I went back to the Sonic website store, found my order, found my invoice, found a contact number and called it.  Once I actually spoke to a real live human, it didn’t even take two minutes to get my money refunded.  Which is a good thing. So, between the cold, the gardeners, Handsome, futzing around looking for stuff on the internet, housework has kind of fallen behind.  I was able to vacuum yesterday, something that was badly needed as there were lots of fur bunnies along the walls and under chair legs.  And all of the litter, too.  Let’s not forget all of the litter.  And, I haven’t even begun to work on the taxes for last year.  So, I’m going to have a busy couple of weeks.  Right after I design my coolamoondo new DVDs…... | Permalink

02:55 PM - 03/21/2005 The topic: I’m gonna smack Handsome ---------------------------------------------- Monday, March 21, 2005  Well, I won’t, really. Because I don’t want him to not like me.  But I get so frustrated when he attacks one of the other cats.  He doesn’t do it often and oddly enough, he only seems to do it when I’m around (but not always, I caught him a couple of times considering rows with Jackie yesterday when I was vacuuming; the only way I knew something was going on was the other cats would run to the window and look out).  I caught him earlier back in the catnip.  Oliver was in there, Richie was in there, Daniece was in there.  Handsome didn’t see me, though, he was rolling in the nip.  So, I did something he heard me, turned and started to run out.  Potter was by the shop door and Handsome started the posturing, you know what I mean, laid down ears, head kind of down, but twisted, walking sideways, but see, Handsome doesn’t do much in the way of warning growls.  He more or less assumes the position and attacks.  Poor Potter ran as quickly as he could, but he wasn’t ready, taken by surprise. So, I’m running through the yard and find Potter in the arms of Handsome, a very unwilling participant.  Handsome sees me (what, he couldn’t hear me yelling across the yard?) and he drops Potter and runs into the house. My first thing is to find Potter and check him over.  I find him next to the shop.  He comes to me willingly and I pick him up and see if he’s okay. There’s some spit on his side, probably because Handsome’s face was pretty spitty from rolling and drooling in the catnip.  No blood or puncture wounds, so we’re safe there. Then I go inside and start yelling at Handsome.  I made myself big by raising my arms in the air and Handsome ran off.  I was so mad.  I told him that the sooner he got used to his new situation, the better it would be for all of us, because he wasn’t leaving.  He’s not at all easygoing like Chandler was.  Even Little Bit wasn’t as bad as he is. She didn’t go out of her way to attack, she only hisspitted when she felt her space was being invaded. But this guy.  This guy has a totally different way about him. And when he’s riled up, you do not put your hand down to him because he’ll lash out at it. I’m crating him at night and when we’re gone because I obviously don’t trust him to not start something with one of the other cats.  I do let him out during the day because I think this will go a long way helping with introductions.  But, damn, it’s a lot of work.  I actually check the lost cat ads in the paper, hoping that maybe his previous owners are looking for him, but I really don’t think I’ll find anything.  He’s been on his own for a while now, they’ve probably given up (if they were even looking for him in the first place). I like leaving the doors open because I know Little Bit really enjoys being outside, but that’s just that much more room for me to keep watch over Handsome.  I wish she knew the cat door. I know it takes time, but I’ve had new cats for almost a year now.  Little Bit and her litters last year, Chandler…I really need a break from new cats.  And for the life of me, I don’t know why they’re ending up in the backyard.  If they’re out front, well, it’s different, they can take off, but in the backyard, it’s like “we dropped down from heaven, God sent us, we live here now”.  It’s making me crazy. At night, in the crate, he pulls at the door. He scratches at the floor, trying to dig out.  It makes lots of noise. And I find myself laying in bed, wishing for some sort of sleeping gas that could be released every so often to keep every cat in a state of relaxation.  I know he’ll mellow out, I just hope it doesn’t take a long time.  I’m just worn out right now. And the one cat I’d love to have in the house is only here for dinner and breakfast.  I don’t see him in the day at all anymore.  I miss looking out and seeing him on the bank, I really do.  I miss my KittyMeezer. I’m sad that he’s not staying here. Annie has discovered the bathroom faucet again. Oh, yes, there’ve been the occasional times she remembered, but she remembers it a couple of times a day now. And if I don’t get up, open the shower door and turn on the water, she starts crying. Loudly.  Until someone goes in and opens the shower door and turns on the water.  At least she’s not doing it during the night when we’re sleeping.  (Nope, that’s Handsome’s dig at the door time.) I talked earlier about the weeds being pulled.  The cats were a little nervous about that at first.  Hardly any of them went out last week, on the rare occasion I had the doors open.  When they found the vegetation missing, the slowly checked everything out.  Now that they’re sure everything is okay, they seem to be loving it.  More dirt to roll around in.  I’ve watched them up on the bank, chasing one another, diving in the dirt and sliding.  It looks like they’re have a great time.  And they’re certainly sharing the wealth.  They’ll waltz in, coated in dust.  Then they lay on the furniture, the bed, the table, the counter…. Cats, gotta love ‘em. | Permalink

      Friday, March 25, 2005

02:03 PM - 03/25/2005 The topic: More on Handsome… ---------------------------------------------- Friday, March 25, 2005  What can I say about Handsome?  Well, he’s sick.  He seems to have gotten worse since he moved in.  It reminds me of what Little Bit went through.  So, this morning I hooked up the humidifier and warm, moist air was going into the crate.  He did eat more after the thing had been running for over an hour, more than he’d eaten since yesterday morning, so that’s good. He’s so darn stuffy. I finally figured out the best thing to do with him is to keep him crated for a while.  Aside from his cold, he’s just stuck in that Robert DeNiro in “Taxi Driver” thing with ALL of the cats.    “What happened to our grass?  Our tall, lovely grass that we would run and jump and hide in?” The weather has let up enough that the cats are going back outside.  It helps that the landscapers haven’t been around this week.  And since Handsome is back to being crated, they can come and go at will.  They’re a lot more relaxed.  I caught Daniece in the lime tree earlier this week.  I don’t know what she was after, but she was having fun.     Before I realized that Handsome would best be seperated from the other cats until he calmed down and realizes that not all cats who wanted to sniff him also want to kick the snot out of him I let him out during the day.  I snapped some shots during the few times he was allowed outside (until he attacked one of the other cats).   Handsome It amazes me how very relaxed he looks one minute, then the next he’s up and after another cat, when the other cat has done nothing.  I was really upset when he went after Potter.  Then when he attacked Opie the next morning when I’d let him out of the crate while I cleaned his litter, it was the last straw. He was still on a fight high when I tried to get him and he hissed and lashed out at me.  Not a good thing.  He needs to learn some manners, which will most likely come after he learns how to relax.       Handsome, Potter and Daniece Once again, things can look so calm.  There’s Potter, not that far from Handsome and there’s not a problem.  Handsome needs a lot of work.  A lot. Little Bit is making great strides.  I’m so pleased with her.  She rarely runs and hides now when one of us walks by her when she’s eating. And when she’s outside enjoying herself, she doesn’t dash inside when I walk around the yard checking things out. She’s becoming a lot more relaxed and at ease around us humans.  And she’s not quite so feisty with the other cats.  Instead of hissing at the food bowl, she’ll sit quietly and wait for whoever is there eating to finish and walk away.     Little Bit   <> Crated Handsome Handsome isn’t pleased with being crated.  But he’s starting to accept there’s not a whole lot he can do about it.  He is sleeping a lot better, he seems more relaxed.  When he’s crated, he can’t fight.  And he doesn’t have to posture.  The cats can sniff him through the grate and he can sniff right back.  Nobody walks up to the crate and hisses and growls at him.  They hardly notice him at all and with any luck this will inventually sink in. That there’s no other cat here who’s a threat to him.  His urine is still pretty strong.  A friend made a good point, that maybe he’s one of those cats who’s testicles never descended.  So, he’d feel to me like he was neutered, when in fact he’s intact.  That would explain a lot of the aggression and the strong urine smell.  If the smell doesn’t get better in a couple of months, rest assured he’ll be taken to the vet to find out for sure.  But Jackie isn’t neutered and his urine is nowhere near this strong.  So, I just don’t know what to think. DeeJay is hanging in there.  Annie is driving me nuts with wanting water at the tub.  And Mickey jumps in the tub and makes a big mess in there.  Well, he’s having fun, I shouldn’t complain. Oh, the other day I was checking my stats and saw that I was still getting hundreds of hits a day to Ciara’s page.  I would assume it’s by people who are looking for information on Ciara the hip-hop artist.  So, I finally took advantage of the traffic and did a redirect from that page to the catcam page.  And I changed the name of Ciara’s page here and changed my site links to it.  Heh. And I did a ‘no index’ meta tag, so hopefully, the followers of the hip-hop artist will leave my site.  I was going to send them somewhere offsite but realized I had a gold mine here.  *grin* Well, that’s it for now.  Keep your fingers crossed that Handsome starts feeling better.  I hate the way he sounds right now. | Permalink

      Sunday, March 27, 2005

07:41 AM - 03/27/2005 The topic: Handsome’s URI ---------------------------------------------- Sunday, March 27, 2005 (Easter)  Well, I was warned about upper respiratory infections and FIV+.  And Handsome has a full blown URI right now.  It started to get bad about three days ago.  Yesterday, I let him out of the crate in the morning and he hasn’t been back in.  There’s absolutely no posturing or faint glimmer of a possibility of a cat fight.  He feels too bad.  And maybe the four days in the crate helped get everyone to back off and realize there was no threat.  I hope that’s what it is. I think his throat is sore because he’s having a difficult time swallowing.  He’s drooling a lot, then he’ll stop doing that for hours and hours.  Then it will start again.  So, I don’t think it’s anything permanent (I think of Pepper and her squamous cell carcinoma in her lower jaw; the drooling was constant).  I did get a little of the enisyl-f l-lysine paste into him this morning.  I know it was too soon for the l-lysine to work, but I think it did something with his swallowing, because he’s resting more easily since I gave it to him.  Poor guy.  He sounds so bad.  And the worst thing is I believe what he’s got, he didn’t bring in with him.  Remember, Little Bit got a bad cold here and so did Chandler, even after he got vaccinated.  I hope he can fight it off.  I’ll be doing what I can to help him. I did have the vaporizer working for him until I noticed there was something wrong with the cord.  Wasn’t a safe looking wrong, so I dumped the water out and tossed the entire thing.  We found a new one at Wal-Mart, a much nicer one for less than twenty dollars. There are two settings, low and high, and it will run for fourteen hours and then it has an auto shut-off.  I haven’t used that one much since we got it Friday night and he’s been out since Saturday morning. I slept on the sofa last night because he’d made himself comfortable on my side of the bed.  Brian had plenty of room, but I didn’t want to bother Handsome.  He spent all night stretched out on my side of the bed. Say a little prayer or send some healing energy his way if you get a chance.  I’m sure he can use it after all he’s been through. I don’t know what the deal is with KittyMeeze and I’m scared that one day he just won’t show up. For a couple of weeks, the only times we saw him was meal time. Then the past couple of days, he’s spent more time here.  He was here all day yesterday.  Then, this morning, he’s not around.  I absolutely hate this. Annie drank so much water from the tub faucet yesterday, she immediately barfed it all up in the hallway.  Fifteen minutes later, she wanted more tub faucet water.  I said no. Not much else to report, just keep some good healthy thoughts for the new boy. Thanks. | Permalink

      Monday, March 28, 2005

07:26 PM - 03/28/2005 The topic: I was pretty worried ---------------------------------------------- Monday, March 28, 2005 I’ll be honest.  I was really, really worried about Handsome this weekend.  He wouldn’t eat, he wouldn’t drink and he’s drooling something awful.  Sunday, his breathing was scary.  I kept thinking back to Blackie.  How we only had him for forty-five days and he died at the vet’s office having fluid drawn from his lungs.  And the reason I brought him in was his labored breathing. And Handsome also threw up a couple of times last night.  One of them had fur in it, but the others were mostly foam or bile. I think the crud he’s swallowing has upset his stomach (I know my tummy gets upset when I’ve got a runny nose or draining sinuses, all of that icky stuff ending up in the belly).  I gave him a quarter of a Pepcid A/C regular strength this morning and I might give him another quarter tonight before we go to bed. And I am going to sleep in my own bed tonight, not on the sofa. Because Handsome was cuddled up against Brian this morning.  I won’t be displacing him, since he likes to get close.  He did drink a ton of water today, which was good. He did come into the kitchen when I made lunch this morning, we had tuna sandwiches.  He sniffed the tuna, but not much more than that.  A little later on I gave him a bowl with tuna water and he drank a bit of that, not all, but some.  And tonight, when I fed the cats, I put a little of the runny gravy in a seperate bowl for him and he lapped most of it down.  Then he got up and started acting like his tummy was upset.  I’m hoping it’s just because he ate too fast and his belly wasn’t ready for it.  I’m hoping that he just has to get used to eating again.  And then there’s that drooling.  From what I could find online, it could be calici virus or herpes virus, causing mouth ulcers.  Herpes would probably be a better bet, since we already have that on premises (Ciara).  *sigh* I just feel so badly.  I know he was sick before, but I bring him in and he gets even sicker.  I hope we can get him over this.  He is doing better, yes, that’s true.  He went outside this afternoon, walked around the yard and did some stretching out.  That was good to see. And after he came inside, he got some water in the dining room water bowl.  I was sitting next to the window on the cedar chest and he stepped down onto my lap, then he laid down on my lap.  It was a big “awwww” moment.  I hope he gets better.  Keep that white energy flowing his way.  He deserves something better than he’s had.  Thanks….. This morning, I caught Little Bit trying to climb the fence back at the corner of the yard by the pool.  I thought she wanted to escape, but then it dawned on me that she wasn’t the only cat hanging in that corner.  Benny was down there, Pete was down there and one of the red boys was down there, too.  There was something in that corner in the fishtail palm that had all of their attention.  Lizards?  We’ve had a lot of lizards in the yard (too late for me to save them).  Birds? That tree has lots of seed pods.  Whatever it was, I wasn’t thrilled to see her climbing that fence.  Tonight when I got her in, she was reluctant to go into her hole.  So, I pulled out the dirty bedding and put in clean.  An hour or so later, she was still outside.  She tried going back in, but it was already occupado.  By Jackson.  He left, I don’t know if she went back in, though.  She’s very territorial.  But she did let me get pretty close to her tonight.  I wasn’t gonna reach out and try to pet her, but I was within two feet of her and she didn’t skitter away.  Progress! KittyMeeze isn’t here yet.  He was here late last night with Carla.  Then nothing this morning and nothing today.  I have to get used to the idea that someday, he might be gone for good.  I told Brian tonight if that ever happens, that we won’t put food out anymore.  It would be different if Carla was a regular, but she isn’t. She obviously had another food source and I’m thinking KittyMeeze is right there with her.  I hate thinking along these lines, but I have to be realistic.  I’d love to catch him, but he won’t go into a trap and there’s no way of knowing when he’ll be here lately. Well, I’m kind of behind with my cat chores.  Litterboxes are done, cats are fed, but DeeJay hasn’t had his fluids.  Bad me. I should do it before it gets too late.  Oh, and it’s an even day. Ciara gets a pill. | Permalink

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lisaviolet is seventy something, married with no kids, takes care of lots of cats, likes taking photographs, loves Southern California weather and spends altogether too much time avoiding her responsibilities. In her spare time, she makes pretty things to sell in her store.

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