Friday, February 11, 2005 It’s raining. It started last night and when I came online this morning, I found that the catcam computer shut down during the night. The last catcam picture was at three this morning. This didn’t make me happy. Because this is a new computer. (Don’t forget to check out the new area of the family album, the one with campix. There aren’t many there yet, but I’m working on it.) One of the most popular pages at lisaviolet.com is the catcam. If it’s not running 24/7, I won’t be a happy camper.
The one we got last year, the refurb computer, was a waste of money. Remember the one that we bought so the camera would be online all day and all night? Every day of the week? Last week, I tried to put something on it and found that the CD drive wasn’t working any longer. I checked for cat pee, found none, so I know the cats didn’t kill this one. Good kitties. So, instead of putting more money into it, while Brian was sitting there, I went to the Dell website, checked out their entry level computer, called them to find out how much it would be without a monitor (we had to buy a monitor for the refurbed computer). The guy kept trying to sell me the next level computer. One with 80G of harddrive space. More SDRAM. More this. More that. I kept saying “no”. The computer I was looking at had 40G, which between all of the computers we have, was plenty. Figure my Dell has 40G and I’ve only gotten it a little over half full and I’ve had it a couple of years now. Then we have the Gateway with a fair amount of HD space (it has four harddrives, I think). And I got an external 160G harddrive a few months ago to have my pictures and movies on. So, since this computer won’t be for work, it will pretty much just be for net surfing (for Brian) and the catcam and weather station 24/7, I didn’t really think we needed a more powerful system. Then the guy starts in on the disk space again. I finally got exasperated from repeating the word “no” and told him that ‘the computer he’s using now is a refurb and only has six gigabyte; there’s room on that computer. Forty gigabytes will be more than sufficient’. The salesman laughed and quit trying to sell me something I didn’t want. That’s where experience comes in handy.
So, the computer that was supposed to ship on February 9th, got here on Monday, February 7th. It took me about five hours to set up. And in that five hours I cooked dinner (we had Swiss steak, French cut green beans and mashed potatoes). Brian fed the cats and did the dishes so I could finish getting the computer set up enough that he could surf. And before I did that, of course I had to set up the catcam and weather station. Which took a little bit of doing with the firewall and proxy settings. To keep out the uninvited. But that got done and Brian was surfing before too long. He liked it, said it ran a lot quicker. And I like it because there are no vent holes on the side. Holes where cat urine could easily get inside, should one or two cats decide to mark the cast. As they’ve done to the other computers.
Then this morning I see that the camera and weather station shut down around three in the morning. Bad deal. It hadn’t happened before and I guess it was the sleep thing, so I went in and changed the harddrive and monitor shut offs to “never”. With any luck, that was the problem.
Last week Brian’s brother and his wife (the one I love) were in town from Colorado. (The cats weren’t pleased with my cleaning, but I do what I can to keep the cat smell down as well as keeping the furniture fur free. Fortunately the weather was beautiful and I was able to open up the house so that all of the cats could go out when I ran the vacuum and the floormate.) They came out to see Stephen’s son, who lives in the Los Angeles area, then they came down here for a couple of days (They got here Wednesday night and left Friday afternoon). They are so much fun! We took them to dinner to Applebee’s, then to breakfast the next morning. After Applebee’s we came back to our house and talked for an hour or so. When they left, we walked them out to their car. And because of how it was parked, they ran out of gas. *lol* Brian had a gallon back in the shop and poured it into their tank. That was enough so that he could get the engine started.
Joanne was a little concerned about the cats while she was here. She has been to people’s homes where the cats bit and the owners didn’t have a problem with that. I told her our cats had better not bite because that’s unacceptable behavior. Our cats were very good. Georgie hung out on the back of the chair she was laying on and the other cats were okay. I got all of the cats in for the night while they were here and I was surprised at how easy it was. I couldn’t find Benny outside, which was strange, but I later found him under the bed, which was stranger. Benny does not do inside when there are people other than Brian and I in the building.
Other than that, things have been pretty mundane around here. I finally got Bart back to the vet for his eye yesterday. It never has looked right since he had that corneal erosion last year. The vet checked it out and said it was okay, but that Bart was a little congested. He also trimmed Bart’s claws and asked Bart if his mom kept them trimmed. I said I certainly did. I remember him telling me way back when if I didn’t keep them trimmed, there would be a problem with them growing back into the skin. The alternative to trimming was declawing and we all know how mom feels about declawing. That just ain’t gonna happen in this house. We modify our home for the cats, not the cats for our home.
So, what else? Hmm…
I’ve been trying to get myself to learn how to make DVD movies on the computer. I’ve got a bunch of VHS tapes and some little digital camera tapes of the cats and some old Disney footage (like the entire ride of the buckets, which are no longer there). I’d like to add a slideshow or two. And I can’t seem to get it down. I’d rather lay on the sofa surrounded by a cat or two. *lol* And I’d love to get all of my cat VHS movies on DVD. It would be nice to have them all together. One very frustrating thing on my part was I can’t find all of the videos I made. There is one of Lisa when she was just starting out on her road to catnip addiction and her little eyes are closed, her head is up and she’s moving her head back and forth like she hears music in her mind. It’s really funny and I’ll be damned if I can find it anywhere.
Twilight time
Pete hightails it to the cat door; it’s raining, doncha know?
It’s supposed to be raining off and on for the next week. There’s something compelling about the rain to Little Bit it would seem. She will sit at the door and look out at the rain. I’ve also seen her sitting up in the dining room window looking out. This morning, she jumped out of the window and started calling. I had watched her looking out of the door before she went to the window, so I opened the door when she was at the window. She came back to the open door and sat there, looking out. Then she went into her bedroom. I shut the door. The cats are not at all pleased with the abundance of rain, I know that. They’d rather be outside than in. And a few of them have found a way to be outside, they get into the old cat trees and condos that we moved outside, along the house on the patio. For the most part, there’s no rain hitting where they are, so the cats can watch. But when the water is ankle deep on the lawn, you don’t find too many cats running through it.
Positive news on the feral front. Carla is coming over a lot earlier in the evening. And she’s here in the morning when I give KittyMeeze his breakfast. She doesn’t run when I open the door, but will sit patiently outside of the gate. Meeze will come sit in front of the bowls. I have noticed more cats over in the yard of the man I dislike so much. I see them in the daylight hours, so I believe they belong to the family next door, where the ferals used to live so long ago. Before the coyote invasion and the trapping of a lot of them (where they were taken to animal control and most likely killed). Carla is the last cat that I know who lives over there. I’ve got my fingers crossed that she takes the same path that her daughter, Little Bit, took and moves over here to live with KittyMeeze and also get used to us. So we can get them both in. Brian said something to me the other night about her being fat. “She can’t be pregnant, can she?” I guess he didn’t realize this is the same cat we trapped at Easter time back in 2003. I reminded him and he just thinks its weird that she looks so heavy.
No more kittens is a pleasant feeling.
Well, that’s it for now. Have laundry to fold and shirts to iron. I learned a long time ago to not leave it where the cats can get to it. They either sleep on it, or pee on it. Have a great weekend!
For more cat diaries (or “blogs”) and pictures, check out this weeks listing over at The Conservative Cat, run by Ferdinand. A big name for an amazingly handsome cat.
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