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      Friday, June 04, 2004

11:42 AM - 06/04/2004 The topic: Just call me crabby. ---------------------------------------------- Friday, June 04, 2004  I’ve really been irritable as of late.  This past month has been pretty bad for some reason.  Heh heh heh…  I’ve left a long, wide trail ripped lips and bitten off heads. I mentioned moving this site to a new host, saving me over $15.00 a month on host fees.  Well, in the past, I’ve been able to access the new site using just DNS numbers, but not this time.  I couldn’t actually work on the site until I could see it, and that didn’t happen until late Tuesday night, after I was in bed.  So, the past couple of days have been spent trying to get things working.  The first things I worked on, the KOTM Contest and the Cathouse Cardshoppe, just wouldn’t co-operate.  I worked on them for hours with no luck.  I finally broke down and contacted Melanie (of Somemoorecats.com) for help.  I really didn’t want to bother her, because it feels like the only time I email her is when I’m in a bind and I hate those kinds of people.  And when she found what I’d done wrong, or missed, well, I have to tell you, I was really annoyed with myself.  Things I should have found.  Easy things.  And I found many of the CGI scripts I’ve been running, don’t work if they’ve got images in the CGI directory.  They worked fine on my old server, just not this one.  A security issue.  So, I had to tweak them a little.  I don’t have all of them done, the topsites need to be done, for one.  But they aren’t really busy, so they aren’t a high priority.  I need to get everything done by the 20th, at which time I’ll cancel my account with the old provider.  I figure I can compare stuff between that site and the new one if I run into problems.  Another big mess is that the thing that keeps people from taking my graphics is also preventing me from using them on my other sites.  Heck, even this site.  I can’t call them from “declaw.lisaviolet.com”.  If I do, there’s that “stolen image” image.  So, I copied the images that I need and put them in a different directory and I have to change the code on God knows how many pages accordingly.  *sigh* And to top it all off, it would appear that my new host is having server difficulties.  The site keeps going down.  I’m very, very frustrated right now.  Which becomes crabby. So, what else?  Hmmm.  Oh, yeah, Richie.  Dear Richie.  You’ll recall our problems with him getting out on the 27th of May.  Well, trimming back the plum tree and adjusting the fencing didn’t work.  He was out again on Sunday.  Then again on Tuesday.  Everytime he got out, we’d scour the fencing for another way out.  What on earth were we missing? Brian added more fencing.  We put up nine sets of windchimes so that we’d hear him climbing the fence, with no luck.  He still got out.  I was wasting hours of time checking on him.  I’d keep him in and in doing so, kept the other cats in.  We didn’t have a happy couple of days there.  Once I went out, couldn’t find him.  He was on the roof of the shop.  I went into the neighbor’s yard to talk him down, but by the time Brian got outside, Richie was back in our yard!  Curious.  Really, really curious.  How was he doing it? Finally, Sunday morning early, I was out walking the yard and watching him.  And he ran up the plum tree.  And out one of the branches (one that Brian had trimmed last week). And he crouched. And he was looking to jump over to the shop.  A good five or six feet away.  I yelled at him and he just looked at me.  I told him not to do it.  He just looked at me.  I kept talking and I guess from the tone of my voice, he figured maybe he’d just wait until I wasn’t watching.  Well, when Brian got out of bed, I told him. And after he ate breakfast and took his shower, he went out and trimmed the plum tree back even further.  And it was good.  Richie hasn’t been out since.  The fencing wasn’t the problem. (YAY!)  It was the tree. Something I caution people about on our backyard page. I took Ciara to the vet yesterday.  She’s had some weird thing going on for about a month.  We had that herpes virus hit the population back in January/February and I thought since she’s on prednisone, it was back, but just on her (she was diagnosed with IBD back in February).  But she’s not getting better.  I started her on Orbax last Thursday, just in case and she seemed a little better at first, but she’d have bouts of coughing.  Well, the vet didn’t hear her wheezing.  She checked Ciara over pretty thoroughly and nothing.  Then, it started.  I said “can you hear that?”  It started out low and got a little worse with each breath.  Turns out, Ciara has a head cold of sorts and the vet said it sounded to her like Ciara’s sinuses were draining and that noise was Ciara dealing with it. That would also explain her coughing.  So, she’s to stay on Orbax for another week. One of the things I mentioned at the vet’s office was how happy I was that I found something DeeJay like to eat.  Purina One kitten chow, with water on it.  Liz cautioned me that it wasn’t really a good thing for him to have because of the protein in it. She gave me baggies with samples of three different kidney diets.  I did the same thing to those I did the kitten food, put filtered water on them and let him make his choice.  He liked the bag marked “AD”.  So, I’ll pick up some of that later today.  And Bart got his followup visit on Tuesday.  He still had a “pinprick” of erosion, so he’s still being medicated. I’m glad he’s taking it well.  One of the ointments stings.  One of the problems I’ve had because of watching Richie and moving the site (downloading to my computer, uploading to the new site took hours and hours and hours; the script I bought that I moved my site with last year wasn’t working as well with the new host, a lot of stuff wasn’t transferring directly from site to site) and watching the kittens is that I’ve fallen behind in housework and paperwork again.  Today, I’ll try to get caught up with laundry and housecleaning, then I’ll have to tackle this big pile of mail that I’ve just been stacking.  That should be lots of fun.  Not. The kittens are doing well.  I gave them their last dose of Strongid this morning.  Brian took down the barrier earlier this week and I’ve been keeping the bathroom door open unless I’m feeding them or we’re sleeping or not home.  They sleep a lot.  Oliver has discovered that he gets yelled at when he growls at them and has taken to spending most of his time in the garage.  It’s okay out there.  It’s quiet and there’s no little kittens begging to be kept in line.  I found a couple of fleas on a few of the cats last week.  I got out the flea comb and went over Sagwa.  Lordy, I combed twelve fleas from his neck area alone.  So, when I went to the vet with Bart Tuesday, I bought more Advantage for large dogs and over the next three days, treated twenty four cats.  I have five to go, but hopefully I won’t have to do them all.  Usually, just having some of the cats done will end up killing all the fleas.  You want to hear something odd?  I never found any dead fleas in the areas where Annie rests.  Lots in other cat resting areas, but none off of Annie. They’re getting big.  This morning on our walk, Brian said how much cuter they are now than when we got them.  They’re two months old today!  They’re really not much for purring, but this morning I picked up Rachel and was holding her against my cheek and giving her light scratches on her head and neck, and she just started purring to beat the band.  It was so nice to hear. I got on the scale for the first time in months this morning and, sadly, I’ve found nineteen of the forty eight pounds I lost last year.  Unbelievable.  I know if I’d gotten on the scale every Friday morning, it wouldn’t have gotten this bad.  So, I’m back logging points over at the Weight Watcher’s site.  Brian starts saying “well, no more of this, no more of that” in the house.  He mentioned the Healthy Choice ice cream and the Slimfast candy bars.  Excuse me, honey, but the problem isn’t the ice cream and the candy bars, it’s that I eat too many of them.  As long as I use them in moderation (and moderation is the key here) I’ll be fine. We finally decided to sell the Mustang.  We rarely drive it (Brian still hasn’t put the registration sticker on it from last year; we got that last July), so figure why pay registration and insurance on it?  If you know anyone in the SoCal area who wants a 1989 Mustang convertible, dark blue with a blue top, grey cloth interior, 26K miles and a nice sound system, let them know about this.  We’d really like to get ten thousand for it, since it is so clean and has such low mileage.  I’ll miss it, but it’s just not practical.  Riding with the top down just wears Brian out.  The wind, the sun beating down, he just can’t take it any longer.  And I hardly ever joy ride.  I can’t see using that nice car just to get groceries.  I’m always afraid that someone might run a cart into it or something. Well, I guess I’d best get cracking if I plan on getting anything accomplished today.  I’m giving the website move a break right now, I need to walk away and regroup. | Permalink

      Monday, June 21, 2004

02:04 PM - 06/21/2004 The topic: Gee, I forgot this was here…. ---------------------------------------------- Monday, June 21, 2004  It’s been awhile, I bet you thought I forgot all about you.  I didn’t.  I just haven’t had the time/energy to make a new entry. Yesterday, I really thought it would be over this week for DeeJay.  He just looked really bad, had diarrhea and was throwing up.  He hadn’t been eating much.  We ran out of the Maxximum Nutrition kitten food he seemed to like and I was giving him Purina.  He didn’t like that nearly as much.  I found the Maxximum Nutrition at Wal-Mart yesterday (I’d originally gotten it at the grocery store) and bought a bag.  When we got home, I opened the bag and gave him a small handful of the kibble to eat.  He ate it like he hadn’t eaten in weeks.  He ate more as the night progressed.  Brian barbequed filet mignon for dinner and DeeJay got a few pieces of that, from both of our plates.  He kept it all down.  There was no diarrhea anywhere in the house this morning, so I hope he’s over whatever was going on with him.  He’s certainly looking better this morning.  Brian’s sister came over last night and DeeJay laid next to her on the loveseat and she asked “is this cat dying?” So, right now, he’s looking brighter and more relaxed.  I thought for sure this would be the week we’d say goodbye.  For now, we’re back on the emotional rollercoaster.  This is the hardest thing about being a pet guardian. What else, what else?  Oh, last week, I found a bouquet of different shades of blue balloons in the yard,  they were tied together with different shades of blue curling ribbon.  I found this balloon bouquet next to the shop, under the fencing.  I’m sure it got into our yard by itself, but it didn’t get under that fencing by itself.  I found out later who took it over there.  Opie.  I threw out the bouquet and I found Opie down by the pool pump.  He kept looking at the sky.  When a plane went over (we’re within three miles of a small airport), he’d run under the platform where the pump is.  He’d growl.  His eyes kept going to the sky, to the plum tree, to the top of the house, to the satellite dish, always up…. So, I’m thinking he saw the balloons descending, maybe getting stuck in the plum tree.  He somehow got himself tangled in the ribbon and took off running.  Of course, the balloons went with him.  It took me about twenty minutes to get him calmed down enough to bring him into the house.  When we walked by the tree, his eyes got really big and he tensed up.  He growled.  I told him all was fine, it was nothing to worry about and we went into the house.  He made no attempt at going back out, he was fine inside, thank you very much.  At least a kid could give you some idea of what happened. We’ve got fleas again.  So, it would seem that the local fleas have become Advantage resistent.  Time to change to Frontline.  For a couple of months, then I’ll go back to Advantage. I’ve got a big old zit on my cheek.  There should be some sort of natural law that when you quit having periods, you quit getting pimples.  There really should be.  If I ran the world, I’d make that a law. I found out a couple of weekends ago, I can make CDs on my computer that play on the other players in the house and in the cars.  So, I spent made a few duplicates, printed out labels and jewel case inserts.  Then, I spent much more time than I like to think about trying my hand at making compilations on the computer.  I’d get about sixty minutes in (on a seventy four minute CD) and it wouldn’t read the CD.  So, I’d lose everything I’d done up to that point.  I spent hours trying to get it to work.  I finally gave up.  I didn’t give up for good, though.  I’ll try again at some point.  The kittens are getting really big.  I’ve got more pictures to upload.  They’re just adorable, they’re slowly figuring out that “kittens!” means them.  They eat with the big cats at night.  Sometimes they run into the garage by themselves, other times I remind them about din by carrying them into the garage.  The big cats don’t hiss at them anymore, which is really nice. I took Ciara back to the vet last week, because she wasn’t getting any better.  The vet remarked on how much better she looked than the last time he’d seen her (I think it was February or March).  She’d gained over a pound (gained two ounces since the other vet saw her).  He said she looked lots better and he was pleased.  As for her breathing, he came up with the same scenario the fill in vet came up with.  He sent us home with some antihistamine tablets.  She gets those for two weeks. With any luck, those will help her out.  Give her body a chance to overcome what she’s got.  He said the same thing I’ve said to Brian.  The prednisone she’s getting for her IBD is suppressing her immune system, to the extent that it’s not fighting this cold virus she’s got.  He said if the antihistamine doesn’t work, we can try a fairly new drug, one that’s more expensive.  It basically does the same thing the prednisone does, but without the side effects.  It’s not labeled for use on cats, but he said he’s used it on many different animals. We’d get her on that until this cold went away.  But it seems the meds she’s on right now are helping.  She’s not coughing nearly as much as she had been and her breathing sounds a little less noisy.  We’ve got over a week more to go, so I’m hoping she’s all cleared up by that time. I’ve been doing a little tweaking on the website.  I moved the catcam to it’s own subdomain, http://catcam.lisaviolet.com.  And I did the same with the weather page (where the backyard camera is).  I also added an “extended weather” site.  I used a script found at www.hamweather.com.  On that page, you can find forecast for many different places.  I really had fun setting it up.  The hardest part was getting the camera links lined up correctly on the entry page.  If you want to check it out, the link is http://weather.lisaviolet.com.  Oh, that picture at the top is a panorama from the top of Ickey Hill I took one November morning on our walk.  I think it’s a pretty nice weather photo. We went shopping yesterday and I saw Katelynn.  I said ‘hi’ and she said she was there with her dad. I said ‘hi’ to him and told him we’re the people who took their cats last year.  He said “you want some more?”  This is the guy who Oliver attacked.  I just laughed. Nope.  Don’t want no more cats. I think SpotTee is pretty sick.  Last week, I saw a spot on his head, looked like drainage from a burst abscess.  I called Brian over to look at him Saturday (Spot was sleeping on the bank) and he said that Spot’s neck looked puffy, too.  I saw Spot yesterday in the Heartless Bastard’s yard, but I haven’t seen him since.  Hopefully, he’s sleeping somewhere and his body is fighting off the infection.  Say a quick prayer for him, would ya?  Little Bit and KittyMeeze take turns keeping watch over him, I think.  The morning I saw him in the HB’s yard, Meeze was right next to him.  We really don’t want Meeze crossing the street. I know there’s something else.  Oh, yeah, I remembered.  I got a new car!  hahahahahahaa!! I got it on Monday, the 14th. It’s a 2005 Ford Escape Limited Edition.  It has all the options.  It’s got black paint and ebony premium leather trimmed seats.  That are heated!  It has heated rearview mirrors.  It has a moon roof.  It has a MACH sound system, seven speakers, an in dash six CD changer.  I absolutely love it.  I took my mom to Kaiser last Wednesday for her bone scan and it handles so nicely.  I felt extremely comfortable driving it, not at all nervous. I ordered the license plate holders before we got the car.  They’re black (like the Escape) and the top says in white lettering “Don’t Litter” and the bottom says in the same lettering “Spay or Neuter Your Pets”.  When the new plates come in, I’ll be taking them down to the DMV with the vanity plates on the Bronco.  I’ll get new plates for the Bronco (which we’re going to sell, as well as sell the Mustang) and put the vanity plates on the Escape. It’s a lovely little car. That’s it for now. | 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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