Boolie

No Respect

I don’t know if they are upset from their vet visits or the taking down of the Christmas tree or if it is just youthful rebellion, but I sense a little residual hostility from the cats. After I felled her great tree, Emma muttered “Yrch!” under her breath hoping I wouldn’t catch the meaning in her elvish tongue.

Sam was more bold and spoke in the Common Tongue. After I went to check on Scout to see how she was recovering from anesthesia after getting her teeth cleaned, Sam walked in and said “Well if it isn’t the dental patient and the mental patient!”

I would not say such things if I were you!^†

^†Said in your best Prince Humperdinck voice

The Things I Learn When Scout Sleeps On Me

When Scout sleeps on me while I’m sitting in my chair, she likes to stretch out like Superman across my chest so I can’t really get much done. This evening I had my laptop beside her and could surf the Web but not type.

While browsing I came across a site that reports the demographics of the U.S. audience of a web site relative to the average (and as we all know, my site is far above average). I have no idea how they estimate this or if it’s even remotely accurate, but here’s what it reports about my site:

I do really well in the age group of 3-11 year olds, accounting for one out of every five of my visitors. Probably attracted by the frequent poop references in recent days.
I have a higher than normal incidence of visitors with children. Oh no! Babies having babies!
In regards to earning power, the report says I attract a less affluent audience. To my three year old readers: I’m very, very disappointed in you.
For education level, it reports a high index of college graduates. Oh three year olds, I’m so sorry! I take it back! I’m very, very proud of you! But you probably should have majored in something other than art history.

Free At Last, Free At Last!

Emma was freed from captivity this morning, not by the Emma Liberation Front (though Scout did penetrate my defenses last night), but because she finally gave us a stool sample. We swapped Emma for Scout as she was now the lone holdout but as of 2:22pm she also earned her freedom (again, not due to the Emma Liberation Front. I suggested to Sam that perhaps they should now be the Scout Liberation Front but he said no, they had worked too hard to establish the brand).

No expectant father in a delivery room has been as happy to see his new arrival as I was to find poop in the litter box, the cats are now free to roam the house and and I’m free to stop watching for them to poop. Everybody wins!

A battle won but not the war. Tomorrow morning we have to try for a urine sample from Scout before she and Emma go to the vet. Hopefully the cat boxing will be less eventful than when Scout and Sam went a few days ago …

No Emma, No Peace! No Emma, No Peace!

I put Emma in the basement last night to isolate her from the other cats as we need to collect stool samples from both her and Scout to see which one is having some digestive problems. Emma does not like to be isolated so I spent a mostly sleepless night on the couch in the basement while she pleaded for her release.

We’re still waiting for a stool sample from both cats today so the isolation continues. Every time I open the basement door the ELF (Emma Liberation Front) attempts a mad dash down the steps to rescue the prisoner. So far I’ve managed to keep both Sam and Scout out but they have begun making a concerted effort which makes things harder.

Scout hasn’t been too happy either and spent most of the day hiding under the covers of the bed, a new behavior for her. It didn’t help that we had a couple of service people in this morning as Scout doesn’t care for strangers. Sam goes back and forth between his two sisters, sometimes crawling under the covers with Scout and sometimes meowing encouragement to Emma under the basement door.

Hopefully Scout and Emma will soon give us what we need so the household can be restored. But you know what they say, a watched cat never poops.

Emma, Are You Trying To Tell Me Something?

A minute ago Emma brought one of her favorite strings into my office and dropped it near my feet. Now she’s brought another of her favorites in and is standing beside it.

Subtlety, thy name is not Emma.

1 Year, 12 Books

I read twelve books this year, a paltry sum compared to the copious quantities my wife reads, but pretty typical for me.

The twelve, in no particular order except the order in which I read them, are as follows:

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Payment in Blood by Elizabeth George
One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Hear The Wind Sing by Haruki Murakami
Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Wolf Willow by Wallace Stegner
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

Some fun facts about the list that are sure to amuse:

Of our three cats, two were named after books on this list, and all three were named after books by authors on this list.
A full two-thirds of the books were authored by women. What can I say, I like the ladies!
Most of these were first time reads for me with the exception of the Solzhenitsyn, Lee, and Tolkien tomes.
The only book I didn’t enjoy was Wuthering Heights. I’m glad I read it but it won’t appear on any of my future book lists. I wasn’t particularly crazy about Mansfield Park either, it was no Pride & Prejudice, but it had its moments.
All of these were books of fiction except for Wolf Willow, which had both fictional and non-fictional sections so I’m not sure how to classify it. In times like these I always ask myself, WWDDD? (What Would Dewey Decimal Do?)
Louisa May did her best to get me to cry on the train but she did not succeed. Sure, I had a little something in my eye a day or two, but I was not crying! I later forgave her when I realized the events of the book were based on her life and that she wasn’t just playing with my heartstrings.
Solzhenitsyn died after I finished reading Ivan Denisovich, but there was a six month gap between the two events so I don’t feel as though I particularly cursed him. Also because he was almost 90 years old.
Of the twelve books, only one involved vampires although the jury is still out on Boo Radley.
With Mansfield Park I have now read all of Jane Austen’s books at least once unless you count her unfinished work Who Weeps for the Wookiee?

Three Years

Happy New Year everyone! The blog turns 3 years old today, my one and only New Year’s resolution is to stop using my blog to fill everyone in on the daily minutiae of the lives of my cats.

So anyway, I welcomed 2009 by playing a game of String with Scout, Emma, and Sam. I was pleasantly surprised to see Scout playing, she’s been more playful lately so perhaps her young friends are wearing off on her. After the fireworks started Scout and Emma retreated under the couch to hide from the noisy celebrations.

Sam’s appetite was unaffected.

No Más, No Más

We went to the Humane Society again this afternoon when a promising dog popped up on the list of cat-friendly dogs. We met her, a friendly golden retriever who had lived with cats before and was just perfect for us except … she has some mobility issues which we thought would be too much for our three-level house. We talked to the medical staff and they agreed, so we left empty-handed once more.

Oh that hurts, she was a lovely dog. At least the shelter is closed tomorrow so we won’t have to fall for another dog that we can’t bring home. Her name was Sam like our youngest cat, so we would have had to rename her. Whew, dodged that bullet!

We did make the mistake of going by the pod that holds the dog we missed out on this morning, goodness but she seems like a sweetheart. We consoled ourselves with the knowledge that she probably chews on knitting and eats cats for breakfast 😉

Subject Is Dogless. Repeat, Dogless.

This is Papa Bear. Put out an APB for a male suspect, driving a … car of some sort, heading in the direction of, uh, you know, that place that sells chili. Suspect is hatless. Repeat, hatless.
The ever observant Police Chief Wiggum on the Simpsons

We’ve been to the Humane Society for the past several days but not come home with a dog. We put a secondary hold on one that we loved but the family with the primary hold adopted her last night, so no luck there. There was another that came available this morning that looked promising but she already has a hold as well.

Our biggest issue is that we need a dog that is cat tolerant and that reduces our options significantly, you either need to start with a puppy that will naturally learn to submit to its furry masters or an adult dog with a gentle personality that at the very least won’t chase them. We’re not looking for a puppy and at the moment that reduces the available options at the shelter to zero.

With the upcoming holiday for the New Year that makes it unlikely we’ll adopt a dog over the break, we’ll also look at rescue organizations but that is a longer process (for good reason).

Scout and Sam are going to vet in an hour for their yearly checkup (shh, don’t tell them, there are shots involved) and Emma goes this weekend. It should be easy to take Scout and Sam together given that they’ve become such snuggle bunnies …

Leaning

This is our Christmas tree shortly after we first put it up (thankfully before the ornaments went on), you can see a decided tilt to the tree. The eagle-eyed observer may even be able to tell which layer Sam and Emma decided to sleep in.