The Christmas cat
The Friday before last I got the following email from a friend:
"Hey {my name}! Are you still looking for a cat? Because we have one that we need
to move out. {friend's wife} got her at the animal shelter about a month ago, but
she's not getting along with {other cat's name}.
She's a white short-hair, very soft fur, declawed and neutered. I can tell
you more if you want. Let me know!"
Well, he was right. I had been thinking of getting a cat. Two cats, actually, so that each could keep the other company, as I'm gone about 11 hours out of the day to work. I also had planned to get a driver's license first as I worried about bringing the cats to the vet in an emergency.
However, I kind of liked the idea, and thought that maybe I could see and meet the cat to find out what she was like. As it turned out, I was going to take a week's vacation next week, and so was he, so that worked out reasonably well. As a side note, I had over 6 and a half weeks of vacation time saved up, and technically I was only supposed to have a maximum of 6 weeks so I was worried about using it or losing it at the end of the year. I also had a floating holiday which, if not taken, I would most certainly lose at the end of the year, so taking the week of vacation time around the Christmas holiday was almost a necessity. We had just finished coding and debugging a major new software release that Friday, and didn't have anything major due for a little while, so this was a good time to take it too.
So Monday I went over to the friend's house to meet the cat. At that time I was told she was more then just not getting along well. The female cat had been playing rather evil dominance games (as in biting to kill and permanently depriving of food) their poor elderly cat. At that time they didn't show me the nasty wound the elderly cat had suffered, but from what I saw later, well, it looked bad. For more on this story, go here. I was told this was very normal for cats. While there, I met her, and she seemed very friendly and affectionate. I even saw their baby (a 2 year old) playing with her fairly roughly and the cat seemed to take it in stride without doing anything nasty. It also seemed to get along with their other cat. Most importantly, she seemed to get along well with me, and vice versa. I was half expecting another {name of foul hellish beast masquerading as a cat of another friend}, and was pleased to see no sign of head-spinning, vomitings, speaking in reverberant deep voices, or spitting hellfire.
However, I wasn't sure I wanted to take it yet. I don't make these decisions on the spur of the moment. I consider a new pet to be a pretty big responsibility (not like marriage, but a lot more then, say, agreeing to join an RPG), so I told him I would think about it. The limit was that while they had the new cat their old cat was locked in the bathroom where the new cat couldn't get at him, and so they needed a decision fairly soon. They were planning on bringing her to the shelter on Saturday (a no-kill shelter, but still). They had gotten her from the shelter initially, where she was brought to after being found roaming the streets for at least five days. She was deaf and declawed, so letting her out deliberately would have been a rather cruel thing to do to her. However the shelter tried to find out if anyone had been searching for her and didn't get any response. She was toilet-trained, and showed a lot of other signs of domestication, so she had obviously lived with people for a decent amount of time. She is somewhere around 3 or 4 years old.
I thought about it for much of the following week. I also contacted the head concierge in my building. We do have a no pets policy there, but apparently lots of people in the building own indoor cats, even one of the building trustees, so it's ok as long as it's kept reasonably quiet. Note that this journal is, and shall remain, fairly anonymous. Dogs are pretty much out though. My head concierge also said she knew of a nearby vet, but hasn't been able to dig up the contact ingformation for me yet. Later in the week I also asked her about the superintendent who needs to be in and out of my condo whenever repairs need to be made (related to the building systems), or when air/heating filters need to be changed (twice a year). She said the superintendent wouldn't rat me out either, which pushed me a little further into going with the cat.
I spent a lot of time shopping for Christmas presents that week too for everyone, and sending out some much belated things I had promised people.
Oh, before I continue the story, I also saw Return of the King. I'm including my take on that below.
Friday morning I called my friend and agreed to take the cat, they (him, his wife, his baby) brought it over on Friday evening. They spent the evening at my place giving me lots of cat supplies (probably more then they could easily afford, I felt guilty taking all that stuff and offered to pay for it, but they refused), and describing how to care for the cat. Aside from a few goldfish when I was very young this is the only time I have ever owned a pet, or even had one in the same place as me. Neither my parents nor my sibling are into pets of any sort. Upon opening the cat cage the poor thing fled in terror under my bed against the far wall. That's about as far away from anyone as she could get. I tried coaxking her out of there and to explore my apartment, but no luck. At least, not while my friend and his family were there.
After they were gone I spent a lot of time scrunched underneath the bed trying to pet and scratch the new cat, and trying to coax her with food into coming out. No luck until I turned most of the lights off, and then, very tentatively she came out until I was able to get her on top of the bed and continued petting and scratching her there for a long time. She gradually calmed down a little and, very tentatively, when the lights were off, started to explore the place. During the night she was quite affectionate toward me, and led me around to various places in the apartment.
Sometimes, for no apparent reason, she needs to stay near me, and follows me wherever I go. Most iof the time though she will explore, or just sleep. Typically though, if she can't see me when she wakes up from sleep she lets out a plaintive little meow and goes looking for me. She's very friendly and affectionate. Not vicious at all (at least, not toward me or any of the visitors I have had in my place. She clearly does miss me when I am gone though, both for my food dispensing abilities and my company. I kind of miss her too. Although her food-dispensing abilities suck ;) Since my friend's baby had, dubbed the cat {former name of cat} and I wasn't thrilled with the name, which was kind of unofficial anyway, and since she's deaf, I decided to rename the cat too {current, vastly improved, name of cat}.
She also gets much more active when all the lights are out, which is a bit of a problem as I am a fairly light sleeper, especially with respect to noise, and have a hard time falling asleep again, but it's gradually working itself out.
Oh, I saw the wound in their other cat's hip on Saturday. Very nasty. I gather it had gotten a lot better since they first noticed it. Of course, my cat tells a different story. According to her this has all been an insidious plot on the part of their younger cat to simultanously get rid of their older cat while laying the blame at her feet so it could get rid of her. Of course, cats can't really talk, let's not be ridiculous. She didn't literally tell this to me, nooo, she wrote out the story with a pen and a piece of paper dragging the pen along with great difficulty in her mouth. Yes, I was as shocked and amazed as you are, but it's true! Unfortunately she had no evidence to back this up, and the new cat is always the one that gets blamed, but she passed the lie detector test with flying colors, and suggested that DNA tests of the old cat's wound would clearly show who was responsible. She has vowed to spend the rest of her life pursuing the real biter....ok, sorry, I just couldn't resist. {Friend's old cat's name} was in very serious condition, so I probably shouldn't make jokes about this, but now seems to be doing quite well and is going to make a full recovery despite his advanced age.
What follows is my review of the movie Return of the King, if you haven't seen it yet and don't want spoilers, don't read the review.
************************************** SPOILER ALERT ****************************************************
Unlike some Lord of the Rings afficionados I thought Return of the King was a wonderful movie. I didn't cry, but there were points at which I was very moved. Unfortunately I also thought it deviated most, of all three movies, from the original books, and not in a good way. As book adaptations go it was still probably more faithful then most adaptations of f/sf novels, but I didn't think it was all that faithful.
I was particularly annoyed with the fact that Sam, in the movie, was presented as the big hero while Frodo was basically an obstructionist hanger-on who ultimately made the wrong choice and got lucky. The book makes both Sam and Frodo out to be heroes, but Frodo is a greater one.
I was also upset about the scene with the finding of the Palantir. I knew they were cutting out the scouring of the shire, and wasn't wild about that, but I didn't know they were cutting out ALL of Saruman's parts. In the book, IIRC, The Palantir is dropped when Grima Wormtongue and Saruman have an altercation in which Gandalf is involved. Pippin manages to sneak off and grab the Palantir for a quick peek while everyone is busy. I didn't dislike the way the movie handled it, but it was a major departure from the book.
In general they cut out entire scenes that could easily have been kept in if they didn't insist on having these interminably long battle scenes of which they could easily have cut 5 minutes here or a quarter hour there. I realize, however, that the modern movie-going audience probably wouldn't have been nearly as interested in those scenes as they would have been in those extra bits of battle, so I suppose, from a profit-making perspective, Peter jackson made the right choice.
Still, despite these criticisms, I thought it was a great movie. I loved the scene where Pippin and Eowyn slay the Witch-king of Angmar.
"Hey {my name}! Are you still looking for a cat? Because we have one that we need
to move out. {friend's wife} got her at the animal shelter about a month ago, but
she's not getting along with {other cat's name}.
She's a white short-hair, very soft fur, declawed and neutered. I can tell
you more if you want. Let me know!"
Well, he was right. I had been thinking of getting a cat. Two cats, actually, so that each could keep the other company, as I'm gone about 11 hours out of the day to work. I also had planned to get a driver's license first as I worried about bringing the cats to the vet in an emergency.
However, I kind of liked the idea, and thought that maybe I could see and meet the cat to find out what she was like. As it turned out, I was going to take a week's vacation next week, and so was he, so that worked out reasonably well. As a side note, I had over 6 and a half weeks of vacation time saved up, and technically I was only supposed to have a maximum of 6 weeks so I was worried about using it or losing it at the end of the year. I also had a floating holiday which, if not taken, I would most certainly lose at the end of the year, so taking the week of vacation time around the Christmas holiday was almost a necessity. We had just finished coding and debugging a major new software release that Friday, and didn't have anything major due for a little while, so this was a good time to take it too.
So Monday I went over to the friend's house to meet the cat. At that time I was told she was more then just not getting along well. The female cat had been playing rather evil dominance games (as in biting to kill and permanently depriving of food) their poor elderly cat. At that time they didn't show me the nasty wound the elderly cat had suffered, but from what I saw later, well, it looked bad. For more on this story, go here. I was told this was very normal for cats. While there, I met her, and she seemed very friendly and affectionate. I even saw their baby (a 2 year old) playing with her fairly roughly and the cat seemed to take it in stride without doing anything nasty. It also seemed to get along with their other cat. Most importantly, she seemed to get along well with me, and vice versa. I was half expecting another {name of foul hellish beast masquerading as a cat of another friend}, and was pleased to see no sign of head-spinning, vomitings, speaking in reverberant deep voices, or spitting hellfire.
However, I wasn't sure I wanted to take it yet. I don't make these decisions on the spur of the moment. I consider a new pet to be a pretty big responsibility (not like marriage, but a lot more then, say, agreeing to join an RPG), so I told him I would think about it. The limit was that while they had the new cat their old cat was locked in the bathroom where the new cat couldn't get at him, and so they needed a decision fairly soon. They were planning on bringing her to the shelter on Saturday (a no-kill shelter, but still). They had gotten her from the shelter initially, where she was brought to after being found roaming the streets for at least five days. She was deaf and declawed, so letting her out deliberately would have been a rather cruel thing to do to her. However the shelter tried to find out if anyone had been searching for her and didn't get any response. She was toilet-trained, and showed a lot of other signs of domestication, so she had obviously lived with people for a decent amount of time. She is somewhere around 3 or 4 years old.
I thought about it for much of the following week. I also contacted the head concierge in my building. We do have a no pets policy there, but apparently lots of people in the building own indoor cats, even one of the building trustees, so it's ok as long as it's kept reasonably quiet. Note that this journal is, and shall remain, fairly anonymous. Dogs are pretty much out though. My head concierge also said she knew of a nearby vet, but hasn't been able to dig up the contact ingformation for me yet. Later in the week I also asked her about the superintendent who needs to be in and out of my condo whenever repairs need to be made (related to the building systems), or when air/heating filters need to be changed (twice a year). She said the superintendent wouldn't rat me out either, which pushed me a little further into going with the cat.
I spent a lot of time shopping for Christmas presents that week too for everyone, and sending out some much belated things I had promised people.
Oh, before I continue the story, I also saw Return of the King. I'm including my take on that below.
Friday morning I called my friend and agreed to take the cat, they (him, his wife, his baby) brought it over on Friday evening. They spent the evening at my place giving me lots of cat supplies (probably more then they could easily afford, I felt guilty taking all that stuff and offered to pay for it, but they refused), and describing how to care for the cat. Aside from a few goldfish when I was very young this is the only time I have ever owned a pet, or even had one in the same place as me. Neither my parents nor my sibling are into pets of any sort. Upon opening the cat cage the poor thing fled in terror under my bed against the far wall. That's about as far away from anyone as she could get. I tried coaxking her out of there and to explore my apartment, but no luck. At least, not while my friend and his family were there.
After they were gone I spent a lot of time scrunched underneath the bed trying to pet and scratch the new cat, and trying to coax her with food into coming out. No luck until I turned most of the lights off, and then, very tentatively she came out until I was able to get her on top of the bed and continued petting and scratching her there for a long time. She gradually calmed down a little and, very tentatively, when the lights were off, started to explore the place. During the night she was quite affectionate toward me, and led me around to various places in the apartment.
Sometimes, for no apparent reason, she needs to stay near me, and follows me wherever I go. Most iof the time though she will explore, or just sleep. Typically though, if she can't see me when she wakes up from sleep she lets out a plaintive little meow and goes looking for me. She's very friendly and affectionate. Not vicious at all (at least, not toward me or any of the visitors I have had in my place. She clearly does miss me when I am gone though, both for my food dispensing abilities and my company. I kind of miss her too. Although her food-dispensing abilities suck ;) Since my friend's baby had, dubbed the cat {former name of cat} and I wasn't thrilled with the name, which was kind of unofficial anyway, and since she's deaf, I decided to rename the cat too {current, vastly improved, name of cat}.
She also gets much more active when all the lights are out, which is a bit of a problem as I am a fairly light sleeper, especially with respect to noise, and have a hard time falling asleep again, but it's gradually working itself out.
Oh, I saw the wound in their other cat's hip on Saturday. Very nasty. I gather it had gotten a lot better since they first noticed it. Of course, my cat tells a different story. According to her this has all been an insidious plot on the part of their younger cat to simultanously get rid of their older cat while laying the blame at her feet so it could get rid of her. Of course, cats can't really talk, let's not be ridiculous. She didn't literally tell this to me, nooo, she wrote out the story with a pen and a piece of paper dragging the pen along with great difficulty in her mouth. Yes, I was as shocked and amazed as you are, but it's true! Unfortunately she had no evidence to back this up, and the new cat is always the one that gets blamed, but she passed the lie detector test with flying colors, and suggested that DNA tests of the old cat's wound would clearly show who was responsible. She has vowed to spend the rest of her life pursuing the real biter....ok, sorry, I just couldn't resist. {Friend's old cat's name} was in very serious condition, so I probably shouldn't make jokes about this, but now seems to be doing quite well and is going to make a full recovery despite his advanced age.
What follows is my review of the movie Return of the King, if you haven't seen it yet and don't want spoilers, don't read the review.
************************************** SPOILER ALERT ****************************************************
Unlike some Lord of the Rings afficionados I thought Return of the King was a wonderful movie. I didn't cry, but there were points at which I was very moved. Unfortunately I also thought it deviated most, of all three movies, from the original books, and not in a good way. As book adaptations go it was still probably more faithful then most adaptations of f/sf novels, but I didn't think it was all that faithful.
I was particularly annoyed with the fact that Sam, in the movie, was presented as the big hero while Frodo was basically an obstructionist hanger-on who ultimately made the wrong choice and got lucky. The book makes both Sam and Frodo out to be heroes, but Frodo is a greater one.
I was also upset about the scene with the finding of the Palantir. I knew they were cutting out the scouring of the shire, and wasn't wild about that, but I didn't know they were cutting out ALL of Saruman's parts. In the book, IIRC, The Palantir is dropped when Grima Wormtongue and Saruman have an altercation in which Gandalf is involved. Pippin manages to sneak off and grab the Palantir for a quick peek while everyone is busy. I didn't dislike the way the movie handled it, but it was a major departure from the book.
In general they cut out entire scenes that could easily have been kept in if they didn't insist on having these interminably long battle scenes of which they could easily have cut 5 minutes here or a quarter hour there. I realize, however, that the modern movie-going audience probably wouldn't have been nearly as interested in those scenes as they would have been in those extra bits of battle, so I suppose, from a profit-making perspective, Peter jackson made the right choice.
Still, despite these criticisms, I thought it was a great movie. I loved the scene where Pippin and Eowyn slay the Witch-king of Angmar.