Castratin' Jane!
Friday Cat Picture, this time of Tazendra in a rare "cute" moment:
Still here and still functional. It's Friday, which helps a lot.
Woke up yesterday to a beautiful virtual rose on my userinfo page; thank you for the touch of brightness, valkyrwench. In a stroke of irony, I was wearing BPAL's Othello at the time, which is like what if the sexiest man alive was sitting right next to you with an armful of roses. So it was entirely appropriate.
Spent a good chunk of yesterday dealing with Animal Control and the Tulsa cops. Not over the cat thing -- I'm pursuing that separately -- but about the neighbors. All of our neighbors have barking dogs. During the time we've lived here, the dogs have done nothing but get noisier, since their owners never discipline them for barking. So far as I can tell they pay not the slightest attention to the incredible racket. The woman across the street has a screaming pit bull that never shuts up, the woman down the block has a yappy black mutt that is even noisier than she is stupid -- she barks for half an hour at the neighbor's cat when it's half a goddamn block away for Christ's sake -- and the guy next door acquired two very large and noisy new dogs last week for a grand total of four in his yard alone. Four, when the legal limit is three. Four, bringing the total of noisy dogs on the street to six.
That was the last straw.
I've tried talking to the neighbors. Woman-down-the-street and next-door guy never answer their doors, and the lady across the street is so sweet on her savage little preciouses that she doesn't ever act to restrain them, so I've been totally unable to get them to shut the fuck up, and have, for months, been simply screaming out the front door like some kind of redneck with Tourette's in an effort to shut the dogs up, even if the human owners are still as oblivious as cow shit. It's gotten to the point where I am honestly surprised that the mockingbirds in our yard do not go "SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU MAGGOT-COCKED SPOOGE-SUCKERS!"
I had to holler myself hoarse Wednesday morning just to get some fucking sleep, so I called Animal Control, who couldn't do anything fast enough to suit me. I haven't had a decent night's sleep in a week. A call to the cops and an explanation that the barking dogs are breaking three separate city ordinances, and that this is completely unacceptable and, given my state of mind, dangerous, got some police officers to come out yesterday and address the situation. The neighbors won't open the door for me, but evidently they'll do it for a badge.
It's been quiet as the dead today -- I've heard barking just three times, and I've been up since the wee hours of the morning.
Gratifying.
The cat situation is better, if we're using "better" to mean "less cat-ful." There are no kittens at that house. It's been days, and there is no sign of them. I think the people in that house actually did something on their own, since they disappeared before Animal Control had time to pick them up. There are still a couple of cats there. One is a pregnant tortoiseshell queen who is about a week from dropping her litter. She doesn't seem as scared of me as the others, so I've been trying to make friends. If I can't catch her myself over the weekend, I'll enlist professional assistance and see if I can bring her in where she can be deparasitized and cleaned up, and have her kittens in a safe place. Otherwise it's Joey all over again.
Thank you for all your support and offers of help. I will not take money until I know where to apply it. The $200 vet bill for Joey is not enough to make me sweat, and right now even if I had a thousand dollars to throw at this problem, I couldn't do squat to help these particular cats. So I'm biding my time and hoping I get the chance to do something more meaningful to clear this situation up. It's better. It's still not as good as I would prefer.
For now, though, I have writing to accomplish and painting to do, and a writers' meeting to go to, but first: a public service message:
Still here and still functional. It's Friday, which helps a lot.
Woke up yesterday to a beautiful virtual rose on my userinfo page; thank you for the touch of brightness, valkyrwench. In a stroke of irony, I was wearing BPAL's Othello at the time, which is like what if the sexiest man alive was sitting right next to you with an armful of roses. So it was entirely appropriate.
Spent a good chunk of yesterday dealing with Animal Control and the Tulsa cops. Not over the cat thing -- I'm pursuing that separately -- but about the neighbors. All of our neighbors have barking dogs. During the time we've lived here, the dogs have done nothing but get noisier, since their owners never discipline them for barking. So far as I can tell they pay not the slightest attention to the incredible racket. The woman across the street has a screaming pit bull that never shuts up, the woman down the block has a yappy black mutt that is even noisier than she is stupid -- she barks for half an hour at the neighbor's cat when it's half a goddamn block away for Christ's sake -- and the guy next door acquired two very large and noisy new dogs last week for a grand total of four in his yard alone. Four, when the legal limit is three. Four, bringing the total of noisy dogs on the street to six.
That was the last straw.
I've tried talking to the neighbors. Woman-down-the-street and next-door guy never answer their doors, and the lady across the street is so sweet on her savage little preciouses that she doesn't ever act to restrain them, so I've been totally unable to get them to shut the fuck up, and have, for months, been simply screaming out the front door like some kind of redneck with Tourette's in an effort to shut the dogs up, even if the human owners are still as oblivious as cow shit. It's gotten to the point where I am honestly surprised that the mockingbirds in our yard do not go "SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU MAGGOT-COCKED SPOOGE-SUCKERS!"
I had to holler myself hoarse Wednesday morning just to get some fucking sleep, so I called Animal Control, who couldn't do anything fast enough to suit me. I haven't had a decent night's sleep in a week. A call to the cops and an explanation that the barking dogs are breaking three separate city ordinances, and that this is completely unacceptable and, given my state of mind, dangerous, got some police officers to come out yesterday and address the situation. The neighbors won't open the door for me, but evidently they'll do it for a badge.
It's been quiet as the dead today -- I've heard barking just three times, and I've been up since the wee hours of the morning.
Gratifying.
The cat situation is better, if we're using "better" to mean "less cat-ful." There are no kittens at that house. It's been days, and there is no sign of them. I think the people in that house actually did something on their own, since they disappeared before Animal Control had time to pick them up. There are still a couple of cats there. One is a pregnant tortoiseshell queen who is about a week from dropping her litter. She doesn't seem as scared of me as the others, so I've been trying to make friends. If I can't catch her myself over the weekend, I'll enlist professional assistance and see if I can bring her in where she can be deparasitized and cleaned up, and have her kittens in a safe place. Otherwise it's Joey all over again.
Thank you for all your support and offers of help. I will not take money until I know where to apply it. The $200 vet bill for Joey is not enough to make me sweat, and right now even if I had a thousand dollars to throw at this problem, I couldn't do squat to help these particular cats. So I'm biding my time and hoping I get the chance to do something more meaningful to clear this situation up. It's better. It's still not as good as I would prefer.
For now, though, I have writing to accomplish and painting to do, and a writers' meeting to go to, but first: a public service message: