I think my cat is pretty smart

So the background is this:

In the middle of the night, Macca can get very enthusiastic and bouncy, like really bouncy, and it's a pain in the neck. As a method of last resort, I can spray her with a water mister, which judging from her appalled body language she hates and despises with every fibre of her being.

The thing is, setting up negative associations with pets doesn't always work the way you expect (a friend told me a story about someone who tried to train his cat not to jump on the bench, but instead trained his cat to jump on the bench and cringe), and she hasn't really made the connection that certain behaviour will get her misted, and that it would be a good idea not to do the behaviour. But she has worked out that if the water mister is pointing at her, it's a good idea to find something else to do, so I've only actually had to spray her a couple of times.

That's not the smart thing. The smart thing is that in every day life she doesn't give a toss about the Water Mister of Doom, and will happily sleep next to it, and happily watch me pick it up and move it around. It's only when she sees me move my hand to the trigger that she feels at risk and hightails it. Pretty neat, huh?

(Yep, I know that talking about cats is horribly cliched and I've reached my quota for the year. As you were, etc.)

My Cat has a Cold

She's been sneezing and is now curled up under a blanket looking Sorry and Sad.

She's eating ok and was out and about exploring the linen cupboard earlier, so I'm not too worried, but I do feel sympathetic about the headache I figure she has.

Carpet Offcuts

Does anyone want some? I've just rehabilitated Macca's scratching post, courtesy of a kind gentleman at Christie Flooring Ltd who gave me some free offcuts, and now I have a superfluity of same. Free to a good home.

Xi Shi

I am now the proud owner of a splendiferously lustworthy doll of Xi Shi, one of the legendary Four Beatiful Women of China. According to the doll's creator, the amazingly talented Catherine, Xi Shi "was sent by the king of one small kingdom to [the king of] another small kingdom as a concubine, with the secret brief of destroying his kingdom through distraction and other secret agent tricks. Once this was accomplished, she ran away with her old handler, ... married him, and lived happily ever after. Moreover, history remembers her as 'that daring and beautiful lady who was very loyal to her country, which she helped greatly' as opposed to less complimentary epithets that [are] applied at times to beautiful women. A very successful lady. (Oh, and her father grew tea.)

Pictures, so that others can envy my good fortune, are below:

(There is a seriously huge amount of detail in this doll, which is fully undressable, with complete hand made jewellery and craft accessories, and several layers of precise and exact detail which the casual viewer wouldn't see but I know are there for added gloriousness.)






Fully assembled lady is here:


Bonus picture of me and Macca, pursuing one of her favourite hobbies:

Lo the Mighty Hunter

Macca caught a bird.

We got it out of her mouth and it flew away, hopefully nevermore to hang around our cat infested property. Cats think differently to people, though. We got the bird away from her while we were outside, but she spend a good long while investigating the top of the book case (a temporary resting place in her romp of glory) trying to work out where it had gone.

Mmm. Hot banana cake.

A couple of days ago, I realised that I was due and past due to give my cat a worming pill.

One towel, two attempts, a strapping young lad, butter, a pill popper, and a lot of hurt feelings all around (except, I think, for the strapping young lad) later, and the job is completed. And no-one's bleeding or has lost an eye or anything!

Have heard a rumour that it's possible to find topical dewormers, much like the defleaing liquid I already use. Really really must investigate.

Banana cake was Repton's first baking excursion that doesn't involve a bread machine. It's very yummy, and I'm sure he'll be keen to do this some more. :-)

Funny things to look at

One's cat crouching on a sloping bannister, facing downwards, realising that actually her claws are in the wrong direction to stop her inexorable downwards slide. The scrabbling noise was quite amusing, too.

Tonight I played in the first game of the new frisbee league, which is about four months since I last played a game of frisbee, and rather longer since I played outdoors. Asthma much less than feared, lovely sunny evening, friendly people to play with, and am now very stiff as I've done no running in a very long time.

Christmas Bling

I don't often wear jewellery, but on some occasions it's almost mandatory, such as on Christmas Day having been presented with rose quartz earrings by one's sister:

They make me oddly nostalgic, actually. When we were very young our grandmother, who lived in South Africa, would most often send us presents of semi-precious stones set into bracelets that she'd made herself.

Regarding bling of a very different kind, my sister has also been producing her own limited edition Christmas Book. (Literally producing, as in selecting the material, editing it, and binding it herself.) It comprises a selection of roughly five years of both of our writing output, and she says that I can have a few author's copies to give away on my own account. Would anyone like a copy, of the 'would really be interested' variety, rather than the 'nod politely because they're friends but stash away somewhere and not look at' variety. We appreciate the latter sort, because they're polite, but more interested in providing Xmas goodies to the former. It has a range of material: short stories, poetry, fairy-tals, one short-film script and some essays. Much of it is very good indeed, and the rest of it is by me. :-)

Finally, a complimentary picture of Macca doing Macca type things:

A Day Out

Repton has once again been hurling himself into the grass, this time at a tournament in Christchurch, and I spent my day pottering around having fun.
- going to dancing practice at the Medieval Guild and being a test audience for the play that they'll be performing at the Harcourt Park Joust in January;
- nice lunch at the Aro St cafe with a couple of members of the aforesaid Guild;
- biking around the bays as far as Cog Park - the eponymous giant cog wheel doesn't seem to be back yet, alas;
- wandering around Te Papa - I thought about looking at the colossal squid they have, but the queue was quite long, so I settled for peering at the display case from the partition;
- gelato on the waterfront.

There were many people out swimming, or paddling, or riding tandem bikes, and just generally enjoying the sun. It's been a nice day.

One of the interesting things - at Te Papa they had a 3d animation display of what they thought Big Squid's life was like, which was neat. Here's the thing, I'm quite amblyopic (posh word for saying my brain ignores the input feed from one eye because it has a very different focal depth) and under normal conditions I don't think about things like depth in what I'm seeing. But in some conditions, like in an Imac cinema, or looking at some pictures with technical tricks giving the illusion of perspective, or today at Te Papa, I get the feeling of knowing that things are nearer or farther just by looking at them, I don't have to work it out from size and movement. Is it like that for most people all the time? Gosh.

Move is just about complete bar hanging pictures and making myself laundry bag. Macca the Cat is now officially Allowed Out, although is having problems getting up the nerve to venture outside anytime she thinks that bouncing around staunchly insisting how brave she is might actually result in being exposed to Other Cats Looking At Her. Right now, she knows where the cat door is, and what it is, but is mostly using it as a toy to bang her paws against. No, wait, she's finally wormed through it now. It's unlikely that she'll be out long. Silly cat.

EDIT: And she just faced off one of the neighbour's cats trying to come in. Might have to think about undisabling the cat door magnet and making her wear a collar.

Total cycling distance: 18.8km, spread over about 6 hours with lots of distractions in between.

Feeling loved, but a bit squished.

I've been away from home for a week. I got back yesterday to find that Repton and Macca were extremely pleased to see me, but also that there was also a lot less room in the bed to sleep. Also, that Macca, who I had thought doesn't purr, actually does, but she needs to be sitting on your hands before it's noticeable.

There is a cat in my house who is trying to convince me that he's moved in and it would be great if we could hang out together.

His name is Thurber, he (or she) is black and white and missing an eye, and is showing no inclination to go home. Strangely, he's even more needy and attention-junky than Macca, which I surely never thought I'd see. We rang his family but have only gotten the answering machine so far.

The Grey Mouser

Macca caught a mouse. She's been sitting out the back door with her face pressed up to the (locked) cat door saying: "Hey, look, I caught a Mouse. Can I come in? I can show off this Mouse I caught. I'm sorry, I can't talk so clearly right now, what with this Mouse in my mouth."

I think it was just a baby, and it looks suspiciously limp, so hopefully she killed it quickly.

Dear Diary, This Morning My Cat Went Crazy.

Well, crazy is very likely too harsh a term - I'm pretty sure she was acting logically by her lights.

Sometime in the wee small hours a neighbouring cat tried to get in the cat door which at night is locked. I woke up to hear cats screaming and found Macca planted on the inside of the door staunchly protecting us against all comers, her tail doing an excellent imitation of a bottle brush. Then the outside cat went away and I thought I'd go back to sleep.

Not...really. Macca spent the rest of the morning wanting to go out, wanting to come in, dashing around the house, wanting me to go outside with her, using the litter box over and over again, not going through the cat door but batting at it very loudly, and in other fashions thoroughly marking her territory. So, logical in her way, but very tiring from my point of view.

[yawns]

I have spent -

- the last three hours pinned on the couch by my cat. I made a brief escape half an hour ago to deal with some necessary functions (servicing my tea addiction and so forth), to be promptly pinned as soon as a I sat down again, ran out of ways to waste time on the internet, and have been left with resurrecting some half-finished stories that had gone the way of procrastination and adding bits. I had no idea you were so literarily inclined when I met you, Macca.

My First Bike Fall.

With picture for the Suppurating Wounds Club (Nasty Bruise Subdivision):


and complimentary picture of Macca, because she's beautiful and happened to be around while I had the camera out:


As bike falls go, I guess it was pretty sedate, involving a nearly stationary bicycle and no other vehicles. Shoe laces are so darn threatening, doncherknow. My laces got caught on the pedal when I tried to dismount and the only way to go by then was down. It's so embarrassing. I'm fine, barring the bruises on leg and ego.

Changes.

I'm feeling very transitional right now. Macca the cat is still in her settling in phase, I've just accepted a new job ... even the weather is beginning to turn.

Macca. She's the most assertively friendly cat I've ever met. She's toned it down a little from her first couple of days, when I expect she was partly smooching out of nerves and a desire to bond, but she's still very friendly, and the only cat I know who would plead to be allowed in to a room full of noisy visitors. She's had a cold this week and is still sneezing, but the frequency seems to be dropping off, and it hasn't stopped her eating or made her depressed her or anything. She's started going outside for short periods under supervision - she loses a lot of her street-wise cool when she goes out, being particularly wary of cars driving by, but also unsure of the strange spaces and the more random air movements. Her main exception was on Saturday, when she found a way into the reserve out the back that I didn't know about and we did some unplanned bush bashing. Macca thinks that Trees Are Cool, and will likely be going out that way a lot as soon as I trust her not to get lost. (We ended up going through one of the neighbour's gardens and coming back by the road because I'd had to cross some awfully steep ground while I was trying to catch up with her, which I wasn't going to attempt with a cat in my arms.)

The Job. It's at FirstLightERA and the position title is Information Taxonomist. (Because obscure job titles is where it's at. ;-)) As I understood things from the job interview, they provide an editorial related advertising service to specialist web magazines. This means that someone reading an article in, I dunno, Plumber's Weekly, would see ads on that page that are very specifically relevant to that article, much more relevant than an automated keyword matching service would provide. The team I'm being hired for goes through each publication and makes a taxonomy tree of what sorts of information are presented, so that each individual article can be tagged correctly. Theoretically, the readers win, because the ads can be less obtrusive and will be more relevant to them, and the advertisers and web magazines win, because their ads are more effective per pixel. Anyway, I get a call in about twenty minutes to discuss things like when I start. Fingers crossed etc.

What isn't transitional is my relationship with Repton, which is about to reach it's 2nd anniversary. This is very cool, except for the annoying part of my back brain which likes to poke me when it thinks I might be getting comfortable with something. Stupid back brain. (Sorry, Repton, I'm going through a neurotic phase.)

EDIT: Just had the phone call, I start next Monday.

EDIT2: And in news of the other person going through a big transition right now, I've heard from Fraser's new flatmate that he arrived safely in Auckland, unloaded his gear and is on his way back to return the van.

Round the Bays

This morning I ran the Round the Bays fun run in ~49 minutes (yes, I managed to run the whole way, excepting about 10 metres when I was having my halfway drink.) I'm glad I did it, although unfortunately I've pulled some ligaments in one foot and am hobbling about putting ice on it and so forth. There was a physio at Kilbirnie Park who looked at it and said it would be fine in a couple of days, though. Also saw my aunt Barbara in the park, and she's looking well. She had news about one of my cousins who has just had a baby after 96 hours of labour. Just ... ow.

Macca is doing well, she's wandering around the main part of the house exploring, sneezing and saying "Myeh" a lot, with intermittent lounging on the couch being made much of.

EDIT: The times have now been published. I actually ran the course in 46.01 minutes, from start line to finish line, and was placed 2837th. (It was 6.6km, giving me an average running speed of 8.6 km/hr.)

On Cats

I can remember reading a series of books by C. J. Cherryh about a family of sort of humanoid cats who travelled about their region of space trading. It became a running gag in the books that they'd be forced to deal with an incomprehensible alien (and once a male of their own species) and end up by locking them in the bathroom for want of anywhere else to put them. In a reversal of that running gag, I now have a prisoner of my own locked in the bathroom. Her name is Macca, and she is a 7 year old tabby.

We've only just got back from the SPCA and she's still upset, but coping a lot better than she could be. Photos to follow when she's more settled in.