Snarks and Ladders

So… I have (stupidly, perhaps?) spent some of the non-money that I have (one day I will get rid of this god forsaken credit card, I swear) to revive the blog.  Mainly because Dreamhost sent me an email which was something like the following:

Dear Scum,

As you have a delinquent account (fitting your already delinquent nature), we will be deleting ALL YOUR THINGS in 2 weeks unless you give us money.

And honestly, us doing this aforementioned deleting might actually be good for the internet.  First we destroy you, and then we move on to larger, more significant targets.  Like Reddit.  And Mitt Romney’s website.

If you want to save your drivel and cat photos, you will pay us the sum of $117 immediately.

Regards,

The Dreamhost Billing Team

Ok, maybe the letter was a bit politer than this.  But, still, I needed to save the cat photos.  Then I looked at the sent date and realised: I had one day!  I don’t get paid for another two days!

So, out came the trusty credit card.

In other news:

I varnished the floors of my house.  They look like shit, with the exception of one room, where my brain had a massive ‘a ha!’ moment and worked out the proper technique for varnishing floors. 

The room, with its perfect floor, is the inferior spare room.  Not the master bedroom, not the guest room (so designated because it is not big enough to be the master bedroom, yet inexplicably has the ensuite)… the OTHER bedroom.  The one which will NEVER be used.

The back story involves porn, my imbecile brother, and apparently, vaginas.  Mum didn’t really like it when I pointed out that she was probably looking at vulvas, not vaginas… Really, its important to use the correct terminology for these things, people!

After the whole phone thievery debacle, I received a shiny new phone.  With no sim card.  Apparently, Optus forgot to send the sim card.  So, they said they would send me one.  Then it didn’t show up.  So I called them… and they said ‘oh, we sent it to Pennant Hills’.  BECAUSE BOURKE AND SYDNEY ARE SO DAMN CLOSE (hint: Google Map it next time).  Then they chastised me for not simply driving to the conveniently close Optus store located a mere 350 km away.  When I reminded them of this, they did promise to send me another one.  I have my suspicions this one will go to Perth.

Thank you Manicare for telling me I am the WORST in the WORLD.  My bushy, terrifying eyebrows: much worse than world hunger.  My broken, varnish stained nails: Definitely worse than racism! 

My dog died.  Which deserves much more than that brief, blunt sentence, but really, I do not have the words.  Willis, destroyer of plants, eater of inedibles, constant companion, my cuddle buddy every time I locked myself out of the house, ‘beloved ‘Safety Dog’ (oh, I should probably tell you all the story one day), fat and proud best friend who thought nothing of stealing sandwiches from small children… you shall be missed.  And while I am not at all certain with the idea of a people heaven, I would like to believe there is something else out there for my beautiful boy.

I’m possibly about to fail my uni course.  I should probably get cracking on my first assignment, but I just can not focus.

Read all the 50 Shades books to see what the fuss was about.  Wish I had stopped at the first.  Or before the first, even.  Yeah, I’m one of those people I guess… just have to join the 50 Shades Hate Brigade.  But really, I don’t think I can stomach the thought of reading ‘my inner goddess’, ‘mercurial’ or anything about two fingers again.  There was certainly potential in the books, but terribly clumsy writing just ruined everything.  Oh, and while we are at it, let’s just go back to what I said about vulva/vagina terminology and agree that it should never be referred to as ‘my sex’.

And, finally, my sister might just kick my arse for being the worst maid of honour ever.  3 weeks after she asked me, and I still haven’t given her measurements for my bridesmaid’s dress.  I don’t have a measuring tape at home, and of course, I forget whenever I am at the shop to get one.  GAH.

Our new puppy arrived home just over a day ago.  So far, there has been:

4 sloppy poos on the carpet (guess who got to clean that up!)

1 destroyed sock

1 terrified cat (I am looking forward to getting the puppy out of the house, because poor Suki feels very threatened)

1 angry cat (Kamiko doesn’t seem to realise she is three times the size of the puppy)

2 nights of no sleep (so…. much… whining…)

But, nevertheless, we love her.  Meet Chilli the puppy!

So, after what feels like a lifetime of no blogging, and very little access to technology, I am kinda back.  That is, until I go again.  However, I am determined to stick to it (does this sound familiar to you?)

The camera was out of commission for quite a while – I had lost my battery charger, and was putting off buying a new one (because we all know the minute you buy something whatever you lost magically appears), but eventually I caved.

And so, you have pictures.  I guess I have a lot of exciting news as well, but I’ll stick with pictures for the time being!

Sonny managed to get an infection in his foot, and so was doomed to wear the cone of shame.  Needless to say, he was very unhappy about this turn of affairs.

Suki, the Barbie of cats, spends most of her time posing and trying to meow in a cute manner.  Usually, she achieves this.  When my parents visited for Easter, my mother spent more time pampering the cat than she did talking to me.  If she was a human she’d be dangerous.

Willis is getting fatter and fatter.  I keep trying to put him on a diet (before, you know, he has a heart attack, or gets arthritis, or something), and then the boy turns around and gives him more food.  I’m beginning to think he is actually trying to kill him.  Hmmmmph.

On the other hand… Gracie is never going to get fat.  Although she is getting furrier.  All she does is run.  And run.  And run.  And run.

In inadvertent pets… A grasshopper decided to come in and eat my roses.  Which was actually preferable to eating the rose bushes outside, I think.  And then the cats got to chase him around the house when the roses were dead.  I think that’s a win.  Also, trying to get a photo of him made me wish for a macro lens SOOOOOO much.  Seriously… if anyone out there loves me an insane amount, and has a macro lens from, oh, a dead relative or a hated ex or something that they wish to offload?  I’ll be your best friend forever if you give it to me.  Totally not scared of dead people cooties, or nasty ex karma.

And we got an owl in the backyard, which was kinda cool.  Would have been better if I had the longer lens on the camera, but I was too scared to spend the time finding the lens, changing the lens, and then racing back out, because I was pretty sure he’d fly away before then.  And, sure enough, he did not too much longer after I took this.  I do love owls.

It was about 11pm when we go home from the pub. We’d both had a few drinks, and it had been a pretty enjoyable night.  The boy had just finished his dinner, and I was lying in bed re-reading The Hunger Games books while the boy gave me a back rub.  It was probably the first night since we had our big argument that everything seemed to be going ok.

At about midnight, the dogs started causing a fuss.  The boy got up to investigate, and he found Izzy convulsing on the front lawn.  He brought her inside, and while he tried to figure out what was wrong with her, I started calling the vet.

Unfortunately, the vet who works in my town also runs a clinic in a town 150 kilometres away.  Just so happens, Wednesday night is the night that she stays in that town.  She told me it sounded like a snake bite or some other type of poison, and recommended that we get her to a vet ASAP.  She wasn’t able to get to the clinic in her town, as she was minding two small children, but she advised me to try a couple of other vets out of town.  Unfortunately, the closest was 280 kilometres away.

Now, both the boy and I had been drinking, and we had definitely had too much to drive.  But there wasn’t anything else to be done – we jumped in the car and I drove as fast as I possibly could while he nursed Izzy, who was still convulsing and foaming at the mouth, in the back seat of the car.  It was probably madness – here we were, both well over the legal limit, driving far in excess of the speed limit, in the middle of the night, dodging kangaroos all over the road, which was wet and slippery from all the rain we had been having.

Unfortunately, about 15 minutes outside of the town we were headed to, two hours after we found her in the front yard, Izzy passed away.  She went quiet, and about five minutes later, she was gone.  We drove her home, and put her in her bed, where the other dogs slept all night with her.  They haven’t seen death before, and they were very confused, spending all night licking her, trying to wake her up.

We thought that the dogs must have disturbed a snake, and it had bitten her, until later the next afternoon, when we found out our next door neighbour’s dog had died that night as well. Dog baiting is horribly common in our community, although usually the poisoned food is left in paddocks or on the levee bank, rather than thrown into yards.  It’s far too much of a coincidence for both dogs to have been bitten on the same night.

I honestly don’t know what I will do if I ever find out who did it.  I hope it isn’t one of my students, or their parents, because I just don’t think I could cope with it.  Crime in general is getting worse, and this sort of thing is becoming a problem. Just the other day, someone threw a marrow bone over a friend’s fence for their dog to get.  However, they had wrapped the marrow bone in barbed wire.  I don’t understand what sort of sick, twisted person would do this to someone’s pet.  What pleasure could they possibly get out of it?

Farewell, Izzy.  You were with us for such a short time, but you were one of the most wonderful dogs I have ever known.

Well, it’s been a while (yet again), thanks to some technological problems (yay computers!)  However, if I decide that I am going to behave from now on, you may see more of me in the future.

Which is the exact same thing that I say every time, and never happens.  Whatever.

Anyway, the boy is actually moving in now (after all the weird discussions we have had around this, we finally decided that it made a hell of a lot more sense to live in the same house and save money.  or, well, for him to save money, since it isn’t working out all that much cheaper for me anyway.  More on that later).

So yes, I now live a two person, four dog, 2 cat, 1 snake existence.

Of course, the practicalities of this whole mess are still sorting themselves out.  I’m a smidgen frustrated that the domestic duties have fallen along the traditional lines, as far as I can see.  Apparently I’m great at feminism on paper, not so awesome in practice.  At least in the household, anyway.  Four dogs is kinda insane.  Kamiko, formerly an outdoor cat, refuses to leave the house, and expresses her displeasure by peeing on everything.  And I mean everything.  Especially if it’s something that won’t fit in my washing machine.

(See: stupidly expensive king size quilt. Also: European pillows.  And again: expensive rug.  Also: me.  While asleep.  What the fuck.)

She also pees on the washing that I have just brought in from the line, the shameless bitch.  At least she usually aims for the boy’s things.

Seriously.  She is not to be toyed with.

Who would have thought that one of the biggest struggles of the whole moving business would be one very angry cat?

Ok, so I had sweet f all to say. Have some puppy pictures instead. I’ll blog about the endless usual nonsense with the boy when it all makes sense in my head, or when I convince myself that anyone other than me actually cares. <3!!!

The other day I said something Kamiko took exception to. Then I wouldn’t let her outside. Then I may have decided to try and scratch her tummy while she was sleeping on her back. I can’t help myself, I just feel the urge to assert my authority over her in small and petty ways. I’m a cat dictator!

So, she gave me a nasty look, then curled up and went back to sleep. I thought that was the end of it. But no…

She waited until I was going to the bathroom, and followed me in. Cats following you into the bathroom to watch you do your business is perfectly normal, by the way. Or at least, it is in the lazy arse household of ‘I live alone and will not shut any more doors than is absolutely required or wear any more clothes than I deem necessary’ .

So, while I got around to doing that stuff you do in the bathroom, she sat, and she waited. When she could tell I was mid pee, and unable to reach over and swat her, she tugged my bath towel off its hook, and peed on it. Then, with a little self satisfied cat-smirk, she walked over, scratched my leg, and walked away.

People try to tell me cats are not smart. That they aren’t capable of conscious decision making.

They haven’t seen a cat revenge pee on your stuff, clearly.

The general consensus is that I am somewhat of a heartless bitch.  I can watch stories about death and destruction without even twitching, and I generally feel very little pity for people, because, let’s face it, 99% of people create their own mess for themselves.  That’s just the way humans work.  Even if it’s something that isn’t their fault, well… I just find it hard to feel sorry for people.  Hell, even my mother refers to me as a cold hearted bitch!

But animals?

You show me a puppy that’s sick, or a kitten that’s been mistreated, and I will be an almighty wreck.  When there was a rash of stories on the news about teenage boys torturing cats, I was crying buckets of tears.  I want to adopt every cat I see, give it a good home, and spoil it rotten.

So, the other day I thought I might stop in at the RSPCA to have a look at the cats that they have there.  Surprisingly, there weren’t too many there at all.  There was an absolutely GLORIOUS looking 5 year old Ragdoll that I would have loved to take home, but she was a ‘single cat home’ type of animal.  There were also these 2 adorable boy kittens, but kittens get adopted out pretty easily, so I decided against them.  Instead, I decided on a one year old white cat that was super snuggly.  She had one blue eye and one green eye, which, while cute, made me think that she might be partially blind… but I decided that she would be perfect for my house anyway.

Well, I paid my $130 (absolute BARGAIN by the way – that includes microchipping, desexing, immunisations and a vet check), arranged to pick her up from the vets on my way back through town a few days later, and went home.

The following day, I got a phone call from the RSPCA “Hi Angela, we are just calling to let you know that we think the cat you got the other day is blind in one eye.  Is that OK, or would you like another?” I said it was fine (hell, I suspected as much anyway), all was well, and I hung up.  At the end of the day, an animal isn’t any more or less lovable just because it has a vision defect!

Then, today, I got a phone call again! “Hi Angela, it’s the RSPCA here.  We took your cat to the vet today, and they think that she is also deaf, as well as being blind in one eye.  Were you planning on having her as an inside cat?  Because it’s really unsafe for her to go outside since she can’t hear anything or see properly.  She also has really bad depth perception because she can only see in one eye.”  I said that I would take her anyway – if I didn’t adopt her, the poor animal would be doomed to be put down, I’m sure.  However, I am a little worried about how this will affect her relationship with the cat I have now.  If she can’t see or hear Kamiko coming to pounce on her, things could be interesting.

Hell, I don’t even know what I’ll do when I take her home to Mum and Dad’s… they have a cat door for Kostya, but since the new cat (tentatively named Suki, but I did want a ‘K’ name for her) can’t go outside, I’ll have to try and keep her in somehow.

Anyway, I am determined to love her, regardless of what happens.  It will also give me more motivation to try and keep Kamiko in the house I guess!

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