For lord_zanther (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

Oh, and I have Internet and FiOS TV back. Yay! Posted in: cat , tuna

Drinkwell pet fountain (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

Last week we bought something new for Blackie, our cat. Ever since she moved in with us, we've been feeding her water from dishes and bowls. Said water would get refreshed every two to three days, which of course is sub-optimal. We also thought Blackie could and should drink more water, for her own health.

Because she used to love drinking from a running tap and still loves to drink water from "odd" places (like the pitcher I use to water the plants), I bought her a Drinkwell Pet Fountain. This nifty gizmo combines a traditional drinking bowl with a small aquarium pump and an additional reservoir to create a small fountain that resembles a running tap.

Blackie was rather fascinated by her new bowl and spent at least five minutes drinking and sniffing and playing with it. The next morning I also heard sneezes coming from the kitchen, meaning that she's still getting used to the stream of water ^_^

Posted in: cat , drinwell , fountain , pet , water

Life according to Thisby (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

takayla: Thisby is up here laying on the bed. Oh no, I have to sneeze. There she went.
punkwalrus: Heh, she is skittish
punkwalrus: I wonder how she sees the world
takayla: Big, bright and scary

That about sums it up. Posted in: cat , thisby

Taboo has something to say... (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

moar funny pictures Posted in: cat , lolcats , olpc , taboo

Thisby sucks (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

So, Thisby, the almost feral crazy cat we have? Spends days under the bed? Well, her curiosity combined with fear are her major undoing. I mean, she is extremely scared of everything and will bite hard if handled. I have never had a cat so feral in my house in my life. I am glad she uses the cat box, but other than that, she's just an occupant.

Sadly, sometimes her curiosity leads her to wander outside the bed space, and due to her lack of socialization, always ends up doing something stupid. When she was a kitten, she hid the the freezer coils of a deep freezer. It was about the space of a softball, and had the freezer been running, she might have died there. One day she found out that the pool table legs were hollow, and decided to live there. It took her over a year to get scared out of there. She hollowed out spaces in our furniture down there at the time, and used a former loveseat as a littler box. :(

She got trapped in my den once. She hides in almost impossible spaces, and the only hint you have that she's there is you'll smell and find where she's pooping eventually. She managed to crawl into a computer, which was on and running, and got her fur tangled in the fans of the video card and CPU. I only found her because the machine kept overheating and I took the box apart to see if the fans were running. She was wedged in between the PCI cards like a snake. It was only her dehydrated nature and the fact her fur was wound in the fans that she didn't run away or attack me. I had no idea how she got in there, but I had to cut her out.

So she did the same thing in my new den. She must have wandered in when I had the door open to move stuff in and out. And a few days ago, I found poop on the afghan on the couch. Dammit! But I didn't think of Thisby at the moment until while checking e-mail last night, I saw a poofy tail slink into the tartan plaid couch. Yes, she had hollowed it out and was living in there. WTF, you stupid cat?? There's no food, no water, and the heat is terrible.

So I spent half an hour smacking furniture and extracting her from various hiding places like cushions, drawers, packing crates, and small spaces between things where only a snake could have found. And I had the door open so she'd have an obvious escape route back to the bedroom, and she'd run out towards the door, make a U-Turn, and run back in the den. It was like getting a raccoon out of an overfilled garage. She was terrified, of course, so she pissed all over everything, including herself.

Somehow, but the grace of Bastet, I managed to catch her in mid-leap in such a way I had her back haunches. She roared and snarled, whipping her head back and forth to get a hold of me, but I had managed a grip in such a way I had her whole back end. She's really only slightly larger than a kitten, even at age 7; she looks bigger because of the poofy hair. She couldn't whip her head around to bite me, although she tried. "Click click" went her jaws like an angry pair of razor-sharp pliers. She emptied her bladder all over my hands. I figured it was only a matter of seconds before she squirmed her way free and tore off a majority of my arm with her razor-sharp claws and teeth, so I carried her like a steaming hot loaf of bread to the bedroom and laid her down next to bed, in hopes she'd run right under. But instead she ran away to another part of the room.

Quickly I ran back to my den and put the door back (I don't have a hinged door yet; the old broken held in place by friction with the frame and some duct tape). I stayed in my den for a while, pissed off, pissed on, and feeling like I had just been in a real fight of man versus nature. My asthma kicked in, and had to mediate slowly to get back some air and stop my beating heart.

Anyone want a cute but feral small poofy Siamese-ish cat? You'll never know she's there. She doesn't get along with other cats, but doesn't start fights. She's kind towards older fat and sedentary male cats. Might be a great cat for a single owner, single cat household. If I could catch her, I'd give her to you...
Posted in: cat , thisby

Hello, miss pretty kitty! (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

Our cat Blackie usually isn't one to pose, or even sit still, to have her picture taken. Tonight she was in a giving mood, which resulted in this pretty picture. I'm guessing the warm heater she was lying on had at least something to do with her benevolence :)

Posted in: blackie , cat , kitty , pretty

Our cat may actually be fiendishly clever (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

Every time that I leave the house for a few hours, I put the living room door ajar slightly. Closed enough to keep the heat in, open enough to let the cat wander around.

So why is it that, every time that I return home, the door is wide open? I reckon that she's figured out that the chill that comes in makes the heater turn on, because that's where I find her every time: on top of the heater.

/me starts to see his cat in a wholly different light

I wonder what the heck else she's plotting o_O

Posted in: cat , clever , evil genius , fiendishly clever

Two things that I love in the mornings (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

1. I love living in Utrecht for many good reasons. One of them's the scent of coffee that permeates the morning air when I ride my bike to the train station. One of the little perks of living in the city of Douwe Egberts' breweries.

2. I love Blackie and her built-in clock. She never fails to wake me at an acceptable time, if I've overslept. Usually my alarm clock goes around six and she starts scratching the doors and meowing loudly at seven, but only if I'm not up yet. Now that's what I call a wake-up service ^_^

Posted in: bike , cat , coffee , mornings , wake up

Wow, Blackie really is a bit like me ^_^ (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

Awww, our cat Blackie really takes after her master. It's so cute! I'm sitting here on the couch, studying and dicking around with my laptop. Slowly I become aware of this faint, wheezing noise coming from the beanbag a few feet away.

She's snoring <3

Speaking of, Marli recently made a recording of -my- snoring. Ho-ly-crap! o_O It's a miracle the girl even gets to sleep at night! I sound awful!

Posted in: cat , snoring

I'm ever so proud of my girls! (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

Remember how I told you that Blackie needs her nails cut? And how Marli was scared shitless of our little Furball Of Doom (tm)? Well, I'm ever so proud of both my girls!

After not cutting Blackie's nails with Menno, nor with Peter, I decided to give it a shot myself. Unfortunately I quickly concluded that I really would need three hands. So, on the spur of the moment, Marli jumped in. I grabbed the cat by the scruff, held her paws, squeezed and Marli cut each nail! Wonderful! She was quite scared of doing this, but Blackie was -very- well behaved! She didn't put up a fight and after two nails actually started purring! I think she knew what we were up to :3

Yay for a small, household victory! /o/

Posted in: cat , proud , wife

Mystery cat (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

There is a cat that shares our yard with a neighbor (and possibly more neighbors, as cat territories are wont to do). I think it's a she, but I don't know, and I don't want to call the cat "it" in this entry, so it's a girl for now. She's a standard brown tabby with yellow/orange eyes... and only three legs. I have looked for a collar, but either she's got one that it almost impossible to see, or she doesn't have one at all, which doesn't mean she doesn't belong to someone. I often see her in the neighbor's yard in the shed, and my dogs have barked at her when she's been in our yard. The neighbor has two very big dogs (a german shepherd and a shepherd mix), and I really down the cat is theirs (although I will ask before I do anything).

She seems to be okay with three legs. She's missing a hind leg, and hobbles about without much discomfort, but she's not very people friendly, and despite several attempts to get close to her, our encounters are always by chance and brief. Today, she was in our yard, sitting in the tall grass by the side of our house and enjoying the morning sun before she saw me and trotted away. I got a fleeting phone picture of her, but it's less spectacular and descriptive than any Bigfoot or Loch Ness monster photo I have seen.

I don't know what to do. I could just leave her alone, but my moral senses don't like that option. I have always been fond of cats, and despite the fact she's "okay" as is, her life span will be short, the three-legged thing seems unfair, and she's probably suffering from fleas, ticks, weather, mean people, dogs, and those sorts of things. I could buy a trap (like $40) and trap her. After that, I would have her checked by a vet, and if okay, released to foster care. I have studied up on how to trap cats, and know a lot of the common pitfalls, like don't trap on hot or rainy days, always check the trap, what bait to use, and so on. That is, safety of cat PRIMARY to actual capture. But then there's vet costs, and who's going to foster the cat until it finds an owner? Probably me, but not if the cat has something contagious like FeLuk or is uncontrollably violent. What if she's very feral and can never be cohabitated? Well, Thisby was like that, and seven years later, finally she'll let me pet her, so eventually they come around. Just think, Thisby, a new pal under the bed with you. I think I'd deal if the vet said, "She's got [terrible painful disease or condition] and needs to be put to sleep," although I'd be mega-sad. I would be willing to shell a few hundred bucks to save a three legged cat. How sad is that?

Advice? Screams of Vader going "NNNOOOooOOOOooOOOoooo?" Posted in: cat , three-legged , trap

Our cat is a drama queen (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

Gawd! Blackie is a frigging drama queen! =_=

It was time for her annual check up at the vet and she made a scene again, just like every other year. On the way there she's well behaved, relaxing in her travelling cage. In the waiting room she catches on where she is, so she ducks into a corner, preparing for what's to come. And then! Le moment supreme! The roof of the cage lifts, she's pushed flat in her corner and the fighting begins! The growling, the snarling, the screeching! Oh and she'll bite your fscking hand of! Growl!! So all she got was her injection and off she went. And once we're back in the car she's all sweet and relaxed again.

What a ham!

That leaves me to cut her nails and to give her her anti-worm drops. The next time Menno or Peter come by we'll take care of her! She may be royalty, but even kings and queens need a smack up the ass at times!



Posted in: cat , drama queen , veterinarian

Yay! A little snow, finally! (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

It's been a while since Blackie had last seen snow. Last year I believe she thought it to be intriguing, but not much more. This year she actually seemed stumped by the white flurry, wiggling outside her windows. She even got up on her hind legs to tap against the glass, trying to catch a few flakes :3 She's never done that before! She's given up though, returning to her huge beanbag in front of the gas fire.

I'm just glad that I got to see a little snow before winter is over! I was -so- jealous of my family in Finland getting their usual fluffy whiteness, leaving me out in the cold. I'll have to go outside for a bit later on to play in the snow ^_^

Speaking of snow: I found it fitting to watch the Tiny snow fairy Sugar special episodes today, after finally watching the last two DVDs of the series this week. Now, at long last, I've finished watching an anime that I started following in 2000! I have to say it was worth the wait :) The ending to the story was good and actually had an unexpected turn of events for me. I'm so glad I decided to buy those 20 Geneon/Pioneer DVDs at a discount... Posted in: anime , cat , snow , tiny snow fairy sugar