cilande

[Yes, this would make more sense if I'd posted it last week.]

We picked up our (slightly radioactive) kitty a day early. So the cat population is back to it's normal number. He sounded extra raspy when we picked him up -- clearly he'd spent quality time yowling during his stay at the clinic.

Though much better than Saturday. The second Pixie-Bob kitten came home Friday night. "Nunzio" just didn't fit the little puff-ball, so on the drive home we decided on "Dante." If he doesn't grow, he'll end up being known as "Bug." At roughly 7 weeks old (and 1.5 pounds), he's still mostly tummy. And tends to toboggan after toys like a penguin. Up come the front paws and he balances on his belly while pushing with back paws.

Marco, at nearly 6 pounds, seems huge in comparison. Marco is taking well to his new "toy" and has already learned not to over-play with the newcomer. Older cats are less than thrilled about the new addition -- they'll get over it.

Pictures as soon as I rustle electrons appropriately. Though, no shots of the penguining so far...

...X% of reality is perception, for non-trivial values of X. I have a story that illustrates my most recent reminder.

Spouse and I are people with cats. Last month our population consisted of one slightly burly Manx and two Bengals. The Bengals have very different body types. Foozle is a 15 pound, heavy boned furry "little" tank. Cally has the more traditional long and lean build. Until recently, Cally has seemed (not to put too fine a point on it) spindly and puny compared to the other two cats.

Then, we got a kitten. All of a sudden, my perception of Cally shifted from "puny" to "freaking huge" and "veritable tank." What can I say? My mind amuses me when it's not driving me nuts.

The kitten is a Pixie-Bob male named Marco with extra toes, currently 3 months old. We went with a specific breed because the Bengals play rough and we figured getting a large breed cat with nice heavy bones would stack the odds in favor of no serious injuries. Ironically, he chases the Bengals around.

Fiction genres are sliced, diced and recombined in lots of ways. I offer my own dicing. The last couple of paragraphs might contain spoilers to Carrie Ryan's The Forest of Hands and Teeth, so be warned.

All books contain problem/solution sets. The problems range from the trivial (what are we having for dinner?) to serious (how do I keep the tiger from eating me when we're both stuck on a life raft in the ocean?). Genres can be grouped by whether or not the book has an over-reaching problem the main characters work to solve. Books called mystery, fantasy, romance or science fiction tend to have this ever present external problem. Whether it's a crime to solve, an invading army of evil, the search for the perfect partner or a run-away nuclear reactor, these books have a clearly set external problem. The book concludes with the problem solved, or the start of a solution outlined.

Horror and literary fiction are a little different. Often, these books are about survival, survival of mind if not body. External problems are accommodated, not solved. They're often sketches of how different personalities deconstruct under pressure. Post-apocalyptic science fiction survival novels also feature accommodation to external problems. However, the main characters actively engage in preserving knowledge or carving safe spaces from the new wilderness. There's external focus beyond personal survival.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth started me thinking about this. When I first ran across the book, I mentally tagged it as fantasy. After all, there's the pseudo-medieval setting with a conservative, controlling religion. After I read a couple of chapters, I realized this was actually a post-apocalyptic science fiction story with a lot of parallels to The Day of the Triffids. Then I finished the book. And re-tagged it as horror.

TFoHaT does have an ever present external problem: a zombie horde (with bonus plague!). However, this problem is accommodated. If it truly was a science fiction book, at the end, there would be the hope of a solution. It ends with survival for some but not even the hope of a solution.

Well, they ended up over at this Facebook account. I vouch for them, it's OK to click through. My favorite is the chase scene. If anyone has trouble accessing the photos, let me know and I'll throw a few up on Flickr and post a new link.

Barrett -- the Sheltie -- came from a multiple dog household and just doesn't understand why Alvin -- the Pom and an only dog -- won't play. Alvin wanted to know when it was time to go back inside and why this other dog kept dancing around.


As a perhaps overly communicative aside, I recently realized the reason I delay posting picture is I don't know anything about digital photo editing or processing. And, since my job title includes the word "software" I must, of course, be amazingly compentent at all things digital or software-ish. Rational me also realizes no one else cares about my overly obsessive brain squirrels.

This weekend I'm heading up to the wilds of Skagit County to meet youngest brother-in-law's new puppy. A three month old Sheltie, still with his fluffy puppy coat. The dog is named Barrett, after the gun. However, I feel a moral obligation to give him grief over naming his dog after a poet.

And thorougly bored with being sick. It's ironic that those times I really, really need quality sleep -- like to recover from respiratory flu -- I really, really, really don't want my C-PAP machine shoving air through my sinuses. I recovered from the flu, then was pounced on by an opportunistic cold virus.

Also, went clubbing in downtown Seattle Saturday night. A friend wanted to go dancing for her birthday, so about 7 of us descended on Club Noc Noc. Dodging people in costume leaving Sakura-Con.  Uhm. Since I've had a relatively sheltered life, it was the first time I'd heard Safety Dance with the volume at 11 and enough bass to make the drinks dance. Stayed until around midnight.

So, yeah. Mostly a thrilling round of wake up/work/eat dinner/sleep with bonus driving and lots of tired the last few months. I have a couple of longer posts in progress about the trip to Powell's Books and the two week vacation with my parents, but neither are finished. I'm also still recovering from a massive cold/flu thing I came down with early last week. My cough is gone enough (finally!) that I managed to sleep through the night last night for the first time in over a week.

What I have finished is another math problem from projecteuler.net -- it's an excuse to relearn C# coding and work with a development environment. And the exercise of thinking analytically and clearly is rarely bad.

In fits and starts, but I got 400 decent words down tonight. This work in progress feels like a short story or novella. I'm going for third time's the charm and this project is small enough to finish before I'm bored with it. It's untitled. I'm referring to it as the "cheaper than therapy" piece. Even though that has nothing to do with the content of the story. It's a rather grim little thing I started in the middle of the recent awkwardness. The curious can look at this post for details, September continued in much the same vein. My work calmed down, but spouse's work ramped up. October had its stressful moments too.

I've come to realize the longer I take to write down pretty turns of phrase, the longer it's going to be before my brain coughs up another one. Focus stays on not forgetting sentences like "We forgot the lesson we taught the Ice Age mega-fauna: technology is a great leveler." Rather than on relaxing and producing more little gems. Or a plot. I seesaw between writing without concern for organization and wanting to block out scenes/events/what have you and fitting the pieces together like a Lego set.

But, I'm keeping the first line, even if my main character turns into a three-headed wombat: I never thought reading post-apocalyptic science fiction stories would be useful.

Clobbered by head cold: check
Crisis at work: check check
Family obligations: check
Started on to-do list: errr... no.

We finally, finally found a good home for the stray cat we've been feeding since May. The person who took her uses the same vet clinic we do and came highly recommended.

So, yay. No more worries about cars, raccoons and colder weather. She will become the pampered indoor lap cat she clearly wanted to be. (our existing cats hated her with the fiery hate of ten thousand indoor-only suns)

Not quite word-for-word accurate, but close...

Scene: I'm at work, spouse is at work. A phone call to negotiate logistics of going home.

Spouse: How are you feeling?
Me: Tired. Another day of being nibbled to death by ducks.
Oh, you probably don't want to hear my news then.
[pauses] Hit me.
The crazy person called.
[pauses again] You'll have to narrow it down a bit. (aside: there are 3 strong possibilities and 2 less likely but still possible]
The oldest crazy person.
[sighs] Now what?

Deleted: summary of semi-hysterical conversation that occurred yesterday morning.

Semi-hysterical on my mother-in-law's side of course. It's hard to tell what's actually going on because no matter what, it's all about the drama. And it's all about her. There was even a request that spouse drop everything and make the hour drive up to the location of the drama Right Now To Fix It All. Because that's the expectation.

Dammit.

[hangs rum around neck]

Yes, it's been a tough 5-6 weeks on the cats.

10 days ago we made the decision to put Squeaker to sleep. Despite being in early stages of kidney failure (according to blood work), she didn't respond to treatment. Just over the course of a day or two she became much more lethargic and generally, well, there just didn't seem to be a point.

Squeaker's original name was Stormy, chosen due to her dark tortie coloring -- all black and dark gray with some hints of orange and cream. That turned into Squeaker or Squeaky. She never got the hang of a full fledged meow; it always had a bit of a squeak in there. She survived her two brothers.

When we got her and her brothers, we were living in a house where the front door opened into a space that went the depth of the house. With the curtains open, you could see from the door out onto the back deck. Well. We also had a cat door and weren't really comfortable with the kittens (about 3 months old at the time) going outside. But they seemed to be ignoring the cat door. Or so we thought. One day, all the kittens had tree sap on their fur. Puzzled, we thought they'd been playing in the firewood stacked by the stove. Nope. The next day we came home from work early. Walked in the door, looked out on the deck and there were all three kittens. All of whom had "oh crap, we're busted" expressions on their faces. Ten seconds later, they'd piled in through the cat door and were trying to convince us they'd been inside all along.

Nearly a year later, we were out front doing something. Weeding maybe. It's mid-afternoon and I look up and see a raccoon trotting across the street. I'm thinking it's weird -- raccoons usually aren't out on sunny days. But... here comes Squeaky, jogging casually after the raccoon. Think the Pepe LePew cartoons, with the raccoon being the cat and Squeaker playing the role of Pepe. She'd rousted it out from the yard of the temporarily empty house across the street. When we yelled at her, she stopped and gave us a "What?" look. Other than chasing things much bigger than her, she never took an interest in hunting.

She was interested in sleeping in the sun, catnip and complaining when picked up. Lap sitting was OK, but not so much the holding and petting. She'd steal the good spots from her brother when he got up for a snack.

19 years and 1 day. Longer than that if you count time living together. It seems to be somewhat permanent.

While we went out to dinner last night, we went to one of our regular dining out places rather than somewhere new and/or special. The last few weeks contained much drama. My brain was tired from work stuff and both of us wanted the comfortable and familiar. We'll go out somewhere special Thursday night.

As an example of how well my brain was working last night... So, I'm sitting across the table from my sweetie, and I'm looking like a deer caught in headlights because one of us managed to sneak off for a romantic card and it wasn't me. After the obligatory round of teasing, spouse says "want to plan for the 20th?" I blink. "Sure," I say, "What do you want to do on Saturday?" Stunned silence. I'm puzzled. Spouse shakes head sadly "I meant for our 20th anniversary."

Fortunately, those moments of extreme cluelessness on my part are considered endearing. In my defense, I will point out that this coming Saturday is Sept. 20th.

I'm also scheming how to get an "I miss you" card into the spousal office while being able to disavow all knowledge of how exactly it got there. And have stashed a couple of anniversary cards around the house for "stumble across" fun.

Yes, clearly, if this was easy, Lightning would be a dog. Still recovering well from surgery. Making us look incompetent with a pill gun, all the usual. And, a perfect little angel during the day when we're up to watch her. Sleeps, leaves stitches alone, doesn't try to thrash around or jump. But come nightfall...

10 days until the stitches come out. Less than that before normal cat behavior isn't risky.


PS in-laws still stupid and living for the drama. And denial. Spouse still believes was switched at hospital.

Surgery done, cat did well. Recovering overnight at clinic. Custom two-room condo built with excessive help from Bengals.

Sleep now. Or as soon as my stomach settles down a bit.