There have been some recent developments on the new cat front. So if you hate cats and stories about cats, you might want to skip this one.
So Stinky Poopbomb finally has a real name. Jim had come up with a few, and I had come up with a few, but we couldn't find any that we agreed on. Until he suggested Roxanne, because she no longer has to sell her body to the night. I burst out laughing and knew that was the one. So it's Roxanne. Or Roxy. Or Rox. And to tell you the God's honest truth, I'll probably still call her Stinky once in a while. Because I can't have just one name for my cats -- they each have about twenty, depending on my mood. No wonder they act schizophrenic half the time. The weirdest thing so far is that I've always thought of my cats as smallish -- Grendel weighs about eleven pounds, and Mia weighs about eight. But they both look gigantic next to Roxy, who weighs in at about five pounds. And she's fully grown, I guess. My other cats have turned into lumbering elephants overnight.
When we got Mia, we did a terrible job introducing her to Grendel in a way that would minimize trauma. We basically plopped Mia down on the floor and said, "Grendel, look, it's your new sister!" Grendel yowled, hissed and fled the room, and then hid in the bathroom for the next seven days. It seriously took her about two years to get to the point where she does more than merely tolerate Mia's presence. So we hoped to handle this one a little better. We knew that Mia would be more accomodating, because she just generally is. That's her personality -- she takes changes in stride. So while Roxy was living on the porch, we put her in a cat carrier, and then took Mia out there to sniff around. It took Mia a while to figure it out, but she only hissed once. We tried the same thing with Grendel the next day, and Grendel yowled and growled while trying to hide on the steps, as far away from the cat who is half her size and in a cage. Because Grendel is a pussy. Heh.
Then, yesterday, we took Mia out onto the porch with Roxy out of the carrier, to see what would happen. Mia did great -- she hissed a little bit when Roxy walked right up to her, but mostly just sat back and watched. Her tail didn't get all puffed out, like it usually does when she sees another cat, or gets scared in general. So we were encouraged. We decided that today, I would shut the cats away in separate rooms, and then bring Roxy inside to let her get used to the house. After she ran around for about an hour, I decided to let Mia out and see how that went. It actually went pretty well! The only problem is that Roxy just wants to be friends with everyone, so she runs right up to the other cats and gets all up in their grills. And they don't like that, so they generally hiss and run away. But if Roxy keeps her distance, they tolerate her. Which is more than I expected, anyway. But then came the big test -- I let Grendel out of her room to see what would happen.
The funniest part is that Grendel totally didn't know Roxy was in here for about the first fifteen minutes. She could smell something, because she was walking around sniffing everything, but Roxy was asleep on the loveseat and Grendel couldn't see her. Finally Grendel wandered into the living room and started hissing. Grendel has this amazing growl where it starts out very low and threatening, and then she does like arpeggios or something, where it goes up and down the scales a few times. It cracks me up. She thinks she's so tough, and she's so not. Because she weighs almost three times as much as Roxy and could easily take her in a fight, but she's just a big, well, 'fraidy-cat.
At one point this afternoon, all three cats were in the living room. Mia was on the back of the couch, looking out the window. Grendel was on the back of the loveseat, looking out the window. And Roxy was in the loveseat, napping in a little ball. No one was growling. No one was hissing. It was great! I hope that happens a little bit more each day. As it stands, Grendel is still kind of pissy about the whole thing -- if I have Roxy in my lap, and then I walk into the kitchen and try to pet Grendel, she's growl and take a swipe at ME with her paw. The funniest part is that Grendel always blames Mia when something goes wrong. Like when we lived in a house with sliding glass doors, there was a male cat that used to hang out on our deck. And whenever he came by, Grendel would growl and then start beating up Mia, as if it was all Mia's fault that another cat came around. I don't know why she does it, but it makes me laugh. I should clarify that when I say "beat up", I mean swipe at a few times with her paws. When Grendel and Mia fight, it's like Laverne and Shirley having a slap-fight -- lots of swings and little contact. They're such babies. But they're my babies!
Oops, gotta go. Grendel appears to be denying Roxy entrance to the bathroom, i.e. home of the litter box.
So we somehow, accidentally, added another cat to our family. I'd love to introduce you, but she doesn't have a name yet. Here's what happened. That's her on the left -- the other pictures in this entry are random pictures I took when I went out for a walk the other day of things in the neighborhood.
Friday morning, Jim and I were going out to the car so that I could drive him to the dentist. He had to get a tooth pulled, which meant drugs, which meant no driving. Anyway, he noticed a kitten near the end of our driveway. When the kitten noticed Jim, she ran right over. She didn't have a collar or anything, but she was really friendly and in pretty good shape, if a little skinny. We figured that she had wandered off from her home, but we had never seen her around the neighborhood before. We decided to put her on our (completely enclosed) porch until we got back.
So we got back and gave her some food. I called our vet to find out what the best course of action was, and the lady suggested making up some flyers to take around to local vets and animal hospitals, because usually if someone loses a cat, they call their vet. She also reminded me not to let the new cat near my cats, because she could have feline leukemia, FIV, or any number of communicable diseases, and to wash my hands after handling the new cat. Good advice.
So Friday afternoon, while Jim slept off the drugs, I made up a flyer and drove around to all the local vets, dropping it off. I also tried to think of people I knew who might want a cat. We decided that if we couldn't find anyone, we would keep her rather than take her to a shelter or something. But we really thought she was someone's kitten.
So no one called over the weekend to claim her, and I took her to the vet on Monday, because we felt bad keeping her out on the porch. I figured if we knew she didn't have any diseases, at least we could let her in the house once in a while. Plus, if she had a fatal illness, we didn't really want to pawn her off on one of our friends. At the vet, she was cleared of all diseases (except worms -- yuck!) and there was a surprise. I had estimated, based on her size, that she was about six months old. The vet estimated, based on his actual knowledge of cats, that she's about three YEARS old. She's about half the size of my other cats, and she's fully grown! Who knew?
So after asking a few people if they knew anyone who wanted a cat, and getting a lot of no answers, we decided to keep her. She's very sweet and so tiny and loving. In a few more days, we can safely bring her into the house and start introducing her to Grendel and Mia, who I predict will be completely unhappy about it. But at least now we know that you're supposed to introduce them gradually. When we got Mia, we just dumped her in the living room and went, "Grendel, here's your new sister!" And then Grendel hissed and yowled, and then hid in the bathroom for a week straight. No lie. But now they tolerate each other, and sometimes lick each other's heads.
It's Jim's turn to pick a name. He named Grendel and I named Mia, so it's his turn. I think I've come up with some great suggestions, but he wants to come up with it himself. Of course, I have veto power. So it'll be a while before an official name is announced. I've been calling her "Stinky Poopbomb" because she had a little accident on Jim's pants the other day. But don't worry -- I wouldn't call her that forever. Much. I do find myself walking around the house singing, to the tune of The Flintstones opening theme, "Stinky! Stinky Poopbomb! She's the stinkiest cat I know!"
I know you all think I'm a crazy cat lady. I swear I never meant to end up like this. If you met her, you would want to keep her too. And she's going in to get spayed in two weeks, while we go on a glorious, all-expenses paid (by us) trip to Ann Arbor, Michigan to visit Eric, and then to Toronto, Canada, to visit Tara and Dave. Jim had some vacation time to burn and that was the cheapest vacation we could think of. I'm pretty excited to go back to Ann Arbor for the first time since we moved back here three years ago. And it's always fun in Toronto.
So that's what's going on with me
Instead of writing another entry tonight, I've uploaded two additions to the site. This information was also posted to the weblog, so I'm sorry if this is a repeat for some of you!
The first is a (hopefully) humorous Sims game, inspired by Monique. I created a family consisting of Britney Spears, Fred Durst, Russell Crowe, and Julia Roberts. And let's just say that hijinks ensued -- kissing, slapping, crying, the whole nine. Here's the home page for that -- I just used the automated pages from the game because I'm too lazy to make my own pages. Click on the little scrapbook to follow the story. I promise it gets good around picture 38 or so, and #53 is my favorite. Enjoy! [Note: I had to remove this because of bandwidth issues -- Kim in 2002]
The second is more personal. My great-aunt died last fall, and now the farmhouse that has been in my family for over a hundred years might be sold. So I went out to the house and took a bunch of pictures. It might not be that interesting to anyone but me and my family, but if you like old houses, you might dig it.
Hey! It's me! I know it's been a while.
I actually went so far as to write down a bunch of ideas I had for entries one night while I was trying to sleep. But then I realized that the pressure of HAVING to write about a certain topic was keeping me from writing at all. Like if I wasn't in the mood to write about any of the topics on my stupid piece of paper, that meant I couldn't write at all. And plus, I have all these ideas about things I want to put up here (like I have a bunch of pictures of my family farm, and I wanted to do something with those), but all of those projects are so long and involved, that they seem overwhelming to me. So all of those things are what has been keeping me from writing. Until today, when I realized that I could just open up a window and start writing, and that was fine. No pressure. And that's what it took. In case you were wondering.
So what HAVE I been doing, you ask? Well, let me tell you.
I volunteered to recap Dark Angel. So I had to do it without ever having seen the show before, and I was really worried that the devotees of the show would rip me to shreds. Let me tell you something -- that show really sucks. Like the only reason for that show to be in existence is to showcase the "talents" of Jessica Alba. From only one episode, I could already see a ton of storyline inconsistencies, terrible writing, and a bunch of other crap. So if you were thinking about checking that show out (if you can -- it gets pre-empted about every week), don't bother. I'll still be recapping it. A terrible show makes for an easy recap. I'm also recapping Boot Camp, which is freaking hilarious.
My mom's been cracking me up lately. She saw some deer in her backyard that had a radio collar, which made her curious. So she e-mailed the DEC to find out what was up with that. Turns out they were monitoring some deer, but really far away from where my mom lives, and they lost like five of them. So it could have been one of them. So the guy told my mom to call him, and she did, and he told her they might do a helicopter search for the deer if she spots it again. Plus, he told her what radio frequency the collar broadcasts on, and she tuned into it on her scanner. This is the difference between me and my mom. If I had a scanner, I would be trying to pick up people's cellphone conversations (if it wasn't illegal) and my mom is trying to pick up a rogue deer's heartbeat. That's sums us up in a nutshell.
I also started playing "The Sims" again, but with a purpose. I was inspired by Monique's entries with screenshots of her Sims. I was playing one night, using characters that I created based on people I know, and it turned into this big soap opera. It amused me, but I didn't think it would amuse people who didn't know the people that the Sims were based on. So I started over, with a family of celebrities. The occupants of the house are Fred Durst, Britney Spears, Russell Crowe, and Julia Roberts. And then some professional wrestlers come over to visit sometimes. The whole thing cracks me up. There's been kissing, hugging, face slapping, fist fights -- the whole nine. So I took a bunch of pictures and hope to post them soon. It's another one of those projects I keep putting off.
And Jim and I are planning a trip at the end of the month, to Ann Arbor and Toronto. The details are not yet final, but I'm excited anyway.
And the battery died in our car, so Jim had to buy a new one. But we're hoping it was the battery and not the alternator. I guess we'll know if the battery dies in a week -- it's the alternator. At which point we would probably buy a new (used) car. Not that I want to, but our car's old enough that putting a lot of money into repairs doesn't really make sense at this point.
And my grandmother is in the hospital with pneumonia. So, please send good thoughts her way. She's never been sick as long as I can remember, so it was kind of a shock when my mom told me. I sent flowers, and I hope that she'll be able to go home soon. Although it's probably good that she's in the hospital. She's the type that, if she was at home, she'd feel like she should be cleaning the house or cooking dinner or something, and wouldn't sit down and get the rest that she needs.
Not to end this entry on such a down note, though. I went out Saturday with Mary and Molly. We went to the Pfaltzgraff Outlet, but more importantly, we went to the Freihofer's Outlet. Freihofer's is a bakery-type place, and the outlet has day-old cookies, donuts, and other such delicacies. I went a little crazy and bought five boxes. Then we went to lunch, and then to the mall. But the places don't really matter -- it was just great to see my friends, and have some girl talk. Which we did. Lots.
And that's what I've been up to.