The cat came back.

There's been a pure black and white female cat with gold-greenish eyes hovering around my Red Cross chapter's front door since Monday. She's meowing - LOUDLY - every couple of seconds, and she's happily running up to people and rubbing her head against their ankles, or hands, or purses, or pretty much anything of theirs within her reach. She looks healthy - well fed, no visible ribs, all her fur in quite good condition - but I think she's in heat. I used to have a tomcat named Hobbes, whom we adopted from a family friend when the cat was around a year old. Hobbes had just gotten to the stage where he needed to be neutered, and we got nocturnal visits from a grey female at night who'd crouch outside one of the basement windows (Hobbes slept in the basement) and yowl just like this female. . .

Anyway. This female has been trying to get into the Chapter when anyone other than one of the guys in Disaster Services opens the door. We fed her the first day. The boss told the person who put out the food to stop, so the second day the food got concealed somewhere the cat could eat without being seen. Now the cat has figured out that she can trot up the slopes of soil created by our landscaping and get her head as high as the windows in my area of the building, then meeeowl piteously for attention. She can't quite get her head under the external windows when they're open unless we prop them up further; nobody's gonna do that, though, not even with the screens closed just in case.

I wish I could take her home, but I live with my parents. I don't have time or room for a cat. My mother doesn't like cats much, either - one scratched her face when she was a kid (there may have been a younger brother involved, I don't know the exact story) - so all around it'd be an unhappy animal. I just feel sorry for this one, and she is pretty, even if she's the loudest non-Siamese I've ever heard...

I gotta get my own place. Man, I cannot wait until I finish my master's and can afford to put that money towards real rent.

*sigh* Today's pulp survival tip is #15: Be good to your animals, even if they're horrible to you.

Kitty go byebye.

Our receptionist called the Humane Society this morning. The person on the phone said they didn't euthanize the animals. Someone came to pick up the cat a little while ago. Cat ran away from the guy, but ran up to the receptionist. The guy said that they keep the animals for seven days, then put them up for adoption, then they stay 'for a while' and if they don't get adopted they might get euthanized. Receptionist is all torn up about it, but she's worried the cat might've had feline leukemia - she has two cats of her own and doesn't dare carry the virus home to them, which is why she didn't take the cat in yesterday or the day before.

For the love of Buddha, people, if you're not going to keep the progeny as your own pets or sell them to people you know to be responsible pet owners, spay or neuter your animals.

Thank you.

Two things.

Number one: I realise this is a concept sketch and probably not the most accurate depiction of the actual device, but I have to say that if I were shown the picture at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_1891000/1891949.stm and told by my doctor that they wanted to use that thing on me, I would probably opt for l-dopa treatment instead, lonnnnng past the point where it ceased to work.

Number two: It looks like cadhla is still feeling unwell today. Why not stop by Temple Ov Thee Lemur's Instant Monkeys Online page and send her an instant monkey? They're really cute.

Does this surprise anyone?

Lemming ahoy!


Which Member of the Endless Are You?

Oh yeah. I rule.

My mother's laptop - several years old, still runs Win95 - recently decided that about half the keyboard wasn't really necessary, and that most of the rest was actually supposed to be completely reassigned into different modes altogether. (I.e., 'shift' really meant 'semicolon, equals sign, letter O, left square bracket, alt'.) Tried for several days to fix this. No dice. Compressed air didn't blast anything out and didn't make anything better. Tried plugging a keyboard into the port on the back we normally use for the mouse, as it's dual-classed for mouse or PS/2 kb. No dice. Bleah. Mom worried about viruses, so did one of the techsupp people; me, I thought it was acting like liquid had gotten in. It was acting like there was damage to the keyboard circuitry.

Ordered a new keyboard from Laptops for Less, for $89. Got the laptop open, pried out the old KB, got the new one in. Plugged it in, flipped it on. It worked.

Cue David Xanatos - "It's alive! It's alive! I always wanted to say that."

Thenk yew.