Cribbed from shimmeringjemmy (even though I saw at least 5 other people with it..)
friend_whoring: a journal whose sole purpose is to see how many people it can get to befriend it. I think I was #980.
Archive for January 12th, 2004
From the department of Kurt (my coworker) comes this tidbit off the Online Version of Britain’s Sun newspaper:
Bear in New Mexico survives 7200 volt shock from power line and 30 foot plummet.
So… it’s just one of those days.
This was posted by fraserspeirs in his journal. This is probably the funniest analysis of news I’ve heard in a long time. Please take the time to comment to him if you agree.
Quoth the Fraser:
BBC: Net blamed for rise in child porn. This is obviously true. I saw a router and two webservers hanging around the school gate the other day with a packet of sweets, offering them to the kids. An 802.11 base station was sitting in a car across the road in a dirty raincoat with a digital camera.
Shortly after moving to our new house on the mountainside we were adopted or at least visited by several stray cats. One of these cats became a regular. She would show up covered in dust or worse soaked to the bone in rainy weather. We started to feed her and let her wander the house.
This is our feline visitor whom we named (after not finding a tag or collar), “Binah”
Binah has never used the litter box we have bought. She managed to meowl at the door when she wants to come in. She had managed to time her morning visits as I was leaving for the office. Eventually this became moot as she apparently has decided to openly exercise her power of particle transportation by mysteriously appearing on our back porch without getting let in the house. We believe she is either climbing over the house or making a roughly 15′ leap from the side steps to the landing.
Sadly, this past week, Binah showed up with a tag. The tag has a phone number on it and the name, “Raisin” (Note, this cat hasn’t been tagged for at least 4 months) The back of the tag had a piece of paper attached to it stating something to the effect that “I am 4 years old. Please let my cat Raisin come home” This is annoying to me because we haven’t exactly trapped or kept the cat. It really wanders where it will. We’ve just opened our house and fed it. Over the last two weeks its taken to sleeping on our bed.
My take was, if I didn’t see a tag by the end of January (4 full months I think), I was gonna take her into the vet, check on shots and tag her. To let people know at least someone was looking after it. None the less, I’m still going to call and comment about the shape that the cat has shown up in and try to verify that the cat at least has had its shots and perhaps has been broken. (I hate the term fixed. They never work the same way after the operation)
While doing some work in the den last night I heard some strange noise back in the dining room. It was sort of a rustling as if some paper was being thrown around. When I went back to the living room we found the results of what could only be defined as a scuffle. (A note about the picture. You’re looking at the feathers strewn on the floor, not the special advance preview of the latest creation of shimmeringjemmy which is called Raven’s Light. Yes, I will pimp her work at every opportunity I have.”)
Well the feathers led to a reasonable assumption. We have a bird feeder outside our bedroom window. There is a large planter under the bird feeder. Binah likes to hide there. Apparently, last night… she got lucky. We scanned around for our mighty nimrod’s prize carcass. (Nothing beats the smell of decaying dead bird in the morning)
While an initial scan of the living room yielded no luck. The realization that perhaps Binah (as a good loving cat would do) might leave her prize in our bed or somewhere similar as a gift (which is actually a cat’s way of saying, “Here stupid, here is how you kill.”) The bed had other feathers in it (ick) but no bird. Then Heather pointed it out to me. Either stunned or dead the bird was perched on the bookcase in the bedroom under the window sill. Out of this photo is the cat on the floor looking up at it.
We went and retrieved a latex glove from the kitchen (I keep them for cleaning, people.) I figured, I’d pick up the stoic carcass and deposit it out the back off the porch. As we got closer Heather noticed what I feared. It was still breathing. (sigh) I tried to gently usher it onto a piece of matte board so I could set it gently outside. The bird promptly proved it wasn’t exactly scared or non-mobile. It flew straight up, buzzed the bedroom and hid in the opposite corner. That corner of the room fortunately has a closed up pet access door. I opened the door and with much effort ushered it out.
I went around to the outside to see how it was doing. It was far more lively now. I didn’t want it to stay on the porch because Binah would eventually find it and probably have her way with it. I tried to pick it up to take it away from the house and it ran off the edge of the back porch and fluttered clumsily down to the next floor. I figure: out of site, out of mind… into LJ.
So later today I will call the ‘owner’ of “Raisin” and comment about their cat and the fact that it is killing birds on my property. Personally, I’m going for the spin that they’ve done a really poor job of taking care of their cat. Personally, as a cat person; I’m pleased with the cat’s conquest. But I would like to make sure it has had its shots and is properly neutered.
Edit: I fixed the article to point out that it was Heather’s innate cat-sense that first located the bird and picked up on the fact that it was still alive.