I just got trolled - in a PARKING LOT.

But first, I will regale you with the absurd suckiness of my day.

I woke up from an awesome dream because Nikki was yelling for the horses to come up for breakfast. No, those horses don't get fed in the morning. They just want to trick you into feeding them. November noticed that I was awake and started yowling at me and digging the covers away. (She can never do this and make me think that she won't scratch my neck out, so I got up and fed her, including her hyperthyroid pill.)

My boss mentioned that she hired me to do yardwork and I always do stalls, at work, and it made me think that if I didn't do yardwork I'd lose my job. (I don't know if she was trying to imply that I would lose my job if I did stalls, but I wanted to be on the safe side; also I'm paranoid.) So I got out into the 80 - 90 degree heat in shorts and yoga shirt to play with the blackberries and the pruning shears in an attempt to free up the tree in the back corner of what they call the "next-door pasture." I got scratched. A lot. My arms and legs itch. I also caught myself on the earlobe with a thorn, and didn't realize until I was at Fred Meyer (half an hour ago) that the thorn was still in my left ear. I could only stay out in the sun for about an hour before heading inside, and received the silent treatment from my coworker (which honestly was kind of a relief -- I'm really not a morning person and she kind of is, in the sense that she makes a lot of noise to wake herself up in the morning, and the fastest way to piss me off in the morning is to make a lot of noise).

I got back from work and my roommates' dog Lucky had totally trashed my room. The garbage was knocked over and scattered everywhere, as was my chick feed and the dry kitten food (which November can't eat anyway). Lucky also ate all of November's wet food (thankfully the bowl didn't break when he knocked it off the table), and I have no idea whether or not she actually got her pill this morning: rather than force the pill down her throat and past a blackened, rotting, exposed canine nerve, I put her halved pill on her food and she just eats it that way. This was also the second-to-last can of food, and would have lasted the entire day. I ended up having to go out and get cat food today instead. (Also butter, which my roommates forgot to get while they were out.)

So I had to go out to Fred Meyer, and as I was trying to park, I was already obviously committed to that particular spot when a motorcycle zoomed into the spot. I nearly hit him/her, it was so close. I backed out and moved to another. This happened three times.

Once in the store, I had everything I needed (3 cans for $0.89, heck yes!) and was in line to check out. I was about to put my stuff on the belt when they closed the lane. Oh well, these things happen. I moved to another lane. I was behind a woman with a huge cart full of groceries and a half-empty belt who for some inconceivable reason had elected to delay putting her items on the belt to be scanned. Again, I was just about to put my stuff on the belt when another lane opened. This is when I found the thorn stuck in my ear.

Of course it was the one that had closed. There were three guys behind me, each of whom had a single camping chair to buy. The first guy got ahead of me when the clerk came to tell us the lane was open, and the second two were apparently not to be out-walked by a girl... even though they ended up behind me in line in the new lane. So, trying and failing to be subtle, they just walked around me. One of them tripped over me and I was so frustrated that I didn't care, even though he hit his nose on his chair and got a bloody nose (it wasn't broken). They looked back at me as if they hadn't noticed I was there and said, "Oh, sorry, did we cut in front of you?" Of course I told them that yes, yes they did cut right in front of me, all three of them. They definitely didn't care, and didn't move.

I finally got everything paid for and was headed back out to the car (my boyfriend loaned me his while he's gone -- he gets back tonight, yay!). However, during my attempt to pull out of the parking spot, I was stopped by an asshole. Of course. I was so far out of the parking spot that I may have been able to make the turn and just go forward, but when that pickup came right up behind me and leaned on his horn for three or four good solid seconds, I didn't want to risk my boyfriend's car and just pulled back into the parking spot because the truck was so close that I literally couldn't go backward any further. So I pull forward and repark, basically. The truck squeals off in what I'm sure was a monumental waste of gas and I start to back out again... and another truck is doing the same thing. This only happened two more times -- eventually the car parked across from me pulled out and I played the pull-through-spot game, in what was definitely a monumental waste of gas, but which allowed me to escape unscathed from the three mysterious trucks that were, literally, circling around the parking lot and taking advantage of pull-throughs to circle around and honk at me. Or something. That was the effect, anyway.

On my way home, what feels like an eternity later, I was stuck behind a BMW Z-3 which was going way too slow. He was doing 35 mph.

That road is 50 mph. People usually do about 60 mph.

ARGH

I'm going to go give the car a very vigorous bath, take a quick shower, and get my boyfriend from the airport. How did I not realize I had a thorn in my ear all day?

Who's a special expensive kitty?

Apparently, November is.

I took her to the vet yesterday ($29 for a check-up? Is that normal?) and her new age estimate is 12 to 13 years old. I was pretty surprised. She's so small in bone structure that I didn't think she was full-grown. Her other fun bits include:

-exposed, blackened nerve in that chipped canine (tooth will have to come out, surgically)

-kitty plaque pushing her gums off of her teeth (surgery will remove it)

-4.5 pounds

-overactive thyroid keeping her weight down

-heart murmur

-undersized kidneys

We're going back to the vet today for blood work ($180). The vet hasn't tested for worms, despite the fact that she was found running loose in the city; instead she's certain that November's weight is because of her hyperactive thyroid. It was described to me as her thyroid keeps her body in a running-a-marathon mode that will damage her kidneys and heart, as well as keeping her from relaxing (this I haven't seen) and burning calories faster than she can keep them in. There's a medication for it, however, that I would be able to just swab on one of her ears daily (roughly $30/month).

We can't get her teeth fixed until she's back up to a stable condition and has gained weight, and the vet thinks that because of that blackened nerve and the hardened plaque, her mouth is in almost constant pain. We had to explain to the vet a couple of times that she'd gained quite a bit of body mass since we'd started taking care of her a couple of weeks ago, too. Nobody in the house believes that this cat is 12 or 13 years old, though none of us have veterinary training either. She's just so small!

The vet did check for any microchips that would say who November really belonged to, but none of their readers found any. Maybe I should set up a "click here to donate to Special Expensive Rescue Kitty With Medical Problems" thing somehow.

Waking up to kittens: who needs an alarm clock?

Not actually as wonderful as it sounds, haha.. though significantly better than many other things to wake up to. Like, for example, dog poop in the hallway or gifts of dead rodents, which have both been statistically much more common than waking up to kittens at this house.

Anyway, November decided at 7:00 this morning that it was high time I started the day. I just got Skype, and my boyfriend's in Hawaii (visiting his folks), so we were up late talking to each other over the internet until about 1:00. Six hours later November decides that the best way to wake me up is to climb over me, meow, and dig the covers away. I woke up enough when she walked all over me that I could take the covers back before she had a chance to miss and dig claws into my throat by accident.

I fell back asleep, and she woke me up again just before my alarm went off about an hour and a half later. This time, she was sneakier about it -- she sneaked along the very edge of the bed, where the blanket was all loose and not liable to pull and alert me, and then slowly pulled the blanket away (digging style again). It was halfway off before I noticed. When I opened my eyes she looked at me and meowed like, "Oh good, you're up. By the way, when's breakfast?"

My cat is smart. That right there was problem-solving. She tried earlier to wake me up by meowing, and I pretended not to notice and to still be asleep; once they know they can wake you up that way, you'll literally never hear the end. Oh, and November is probably part Siamese, based on her meowing. She almost sounds like my mother's cat, Shiro, who we know to be half Siamese. I don't think November's as much as half, though. Her hair is too long and her eyes are too yellow to be very Siamese, but even still, the meowing-to-get-food-at-all-hours-of-the-night thing wasn't exactly something I wanted to encourage by rewarding. Apparently I'll be getting little enough sleep as it is! Maybe I'll take a nap.

Yesterday, she also started to sleep on my bed, as opposed to her usual spots -- under the bed, the floor, the table, occasionally the sofa. Her eyes are also running less than they were before. I was watching a Japanese show yesterday called "Shikaotoko Aoniyoshi" (The Fantastic Deer-Man" -- it's about Japanese mythology and heavily involves Shinto and bad animatronics and CGI. It's excellent) and she reacted to a sound in the show, a shakuhachi, which is also odd for her to do -- she ignores most sounds. Originally I thought she was deaf. She rubbed all over me when I showed her that the noise was coming from my computer.

Ever since Tim bought a new router the other day, we've all been able to stay connected to the internet and everything is so fast now that we can have everybody online at the same time and still be worth it. I can watch my Jdramas at a reasonable speed instead of setting a 10-minute segment to load, going to work, taking a shower, eating lunch, and then being able to watch half of it. This is pretty nice. November isn't impressed by the screen though. She doesn't watch it like Spike sometimes will.

Remember remember my kitty November

See what I did there?

I named the kitten November. There are some photos of her on my phone, but the phone isn't playing nice with the computer right now, so you can't see them. So there!

For the first couple of days she'd either lie on me, lie next to me, or lie on the floor within line of sight. Now she's spending most of her time under the bed, as of yesterday morning. I'm not really sure why.

She isn't grooming herself, and she's kind of bad at the litterbox -- she orients her head in the center of the box, with the result that there are an extremely limited number of ways that she'll hit the litterbox as opposed to the surrounding area (say, my laundry hamper, Jill's other computer, a bag full of cables, et cetera). These two delightful facts combine and make her quite the stinky kitty indeed.

I'm pretty certain now that someone actually was taking care of her before she got out accidentally or got kicked out: I tried to rinse out the poop matting her tail (only a little streak, but still, ew), but as soon as she saw the bathroom sink it was splayed-legs-claws-extended-DO-NOT-WANT. Apparently she knows that bathroom sink = water = bath(?) = unhappiness. I'm going to try to get her more accustomed to water gradually and with conditioning/positive reinforcement, and also convince her to groom herself.

Actually, according to that most great tome of knowledge The Internet, cats dislike water because they think it makes them smell funny. Their saliva, it continues, has an enzyme that destroys odors and makes them smell like "nothing at all."

That's bull. Cats have a very distinct scent, and if our weak human noses can pick it up, then I'm pretty sure a mouse's can too. Or a shark. I bet sharks would smell a cat coming from miles away. Or is it leagues?

One of my roommates, who is responsible for such gems as "Princess Fuzzball Kitten Person," as well as that poor cat's nicknames, "Prinny," "Prinny-boo," and "Prinny Kitty," is trying to nickname November "Millie." Apparently it's from some TV show called Dollhouse. Whatever it's from, it's so not happening (though I guess it's better than "Berry-boo" or something. I don't want to tempt fate by trying to come up with what she'd think up). Every time she tries it, I tell her no very firmly and threaten to kick her. (I haven't actually kicked her.)

A friend told me that I can get November to groom herself by putting water drops on her fur in easy-to-reach places. So far, this has inspired two annoyed paw-shakes and a bunch of ignoring. She doesn't care about single drops of water, apparently, despite the fact that he swears up and down that he taught his cats to groom this way.

She did groom once, but... imagine a 3-year-old trying to use an old metal washing board, and the lack of motor coordination that age tends to entail. It was kind of like that.

Kitten rescue

The friend of a friend found a very emaciated calico kitten on her doorstep while my friend was visiting, and tonight, after much changing of plans, the kitten is being brought up. I'll pick her up tonight and bring her back. We have some kitten food that I'll soak in water, and tomorrow my roommate gets food stamps -- I asked him to pick up some wet kitten food for me.

Hopefully the new kitten gets along decently with the four cats we already have here. Once I have pictures, I'll post them.

Hey folks! (Literally.)

My folks started reading my blog. Hey, Mom and Dad! I guess that brings my reader count up to two. I'm moving up in the world. :3

So they live in Colorado, and have a white cat named Shiro (it means white in Japanese). She's been living with us for.. oh, what, 14 or 15 years now? Anyway, she dislikes intruders into her space (her twin sister Dutton was a smidge more laid back about it, but still not buddy-buddy with the neighbor's "evil" cats), and recently a grey medium-haired cat has been hanging out around the yard. My parents were feeding her a bit and then she had a kitten!

So here's my dilemma. We need to come up with a name for this kitten. He's all black and was born at midnight on 8/2. Based on his mother, I'm assuming he'll also have medium-length hair, and I think he's going to be absolutely lovely. (For several months now, there's been a medium-haired black cat at Petco up for adoption by the Cat Adoption Team -- her name is Rosie and I just can't get a cat. We already have four where I'm staying, and they separate out into two even groups that don't intermingle. She's so beautiful. Aaauugh.)

Some names have popped into my head, including:

-Talon

-Mozart

-Bagheera (the panther from The Jungle Book)

-Scrabble

The problem is that he's too young yet to be able to tell what his personality is like. Once I get a picture I'll probably post it. My landlord suggested Shadow and called herself unoriginal, which is odd because she desperately wants to be a writer, and came up with those longer names for the cats.

Now, to the "chickens" part of this post (because it seems like every post has one):

For those of you thinking about getting into backyard chickens, urban homesteading, urban farming, and the like, a great place to start for chicken stuff is the Backyard Chickens forum. People there are incredibly helpful, and it's very educational just to peruse the threads.

For Oregonians, there's a Chickenstock (yes, they're really called that) on September 25th at Pass Creek, which is some kind of camping park or something like that. There will be local chicken experts there to answer questions and to showcase and trade their poultry, and one person is also bringing what looks (from the photo) to be a delicious, county-fair-award-winning cheesecake. The fun goes from 9:00 am to sunset and is a little less than 3 hours from Portland.