Author: Joe

Long Weekend

I’m going to start trying to break up my posts by topic, since I realized that I had Talore flagged for nearly every post I’ve made so far.

With the long weekend I had an extra day of keeping Talore awake during the day, and she didn’t wake me up all weekend or this morning. Unfortunately she slept all day today and has been wanting to play non-stop since I got home. I even caught her stalking my feet a little while ago. Not helping is the fact that she misjudged the toy on the elastic string and caught it with her nose over the weekend, so she’s been rather reluctant to attack it. I’m worried that I’ll be woken up very early tomorrow morning.

I didn’t manage to record a video of Talore attacking anything over the weekend, largely because I spent most of the daylight hours reading and don’t have great lighting for a video at night. I did find another potential subject for videoing though. One of the new toys Talore has makes bird noises when it’s moved. When I stick it in a box Talore fights the box until she manages to get it open and get the toy out.

I finally got around to buying cat food today. I’ve been low for a while, but last night I had to tilt the bag to get a full scoop). The pets mart I went to didn’t have the medium sized bag of food like I got before, so I ended up getting a 15.5 pound bag of cat food. I’m pretty sure that will last Talore a very long time. Unfortunately, this bag is less scent-proof than the medium sized bag and Talore has already chewed a couple small holes in it despite there still being food in her bowl.

Talore was happy to see me when I got home (like always), but after she sniffed at me and got her nose shocked by static electricity she wasn’t quite so thrilled. I get the feeling that Talore isn’t going to appreciate my carpet in the winter considering I could hear static crackling from across the room when she was rolling around on the floor.

New Toy

Talore has been given a few new toys, but the one that gets the most attention is a plastic mouse with about inch-long fur everywhere except the nose. It rattles, and it’s attached to the end of about four feet of elastic cord.

If you notice, Talore has chewed through the cord twice so far trying to keep it from being pulled out of her grasp. She’s also severely dented the plastic body, but she hasn’t managed to chew the head off (or leave a mark on the head besides holes in the ears) despite working on that a good bit.

I’m pretty sure the elastic is what makes it so entertaining. When I walk around my apartment with the other end of the elastic in my pocket Talore catches it and lets go, causing it to fly at me, then she’ll try to catch it again nearly while it’s still in the air. She also responds very well to me sitting still bouncing it back and forth. I’ll try to get a video this weekend when I can get natural lighting to film by.

I’ve also been very surprised at how well Talore is able to grasp it with a single paw. I haven’t trimmed her claws recently and they’re probably the sharpest I’ve let them get since I got her. With that advantage she can snag the toy with one paw, and once she’s caught it and adjusted she can hold it (not pin it to the ground) with one paw while I stretch the elastic a good bit. She did get stuck where she couldn’t let go of it while I was pulling on it once, but generally it looks like she’s trying to hold it.

I haven’t managed to find somewhere that I can hang it where Talore will attack it on her own yet. She’s rolled around on the floor a bit with it when I wasn’t pulling the string, but if it’s hanging she doesn’t even notice it. The closest I’ve come is when I shut the bathroom door with the cord going under the door, then pulled the cord tight. Talore spent a while pulling at it, but eventually she pushed it under the door out of reach. Watching her flail around under the door with claws out was entertaining, but after a few tries at that she left.

Weekend Excitement

This post is a bit late, but I’ve been working late all this week to take time off on Friday and just never got around to finishing it.

The plan last Sunday was to go to laser tag with several people from work at a family fun center. We all got there and almost everyone had bought a two hour pass, then we noticed the sign saying that the laser tag was reserved for private parties for most of the next hour and a few more times after that. The two hour cards wouldn’t activate till the first use, but that left us with a good bit of time to burn. After a round of DDR we wandered through the entire place for those of us who hadn’t been there before.

Besides an extensive arcade and laser tag they had bowling (which wasn’t covered in the 2 hour pass), go carts (electric since everything was indoors), mini golf, a room full of battletech pods, and a new section that had moved in since anyone in our group had been there before. That new section was a large room set up for Xtreme Challenge.

Xtreme Challenge is basically a large set of physics based games and challenges designed to be done in a group. They normally only take group reservations, but we had a large enough group and the guy running it wasn’t busy so he invited us to sign a waiver and go demo the stuff. It was great advertising for them since we had a blast and all the people who walked by and saw it got to see something happening instead of just a room full of interesting stuff.

I generally make no effort to keep in shape since I don’t really do anything that requires it. Considering our group was made up of programmers I’m probably not the only one, but several of the people we had are fairly active. Either way, we were all pretty tired out by the end of 45 minutes to an hour.

Regardless of how tired we were, Calvin hurt his ankle on the second to last thing we did, which was jousting (as labeled by the tv show Gladiators). Basically both people stand on a platform with sticks that are padded on the end and try to knock the other person off their stand. I knocked Calvin off first, then we went for a while and he knocked me off. Apparently while I was falling off Calvin jumped off, but since he wasn’t wearing his glasses he couldn’t tell how far away the ground was, and he tore something in his ankle.

We didn’t end up playing laser tag at all, but most of us still have the 2 hour cards so we may go back for that at some point. There is also talk of going back to Xtreme Challenge once Calvin is recovered if we can get a large enough group.