Category: Cats

Cat/Roomba battle?

When I got home today the roomba had failed to make it back to it’s charging dock. When I went to look for it I found a couple things conspicuously not where I left them: a pot holder was on the floor (Talore normally doesn’t jump on the counters in my kitchen) and the laundry basket was on it’s side and mostly emptied. The roomba was stopped near the laundry basket, but didn’t have anything jamming it and had no obvious reason for it to be stopped. I’m guessing that Talore was trying to walk on the side of the laundry basket to evade the roomba, tipped the basket over, and pushed the button that stops the roomba, but I have no way of knowing if that’s actually what happened. The roomba also had collected very little in general, but there was far more cat hair on one of the sweeper brushes than I’ve seen there before and I cleaned that last night.

Over the weekend I attempted to keep Talore from sleeping all day like she seems to do while I’m at work in the hopes that it would cause her to sleep later and not wake me up. I was reading Cryptonomicon most of Saturday and every time it looked like Talore had fallen asleep on my desk I would get up and either pet her till she was awake or sit back down with her in my lap where I could pet her. She got a little sleep in her window seat, but for whatever reason she didn’t sleep there for long.

She still woke me up Sunday morning, but it was by walking across me to get back to the bookshelf that she sleeps on instead of meowing at me. I tried to continue keeping her awake Sunday afternoon, but she woke me up this morning in a mood to attack stuff. I think that was because she was hungry (her food bowl was empty), so I may start filling it at night instead of in the morning.

I’ve been planning to get a water pistol to shoot at Talore when she claws at the cushions on my furniture since just telling her “No” and glaring at her doesn’t stop her for long, but I couldn’t find one at wal mart today. Over the weekend I got a cup of water to flick at her when she starts clawing things. The first thing she did was drink a noticeable amount out of the cup, then go to sleep next to it. Apparently it’s convenient for Talore to have a cup of water on my desk since over a fourth of the cup has been emptied by her. The first time I managed to hit her with water she leaped three or four feet from the couch. The next time I tried she watched me flailing trying to fling water that far from the chair I was reading in for several seconds before I managed to hit her, but she did leave the sofa.

Talore has been playing with the feathery toy by herself (tossing it in the air and dragging it around), but she didn’t at all appreciate it when she somehow managed to tie the thread the toy is attached to around her tail. She got up to leave it and it followed her, which prompted another attack on it, but the next time she tried to run from it. She also tied her back legs together with the thread some time later and didn’t appreciate me rolling her on her back so I could untie her.

I discovered I had one of those large plastic bubbles of air that they use for packing flat things in boxes, so I thought I’d see if I could get Talore to pop it. She poked a few holes in it, but it’s probably a good thing that she didn’t actually burst it because when I did so she ran and hid under my bed for a while.

Cat Report

Talore persists in waking me up well before I’m ready to get up. Usually she just runs around and meows, but she occasionally gets creative. Last weekend she purred in my face, but during the week one day she licked one of my eyelids open. That sure woke me up, and felt rather odd. Last night I figured I’d just go to bed early and be ready to get up when she got up. Unfortunately, Talore also went to bed early and woke me up before there was enough light to read my watch. If only she was so eager to play at night instead of in the morning.

Note the cat hair on the top edge of the hole in the side. I’ve cleaned it at least once and I almost never see Talore actually go through the side, but there’s still a good bit built up there.

Talore is now relaxed enough about the cat carrier that she will let me put her in it without struggling, but I haven’t figured out a way to get her to walk into it for a treat though. I was planning to mention that she no longer feels the need to follow me from room to room whenever I leave her sight when I’m at home, but then I noticed that she moved to the bedroom doorway when I was in the bedroom hanging up my clean clothes. I guess it’s just that she either doesn’t wake up or isn’t inclined to get up when I’m moving around while she’s asleep.

I finally moved the cat food/water bowls off the dining room table. I eat at my desk so I wasn’t bothered by Talore eating at the table, but I could see that being a problem if I had company. They’re now on the brick in front of the fireplace, which is behind a chair from where I sit at my desk. It took me a while to figure out what the slight sound of water was the first time I heard her drinking with the bowl there, since I didn’t recognize the sound from when the bowl was at the table and Talore was hidden behind the chair when I first heard it.

Talore still knocks things off my desk, but now she has more to choose from. The plastic cup that I had holding all my pens and stuff (that Talore split down both sides a while back) got killed by the lamp that I knocked over, so now everything is in a pile. Only one thing has been found first by the roomba so far, but if I don’t find a replacement cup (or something) I suspect it’ll be eating more.

I’m guessing Talore has allergies. My apartment is as dust free as it’s been since I moved in (thanks to the tireless work of the roomba), but Talore sneezes occasionally. That both started well after I got her and started cleaning the apartment and my allergies have been noticeable lately, so I’m figuring that’s all it is. If Talore gets worse or starts acting differently I’ll take her to the vet, but the internet tells me that cats can have the same allergies as people do.

I finally got my 2x2x2 rubik’s cube and stickers this week (eastsheen brand cube, used pink instead of orange so I had to get stickers). It is indeed a much better cube for speedcubing than the rubik’s brand one. The core of it is basically a 3x3x3 cube, but instead of the centers and edges being visible the corners have caps that snap on them and hide the internals. Nearly the first thing I did was break the tab that holds one of the caps on, but the reason I broke it was that the piece had so much friction holding it on that I couldn’t tell when the tab was pushed back far enough, so it’s not likely to be a problem. It’s rather loose, and the springs allow it to turn even when not completely aligned, so it’s a really fast cube. Since I’m not at all used to it yet, I occasionally have trouble with turning it too far, but I’ve still managed a 16 second solve (5s inspection time), and an average in the mid 20s.

When I put the stickers on the 2x2x2 cube I did it at my table instead of at my desk. The light is a bit better there, and I figured it would be easier to keep cat hair off the stickers since Talore was asleep on my desk. As soon as I sat down at the table Talore came over to see what I was doing, and she insisted on jumping up into my lap (which she never does). She was persistent enough that I was getting bits of cat hair on the new stickers as I peeled them off the backing. She did leave after I started sticking the old stickers to her, and it was quite impressive watching her flick her paw hard enough to unstick a sticker that I’d put square in the middle of her paw.

The weekend

Instead of her usual waking me up at 6 something by meowing insistently in the other room, Talore woke me up at 7 this morning by sitting with her head 6 inches in front of mine purring loudly at me, then as soon as I went to pet her she retreated out of reach.

I finally uncovered my chairs yesterday (I had boxes and stuff on them to keep Talore from picking at the fabric of the cushions).  She still picks at them occasionally, but if I look at her and say “No” she stops.  Talore doesn’t seem to mind that they lean back now (when I first got her she wouldn’t even stand on them) since she both walks all over them and has gone to sleep on one.  She either walks up the chair next to it or just jumps to get to the cat bed I have next to the balcony window where it’s high enough to see over the railing.

Half of the clothes pin I have the feathery toy tied to is missing.  I had it clipped on the fan above Talore yesterday, but she eventually just ignored it and went to sleep.  At that point I figured I might as well take it off the fan so it wouldn’t keep swishing by, but I forgot I had the fan on lowest instead of medium and pulled the cord twice.  At full speed the thread caught on the pull chain, wound up, and popped the clothes pin off the fan blade.  The clothespin twisted coming off and one side came out from under the spring that held it together and the side with the spring flew off, hit the wall, and fell behind something.  I wasn’t paying attention to what direction the sound came from and I haven’t found it yet.

Talore now is quite willing to tolerate going in the cat carrier in return for a cat treat.  For probably a week I would put her in it, then feed her a cat treat (after she got out to start with, then while she was in it when she was used to it enough to not be in panic/escape mode).  At first I figured it was at least giving me practice at getting her in when she didn’t want to go, but she did start getting used to it somewhat.  This last week I’ve been sitting her in front of it, then putting a treat in the carrier and waiting there till she went in to get it.  I have to hold her in front of it so she doesn’t wander away (she’ll sneak back and take it while I’m not looking if I let her leave), but she has now entered the carrier several times without me having to force her in.  Next step is to get her to go in, then feed her the cat treat, though I don’t know if she’ll go for that.

I spent a couple hours working on my rubik’s cubes yesterday.  My average time on the 5x5x5 is 14:36 minutes with four solves.  I should have kept track of the time for each step of solving it, and I know I’m getting faster at the first ones (the ones unique to the 5 cube, or at least to big cubes).  Still, it takes so long to scramble and solve it’s hard to work on it much.  For the 3 cube I went to update my time when I got to work on Friday and was just in time to see Tom updating his times.  His (newly updated) single best was one second faster than mine, and his 3 of 5 was three or four seconds faster.  Calvin still has us both beat, but we’re catching up since he hasn’t been improving his times.  That was part of what prompted over an hour spent on the 3 cube yesterday, but I think I’ve finally got a solid second place single solve time with a 29.13s solve.  It didn’t seem spectacularly lucky when I was doing it till the last step so if I hadn’t been using a timer that keeps a log I’d have thought I accidentally touched it and restarted it during the solve, but considering I had gotten a few solves that nearly matched my previous record that weren’t lucky solves I shouldn’t have been too surprised.  Unfortunately I was getting great times (sub 45s) about once every 5 solves with mostly mediocre times (of 50-55) around them so I only dropped my 3 of 5 by half a second.  It seems like fast solves are now more dependent on me spotting the last steps quickly and not messing up the new algorithms I know than they are on getting a good start.

Also: “something negative about Emee”  I was assured that if I posted that Emee would hear about it.  I’m sure that’s not what Dad meant, but I couldn’t resist.