Category: Talore

Weekend report

Another long and varied post. Oh well.

Apparently wordpress publishes posts dated for when you first started the post. The last two posts I made showed up out of order and several days earlier than I actually finished them. I started them with a list of notes I intended to write about figuring I’d finish them over the weekend and post them on different days, but it didn’t let me.

I just got up for a minute to take the trash out and Talore stopped pretending to be asleep and stole a slice of bacon off my plate. At least she’s mostly stopped trying to steal my food when I’m there.

Since the first one didn’t really have a lasting effect I gave Talore a proper bath last night. She was curious while I was filling the tub, but not curious enough to step in it. When I put her in she was trying to keep her feet first but not have any foot touch the water. That would have been a great video, but I only have two hands and didn’t have a good stand in the bathroom. Her lack of traction on the bottom of the tub meant it was fairly easy to keep her there, but a good bit of water got splashed over the edge when she’d flail around trying to grab hold of it. I didn’t have any cat shampoo, so I just rubbed her with water where she wasn’t low enough to be in it.

She complained a little, but when I was talking to her and petting/rubbing her (even with water) she was somewhat calm. Toweling her off also went much better this time, though the fact that I had her in the bathroom and could let go of her without her fleeing helped. I did get a couple of scratches from not having trimmed Talore’s claws, but that was just when she was flailing with her claws out, not because she was trying to climb up my arm. It turned out much better than the first attempt: even without soap her fur is much fluffier than it was.

A week or two ago there were noises of someone moving stuff around in the apartment next to me before I went to work. I’m guessing they moved out, because since Thursday I’ve been hearing a beep on an 11 second timer, and I’m pretty sure that it’s the smoke detector in that apartment complaining that it’s low on battery. If I’d guessed that’s what it is before late last night I’d have gone by the apartment office yesterday to ask if they can do something about it.

I forgot to pick up for the roomba today. Apparently the first thing it did was back over the elastic cord for that cat toy as it was getting off the charging dock and declare itself stuck.

It’s come to my attention (see the next paragraph) that I need to dust most of the surfaces that the roomba can’t get to. Unfortunately I got the roomba because I don’t bother to clean as often as I should, so my desk is probably the only thing that will be dusted with any regularity.

Last weekend I was compressing a screencapture video for posting on youtube, so I was using my old desktop. That computer is still set up for transcoding videos, and it prevents the processing time that takes from affecting what I’m doing on my main desktop, even if it takes longer to do it that way. Apparently it had been far longer since I used that computer than I thought. I swiped ram and a power cable from it when I built my server, and I left the side of the case off for a good while. That let a significant amount of dust in, so when I turned on the power supply after plugging it back in and the computer turned itself on I got a face full of dust as the vent fans ejected all of it out the back of the computer. Talore was sitting next to me watching and she fled instantly, but I failed to react that quickly.

The ebook section of the library I live next to now has a decent selection of at least the newer Terry Pratchett books. Last time I checked for ebooks I only found a list of about 100 books, none of which I was interested in, so this is a big improvement even if I’ve already read all of them. Actually, about half of my search results are e-audio books, so it’s not as large a collection as I thought, but still better than I found a few months ago.

Downloading a book (Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson) was relatively painless, though it helped that I already had an adobe id for Adobe Digital Editions. Adobe Digital Editions appears to be a flash application, so right clicking anywhere brings up the flash settings menu, which is extremely annoying when you expect a useful context menu to be there. I did eventually figure out that the book could be dragged from the library section to the nook icon on the left, but that wasn’t obvious to me to start with.

Claw trimming time

It’s probably about time to trim Talore’s claws. She hasn’t scratched me, and never tries, but when she’s sitting on me she tends to knead, and most of her claws are about as sharp as they’ll get and pointy enough to hurt. She probably won’t mind me cutting them, but I would imagine that not being able to snag things with a single paw won’t be appreciated.

She did manage to get away with the toy on the elastic string the other day. When I put it down Talore chewed almost through the cord next to the handle where I didn’t expect or check it, then the first time she caught it after that it broke off when I pulled. That toy is now missing a significant amount of fur (the flap holding the back half on came off) and doesn’t get chased as much in the mornings.

Talore seems to have stopped picking at my furniture, or perhaps she’s careful to do it when I’m not around. At one point it seemed like she was listening for me to turn my chair and stick my hand in the cup of water, because that’s all it took for her to look at me guiltily and prepare to run. She still drinks the water out of the cup on my desk, and I’ve now had two almost empty cups of water swiped off my desk because they were so light it didn’t take much (and because they’re on the edge away from my computers). The third is about at that point now, perhaps I’ll refill it.

I finally managed to get into my apartment in the afternoon without Talore meeting me at the door. I got home over an hour earlier than usual, and both the roomba and the air conditioning were on providing a high enough ambient noise level for me to sneak in. Talore still managed to be sitting up and looking at me when I walked into the bedroom though.

Talore had finally stopped seriously trying to wake me up in the mornings last weekend, but then I had a few days when I had to get up before it was fully light to get to work early. Now Talore again insists that as soon as there’s light it’s time to get up. She’s attacked my feet a couple times recently (with sharp claws), but I promptly pushed her off the bed both times and hopefully she’ll stop that.

Well-used toy

I had trouble getting a good picture of it, but Talore has thoroughly mangled the toy that’s on the end of the elastic cord. She’s also bitten through the cord another two times, putting the knot count at 4. I had trouble getting a good picture of the toy. This was the best I managed and it didn’t turn out as well as I’d like.

It looks like the fur on the back of the toy was mostly just glued on. There’s one edge that’s still holding on, and a sewed seam in the middle that’s starting to come apart, but the toy is dangerously close to losing it’s tail (and half it’s fur). The plastic body is also so dented and punctured that it doesn’t rattle very well anymore.

I generally try to keep my clean clothes cat-hair free, by which I mean I close them in my closet and don’t let Talore in there. Today after I put a load of clothes in the washing machine I turned around to see Talore stretched out in the empty clothes basket. For how short a time she was in it she managed to deposit a good bit of cat hair, and all of it is clinging to the plastic rather well. It’s surprising that she even went near it in the first place, considering when I first got Talore I trapped her in the upside down clothes basket a couple times and she didn’t appreciate that at all.

Speaking of not appreciated, I attempted to give Talore a bath (or really just get her entirely wet and towel her off) in my kitchen sink today. She’s got a stripe down the middle of her back that occasionally gets a bit matted, and I’m pretty sure the reason for that is that she usually bathes on top of the bookshelf in my bedroom but the shelf isn’t wide enough for her to twist far enough to reach that spot on her back while being perched comfortably. It turns out my sink isn’t nearly deep enough since she absolutely refused to be forced to lay down. I was able to hold Talore mostly in the sink without her getting panicky, but she wouldn’t relax at all. I couldn’t even dunk her tail because when I tried she’d try to sidestep her back legs out of the sink and I’d have to use both hands to hold her (I really didn’t want a wet cat fleeing across my bed to the bookshelf). I could have almost completely submerged her if I flipped her over on her back, but doing that normally causes her to struggle and I figured trying it in water would result in claws coming out. In the end it worked out well enough – she was wet enough that I managed to briefly swipe a damp towel over her back before she bolted (to next to the dining room table) and went to lick all the water off. From the noises she made I think wrapping her up in the towel bothered her as much as the sink mostly full of water. No pictures because I didn’t want any electronics near a wet cat.

If I try that again it’ll have to be a shower, but ever since she poked her head around the shower curtain and got a face full of water she’s avoided the bathroom in the mornings. Actually, Talore tolerated the water far better than most descriptions/videos online of bathing a cat indicate can be expected. She complained a bit at the start, but was quiet so long as I was talking to her and petting her head with my dry hand (as I held her in place by keeping my hand in front of her face). Reading about what preparations I should have made (which would have mostly been unnecessary) I should bathe her in the bathtub with somewhat deeper water than I had in the sink. At least I had the water temperature right (somewhat warm). Watching vocal cats given baths got Talore to come looking for the tormented cat, which doesn’t usually happen when I watch videos of cats, even loud ones.

I had to go shopping today, and since it was getting late I got a bacon cheese burger from Wendy’s on the way home. Talore was rather interested in the smell of it, but I wouldn’t let her have any while I was eating it. Once I’d nearly finished it off I let her swipe the long strip of bacon that had fallen out. She took it out of my sight, but she managed to eat about half of it and came back around the corner licking the sauce off her face around her mouth.