Tag Archives: cats

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Dick measuring veterans. I know, that’s a bold statement to say anything other than “thank you for your service,” but hear me out. I’ve spent the majority of my adult life working with active duty soldiers and a heavy helping of veterans who have opted to come back to work as civilian employees. The one thing that most perplexes me about the veteran community is the incessant dick measuring – You’re not a “real” veteran unless you were in combat, or this one is a better veteran than that one because “he only went to Afghanistan twice and I went to Iraq three times.” As an outside observer who honestly indifferent about the outcome of most “best veteran contests,” it really feels like the weirdest thing to try making hay over. The military is a big place and expecting everyone who raised their hand to have the same experience across a span of decades is simply ridiculous on its face. 

2. Cats. Ivy has been here at the house for a little over a month now. We tried the basic slow introduction and did well right up until we got to the last bit – letting everyone roam free. Ivy is determined that Cordy and Anya exist to be chased. In turn, they have mostly holed up under my bed any time Ivy is on the loose. What I seem to have created is a two-shift situation where Ivy is free to move about the place from about 5AM – 5PM and then gets relegated back to her kitted out bathroom while Anya and Cordy take over the house from 5PM to 5AM. It’s not ideal and absolutely doesn’t feel like a situation I’m going to be able or willing to keep up with indefinitely. Just how long I’m going to let it run, though, remains the uncertain variable. I don’t need them to be the best of friends, but I do need them to eventually coexist as at least disinterested parties.

3. The Islamic State. It’s hard to imagine a stratagem less likely to engender support for your cause than launching a terror attack on Taylor Swift in concert. I assume that ISIS and its slack jawed religio-fascist followers simply don’t grasp the magnetic force that woman holds over millions of devoted fans, who would simply demand that the western world’s governments scourge the wanna-be caliphate from the face of the earth if they hurt a single blonde hair on Dr. Swift’s enchanted head.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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Cat food. For two small mammals who used to live rough outdoors, my cats seem to have an overdeveloped sense of pickiness when it comes to food. I’m trying to get them off their wet kitten food onto wet adult food and it’s…. not going well. The number of “premium” brands and flavors I’ve purchased only to find them rejected is, honestly, embarrassing. I’ll be handing the scores of castoff cans to the local shelter in due time, but it’s still money and effort I’d have rather not spent. I’ve been at this for a month now and haven’t found a single thing they’ll touch.The more expensive the food or better quality the ingredients, the less interested they get. They can’t stay on Pro Plan salmon flavored kitten food forever. Probably. I wonder if they still like the Friskies blend they were getting at the shelter.

Vegetables. Look, I like vegetables. I just don’t like them in the quantity you need to eat them to make them calorically significant. A nice dinner plate has no business being five or six ounces of meat and then 37 metric tons of green beans, asparagus, and squash. I’m sorry, it just doesn’t. And then doing it all without any decent sauces is just adding insult to injury. I’ll do it, but there’s not a power on earth or in heaven that can make me like it.

Warm body duty. This week, the prevailing schedule found me schlepping over to the office one day so that I could remain in compliance with the guidance that “everyone must show up in the office one day each work week.” Whatever. It’s a radical improvement over being there three times each week, but still, it can’t help but feel a little bit contrived when you spend the day doing absolutely nothing that you couldn’t have done at least equally as well from home. I don’t think I’ll ever entirely understand the managerial obsession for having someone performing duty as the designated warm body, at a specific desk, in a specific room. I’ll dance to the tune they call, because they paid for the band, but you’ll never convince me that “just because” is a good reason to do one thing over the alternative.

Better than buying magic beans (probably)…

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Having cut my teeth with a cat who was essentially a small dog, I obviously missed some of the fine points of raising felines. After losing Hershel to a urinary blockage, my slightly obsessed tendency towards doing extracurricular reading and knowing things let me down a number of intellectual rabbit holes. One of those research projects led me to discover that most domestic cats tend not to drink enough and hover constantly near a state of dehydration. It explains at least some of what makes male cats so damned prone to urinary tract issues.

Knowing something, having the information, is only worthwhile when it leads to improved decision making, I’d always kept Hershel on high quality dry food. While that most likely wasn’t the outright cause of his demise, it could easily be a contributing factor – and something I’d done unwittingly because at the time I lacked better information.

Now, with a bit of upgraded knowledge, Anya and Cordelia have their own filtered water fountain as well as access to the other strategically placed water bowls around the house. I’ve also opted to augment their kibble with twice daily wet food. They seem to enjoy it and the extra moisture is supposedly to their advantage. Aside from what feels like an absurd price for big boxes filled with three ounce cans, I’m reasonably satisfied it’s better for them overall than the way I use to do things. I will, however, refrain from naming specific brands here because the internet is an utter shitshow of people who want to dive in and criticize every choice and brand if it’s not precisely how and what they do themselves. That’s mess enough on Reddit that I won’t invite the same kind of engagement here.

In any case, the gang is eating and appears to be performing all other bodily functions normally so if nothing else, this change in process meets the baseline standard of doing no harm. I may never know if going over and beyond very basic feeding and watering makes a difference. If it does, that’s terrific and I’ve bought Anya and Cordy a marginally improved quality of life. If it doesn’t, I’m only out some money… and I’d have probably just pissed that away on magic beans or something anyway.

Thoughts on the day after…

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Being a multi-animal household, I always have an interest in how they get along. Some simply mesh better than others – and knowing who needs to be fed separately or who’s apt to pick a fight over a certain toy can be awfully critical information to have at your fingertips. It’s not hard to sort out what’s what when you live with them day in and day out over a period of years. Getting it sorted, though, doesn’t take nearly that much time.

As for my crew, Hershel and Maggie regularly palled around, by which I mean you’d often catch them napping together in the living room. Even if occasionally he’d give her a quick bite seemingly out of nowhere, she mostly put up with it. They seemed to have their own kind of bond, but it was proof enough to me that cats and dogs can happily live together. Hershel’s the one who’s going to spend the next few days wandering around the house trying to figure things out. 

Maggie and Jorah’s relationship is a bit of a different story. They occupied the same space, interacted tangentially, and were mostly happy to do their own thing. It was a bit like observing two people who could be perfectly civil to one another without really being friends. With almost ten years between their individual stage of life, that was always easy enough to write off to the age gap. He seems to be happy enough mostly keeping to the well established routine.

Winston, gone now for the better part of three years, was always Maggie’s alter ego. They were unquestionably a pair, inseparable except in the ultimate extreme. She took losing him every bit as hard as I did.

I’m utterly unqualified to speculate on what’s beyond the veil that both Winston and Maggie have now passed through and that waits for us all. If there is something other than the end of consciousness and the return of energy to the universe, I’d hope they manage to find one another again.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a church for something other than a wedding or a funeral, but I vaguely remember some debate on whether or not animals go to the Christian heaven. Something about them not having the ability to “accept salvation.” Let me just go on the record here and now by saying that if there is, in fact, some echo of consciousness that carries on after life and it resides forever somewhere posted “no dogs allowed,” I want no part of it. 

I’ll happily take my chances going wherever it is they go.

Not nearly that Zen…

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I know I was busy today. I have the meeting notes, calendar invitations, and seemingly endless chain of emails to prove I’ve done something today. I try not to delve too deeply into differentiating simply being busy and actually getting things done. The two are most decidedly not synonymous. I’ve long since given up on making an official distinction between the two. In my estimation on any given day as long as you look busy, people will assume you are busy. That’s one of the great double edged swords of working for Uncle.
So is there virtue to being busy even if you don’t really have anything to show for it? Well, it passes the time if nothing else. When you live your life eight hours at a time, I suppose that has to count for something. A quick eight hours is usually preferable to a slow eight hours. That’s not universally true, of course, because there are some days that go quickly only because they are so full of unimaginable levels of stupid. Stupid can be a deal breaker – because at some point things can easily get so far sideways that a slow day would just be less anguished.
I can sit here and ask myself what kind of day it’s been, but that probably misses the real point. Just now, busy or slow, it’s the best kind of day – the one that is quickly receding into the rear view of life. I’m not nearly that Zen, of course, but I have important business to attend. After all, dogs and cats aren’t going to learn to live together all by themselves.