Requiem for Winnie the Paws

A dog of many talents and names (Winnie, WinTinTin, Win, Windawg Windoggie, Pysco Dog, That Damn Dog, Sweetie, My baby) has gone to the Great Puppy Farm in the Sky.

Traverse put Winnie to sleep at 11:30am Eastern time today. The vet said she had lost a lot of muscle mass in her hind quarters and that the time was right. Twelve years is a long life for breeds of her fine lineage. It was a great twelve years. She led a dogs life. Both Traverse and we will think of her often.

Photo Friday: Hunter's Roost

The Kitten Farm West kitchen has nearly three times the counter space of the old one. The boys are allowed on the otherwise unused counter which has an opening to the living room and is a natural perch to watch most of the downstairs from. However, we do use the cabinets over this counter. Normally, with the doors closed, there is no problem. However, with the door open today, Billy claimed one of them as an overhead extension of his counter.



Please reel your tail up Billy, so I can at least close the door again.

The Grim Purrer

CNN has an article on Oscar, a cat who knows when a nursing home's resident's time has come. When Oscar visits, it's time to call the family for the long goodbye.

The original article text is also available.

Photo Friday: But He's Wafer Thin!

Packing for her trip last week, Katherine could have sworn her briefcase was fully loaded before Billy wedged himself in.

The Daily Stench, Asylum Edition

In honor of my first full day as the only valet of the asylum, the boys very carefully showed me they knew which bathroom that their litter box was moved to. Unfortunately this didn't show me that they actually know where the litter box itself is, as the sign they left was a solid mess on the bathmat. I don't know if it was a hairball or something from the other end. I do know the bathmat immediately went in the washer. No other damage was noted.

Catatouille

As noted elsewhere, Whitey is the less active of our two boys. Compared to Billy, he can act like a lazy bum, but in reality Katherine and I both realize that what Whitey is really doing is simply observing the world around him in a serene feline manner. If Billy wants to get up and run around and take an active part in that world, that's fine with his brother; he'll wait for the kitty treats.

The only problem with Whitey is and his Zen like attitude is that he chooses to exhibit this serenity even when observing the world from places where he should not be in the first place. On two trips into the kitchen last night about 20 minutes apart, both times I found him serenely lying on the main kitchen counter next to the sink with his paws folded under him like he had not a care in the world. (The Mist of Doom was deployed both times.)

Maybe he figures that if rats can be chefs, mighty feline hunters (and bums) can become chefs too, and he should hang around the kitchen until somebody teaches him. Then he can open those pesky cans.

The Inmates and the Asylum, Summer 2007 Edition

It is time for that annual summer event, the running of the asylum by the inmates.

I tried make lemonade out of lemons this year, taking the opportunity with Katherine being gone to install a high-speed wired network in the new kitten farm, and make it truly our West Coast electronic cottage.

Having found a larger electrician who routinely works on Saturdays, I thought I had the perfect plan that would minimize both my time off and any interruption to Katherine. I even planned it out for the boys carefully. In particular, at my request Katherine moved the boys' litter box from their own upstairs bathroom back into the master suite, so they can have the self-contained master suite to themselves. (In other words, I was going to jail the boys while the electricians were running around.)

Alas, my glorious plan to avoid disturbing Katherine was foiled! The company I had chosen had sent an experienced low-voltage (network) person out to do the estimate, and we had carefully scheduled two weeks in advance to do the work. At the time of the estimate, the estimator had specifically said that they probably needed two people to do the work. However on the appointed day yesterday, they sent a single high-voltage person out who had no expertise with data wiring, and did not even have the parts required for a new light switch in the garage which was one of the few high voltage items that were part of the original estimate.

The end result is that the kitten farm is still not fully networked yet, and the work will have to be rescheduled in a couple of weeks when we can get the proper people with proper equipment in. For now, the boys litter box is relocated back to their dedicated bathroom. No doubt they view this as the bright side, as the migration caused me to distribute kitty treats in the bathroom to remind them where the litter box had come to a stop.