we had joy...

...we had fun, we had seasons in the sun

(wicket sez: spring sunshine and feathers and sis/bro locked up in separate room are niiiiiiice)

claws!

wicket's, to be exact

synesthesia

each time i visit lizzie's 922cats, it feels like walking into a clean, white room. there's a window open somewhere and minimal furniture- lots of space to walk freely, swinging your arms.

she's using a beautiful, simple template with so much restful white space that text and pics just pop. as i'm mentally swinging my arms, feeling the breeze through the imaginary open window, and poring over pics of ppeettunniiaa, i remember a story i just read in my new cookbook.

the story is about a man who experiences combinations of sensations. it's called synesthesia. so while eating chocolate mousse, for example, he feels the smooth contours of tall cool marble pillars. after serving a friend the fried chicken he had just baked, he tasted a bite and said, 'it's not pointed enough!'

nabokov was a famous synesthete. letters of the alphabet, when he imagined them, were each tinged with a different color. duke ellington saw timbre in color.

kind of related to this is the bouba/kiki effect. take a look at the two images here. assign one image the word "bouba" (regardless of this word's meaning (it has none)), and assign the other image the word "kiki."

when many, many people are asked this question, 90-something percent answer the same way. how do you answer?

go back to bed!

I was woken up at 3 a.m. this morning. For one horrible moment I believed I'd aged ten years, birthed three half-grown kids, and that somehow Christmas had been moved to late May. It was horrible! I was groggy! Had trouble getting to sleep in the first place!

All three fuzzers rampaged from room to room, yowling and crying piteously and running into walls, crashing over furniture. Then one of them discovered me on the bed, snuffled my hairline, rrroowled, and before I knew it, all three were on the bed. Nudging my elbows, patting my toes, biting my toes, walking across my belly.

For crying out loud, kids, go back to bed! No one's opening any presents until 6!

Maybe Wicket was hungry and extra-ornery? He's the only one with enough bulk to knock a giant bean bag from teh couch onto the floor. sheesh

lust

reclamation

All my mental associations of the word 'gimp' are derived from the movie Pulp Fiction. And they're not good. So I set about reclaiming the word for my own peace of mind, and found these alternate meanings:

"...a special type of black lace used to trim certain gowns at Oxford University."

"...ornamental braid used to cover tack heads that hold fabric's edge against exposed wood."

"...a small punk band that originated from East Brunswick, New Jersey...fronted by Tomas Kalnoky who later went on to write, sing and play guitar for famed third-wave ska bands Catch-22 and Streetlight Manifesto."

So there, QTarantino.

But my real reason for this post is to celebrate my recent discovery of a fantabulous free open-source image editor. It's called GNU Image Manipulation Program (or, surprise surprise, GIMP), and so far I love it.

So do the guys and gals at CNET, who made it their featured download earlier this month: "Extremely powerful and easy to work with, GIMP is ideal for both amateur and pro photographers, Web designers, or anyone who wants to create and edit professional-quality digital images on a budget."

On their FAQ page, the people at GIMP respond to the comment that GIMP is a stupid name: "GIMP is comfortable with its name and thinks that you should apologise for your rudeness."

exercise & Wicket- the blue series

exercise & Wicket (or "eW!") - the red series

Cardinals fans

and now you know where new cell phones come from

Lecanomancy

I have finally figured out why mine (and maybe yours) are so in love with water. They're splashers, drowners, dabblers, dippers, waders, tricklers, and sodden-paws, and I've wiped, mopped, dried, toweled, sopped, absorbed, and Bountied in an effort to keep up with them (esp. Kai, my Hawaiian sea).

They're not killing their food or washing their paws, they are lecanomancers!

Love-a-Geek day

holy crapola! it's been a month already since the first time i officially weighed wicket with intent. he weighed 16.5 pounds on april 21, and four weeks later, he weighs 16.6.

this in no way concerns me! first, as jen points out, we loves him just the way he is, yes we do. second, in the transition from dry to canned food (or morning-dry, evening-canned, i haven't decided yet) his portions haven't been as tightly controlled as they would have been otherwise.

and third, my goal has been to give him 450 calories a day, as vet-lady recommended to bring him down to 14 pounds. but he apparently needs fewer than that.

so my revised plan is to finish the switch to canned (or dry in the morning, canned at night), maintain that for two weeks or so to find out what happens to meerakai 'n' wickets' weights, and then reduce portions if i need to.

geek that i am, i've been charting this stuff. here's a pic of wickers' weight (in red) and his target weight (in blue). our target weight has been based on a healthy loss of 1-2% total body weight per week. you can see that at week 4, he was so far off target that i had to recalculate our goal from that point on. does that make sense?

click to enlarge, my friends:

bella and bro 1

bellabro2

wellness

oooh, they love the wet food, yes they do.

guest tonight

i spent the morning and early afternoon cleaning the apartment to prep for niece em's visit tonight. she'll be spending the night...one guess as to which of the three won't come our from under the bed or use the litter box until two in the morning, when all is quiet and dark?

i swept, i dusted, i did dishes, i rearranged the living room furniture (again)...i got rid of the lovely red carpet, bought a year ago, which was shredded into unrecognizable tissue paper within two days. i hung onto it because they love it so, but today i just didn't have the heart to vacuum it.

to vacuum it would have meant moving the very heavy table, going over every square foot five times to pick up the cat hair embedded in the torn peaks and valleys, changing the vacuum bag at least once, maybe twice, to avoid bag-explosion, and then, then! with the carpet as clean as it can be, i'd have to place the vacuum head on its side and with pincer fingers, pull out all the long strands of red used-to-be-part-of-a-carpet from the roller brush.

so my pretties, i'm sorry, but not really. i think i'll buy you a nice scratching post, with levels and hanging bits. will that do?

changes afoot

eat your dry kibble, boys and girl! only a week or so before we begin the switch to canned...

Arrrrr!

meera gets thingies in her eyes consistently, but luckily not that often. this morning she's walking around like a pirate, poor kid.

while i'm talking to you

Wicket, why do i get the feeling you're not listening to me while I'm talking to you?

cat mottos...what are yours?

"Nothing good ever came out of a squirt bottle." (Jen's 'Bastian)

"If I can reach it, it's a toy." (J's Dunc')