I’m tired

I've been home from work long enough to grab a bite to eat.  Yes, I worked today.  It's been that kind of week.  I realize there haven't been many site updates over the last several days, but you're just going to have to cope with your cravings a wee bit longer.  With so much going on at work and getting ready to move on April 21, things are quite hectic for me right now.  Not to fear, though, as I'll be updating the site as much as possible and hope to be back to regular updates shortly after we get through this move.

Cat declawing gets outlawed

In what I hope to be the first in a series of similar laws, the West Hollywood City Council unanimously voted to ban the declawing of cats.

Known as onychectomy, cat declawing is a procedure which mutilates a cat's paws by removing the first joint of each toe.

I've long considered this to be pure animal cruelty and a completely unnecessary procedure.

I have had cats in my life for as long as I can remember, and declawing them has simply never been an option.  I live comfortably with four cats right now and don't fear being wounded by them.  I also do not worry about furniture being used for claw sharpening.

It's a matter of patience and training and not a matter of medical mutilation from the Dark Ages.

Cats may be inherently independent, but that does not mean they can't be trained.  By trained I do not mean beaten and abused for scratching a person or piece of furniture, either, but rather a simple technique of reinforcing good habits and negative feedback for bad habits — followed by positive reinforcement of the corresponding good habit.

With four cats in the house, all of whom have their claws, you would expect my roommate and I to be bleeding at all times and to have furniture that is shredded.

Not so!

The kids understand where and what they can scratch, and, even when playing rough with one of us, they are gentle enough not to cause too much damage.  Shallow scratches are the worst wounds we've suffered from.

I applaud West Hollywood for this maneuver and hope that other cities, municipalities and counties follow their lead.  Perhaps we can do away with this barbaric practice altogether.

Now we taper him off

Spoke to the vet today, and it's time to start tapering Grendel off of the corticosteroid.  He's been on one every other day, so now he goes to one every third day.  If he does well on that schedule, we stay on it for two weeks then reduce it to one every week.  Again, if that works well, then, after two weeks, we take him off of the pill altogether.  He's done well on the inhaler, so I'm hoping I can finally get him off of the pills.  Here's hoping things go as planned.

I’m not neglecting you

Just so you know, I'm not neglecting you.  I've been busy packing and have had some folks visiting from out of town, so the last two days have been hectic.  I just got home from work, so I'm going to grab a bite to eat and hit the sack (it's been a long day).

I hate moving

As you might have read by now, my roommate and I are moving later this month (April 21 to be precise).  There's so much work involved in moving, though, and I always end up feeling like I'm going to forget something.  It also turns into this chaotic episode of packing and making phone calls and packing and throwing things away and packing and more packing.  I just started packing this weekend, and I've already generated three garbage bags worth of junk.  No, we don't live in a house so cluttered with junk that you have to travel around via paths cut through the debris.  Quite to the contrary, actually, the house generally stays quite clear except for the kids' toys.  Still, as you dig through closets and drawers to pack things, you come across stuff that you can't possibly want or need — yet there it is.

For instance, I ran across my first two cell phones in their original boxes with the original documentation and accessories.  WTF is that about?  Did I really think the Nokia 6160 was ever going to come back into style?

While cleaning out the lowboy, I found the original documentation for an electric shaver I purchased two years ago and threw away shortly thereafter.

Have you ever wondered why you keep things like that, when at the time you're convinced it might actually be needed at some point in the future?

When I tackled one of the closets in my room, I found two Abercrombie & Fitch catalogs — both from more than two years ago.  Again, what was I thinking?  I must admit that I found them in a stack of tax-related papers and documentation, so I know they got put in that box by accident.

Still, the moral of the story is that I consider things necessary for no logical reason, yet I always find myself unable to comprehend the initial reasoning when I come across these lost treasures later.

Needless to say, this whole packing/cleaning thing is going to take me the next two weeks.

Still, I think we'll both be happy to get out of this place and into someplace new.  We've grown quite frustrated (dare I say repulsed) with the local inhabitants.  Trash doesn't go far enough in explaining the riffraff that has enveloped our once quiet little neighborhood.

It's not that we haven't had this problem before (children playing in the streets all hours of the day and night, playing in our yard and driveway like it belonged to them, people parking in our driveway like they owned the place [no, don't worry about me, I'll just stay home and starve so you don't have to get your nasty car out of my driveway!], and the list goes on).

Believe me, we don't live in the ghetto.  In fact, it's an affluent area of the DFW metroplex.  Still, it draws a lot of "new money" who have just enough money to live here but not enough money to furnish their homes.

So, again, we'll be happy to be out of here.

Our new pad is quite cool.  It's spitting distance from a lake (now hints on which one, since I don't want you freaks stalking me!), faces the woods and a creek (that runs into the lake), and is quite a distance back from the nearest major thoroughfare.

And the kids will love it, as the creek is already bustling with all sorts of wildlife, including a menagerie of birds and other wild creatures.  The kids love to talk to birds right now, so I'm quite interested in how they react to having a dramatically larger selection — and much closer than what they see right now — to choose from.

So I reiterate what I've said multiple times before.  As we get closer to moving, I can't promise that I'll keep the site updated daily, but I'll do my best.