My Daisy is seven now and spry as ever. But she grows whiter in the muzzle and around the eyes all the time, and sometimes you can see the crotchety old dog in her:
Some friends and I went to a music festival last night and saw six bands — we missed way more than we saw. I stayed up half the night, so my butt is dragging today.
I could use another day to recover, but that’s not happening. What are you up to this Sunday evening?
Open thread!
Culture of Truth
CAT BLEG
Hi all,
As you may remember, Balloon Juice community member Karen is dealing with Stage 4 cancer, and posted a cat bleg a few months ago. She was unable to care for Contessa, her beloved cat of 13 years, and put out a request to see if anyone could could take her in and avoid her having to resort to a shelter. I took Contessa in and she is happy and thriving, and she is indeed one of sweetest and most loving cats I have encountered. However, she and Tiger have never established more than a wary distrust, and as Contessa has more gotten settled in, it’s become increasing difficult to keep the peace. Karen and I talked it over and agreed that we should put out another Cat Bleg and see if we could interest anyone is taking in an easygoing lap cat with a loud purr. Contessa is diabetic and does need injections, but I find them easy and I’m no expert. My vet calls Contessa their favorite cat to treat, and they certainly never said that about Tiger. Please let me know if you or anyone you know might be interested.
Culture
donnah
Daisy is darling, soaking up the sun. Our dog Wendy is twice her age, and it shows. Her eyes are cloudy and her hips can give out every now and then, but she still has the sweetest face in the world and she’s been a good dog. I don’t know what we’ll do when her time comes, but we’ll always be glad she’s part of the family.
Enjoy her! Give her a scritch behind the ears for me.
princess leia
@Culture of Truth: Where are you?
RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac)
I worked Friday night and Saturday. Today is sitting on my ass doing Photoshop work.
The new season of Orphan Black is fantastic so far.
Bystander
I’ve never mastered posting here but I love this clip from Maher’s program so much I’ll embarrass myself by trying.
DL Hughley lives out my fantasy of being on a television program and telling off a bushie in no uncertain terms. Maher does a nice job and I love the reception Harman gets, too.
Bystander
The heck with it.
satby
So proud of this young woman, who I met as a small child after Katrina. She’s getting close to her goal and needs a Bit more to boost her over the line.
There’s an article about her today in the local newspaper:http://www.sunherald.com/2015/05/02/6207954_a-small-town-girl-can-beat-all.html?rh=1
John Cole +0
Did she eat the crotchety old dog?
KJSBrooklyn
@RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac): I think it’s gotten too violent – too much torture.
gogol's wife
@Bystander:
Here you go:
http://crooksandliars.com/2015/05/d-l-hughley-whacks-dan-senor-being
gogol's wife
“What are you up to this Sunday evening?”
WOLF HALL, of course
JCT
I don’t know – looks to me like Daisy is saying “get off my porch “!
Our beagles are 15 and 13. The older one has had a rough time of late, dysfunctional thyroid followed by early senility and vision impairment. She gets anxious and has forgotten her housetraining. She was my husband’s devoted “chemo dog”, so this has been rough on him. But she is still perky in the AM and gives us a smile. Her younger sister had to have an emergent tooth extraction last week and the older one sat by the door all day and cried for her.
Will be very tough when we lose our old pals.
satby
@Culture of Truth: if WereBear shows up you may want to ask her advice. My experience is that it takes quite a while for cats to accept another, but they eventually do. After lots of drama.
satby
I’m sitting on my deck in the beautiful weather watching the hummingbird swing by my feeder while I enjoy a nice glass of red wine.
Oops, he’s pissed off at me, he thought my orange shirt was a tasty flower.
Raven
We’re worried about Bohdi. He yelped a number of times and we took him in yesterday. He’s got back issues and they gave him meds and he’s got to lay low.
The ER just finished giving me 6 stitches on my left pinky. In pretty lucky, the plate I fell on cut me deep but not too deep!
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
I’m on Fun Aunt duty while the grownups hang out inside. I’m trying to explain to the 7-year-old that the Peter Pan ride at Disney World does not go upside down, so it’s not too scary for her to go on.
Much drama today with the oldest niece (who’s 20). Basically, she’s scamming my mom out of money, everyone knows, she knows that we know, but she’s still successful at it.
Jane2
@Culture of Truth: Perhaps send the particulars to Anne Laurie so it’s promoted to the front page.
MattF
My project this weekend was updating the system software on my iMac and iPhone– OS X went from 10.8.? to 10.10.3, iOS went to 8.3. Then all the applications were updated, then various financial data was/were updated, then all backups were updated. It all worked, eventually and successfully, I’m glad to say. Hint to OS X updaters: if the updating seems to get ‘stuck’ at some point, just be patient. Also note that cmd-L shows you a real-time installation log, so you can see something happening.
satby
@Raven: hope you and Bohdi feel better soon!
WereBear
@Culture of Truth: Are you comfortable giving me a general area Contessa is now? And shoot me a picture at dearpammy AT wayofcats DOT com?
Because I’d be glad to Facebook it and Tweet my fans.
UPDATE: As satby said, I’d be glad to give an opinion on the issues. Though I respect your assessment that things have gotten worse instead of better.
Be aware that Contessa went through her own mourning period for having her home changed, and such distress distresses other cats.
Tree With Water
She looks like a loan officer, when a person knows they have no chance whatsoever before even sitting down.
Brachiator
Just came back from seeing the new Avengers movie. While the first was a superior action adventure movie, the latest installment is an overlong enjoyable incoherent mess.
I was glad to see the old gang back together again, but I wish that they had something else to do. Too much of the movie seemed pitched solely to the comic book sweet spot, the sensibilities of a 13 year old geek.
And I know people who complain about product placement in movies. But in a strange way, this movie is its own product placement. At a number of places, scenes and characters show up, not because they are essential to the current story, but because they will probably appear in a future Marvel movie.
I really liked Furious 7, because that movie had heart. The new Avengers provides a share of fun and thrills, but it is as coldly mechanical as its antagonist, Ultron.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Raven: I’m thinking good thoughts for the Bohdi and his back. Django had back issues at the end of his life and I think I waited a bit too long to let him go. I hope he forgave me.
Thinking good thoughts for your pinky also. Still jealous about your fishing trip, since I’m not going anywhere near saltwater (or fishing) anytime soon.
ThresherK
We have a surly cat on our hands.
Dexter, my wife’s cat (remember the “piss in the messenger bag” escapade earlier this week?) slipped out the door on my wife and she didn’t notice.
I noticed when I woke up from a nap and saw him on the deck for the first time ever. He has not been outside this new place. Tried opening up the sliding door, going out and around and shooing him in. No go. His demeanor got very threatening when I got within six feet of him, so I left him alone.
Later came out with treats and tried to figure where he scuttled off to. Found out it’s under the deck, in a dirt crawlspace I can’t fit into. Tossed a couple treats where he could see them.
When my wife came back he must have heard the garage door and just traipsed back in on her heels. And he’s been a somewhat hissy, offputting pile of PTSD since. Hopefully in a couple of days he’ll get back to normal.
WereBear
@ThresherK: What ticked him off? Is he nervous when your wife leaves? Is it moving?
Which is what it sounds like to me.
Raven
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I think he’ll be ok. This is where we have to ease up on him playing ball.
Raven
250 copay!
Culture of Truth
@princess leia: Hi, New York / New Jersey. I can drive to anyone within a reasonable distance (several hours). Thanks!!
ThresherK
@WereBear: I’m sorry, I didn’t want to go monologuing, but: He was like that outside at the old place too.
He was fascinated with going outside, and he learned that my wife has (as hockey fans would say) a Technicolor Five-Hole. Once outside on the screened-in porch he sniffed around, maybe poked outside a couple feet onto the walkway (next to a lawn, on a cul-de-sac), and maybe would scurry around behind trees or shrubs.
The behavior was not as bad, and the proper way to fix it was to set the storm door open and grab the other cat (who, of course, wanted to sniff the air of freedom also).
In nice weather my wife bid him to go outside. She’d sit on the porch and read and he would just hang out there, but it was certainly not like the whole “you have a book on your lap and I need to be closer to you than the book is” experience she always–and still gets–from him while indoors. Again, not getting close was the way to enjoy it.
Since this thing I’ve been giving him a wide berth. While we were both on the deck he was making an ungodly noise, from the inside of the glass sliding door. And he nipped at my wife for no reason, also, since then.
Help me, WayOfCatKenobi. You’re my only hope.
Brachiator
@Raven: Six stitches! This does not sound like fun.
Culture of Truth
@Jane2: Hi, thanks. Do you know how I reach Anne Laurie?
Thanks!
Raven
@Brachiator: It could have been much worse if it were just a bit deeper. This finger was badly dislocated playing basketball about 9 years ago. It didn’t need tendon damage. I wouldn’t have come to the ER but it was really bleeding badly.
Culture of Truth
@WereBear: Thanks! I’ll try to find a good picture to send. It’s not that things have gotten worse, exactly. It’s just that we don’t think either cat will be as happy as they both may be if we can find Contessa a better home.
debbie
@gogol’s wife:
Me too, though I’ve begun wishing they’d held off until all three books had been written. I’d love to see Mark Rylance portray Cromwell as his comeuppance comes due.
MattF
A caption for the photo: “No, I am not going to learn a new trick.”
dp
Same as you, Betty — trying to recover from JazzFest yesterday. It was the most crowded I’ve ever seen it; it may have outgrown the Fair Grounds. (But Ed Sheeran was worth it!)
WereBear
@ThresherK: Thanks for expanding on the reasons. It seems like an anxiety disorder — he’d like to go outside, but this one is different and might have monsters in it.
And if he adores your wife as much as it sounds, she is an important part of his security, so her leaving ramps things up to eleven.
You might help him secure himself by mentally associating your wife with a security object, as described here:
While we are away
If this helps him calm down, he won’t be as nervous outside, either. Where you hoping to keep him in in this new place?
OldDave
Wondering if Betty made the cross state trip to SunFest in West Palm Beach. I should go one of these years, but I’m not sure I’m up to it anymore. Aging is not for the young, or something like that.
Central Planning
I’m off to the west coast for a week of training and catching up with people I generally deal with via IM/email/video. Always a good time.
I’m not too sure I like leaving late in the day. The late arrival doesn’t bother me….I think it is the feeling of something big hanging over me all day that becomes a distraction.
I guess next time I’ll have to look for a late morning flight if we are lucky enough to have one in Rochester
gogol's wife
@debbie:
They plan to do it with him if/when Mantel writes the last book.
Aimai
Reading the eighth outlander book. Restarted the series about ten days ago–most of the books are 1000 pages long–and polished off the seventh between 4 pm and 5 am yesterday. Walked five miles to the library and back to get the 8th.starting it now.
shell
Same with my dog, Kate. When you notice the start of whitening around the muzzle, you want to say ‘no, no, not yet.’
ThresherK
@WereBear: “Where are you hoping to keep him…” or “Were you hoping to keep him…”?
Part one: He has the run of the house, basically. Part two: Of course we’re hoping to keep him. He is not an outdoor cat, and since we’ve only moved in in the autumn we haven’t really figured out the whole “supervised outside time” thing yet.
I’ll show the link info to my wife. She already likes you from the alpha-beta-gamma cat piece.
WereBear
@ThresherK: Har, didn’t even see that, but then I’ve been on the computer all weekend.
What I meant to ask was, “Were you going to try and keep him inside in this new place?”
I gather you were up for supervised outdoor, eventually, and he took matters into his own… paws.
ThresherK
@WereBear: I learned more about what I can wash cat urine out of this last week.
He is an indoor cat with aspirations to be outdoors sometimes. We’ll see how it goes.
Germy Shoemangler
For fans out there of ancient color photography, here are some snapshots you’d swear were taken today. But they are from 1913:
http://mashable.com/2015/04/23/autochrome-photos-ogorman/#share-action:eyJzIjoiZiIsImkiOiJfZGp2MXRteXNiYjN3OHZmdCJ9
Mervyn O’Gorman was 42 when he took these pictures of his daughter, Christina O’Gorman at Lulworth Cove, in the English county of Dorset. He photographed Christina wearing a red swimming costume and red cloak, a colour particularly suited to the early color Autochrome process.
Autochrome was one of the first colour photo technologies, which used glass plates coated in potato starches to filter pictures with dye.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@ThresherK:
It sounds as though there may already be a cat outdoors that your cat can see/smell, especially if the “peeing on things” Is a recent behavior. He may actually be marking his territory from the strange cat.
ThresherK
@Mnemosyne (tablet): I wish it were so, but the peeing started when my wife neglected the cat box. Displeasure was evidenced in nearby empty bags and in another room on a couple of my things into which he crawled and left his calling card*. It was one incident when the litterbox was in disrepair, and exactly once afterwards.
Our neighbors have said they don’t know of any strays around. Plenty of folks here have dogs but we haven’t met any with cats, and it’s a bit of a haul and across a busy state route to get here simply to spray and beg food.
(*I may have gotten by this with very little loss, as there was almost nil absorbent clothing in it.)
Ruckus
@MattF:
Updated the mac last night.
Worked fine with 2 exceptions. The times it states a task will take are not estimates. They are wild ass guesses. And they are wildly wrong. Second, a hang up on the reboot. It was stuck about 1/2 way through, for about an hour. I figured it was a reboot so it wouldn’t matter and shut it off and back on. Worked like a charm. So what should have been about a 30-40 minute at most process was well over 2 hrs. (Download took 20 minutes)
On the upside the computer seems to run much better and faster.
Ruckus
@Raven:
You’d like my thumb story. Industrial accident, dead sharp razor knife, only the bone stopped me from completely severing the digit. Liviing bone is softer than I imagined. And yes I was cutting away from me but struck a piece of equipment and who knew, a knife can ricochet. Artery, nerve bundle, about half the tendon. A total of 12 stitches, some internal. Six weeks in a cast to keep from tearing the tendon. Weeks of PT to get use back.
Fun times.
There’s a side bar to the Dr that sewed me up and that involves the area of town as well. For another day.
Ruckus
@ThresherK:
My roommates cat was a huge outdoor girl in our last place but in the apt in this urban environment it really isn’t possible to let her out. The first month she would sit by the sliding door looking out and acting like she was going to make a run for it. Three months in and if you let her out she will very tentatively step outside, look around and run back inside. She knows where the food is.
raven
@Ruckus: That’s where I’m lucky, this is on the joint of the finger and hand but it’s shallow enough that I think I’ll be ok. Beaucoup blood and achey but not that bad.
Ruckus
@Germy Shoemangler:
Wow.
Ruckus
@raven:
Good to hear.
The doc was not all that assuring that my thumb would recover and be anything useful. He was wrong, in a good way.
Did have a friend from your end of the country who lost his thumb in an accident and the docs sewed a toe on in it’s place. Looked almost like it belonged, if you weren’t standing too close. But it worked and kept his career going.
Tree With Water
@Ruckus: A big thumb’s up on that happy ending.
WereBear
@Tree With Water: Good one!
raven
@Ruckus: I was in a shop when a guy working on a split-ring tire of inflated it a, when it blew, it took off his pinky and spilt his arm open. I got him down, put pressure on the wounds called 911, found his finger and put it in a bag with ice. They couldn’t reattach it but I gave it a shot.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Germy Shoemangler: That’s an amazing link – thank you. Only the hairstyle is a real tell of the era in the first photo, and in others they could have been taken now.
Ruckus
@raven:
In HS I worked in a gas station and when we were on duty we did everything, tires, brakes, gas, tune ups, cleaned the restrooms, whatever. The one thing the boss warned us about was split rims. We had pics of this going wrong and the ring stuck halfway though a 12 ft high wooden ceiling. Those things were about the most dangerous thing next to carrying high explosive shells up a wet gangplank in leather soled shoes that I’ve ever seen up close.
Germy Shoemangler
@Ruckus: I love old photographs. The older the better, and when they’re color it’s amazing to me.
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I just discovered the site. It’s got a ton of historical photos. I’m getting addicted.
joel hanes
Watched a bunch of North Iowa music educators and a few of their star students do three sets of big-band jazz at a roadhouse east of Mason City (as they do eight times each year): The North Iowa Jazz Coalition plays Mulligan’s
Standards and arrangements from sixty years of big-band jazz. Sax choir. Great drummer. Outstanding trumpet. Loud. Syncopated. Completely wonderful
It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.
Bystander
@gogol’s wife: thanks!
Bloviator
Daisy is morbidly obese. It may be too late, but please stop feeding her massive quantities of bad stuff. Seven is plenty young except for the giant breeds like Great Dane and Irish Wolfhound. I’m sorry, but that is a disturbing photo of an unhappy, unhealthy dog. You are shortening her life, and certainly shortening the time when she will be able to run, explore, amble, cavort, explore and be an otherwise happy enthusiastic dog.
On the half-positive side, saw the great Lyle Lovett and John Hyatt in a nice, small venue this weekend. They are both sublime solo performers, and were both characteristically very fine, and completely professional despite the minority of loud, disruptive and severely stupid audience members who kept yelling and calling out and whooping and whistling, despite the performers’ subtle but extremely clear encouragements to shut their stupid mouths and listen to the music.
The concert attracted just enough selfish slobs from who-knows-where to disrupt the evening. I guess in these folks’ stunted imaginations the concert was entirely about them, and they imagined they were part of the show at some BillyBob country western dump.
In fact the concert took place in New Haven, one block from the Yale campus. It was a reminder (though we already knew) that Connecticut if very far from being all Izods, BMWs and Fairfield County Lockjaw. The state’s anchor radio station is round-the-clock Rush Limbaugh-and-his wannabees, and it recently “accepted” the “resignation” of popular drive-time anchor former Republican governor John Rowland during his second round of federal corruption convictions and incarceraton.
The political and cultural are inseparable. If you want to look at it in medical terms, our country is infected with a cultural and political pathogen against which there is no known effective agent. I believe the pathogen is going to win, and that is why I do not regret being old and having brought no children into the world.