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time for high-maintenance cats
Thursday, February 2 2006
Buster yowled all night from his bathroom prison, ruining the sleep of us humans in the adjacent bedroom. Gretchen often has trouble sleeping, but I usually sleep like a baby so this was unusual. This morning we closed the doors and let Buster into the bedroom, where he seemed much happier. But the dogs also wanted to hang out with us. So I suggested we let the dogs in. Gretchen was reluctant, but she quickly acquiesced.
It turned out to be a great idea. Buster growled at first but rapidly adapted to the dogs, particularly Sally, who was fascinated in that way she always is with new cats. She lay down nearby and stared at him intently, shivering initially from a combination of fear and excitement. But after awhile everyone was calm and collected. At this point Sally was serving a valuable function, that of babysitter. With her hanging out with Buster, he didn't yowl and tear everything up the way he did when he was unsupervised. This made it possible for Gretchen and me to do other things undistracted. Unlike the dogs, both of us humans have a crush of work these days so there isn't a lot of time to deal with high-maintenance cats.
It didn't help that I had to go back to that Woodstock veterinary hospital a second time today to fix a problem with the phone lines caused by yesterday's installation of a DSL internet connection. Most of the problems seem to result from the fact that some of the DSL filters were one-line models (as opposed to two-line models, which are essential in businesses that have, you know, two lines).
Interestingly, I found that certain Chinese-made "one line" Y-adapters are actually superior to the way they are described on their packaging. Had this not been the case I would have had to make yet another trip to the hardware store today; I'd bought a one-to-three line Y adapter (more of a W-adapter) without looking to see how many lines it could handle. Its packaging said "for one line" but thanks to the overachievement of Chinese slave labor, it was actually wired for two.
This good experience balanced a bad experience yesterday when I went to buy a cordless drill at that same hardware store just because the batteries in my drill were nearly dead. All I needed was one or two holes, which I nearly got from the new drill's factory charge. But then it turned out its charger was defective and it would drill no more.
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