Due to the increasingly worrisome Russian takeover of LJ, including the scary new TOS and the migration of the servers to Moscow, I am going to be shutting this journal down sometime in the next few weeks, as soon as I confirm I have everything I need from it ported over. Henceforth, I will be posting at neonhummingbird.dreamwidth.org, which functions almost exactly like LJ, so it should be pretty familiar to casual readers. Please change your bookmarks. :)

If you are migrating to Dreamwidth or another platform, please drop me a comment so we can hook back up, or go ahead and Subscribe to me over on Dreamwidth and I will happily reciprocate. lunalibre, if you want to sign up to see locked posts, membership is open.)

I did NOT just leap through the computer and rip the IT guy's face off for informing me (after fixing what I actually asked him to fix on the server-side) that our main printer is low on toner and he can set up a service call to get that fixed if I don't know how to -- set up the service call, that is; me not knowing how to order or change the toner was assumed. I don't know how much of it was mansplaining and how much was "IT is superior to all lesser beings", but who in the hell does he think has been maintaining that printer for the last seven damn years?!? Who in the hell doesn't know how to change a damn toner cartridge? What competent office manager doesn't know how to order new %^&$%^ toner?

I limited myself to informing him that the printer asks for toner two months before it actually needs it, in hopes of forcing us to waste money buying toner we don't need; that I will replace it when we do need to; and that I will then order more, none of which requires a service call. His response was to stammer a nervous, "Heh, good one" and slink away before I could finish destroying him.

Which I want props for not actually doing. But someday, I swear to god, I am going to fly to Toronto with a Nerf bat and other assorted Nerf weaponry and destroy that entire department. And then I'm going to take down A/P. Yes.

Everything cat-related continues to go reasonably well, which frankly is a little terrifying. :) Chloe and Jack actually made little "I shall bat at you with soft paws as a preliminary to actually playing" moves at each other simultaneously the other day, and Jack later tried to rush her as a prelude to starting some play. She sensibly hissed at him and he more or less converted it to running past her instead, which was of course his plan the whole time, yup. Cats. She's not as snuggly as I would like yet, but she's come up and sat on my lap a few times of her own volition (rather than snuggling in when I pick her up and put her on my lap, which she will do sometimes), but she's still getting comfortable, I think. I was finally able to move all of the litter boxes back into the bathroom (huzzah!) and my dining room is no longer gross. It does need to be vacuumed, but it's not like that's new.

Chloe is currently doing reasonably well in her Adoption Mania bracket, so the possibility exists that we might make the Final. But Mia is a major cutie and stiff competition, so... Click here if you'd like to throw a Like her way and help my shelter. :)

P/T is progressing; my shoulder feels better when I use it, but the place where the actual tear is will still sit there and hurt sometimes for no reason. To make it worse, I came in to P/T Monday with a tension headache so bad I was just this side of functional. But J first gave me a towel to put over my eyes (I am rarely light-sensitive, so that tells you how bad it was), then did something called dry needling, which is exactly what it sounds like -- sticking a very thin needle down into the trap muscles to find the trigger points and force them to release from the inside. It was like magic -- in the space of 10 minutes, I went from "I may throw up at any moment" to "Sure, I can do most of my exercises, let's go" -- and it's still much better several days later. I clenched up too much during the process (it wasn't painful, but I was already clenched and it felt pretty weird) so I have a bruise where the first needle went in. Still totally worth it. Now, if only she could do it to the knots in my neck... but I'm working on those.

Integration has been achieved! Or, like, 90%: enough that I was comfortable leaving Chloe out when I left for work this morning. She was out pretty much all weekend -- I put her back in the bathroom Saturday night, and she got very stroppy about it Sunday morning; it was the first time I'd heard her raise her voice. There was one Incident where she swatted at Bud for walking too close to her on the couch, and ended up in Time Out for a while, but she didn't even blink when he did it again that evening, so hopefully she's getting the idea. I am sympathetic with a tiny girl deciding the best defense is a good offense, but there are limits, especially as my main concern is that she might bully Bud. She's already decided there is no place in the condo that she can't go -- she was snoozing on top of the previously disputed cat tree at one point -- and seems to have the same taste in favorite spots as Bud, so I need to keep an eye on that.

Jack is perfectly willing to tell her off for trying to walk on him when he's on the couch and in her path, and otherwise largely ignores her, so I have no worries about that. But Bud is a sweet, easygoing kind of guy, who is spending a lot of time in his carrier cave, so... I do hope eventually everyone feels secure enough to start playing together. Both Jack and Chloe have made a tentative move in that direction, so I remain optimistic.

Mainly, I'm happy that almost all of Chloe's stuff is out of the bathroom, and Jack can join me for showers again. (Not IN the shower; he hangs around on the toilet and waits for head scrubblies. It's our Special Time Together.) I just need to get the boys' catboxes moved back in, which I will do as soon as I'm relatively certain time outs aren't going to be an ongoing Thing.

In other news, my buddy T has also adopted a new kitty, surprising absolutely no one (involved circumstances I'm not going to go into, but it's a good story I might tell if I get her permission). I'm waiting to hear how that's going.

Okay, everyone who's been wanting a picture of Chloe, here you go. But, there's a catch! If you have a Facebook page, I need you to go to Animal Planet's Facebook page and click on Frosty’s picture, then like or love it. Because this is my new baby (now Chloe), and a like or love for her is $1 donated to the ASPCA! Making it to the Final Four? Would be a bonus. :)



Isn't my baby adorable? And there's a different picture at the link!

Apparently, Bud does actually have his limits, and one of them is the baby stealing the dangle toy right out from under his nose when he was about to grab it. My sweet, easygoing boy actually hissed at Chloe, so obviously she hissed back, and then it was time for the evening's experiment in togetherness to be over. :) Bud was entirely justified, of course, but I will be buying another dangle toy at the shelter tonight so I can keep two going at the same time, and hopefully head future incidents off. The playing while she's out works really well right up until it doesn't...

The condo was 69 degrees when I woke up this morning; apparently half the building woke up and complained simultaneously, because the radiators came on and stayed on for 40 minutes. Thankfully, since it is cold as hell outside, with a really bitter wind, and I am ready for spring.

Integration proceeds, although not without a few potholes. Jack has become inexplicably territorial about the bathtub and the cat tree; he can cope with Chloe's existence in the condo as long as she does not lay one tiny little paw on "his" cat tree. The one time she dared, he immediately leapt onto the bottom platform and hissed down at her (and got spoken to very firmly, because that's just rude). Not that the baby can't be rude -- whenever I let her out, there is always an incident or two of her hissing at one of the boys for breathing too close to her. But she was out for about 15 minutes last night with only mild hissing, and the boys were both pretty good, although I had to end the session when Jack was just getting too intense watching her. Still, later in the evening, they met in the bathroom doorway and there was some very polite nose-touching, so there is progress.

(Bud is mildly scared of Chloe; he's not sure why this tiny person is so upset with him, but he's going to keep his distance for a while. He's ridiculous. But there was also polite doorway nose touching between them yesterday morning before Bud got spooked and backed away, so hope remains.)

There's another vet visit on Thursday -- Jack has been wheezing again (including a short fit triggered by hissing at the baby because she looked at his bathtub when he was in it, which is his own fault) and the asthma diagnosis is looking unfortunately probable. And he was doing so well! Chloe, of course, needs her distemper booster and to have her ears checked, although they are looking much better -- I can actually see inside her right ear, instead of it being swollen almost shut! She's also very sneezy, but showing no other URI signs. I'm going to try to haul both of them in the same visit (him in the carrier, her in the sling-pack) and hope there's not blood; the logistics will definitely be interesting. Happily, I have Thursday afternoon and Friday off to kill the last of my rolled-over vacation time, and I have wistful hopes of being able to get integration much further down the road. I would really like for the baby to be out much more; I think she's bored.

I have PT tonight and Thursday night, and a therapy session on Friday, if we can settle on a time. My PT J is awesome and remembered me from way back, so that worked out very well for us, yay! At least something isn't being stupidly hard right now! And I finally watched Arrival, and yeah, Amy Adams was absolutely robbed of that Best Actress nomination.

Bud is so stoned from the remnants of his anaesthesia plus his pain meds that he looks like he's been possessed by an alien -- that's how blown his pupils are. Just pure black eyes, all the way through. :) I had to (carefully) hand-feed him, because he's never hungry when he's stoned, and he spent all evening and most of the night and morning wandering around the condo talking loudly to invisible people who aren't there, but with whom he apparently had several very intense disagreements. Even Chloe is looking through the door towards him like, "What is your childhood trauma?"

Chloe's doing fine, although after consulting with a vet tech over her slightly confusing medical records, she has to go to the vet sooner than I was hoping -- she needs her distemper booster sometime in the next two weeks, thanks to the URI that threw off her vaccination schedule in the shelter. I need the weather to warm up before I can take her outside, though. It's a bit of a problem.... But she has discovered that she can sit with her front to the window, instead of her butt, and look outside like it's TV, which she likes. I let Jack look in at her through the cracked-open door last night; he was really curious and badly wanted to come in, and she was just sitting on my lap calmly inspecting him, utterly unfussed. So, positive progress there. I am going to continue to keep her and Bud separate until he's off his meds and no longer behaving like a weird stoner dude, because he's not making a great first impression here.

Jack is Jack. He's fine. And I start PT tonight. Yay.

I did the thing.

Not that anyone should be surprised but, yeah. I did the thing. I went to the shelter Monday night to hang out with Frosty, saw that the Not Available sign wasn't on her cage anymore, confirmed that she was, in fact, Available, and went immediately from "I shall hang at the shelter for 30 minutes" to "Oh god, I am now adopting a cat!" which, you know, it's just a 10-, 15-, 20-year commitment, no problem....

( Gory details, because they got long. No pics yet, but soon.Collapse )

Tags: chloe

I spent part of last night blow-drying kittens, and it was awesome. :) I was passing through the lobby and got grabbed by Staffer T to escort a woman through the back of the shelter to the Pet Grief group (she came in the wrong door), so I said "Okee doke" and did the guided tour of our lovely garage and laundry room. Nice lady delivered, I was heading back when I heard interesting sounds from one of the staff rooms; I'm nosy as hell, so I checked through the window to see a set of 3—4-week-old kittens being given baths and blow dried using the vacuum cleaner hose setup (on its gentlest level, natch). I cooed through the door, got laughed at, and then Staffer N let me in so I could play, too. :)

My job was to towel-dry one kitten while a second was being blow-dried and the third was finishing her bath. When the other kitten was fluffy, C turned the hose on my baby, and we got to play "keep the squirming kitten within range of the blow-dryer despite the kitten's very serious objections to this assault on his dignity". Which, I shouldn't have to tell you, was So Very Cute. He especially objected to having his cute widdle belly exposed, but I did have some sympathy when the butt-drying rolled around. Then I had the horrible job of wrapping him up in a blanky and keeping him warm until his sister was done and we could cuddle them all together under a stupendous pile of blankies for warmth. (His sister was having none of this and wanted to be out exploring. She was dissuaded with some effort.)

They came in without their mama, which is not the best, but they're going into foster today and they're old enough that they can probably be fed liquified solid food, which means they'll be fine. Yay! :) (Their names are Alvin, Theodore and Simon; the sister is Alvin, of course.)

The Heffalump was adopted a few days ago, which was a little sad for me, but the timing was off and it's most important that she's in a home. Plus, now there's Frosty the Crumpled-Eared Kitty, who is tiny and sweet and darling and curled right up on my lap and I am In Love. I need to confirm that bringing her home to my FHV-carrier household will be okay (she got frost-bitten, hence the crumpled ears, and might be prone to ear infections; my research suggests that URIs don't seem to cause ear infections in cats, but I need to confirm with an actual vet) and that Behaviour is confident she'll be okay living with other cats (ie, they don't think she'll spaz out at the very concept; the rest is up to us, but Bud won't care at all, and Jack won't care after after a day or two, unless both of them have changed quite a bit since I brought Bud home), but yeah, I'm hoping the timing can be made to work out, between needing to wait for Bud to get his shots Friday night (rules are rules, and he's about a month overdue thanks to everyone being sick), and doing training Saturday afternoon.

(Before Hermione came to me, she was found on a porch in Des Plaines with frost-bitten ears. I don't necessarily believe in Signs, but...)

In non-shelter/cat news, I have antibiotics for my sinus infection (once it occurred to me that I'd had a sinus infection for, like two weeks), and my orthopedist appointment is Friday, but there is nothing any one can do to cure parentheses abuse...