Janelle’s sister, Alaine, bought our cats some Christmas gifts this year.

Franny
Zoey
Sherlock

Also among the gifts were some new toys and a crap-load of catnip.

I haven’t blogged about this because I’ve been MIA for about a month, but there have been some recent developments with Zoey. We found out about a year ago that he has some problems with his gums. Not even problems that we can fix or prevent—he has some genetic form of gingivitis. The resulting inflammation will eventually cause his teeth to hurt, meaning it will hurt for him to eat. The pain can get quite severe. When it gets to that point, there’s usually no choice but to pull the bad teeth.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, I looked down at Zoey and saw a shape a little different than the roly-poly one I was used to. I weighed him and found that he had lost a pound and a half. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you consider that it’s 12% of his total body weight, which is the equivalent of me losing 21.6 pounds, it gets a little more serious.

It wasn’t until then that we connected the dots in our head. Zoey had started sitting by the food bowl and meowing. We assumed it was because he was spoiled and wanted the canned food that we feed him on the weekends. We realized that it’s because he was hungry, but had to choose between putting up with severe pain or going hungry.

Needless to say, we felt really bad for the poor little buddy. We took him into the vet the very next day, and they thought they could save the teeth with an antibiotic and a steroid. Yes, we got a cat steroid. This will not help us if we need to barricade him out of a bedroom. The vet also prescribed a special, high-calorie canned food for us to feed him twice a day. Yes, we’re actually giving Zoey a special high-calorie food. You can guess how much he loved that.

Anyway, after a few weeks on all three, everything seems to be back to normal. We’ve stopped giving him the steroid, and we have about one dose left of the antibiotic. (We cleared all of this with the vet on a second trip.)

Well, everything is back to normal, except for one thing: Zoey is now accustomed to being spoon-fed high-calorie cat food while the other cats are locked out of the room. He’s eating normal food again, and quite often, so we decided last night that it was time to stop giving him the special food. We split the contents of the last can into three equal portions and fed them to all three cats.

We’d been giving Zoey his medicine and food in the downstairs bathroom, so that’s where he’s used to being spoon-fed. We were cleaning it tonight, and Zoey hopped up on the toilet seat cover and started crying. If you don’t know, Zoey’s crying is pathetic. We ignored him and cleaned the bathroom. We cleaned it, and then we went elsewhere to clean. Five or ten minutes later, we walked by and we saw this. He was there for about fifteen more minutes before he gave up.

So, while I’m sad that he had to go through all of that in the first place, we also now have to put up with a rather spoiled cat.

Is it weird that I followed up a long post about Existentialism with a long post about my cat’s dental problems?

Yes, we’ve all seen YouTube videos of talking cats. But have we all seen singing cats?

I thought not!

If you don’t know, there’s this computer software called autotuner that takes noise (in most cases, human voice) and tunes it to a nearby note. The farther the original note from the autotuned note, the more noticeable it is. Virtually every pop star uses autotuner to ensure that all the right notes are hit. Some actually get very close, so the difference is barely noticeable; others are so far off that the resulting voice sounds more like a keyboard synthesizer than a real voice. I’m sure you’ve heard it.

Anyway, Joel over at rathergood.com (home of the sponge monkeys!) took an autotuner to a bunch of cat videos. The result is sheer musical brilliance.

You know you’re a cat person when you think about what Meyers-Briggs types your cats are. That said, I’m a cat person. Here are my predictions:

Franny: INFJ
Zoey: ENFP
Sherlock: ENTJ

As you can see, all of my cats are intuitive. I can talk about this at length in a later post.

So I’ve been sick pretty much since Friday. I had an eye infection, an ear infection, and something in my throat. This morning was the first morning I was actually feeling pretty decent (although still not so great). So my alarm goes off, and I turn the light on, ready to start the day. Sherlock jumped up on my bed, heaved quickly three times, and threw up all over my bed. Thankfully, we had just washed our spare set of sheets, so we just switched them out. But the little punk jumped up on the bed, threw up, and then ran away. He jumped up on the bed specifically to throw up. That is evil.

After I got out of the shower, the devil-cat attacked my foot with his vomit-stained teeth. Bear in mind that my arms are covered in scratches from the last four days at home with this cat.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I actually have some scratches from Zoey as well. Zoey likes to explore behind my computer desk. Occasionally, he’ll get the speaker wire wrapped around his leg. When this happens, he’ll briefly try to pull it loose, but then just collapse onto the ground and start wailing. I mean really pathetic crying, too. Not even meows—just a long, sad howl. I went to free him yesterday, and he panicked and dug all of his claws into my right arm. The cat really has no idea how to be mean unless it’s completely by accident, which is actually kind of an endearing quality unless he’s breaking into your room at night.

And all of this is after Franny and Sherlock systematically tag-teamed the consumption of the flowers I bought for Janelle on Friday. They seriously ate half of the flowers!

Well, there you have it. Four days at home has reduced me to blogging about my cats again. I was able to work today, so hopefully that will jolt me back into having something else to write about. Oh, and maybe I can find the motivation to work on my portfolio again. Anyway, good night!

Since Janelle told the world over on her blog, I guess the news is out. Somebody’s going to be a daddy! What? No no no! It’s not me! It’s Sherlock! That’s right! We now have our very own deadbeat dad living with us.

I don’t think all those kitten support bills are going to help his chances with Franny at all. And it’s not going to gain him any real points with Zoey either. Sherlock’s just going to sit on the couch all day and watch trashy talk shows.

Anyway, uh, yay Armenianism. I’ll get back to that when I have some more energy.

A few days ago, Zoey was chasing a beetle that had gotten inside and was flying around. I was getting pretty annoyed at the whole spectacle, so after about fifteen minutes of this, I got up and swatted the beetle with a rolled up magazine.

“Ohhh, who’s the great hunter now?” I asked Zoey. He swatted once at the dead beetle, then went off to sulk. “Just remember, Zoey, I’m the man of the house.”

I don’t quite know which is sadder: me taking away my cat’s play toy, or me feeling the need to remind Zoey that I’m the man of the house.

Anyway, I’m off to Wichita for a few days to visit with Janelle’s family. Be back soon!

So Saturday was moving day again at the Gregory household. We packed up Tilly and all of her toys (consisting of a few scraps of paper and some pillbox caps… she has weird taste in toys) and drove her over to Landon’s apartment. She darted under the bed shortly after she got there and stayed there for a good seven hours. She did come around, though.

The saddest part, though, is Zoey. Zoey loved Tilly. After we removed Tilly, he pretty much made the master bedroom his permanent residence. We had company over that night, and throughout dinner and one round of Settlers of Catan, Zoey came down exactly twice, and that was to eat, and then went right back up. We went up to visit him a few times and found that he had moved behind the now-open door and was pouting there, staring blankly at the wall. Now, when I get home from work, he at least comes down from the bedroom to hang out, but heads right back up there after a few minutes. I think he’s coming around now and realizing that Tilly’s not in there, but he’s not happy about it.

The good news is, we get Sherlock on Wednesday. Of course, we’re getting him right after he gets neutered, so we’ll have to keep them separated while his stitches heal up. Hopefully that will be a better experience for all of us.

So, on my recent comic strip kick, I was talking about them with some friends last night, and Alan brought up a week of Garfield comics back in the 80s that took a turn for the deathly serious. I was able to track them down online. These ran in 1989, and they are indeed real.

Existential Garfield

So it’s official. Landon’s taking Tilly to live with him in his new apartment. We figured this out sometime last week. Friday, when I got to work, I had an e-mail from Janelle with a bunch of links to cats on Petfinder. We ended up inquiring as to one of them, and got suggested another cat, whom we will very likely be getting next week.

Meet Sherlock. (That picture is slightly Photoshopped.) Being that he’s another rescue kitty, we can’t be sure of his lineage, but his mother is a Ragdoll/Himalayan mix (just like Franny!). Also, notice how large he is in that picture. He’s eight months old. So we could be dealing with a giant. At least Zoey won’t be able to push him around.