Musings on a Small Life

"John Bellen", caretaker to a handful cats, including foster Parker, has a recent post about Parker's encounter (inside) with two ferals eating (outside) . Nicki also had an encounter on Saturday, though I couldn't see with what. I presume another cat, from his reaction: Nicki sat on the step for a long time, and I could see his entire body trembling, but he continually refused to come inside. I don't recall seeing Nicki quiver like that, for so long after an encounter. I wonder if it was with the hated Carla (one of the neighbourhood cats and long-time nemesis) or with someone else. Fortunately for Derry sake, he (Derry) was inside at the time, and I kept him in with me until Nicki finally calmed down and wanted back into the house. (Nicki is well-known to turn his aggression onto Derry and fight viciously.) With temperatures warming* and the boys (presumably) spending more time outside in the late afternoons this week (once I...

Why do the "short" work weeks always feel so long? That's rhetorical. I'm sure I ask this after every "long" weekend we have. Anyway. The annual cat show is on this weekend, but I'm not feeling it this year, and it likely isn't the best idea to go when I'm having such a bad time with my allergies right now. I'll see. Maybe I'll change my mind. Besides, I have my own "cat show" at home.  :-) Snapshots from last weekend. There's been significantly more snow melt since then.  I just want to smooch Derry's kitty lips! I've been going back and forth with our vet re: Nicki's increased asthma attacks this winter. He's looking into the possibility of compounding a bronchodilator into something tasty (chicken-flavoured). Alternatively, I could go the route of a tasteless pill that I could grind up and put in his canned food. I'll see what happens there. I've turned the whole-house h...

I toddled off to the City Greenhouse on Sunday, for its annual open house (5 consecutive Sundays through part of Feb and March). I've been going for quite a number of years, take essentially the same photos, but still enjoy it. So here are a number of them, to give you a taste of Spring. Comments are off, just enjoy! Peace .

The clues are very subtle, but I think some kitty, who shall remain nameless... ...has been hanging out where he's technically not supposed to. (The dining table.) I don't know...Does my theory hold water?  :-) It's a long weekend here in Ontario, and in many other provinces as well -- here, Monday is "Family Day", though it goes by other names. So I get an extra day off to pretend I'm actually going to tackle a few projects I've had on my "to do" list for months (or longer).  In actuality, other than the usual errands, grocery shopping and house chores, I'll more likely be glued to Olympic coverage and maybe even napping. I enjoy watching the winter sports more than the summer ones, love all the skiing, snowboarding, aerial events, etc. and the various speed skating events. Alas, even though I'm Canadian, I don't like watching hockey, even at the Olympic level. I hope Canada does well, both the women and the men, but a...

OMG, I'm so far out of the loop when it comes to technology today. My new director (two full weeks now, into her third) asked me earlier today if I could build a web interface that would feed the (excessively) complicated calculations needed for all the university budget projections, etc. I could barely grasp what she was asking me...and the answer was no, that's way over my head! She mentioned a software program and after she left I had to Google it...it's a platform for coding apps, games, web sites, etc. Completely Greek to me, not a clue. (I'm checking with our IT department, though, to see what, if any, options we might have.) Then I had someone apply for a survey platform account (the university has a license with a third-party for a product which is used to create and deploy surveys), and on the application, under the source of the data sample, he had listed " Mechanical Turk ." Huh?! I had to Google that too, to find out what it was. Who kne...