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:: (Tuesday, Sep 09.2003) - A helpful cat can be good to have.
Mostly, I don't mosh around in personal stuff. Talking about your cute pets tends to fall in that category and can be tiresome to those who are not necessarily fans of small domesticated animals. So, if I've got an excuse for this, it's because I've always been interested in how and what animals think. How intelligent they are, and in what ways.
Probably the commonest domestic animals are dogs and cats. Humans and dogs and cats have been keeping each other company for a few thousand years. Mostly, my wife and I have always been "dog" people. But a couple of years ago, after good ol' May, the Norwegian Elk Hound/German Shepard, had to be put to sleep, we got a cat. A black female domestic short-hair cat. We got her when she was about ten weeks old. We named her Cleo. She was small when we got her and she's not a big cat now. Sort of a pocket cat, you could say.
Now we have two cats. A little over a year ago, Cleo had kittens. Three of them. All males. All black. We gave away two and kept the third. We got him neutered and he's gotten huge. His daddy was a black cat, too, but with a longer coat. So he's got a longer coat. Lays around for hours, flat on his back, with his legs spread out, and snoozes. We named him Buddy and he's just that; a buddy. We call him The Bud-lug.
So. Anyway. There I am at the kitchen table, yesterday. Putting together an external SCSI drive for backup. Whenever you're doing anything with tools, these cats come running. It fascinates them. Espcially Cleo. Buddy finds tool work interesting, but if it's close to nap time, he'll wander off sooner. Unless you're doing something that makes sparks or smoke in the air. He has a definite fascination for pyrotechnics. I thought cats were not supposed to like that, but tell it to Buddy. He likes sparks and smoke. But, he doesn't quite like explosions. Not yet, anyway.
The case for the drive I was putting together, of course, has several very small screws. You also want to avoid using magnetized screwdrivers around hard drives. So these dinky screws are easy to drop. I'm working away on this thing and Cleo is sitting on one of the other kitchen chairs watching everything I'm doing. With rapt interest. Of course, I drop one of these pesky little screws. Of course it goes somewhere on the kitchen floor. Which, of course, has that kind of nubbly vinyl floor covering that makes finding things like small screws doubly difficult.
Well. Not to fear. Cleo's here! That screw hit the floor and bounced. But the ever watchful Cleo is everwatching. She immediately jumps down from her chair going straight to it. She sniffs at it. Points at it with her nose. Looks back at me. And points at it again. Again looks at me with this quizical look as if to say, "Well...?" Needless to say, it makes finding a miniscule screw a bit easier.
Now one might probably suppose her immediate interest was, "Is this something good to eat?" But we've done this before, Cleo and I. Working together on these little things. Any more, when I've got to do something like this, I always like to make sure Cleo's around. And she is mostly obliging. We've put bookcases and stereo cabinets together. Odd pieces of furniture. Worked on cameras and computers. Whenever you drop some little piece of something, you can count on Cleo to jump down and point it out for you. Even if it winds up under something else. She'll try to fish it out. I think she knows the difference between little screws and nuts and plastic parts and things that are good to eat. She's just a helpful cat who's possibly wishing that she, too, had opposable thumbs and could work with tools.
:: (Wednesday, Aug 27.2003) - Although we're having an August blast of summer weather (daytime temps in the 90's - and that's farenheit degrees), Fall is sneaking up and that's followed by Winter. We would seriously consider bonafide job offers in the U.S. Virgin Islands.