JanerBlog

I do not like The Cone of Shame.

Biked home from work tonight to a strange yowling coming from under my car. Turns out that Claudia escaped from the house sometime today (out a window? when we let the dog out?) and got into some trouble with the local wildlife. We're still not sure what kind of critter she tangled with, but it was pretty nasty; fortunately we found her before the vet closed and were able to get her stitched up within an hour. The vet said that the long gash in her forepaw was pretty serious and had just missed a major artery -- she could've bled out if it had been any worse. She also got tagged over one eye, and will be wearing The Cone of Shame for the next ten days till the stitches come out.

Right now she's cooling her heels in the library, all loopy on drugs. Here's hoping that this will break her of some of her more aggressive nature with the other animals in the house.

Long-awaited cat photos

And now for something pleasant: Kittens, after five months. Claudia is the whip-thin black one, fond of playing fetch and capable of a four-foot vertical. Maddie is the dense calico, so compact and heavy for her size that she must be a Tardis-kitty. She is the most loving affectionate, cuddly cat I've ever known. Both allow us to clip their claws with no protest whatsoever, a testament to their foster parents.

Guilty pleasures

I have a guilty-pleasure confession: I love chicken wings. Love them. I love the tactile pleasure of getting every last bit of meat off the bones, and as such, I rarely eat them in public (I have the exact same problem with rib tips, my preferred form of barbecue) because I am such an embarrassing, gnawing carnivore. It's a bit like that scene in Splash, where Madison eats the lobster (sorry, no clip -- The Youtubes have failed me).

So I tend to eat my wings at home. Which brings me to the problem.

There is something in chicken wings that drives our pets completely insane. They will not leave us alone when we eat them. The cats swarm, leaping into laps. The dog shoves her snout directly into the bowl. We cook meat all the time, and nothing has ever produced a reaction like this -- all other meals are ignored as though they don't exist (okay, except for our older cat, who loves yogurt).

So I literally have to throw all the animals out of the room and shut all the doors to eat my wings, unless I want sauce-sticky fingers covered in pet hair from shooing them away. And as soon as I carry the bones to the garbage, they're on top of me again.

The wings are sizzling now -- off to start the kitty-viction.

Watching the olympics

and discovering that one of the new kittens likes to watch speed skating. For serious. She keeps tracking them as they run off the edge of the screen. We'll try to get video of it, but as soon as we haul out the camera she gets all shy.