Another rainy day

From: Emmabuddyandkid@kittymail.com
To: Tatum@cheerful.com
Date: 10/4/10 09:34:22

Hi, Emma here.  After that great summer with no rain, it seems like it's always raining now.  I am bored with rain, and I hate getting it on my fur!  If I get stuck outside in the rain I have to find a dry place and then run for the house when I see someone at the sliding door on the deck.  If I'm lucky enough to be inside, I have to deal with the yappers.  Oh, such a funny thing happened with one last night.  Ziggy has a hurt paw, and Loveymom took him to the vet for it this weekend.  He had this funny looking bandage on it and he was limping something bad.  Well, he was running around on three legs, holding his leg up in the air, so I walked over and stood where he could see me and I dangled my paw in the air just like he was doing - just to harass him a little bit.  I thought he'd come after me and then I'd run to Loveymom because she loves me better than them and she'd protect me.  Well, he just stood there, and eventually asked me if I had a hurt paw too!  What a stupid dog.  But Loveymom got the joke - she started laughing and then when the yarn lady came home she told her about it. 

I've barely seen Kid in the last day.  I think he's stuck out in the weather, poor guy.  Buddy's been his usual self, trying to keep Kid from coming in the house, but Buddy doesn't want to be out in the rain any more than I do.  And since he only chases Kid when they're outdoors, if Kid could just get inside he'd be fine.  Well, maybe later. 
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From: peepmissrudyandlt@gmail.com
To: Tatum@cheerful.com
Date: 10/4/10 12:08:14

Rudy here. By the Great Cat – I want this rain to stop!  Although I must say we’re having a much easier time of it than the Mommy is down in Mary Land.  She told Daddy that it absolutely poured almost without stopping for two whole days last week, and rained most of the other ones.  I hope she didn’t have to drive through too much rain last night when she went back.  I worry about her with all the driving she has to do.  I thought the Daddy would never leave today.  When it rains he doesn’t do as much work, since he’s almost always outside when he does it.  I can’t use the computer if he’s home, even if he’s asleep.  Can you imagine him walking into the office when I’m reading my email?  Oh, that would be rich.  He’d probably put two and two together and figure out it was me with the viruses, and buying the turnip seeds a couple years ago.  That and he’d probably want to put me on Letterman for Stupid Pet Tricks. 

I guess LT has found somewhere outdoors to stay dry.  He’s got a bunch of places he hangs out.  Peep is asleep on the bed, totally slugged out.  She claimed that new pillow of Mommy’s and likes to sleep on it when Mommy isn’t using it.  I’m just going to hang in here until it clears up.  I think I’ll check out Flickr and ogle some handsome toms.  I’m just bored with all this rain, although the weekend was pretty good. 
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From: Tatum@cheerful.com
To: peepmissrudyandlt@gmail.com
Date: 10/4/10 13:45:52

Hi Rudy.  Being an indoor cat I don’t much care what the weather is, except that sometime my humans track in water, and I don’t like stepping on wet floors.  And, I guess my crunchy food gets a bit soggy if it rains for too many days in a row.  I do like sitting by the back door and watching the rain, though.  It’s so pretty.  I have to tell you that Ursula is being a nutcase these days.  My loving Daddy thinks she got into catnip, but she’s just crazy.  She’s been actually bouncing off furniture.  She launches herself at a chair, hits it with her paws and rebounds in another direction.  Squirrelly.  She tried to do that with me – I dunno, maybe she thought I weighed as much as an armchair and wouldn’t go flying across the room.  She apologized profusely, but man that hurt. 

The noisy girl came up and laid on the bed with me for a while the other night.  I miss having someone who will give me loves for as long as I like and then let me snuggle behind her knees.  Ande was good at that.  I still see her, and sometimes we snuggle for a little bit, but it’s just not the same.  My loving Daddy was talking about getting new carpet in the downstairs.  New carpet would be new opportunities for scratching, so that would be nice, but he’s talking about how all the furniture needs to be moved, and they have to tear up the old carpet first.  I think I’d be spending a day or two upstairs while that goes on. 

Well, not much going on here, and I think I hear the noisy girl getting up so I need to get off the computer.  Byeeee!
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From: Tatum@cheerful.com
To: Emmabuddyandkid@kittymail.com
Date: 10/4/10 14:12:52

Hi, sorry to take so long to get back to you, Emma.  I saw your email this morning, but when I was about to reply I thought the noisy girl was going to get up, so I had to log off.  Turns out she was just using the facilities, so I’m back.  I’m sorry to hear that Ziggy has a hurt paw, even if you do like to torment him.  Ande and the noisy girl say he’s a nice dog.  The noisy girl talked to me about all of you after she came back from visiting your place with Ande.  She said you look like one of her grandfather’s old cats – same coloring and build, except her legs were a bit shorter.  I’m glad you were nice to her.  She’s a good kid, and probably won’t even be too noisy when she’s over there with Ande, since she won’t have her computer to play loud music from YouTube.  Sometimes when I’m hanging out in her room she puts on the music and starts jumping around, I think it’s called dancing, but it looks like jumping to me.  I try to find the safest place possible, like under the table the television is on, way back against the wall.  I don’t want to get stepped on! 

I was just writing to Rudy and said that I don’t know from rain, because I’m an indoor cat.  So, I can sympathize with you, but I have no clue what it’s like to be out in rain, and I don’t think I want to find out from everything you all say.  Well, try to stay dry, and I’ll email if anything interesting happens.  It mostly doesn’t here, but you never know!

New developments in the class action lawsuit

The situation surrounding the class-action lawsuit against me is getting very complicated.   Two of the plaintiffs have notified the courts that they are removing their names from the suit, and the other plaintiffs are, well I can’t say up in arms because they don’t have arms, but they are upset.  Ziggy and Bella have decided not to sue because they realized the reason I didn’t write about dogs was because I didn’t know any dogs well.  Up until the last week, I’ve never lived with a dog, and never even had a dog as a close friend.  They have concluded that I was just didn’t have dogs in my life to write about, and so wrote about cats.  I don’t think this is the whole truth, but it’s their conclusion.  

Troy is furious.  He’s the English Lady’s dog.  His reply to Ziggy, who is the spokesdog for he and Bella, was, “She’s known me for years now, and never wrote once about me until this summer when she took pictures of me being forced to swim in that pool.  You’ve been corrupted by a manipulating human who is just there to get you to drop this lawsuit.  Dogs need parity, and you’re capitulating for a few head pats.”   Ziggy’s reply was less than polite, as he considers Troy to be an arrogant snob.  Nice enough, but a snob.

Runa is staying out of the whole mess, probably because her primary motivation in this suit is food.  Since she lives in New Hamster she is also physically removed from the situation.  She has no personal interest in me – as long as she has her Woofie (as she calls her human, whose name is Wolf) she’s happy.  

The plaintiffs who don’t know me personally but have just signed on as members of the ‘class’ of dogs that are underrepresented in my blog are of course angry.  My email was full all weekend with messages from these dogs accusing me of tampering with the witnesses, buying the affection of the dogs, all sorts of things.  I can’t even figure out what some are trying to say, as their spelling and grammar are just atrocious.  

My lawyer, Cooper, just said, “I told you this would be a problem, but you didn’t listen.”  I was hoping he would have constructive ideas as to how to handle it, but no, I just get condemnation.  I’m doing an online video conference with Cooper and his human partner tomorrow, and will be making a quick phone call to the court beforehand to check on something.  Wish me luck!

Variety is the spice of life

Peep was bored.  It was a beautiful early fall day, cool and sunny.  The whole world was out there waiting to be played with or explored, but she was bored.  She’d gone out to see if the bullfrog was around the pond, thinking maybe she’d bring him in for a game of chase, but either he heard her coming or was hiding in the muck from the cool weather – no matter, he wasn’t available.  She’d patrolled the yard for bees and wasps and found nothing but some butterflies who were considering starting their migration to Central America.  Mommy was running errands, so she couldn’t entertain Peep and Daddy was out, either on a job or somewhere else. 

Peep wandered around the house.  It was a nice house, but it was boring.  A place for everything and everything in its place.  Except for some books and papers that were left around sometimes nothing ever changed.  The same stuff on the same tables.  The kitchen tablecloth changed from time to time, as did the bedspread, but even those tended to alternate between the ‘same old, same old’ stuff. 

Variety – that was what Peep wanted.  She’d seen on television that people redecorated their houses.  There were even entire shows about putting new stuff around the house.  Curtains, knick-knacks, occasional tables and small rugs were the types of things that humans changed when they got bored with their houses. 

Peep came to a decision.  It was time to redecorate the house.  She wished that Daddy hadn’t locked them out of the Paypal account.  She bet she could find some great stuff on Ebay to decorate with.  Giant cat statues, huge velvet pillows, fluffy wallhangings that could double as places to sharpen your claws – those all would be perfect, but there was no way she could do any online shopping.  She’d just have to make do with what she could find around the house. 

Walking from room to room, Peep identified items that could be moved or pulled out from where they were being kept.  There was a lovely old blanket on top of a chest that was very thick, and probably could double as a rug for the living room.  The bathroom rug, in Peep’s humble opinion would look better in front of the sink.  The kitchen rug should be on the floor in the bedroom so Mommy wouldn’t get cold feet when she got out of bed.  Some pillows on the floor in one of the closets could be traded for the ones currently on the couch.  And hmmm, her trunk was full of all sorts of interesting things.  Stuffed animals and toys were used as décor on the television shows.  She could use those to pep up some areas that were lacking. 

The blanket would be the best place to start.  Once it was placed, Peep would have a better idea as to how much more the living room would need.  She tugged and pulled at it, finally getting it onto the floor in the living room and then spent at least ten minutes unfolding it and smoothing it out.  It actually was a bit larger than the area she had planned to use it for and she had to bunch it up against the legs of the table in the corner.  No matter, it looked good, and considering how cool it was today it felt better than the cold tile against her paws. 

Next Peep moved the bathroom and kitchen rugs.  That was an easy job, and she was delighted with how the kitchen floor looked.  She checked out the rest of the room and realized that the tablecloth and the rug clashed horribly.  The tablecloth would have to go.  It was a very nice butcher block style table and there was no reason not to show it off.  Peep jumped onto the table and checked out what was on top.  One basket of bananas, not a problem.  She used her claws to pull one end of the tablecloth up onto the table, dragged it so that part of the tabletop was clear and then pushed the basket onto the bare table.  From there it was easy to drag it off the table onto the floor where it lay in an ugly, uncoordinating heap.  She thought for barely a second before dragging it into the bedroom closet and stuffing it as best she could into a corner.  While she was there she removed the pillows she wanted for the living room.

She placed the pillows carefully on the couch, arranging them to her liking.  Maybe she wasn’t Kim Myles, but she thought the place was starting to look better.  Now for the tchotchkes.  Peep rummaged through her trunk.  A stuffed cat would look nice on the bed just in front of the pillows, so she put it there.  The mouse collection was arranged artfully on the coffee table in the living room.  One by one she pulled items out and determined if they were décor quality, and if so found just the right place for them. 

After she placed the last item she took a walk around the house.  The office was the same, no changes there, but it was a functional type of room so that was okay.  The spare room, same thing.  No one went in there except to get stuff, so it didn’t matter.  The true living areas, though, were definitely more attractive, even down to the hamster she’d placed on the toilet tank. 

Thoroughly exhausted, Peep curled up for a nap.  As she drifted off to sleep she imagined the house being featured on one of the decorating-on-a-shoestring shows.  She was sure that none had ever featured a house redecorated by a cat before.  Maybe she could get the yarn lady to take pictures….

Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/splityarn/3036243641/

One born every minute

Rudy logged on to her email account for the first time in a month.  After that whole computer virus debacle she had been terrified to touch the computer.  Rationally, she knew that opening those picture files was what had allowed the computer to become infected, but emotionally she felt as though she would be lighting a bomb fuse by just turning it on.  Last night, though, Daddy had left the television on and a show had come on about computer security.  It turned out that other than opening those darn files, the way Rudy managed her email was about the safest way it could be done.  She used a web-based email system, so none of the messages were downloaded onto the computer, the computer’s virus programs were automatically updated and she had the email site set so that any images that were part of an email didn’t load unless she clicked a ‘show images’ button.  Really, all she needed to do was to exercise a little caution.  So, here she was logging on, holding her breath and praying to the Great Cat for the best.

She couldn’t believe all the messages she had, and decided to create some email filters once she’d gone through them all.  From the subjects listed, she could easily send to the bulk folder most of the commerce related stuff, as well as a lot of the um, solicitations.  Delete, delete, delete, delete, delete - she felt like she’d be clicking on that icon for hours.  She wished the little box you clicked to mark messages was a little bigger.  Paws weren’t great for fine control with a mouse (well at least a computer mouse).

Here was a message from Tatum – Rudy opened it to see what he had to say.  Hmm, complaints about the noisy girl and the food selection.  It appeared that whichever human bought the cat food had been buying a lot of the one with the little pieces of vegetables in it, and Tatum didn’t like that.  Rudy shot off a quick reply, commiserating with Tatum on his difficulties.  She’d met the noisy girl a few times and thought she was perfectly nice, except for talking too much.  Tatum must have just been having a bad day when he wrote it. 

Thankfully, the responses from the Craigslist personal ad had stopped.  There were, unfortunately, several messages from the Nigerian man.  Rudy hit the delete button on the oldest immediately, and then another, but by the time she saw the subject of the last email she hesitated before hitting ‘Delete’.  The subject was “imminent starvation”. 

Despite Rudy’s gruff demeanor she really had a big heart.  The thought that this man’s children and nieces and nephews might be starving was heartwrenching.  Was it possible that he hadn’t known that the photos contained viruses, or worms or whatever they’d been?  Maybe someone had taken the photos for him and given him the disk, or put it on a thumb drive so he could load them onto his computer and they already had viruses and…wait a minute. 

In a flash Rudy realized that she’d been a bigger sap than she’d even thought herself to be.  How could a man whose family was facing imminent starvation afford a computer to send her these messages?  How could he afford the internet access?  And, wait just a minute – the photos he’d sent of his house and village didn’t even show any electricity.  Yeah, they can run underground lines, but that sounded expensive and sophisticated.  She’d been had.  Royally.  And not only that, he counted on her naivety or kind-heartedness to get her to fall for it yet again.  She clicked on delete, and then immediately emptied the Gmail trash.  She may have been a sucker, but she wasn’t going to be one anymore. 

Photo courtesy of Karen Demerly - http://www.flickr.com/photos/kdemerly/4468713654/