There was an outdoor orange neighborhood cat with only one eye that visited our backyard often and who drove Fifo absolutely batty. Today the cat died near the side of the big road near our house. It's possible he was hit—I'm not sure. It's a reminder of how delicate life...
Looks like the cats have a new little buddy....
I'm out of things to discuss at the moment. Enjoy an ancient picture of Aleph and Fifo....
Layla and I have only really bought one new piece of furniture since we moved into our house earlier this year, so we picked up a few pieces today from a local antiques importer. This particular piece came complete with a dorknut Aleph. P.S. It looks a little fruity in...
Halloween. When the lolcats come out to play. Welcome to the internet....
It's a late night. Cat pictures all around!...
Why, oh why, do you do things like this?...
There's this thing I've been working on lately1 that's been sucking up lots of my spare time and energy. It's a lot of work, but it's also a good time to be a developer. It also means I don't have a lot to post about. So here's a picture of...
This little guy torments the cats....
On a tip from Manuel, we recently switched cat litter from our typical large clay variety over to a product called Good Mews, sold in the silly yellow plastic bags pictured at left. It's fantastic stuff. Good Mews (annoyed by the name yet?) looks a lot like rabbit poops made...
Well, Aleph has finally been featured on Stuff On My Cat (cached). I think I sent in this picture in early November. How's that for turnaround?...
This is Fifo. Fifo is black and white. Fifo doesn't have any brown or grey spots. Our fireplace, however, has lots of brown and grey soot. Judging by the brown and grey spots on Fifo, I'm guessing he made an excursion into the fireplace. And judging by the pile of...
There was no response for the moment when I saw him pee in the sink....
My (OK—Layla's) scanner doesn't currently work with Vista. I don't know if it's a driver issue or a software issue or what. I'm sure it's going to get fixed by the time we ship, but for now, it's a giant pain in the ass. The reason it's a pain in...
Aleph has a wound on his right front leg. It started as a patch of fur that the veterinarian shaved off in order to provide Aleph with fluids through an IV so he didn't get dehydrated during his teeth cleaning, for which he had to receive general anesthesia because cats...
I took Aleph and Fifo to the vet last week for their annual checkups. Fifo doesn't seem to enjoy the vet nearly as much as Aleph does, and the first thing he did once I let him out of his cage was to climb behind the computer screen in the...
Aleph really wanted to play with the green feather at right. He climbed up onto the shelf at the very left-hand edge, and then slooowly made his way over. This was shot on the way back. Awesome....
Tonight marked the first serious fight that Aleph and Fifo have gotten themselves into. As far as I can tell, it started when a yellow spotted cat wandered onto the back patio and caught both of our cats' interest. What happened then is somewhat unclear, but the hissing and screaming...
This is the 4000th picture taken with Layla's Sony DSC-T1 camera. So, this is sortof nerdy and also a cat post—all at the same time. Oh, and a total copout. I'll have more to write about tomorrow....
Both the bedroom and office of our townhome are on the third floor, and we've got a peaked roof. So instead of making the top of those two rooms boring, the architect/builders decided to put in a shelf that runs the length of one wall and goes back a good...
I haven't posted cat pictures in a while. Here's a shot of Fifo getting jiggy with his bad self on the carpet. I think he was high on catnip at the time. Enjoy....
It's been nearly three weeks since we got the cat fountain for Aleph and Fifo, and in those three weeks, I'm fairly sure that Aleph has used it ... well, not at all. I strongly suspect he's just been terrified of the thing, because it makes little drippy noises and...
For as long as I can remember, Aleph prefers fresh and cold water left in glasses over water that's been sitting for days in a plastic bowl on the floor. It's always been like this, and it's always led to lots of humorous pictures of Aleph with his head halfway...
You can sortof see in the picture at right, but Aleph got into the fireplace at the new place while Layla and I were out shopping for ... well, food and cat things. We got the cats a water fountain (instead of the bowls—I'm pretty sure they hate stagnant water)...
Admittedly, this happened quite a while ago—but I waited until now to post about it because although I took pictures when it happened, the whole server situation hadn't yet been sorted and I didn't have a good place to put the pictures. Let's get to the story. Layla and I...
Now that I've finished with migrating the server to Windows Server 2003, I've been able to dig a bit into consolidating all the processes that I've been putting off. For example, I've only just now started updating the photo gallery again—and although I plan on moving to something else eventually...
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Ahem. Bad Aleph...I presume. Bad....
I'm really busy this week. And probably for the rest of the month, really. This is why the Spanish posts have been lagging. So here are some pictures. I [heart] pictures. And they're easy to post. This first one is a peach I bought at a farmer's market last weekend....
This is a copout post because Layla arrived tonight. Behold, supercat. ...and his sidekick, fluffball....
Oops. Forgot one. Ooh. That's creepy....
Too few kitty pictures recently. Time to fix that. Plus, some pictures of Layla's fish. And yes, it's got a name that's at least as geeky as my cats'. Yes, that last photo is a picture of Aleph drinking out of the fish bowl. Mmm, this tastes like fish poops....
Some of you (OK, probably none of you) remember the fact that my cats steal sponges and deposit them all over my damned apartment. Dammit. This hasn't really ceased to be a problem. I had, at one point, purchased a sponge holder1 which I hung near the kitchen sink. The...
For the last three nights in a row, I've gotten less than six hours of sleep. Most of this is the cats. Aleph, in particular, has been getting bursts of energy around 5am and generally wakes me up around then. This morning, I found him asleep next to my pillow—although...
On Liz's suggestion, I'm going to toilet train my cats. Wish me luck. The biggest complaint that I've heard so far is that if you're particularly unlucky, the cats make a huge smelly mess while they're learning to actually use the can effectively. The thing is that Aleph has had...
After my cleanfest last night, I bagged up all of my to-be-tossed shit. I didn't want to throw it into the dumpster immediately because they clean them out around noon everyday and I didn't want any nutcases wandering through my trash as happens at, you know, NMT. So instead, I...
So, it turns out that in 2000, the Aum Shinrikyo (responsible for the Sarin nerve-gas attacks on a Japanese subway) renamed themselves to Aleph. Fuck. Good lot of research work that was. Man. I have a hard time figuring out how I missed that one. Does my cat really look...
I left the house this morning, and my net connection was working. When I came home for lunch (because hey, driving) it was not. It turns out that one of my bastard cats actually managed to unplug just the power adapter for the wireless router, thereby rendering a connection to...
Since I mentioned that I wasn't taking many photos, I've been making it a point to post the ones that I do. So here we go. Those boxes are filled with books. All of them. I haven't unpacked them yet because I've already filled my bookcases with things that aren't...
I have two dish sponges on my countertop. They're there for cleaning dishes. Now note that the cats are not allowed on the countertop. That's a no-no. Now look at this. Son of a bitch. This happens a lot, actually. This time, I happened to wake up and notice that...
I talked about kitties earlier but I didn't really have any new pictures then. So here we go. FiFo really likes to spread his ass out all over the place. In the above picture, both cats are lying on the trunk mat for my Camry, which isn't in the car...
I'm renaming the section Aleph the farting cat to Two flatulent felines. I'd also like to point out that Aleph hasn't been gassy in months, and that FiFo hasn't let an audible fart out in a week or so. That's not to say that I haven't smelled anything, but it...
Because I'm a slacker, I didn't notice Mouser and Jason's comments on the post discussing my new cat. So yeah. FiFo. Awesome. The cat is named!...
I took Aleph and the other cat over to the new apartment so they could poke around while I unpacked things. It seems that ... the other cat has caught a cold. He's been sneezing for the last day or so, and I'm going to find a vet tomorrow. The...
Fight! Because I didn't post about this when it happened, I'll give a rundown of how the two have reacted to each other. Thursday I stuck Aleph in his cage and let FeFe walk around. Aleph growled and hissed, FeFe ignored him. FeFe was pretty clearly investigating the apartment at...
Aleph is a dirty little kitty. He got into something today, although I have no idea what. Behold, The Smudge&tm;. And FeFe is just plain filthy. His back, especially, is super oily, and all the fur around his front sticks together in little clumps. He's been in the shelter for...
Today I got a new cat. His (yes, his) name is FeFe. I originally was pronouncing it "feefee," but the more I think about it, the more I realize that nobody could have been that stupid—it's assuredly pronounced "fayfay." But nevertheless, the name is going. I solicit your suggestions hereinunder....
Aleph has been spazzing out today—although this is hardly unusual. And just now he was swinging his tail around when he managed to accidentally whip himself in the back of the head, and then promptly flipped out....
I somehow missed posting this picture before. Scandalous!...
Among other things, Layla and I got lost (again) looking for the Seattle Humane Society today. Eventually, we found it. We went to look at kitties. Wooooo! Now, I had pulled up the Society's cat listings a few days prior, and noticed that most of the cats that they had...
Wow. What a day. I'm still in Albuquerque. During my trip to drop Ashley off at the airport, I had an opportunity to chat with the United desk agents. "Is my cat carrier OK?" "Why certainly. As long as you have supporting health documentation and a small water bowl, this...
I haven't posted pictures of Aleph recently. Enjoy. My cat is a giant dork. DORK...
To determine Aleph's attitude toward travel, I threw him in the cat carrier and took him to my parents' house in Rio Rancho. Somewhat unfortunately, he cried the entire way up there and was completely hoarse when we arrived. Thankfully, on the way back, he actually shut up and slept....
We ran out of trash bags yesterday, so I put Aleph in my trash can. Excitement ensued....
Today (OK, technically yesterday—it's late right now), I gave Aleph another bath. As you may remember, his first bath went well, but not fantastically. Survey respondants indicated that the bathtub had, "too much water" and that both the rinsing and drying processes were, "inadequate." Felines declined to comment further, giving...
Aleph spilled water all over my desk. Unfortunately, this is where I keep important papers. So, I just spent the last hour blowdrying things like my insurance policy out. Fantastic. Sometimes as a cat owner, I'm not entirely amused....
To begin, I'd like to say that tonight's post velocity is courtesy of my impending EE midterm which I'm avoiding studying for. Back to the topic at hand: cat toys. In specific, Aleph's favorite toy. It's a grey-and-white wind-up mouse that I bought for him around six weeks ago. Rather,...
Yay. More Aleph shots. In the gallery there are a few shots of Aleph sleeping next to a fortune I got years ago ... at the Panda Express in Albuquerque. It reads, STOP SEARCHING FOREVER, HAPPINESS IS JUST NEXT TO YOU...
And really this time. Very null. Today, I had Aleph neutered. For those of you who don't know what this involves, I've prepared a helpful illustration. Honestly, I have some ethical issues with chopping an animal's nuts off. There's something about imposing my arbitrary will on the cat for the...
Aleph did two things today. First, he continued the attack on my spider plant. The funny part is that he sat there long enough for me to take four pictures. Yes, the one you're looking at is the most incriminating. Secondly, he fell asleep on my paperwork. He also fell...
My last post reminded my why I don't, in general, really ever post what-I-did-over-my-summer-vacation style posts. Frankly, I have a difficult time A) paying attention to, and B) caring about all the disparate boring things I did over the last few days. I find that sticking to a single topic...
"Things that Aleph has tried to eat." This would include toilet paper rolls, toes, cardboard boxes, toes, toes, Ken, toes, and more toilet paper rolls. Again, with the toilet paper! Aggghh. The shot on the right is what Aleph looks like after I've hit him with the spray bottle. Rest...
At Mouser's quasi-suggestion, I reworked this image. OK....
Aleph is in a rowdy mood today. First, he unrolled half of a roll of toilet paper. Then, he spilled dirt all over Ken's desk. What a little butt. I gave him a stern talking to (rerolling paper towel tubes isn't the kind of thing I'd like to be doing...
Aleph's hind leg markings look an awful lot like BMW Z8 taillights. The funny thing is that I've been waiting for a week to take a picture of my cat's ass....
Aleph has a new friend. Earlier tonight, we had a crane fly find its way into the house. Aleph spotted it around 30 minutes ago and has been chasing it ever since. I'm surprised he hasn't killed the damn thing so far—he seems most interested in chasing it and swatting...
I mentioned previously that my file server drives were b0rking up from time to time. I'm fairly sure it's heat related. On Tuesday, when the gods let loose their fluffy white load all over the Grand State of New Mexico, the temperature in my house dropped a good ten degrees...
...by Fyodor Dogstoevsky. Boy, was that ever terrible. Remind me to never use puns, ever. I've got two things to note.I've started using a spray bottle on Aleph when he does something that could potentially get him in physical harm: such as climbing in the fridge (where he could get...
In lieu of actual content, here's Another Aleph Clip Show Post. Today's topic: Aleph being a nerd....
I picked up some more cat toys for Aleph today at Wal*Transnationalmegacorp because A) cat toys are cheap, and B) maybe this will keep him from eating my feet every time I walk down the hallway. I got him some more hypercheap fluffy-things-with-a-hint-of-catnip because he seemed to like this before....
Last night was the first night that I was the only one around the house. And since Aleph was being an assbasket last night (lots of biting and scratching ... and he was trying to climb the screens earlier) I left him to sleep in the living room. This morning...
I've got a ton of pictures of Aleph sleeping in weird positions. I've included some duplicate poses because he's really grown over the last seven weeks. I'm not sure why this breaks all the layout, though. Guh. Figured it out: errant newlines in the table were converted into <br />s....
Here are some pictures of Aleph being a weirdo....
I suggest that Aleph is related to a cat from Idaho....
And Aleph just woke up by eating my toes. Better than an alarm clock? At least I can set an alarm clock....
I had commented previously that Aleph had stopped farting. I'm afraid to report that this was a dirty, dirty lie. Thank you for your attention....
I forgot to feed Aleph. I'm a bad cat owner. When I first got him, I bought a "kitten-sized" cat litter box from Wal*Mar ($3.97) ... this turned out to be horribly undersized. It would probably have worked at one point, but even when I got him, he would usually...
Aleph is a bit strung out tonight. He managed to cause a very large crash earlier, although a search of the house hasn't revealed anything that he's tipped over. Unsettling. While I was writing my last post, he tore ass into my room, simultaneously pulled three books out of my...
Aleph has been getting increasingly strung out in the past few days. Overall counts of random cuteness have declined in proportion to instances of window screen climbing and 8am toe-eating. Thankfully, occurences of gross flatulence are down 28%. I'm bit worried that not giving him enough attention is starting to...
People who anthropomorphize animals worry me. I'm not really sure what it is, but hearing a comment like, "my dog adores my family" is the type of thing that makes my skin crawl. There is a very fine line between your dog loving you, and your dog understanding the natural...
Lots of picture-only posts tonight. At least this one doesn't involve any nuts. It does involve my cat and my wireless mouse, though....
As I'm sure many of you know, I organize nearly everything I come across. The car video archive and photo gallery, for example, are perfect examples of this. My paper filing system is no different. I've got a 2.5'-deep two-drawer filing cabinet that is packed solid with paperwork. I've been...
When we first got Aleph, we kept the bathroom door closed unless someone was either on their way to or had just done some manner of nastiness. In the ensuing weeks, though, it became clear that the bathroom suffered from inadequate ventilation and would become laden with vapors and odors...
Today hath rained a bountiful plenificence of boo-tay upon my coffers, opened wide by the possibility of wicked bling. First on the agenda was an order from Amazon, including some really fantastic music. In specific: Schubert Complete Trios, including one of the best movements ever. I really like Schubert—he's one...
I've never seen a Rottweiler/Chow mix before. Wow. That is one ridiculously ugly animal. It, and a large dalmation, were walking around my yard earlier. They were both collared but seemed to be scrounging for food. The Rottweiler had some pretty nasty Battle Damage(TM) on his right leg. In other...
Aleph REMs out a lot when he sleeps. Most of the time, it's just paws and whiskers twitching and generally results in me being quite amused. Just now, though, he started wigging out and chattering his teeth before waking himself up and falling back asleep. Weird....
Aleph is my cat. Just so I don't forget all the details (and because I still can't sleep), I'll go ahead and dump the Aleph story here so at least it's recorded in the depths of my database server....
