I thought I wasn't really upset about my cat dying. I've only seen him occasionally since I moved out, and I was kind of expecting it since he was old and in poor health.

But last night I had awful dreams about watching people I loved slowly die.

The kitten ended up going to the Orphan Kitten Project - a group of vet med students who take in orphaned or abandoned kittens in order to get practice caring for little kitties. They're overwhelmed with kittens right now and aren't technically accepting anymore, but there was another singleton the same age, and they do better raised as part of a litter, so they were actually happy to get her.

So now she has a "sister", and adequate care if she isn't as healthy as she seems, and I don't have to worry about Leif killing her with kindness or koyote dying of an asthma attack.

We have a feeling she may have been purposefully abandoned - she's quite clean, nice shiny fur, no fleas, healthy beyond some dehydration and exposure, and very comfortable around humans. As much as I hate the idea of euthanizing healthy kittens, I'd rather people do that than abandon them to die of dehydration or exposure, especially when they're too young to be separated from the mom and don't have a fighting chance unless someone picks them up.

I also wonder a bit about all the other people who went by and didn't stop. Of course, I didn't hear any meowing on the way out, so perhaps it had only started up recently. Then again, most of these people didn't even stop to ask if the woman pushing a bike with a toddler in the trailer, miles from town, needed help, so it wouldn't surprise me if they had heard but hadn't stopped.

Leif is interesting with the kitten. He wants to love her and hug her and call her George, but at the same time, gets very jealous if I try to feed the kitty. He did the same thing with Alex the dog (who ran away and hasn't been found yet). All in all, it makes me glad we don't have a small baby right now.

I forgot to take pictures before the kitty left.

The good - We go to Davis on Friday! koyote found cheap tickets, and decided to take us for Mother's Day and the Whole Earth Festival.

This was supposed to be a surprise for me, but koyote sucks at keeping surprises secret :) Plus he figured that I'd be pissed off if he woke me up at 3:30 AM Friday morning to go catch a plane.

My mom and stepdad are driving up, which is also supposed to be a surprise. Perhaps my brother will show up as well. I have vague memories of koyote saying he was going to, but that may have been a dream.

Luckily, the weather is supposed to be cooler than it was earlier this week.

The bad - silkensteel is taking the cats today. This is primarily for health reasons (koyote's allergies, and Jenna came near to scratching Leif's eyeball yesterday), and we really should have done this back before we moved, when it was obvious that koyote and I were going to be staying together long term, but I still feel like the worst pet owner ever.

I know that this is necessary. koyote needs $300 (pre-insurance, thankfully) worth of meds per month to keep his asthma under control (not entirely due to the cats, but largely), and was in the ER once a month before he got decent insurance coverage. Keeping him alive is more important than keeping the cats.

And honestly, they'll probably be happier. Leif torments them (though they still love him - I find them curled up at his head while he's sleeping), and since he was born, we haven't been providing them with as much attention as they like to have.

I still feel terrible, like the dog owner in that email forward, who gets a dog in college, and then gradually abandons it as she gets a job, family, etc, and eventually puts the dog to sleep because it's too inconvenient.

I suppose we're a little better than that, since we're giving them away, not sending them to the violin factory.

I'm wondering how Leif will react. He loves the cats (even if he expresses it rather roughly). I don't know if he's aware enough yet to really notice they're gone.

The neutral - I want to make another baby carrier before leaving for Davis. Not sure I'll have the time. With silkensteel here, perhaps Leif will be distracted enough that I can get something put together.

I'm not sure what to do about diapers for this trip. I don't want to use disposables the whole time, but I don't want to fill up our luggage with diapers or do laundry constantly. I suppose I'll bring along our 5 motherease diapers and some training pants (since they're smallish) and 2 prefolds for nighttimes. That should do while we're in the house, at least.

Leif seems to have gotten the cold that's going around. His nose is all stuffed up, and he wakes up crying because he can't breathe easily. He also can't nurse easily, since he can't breathe through his nose. We have to use the nose suction bulb thingy which he really hates.

Poor guy.

Despite that, and having a temperature of 101, he seems pretty happy and energetic. When he's not being yelling his head off, that is. It's about half and half. I'm a bit surprised - I'd expect him to be grumpy all the time. At the moment he's in happy mode.

He and the cats aren't getting along too well right now. He's getting really aggressive about grabbing, and they're starting to fight back. Jenna gave him a bit of a gash on his leg today. I don't blame them - he's really pretty rough, but I wish they'd stay out of his way (there are places in the apartment that they can go where he can't reach) or that the weather was nice enough for them to stay outside more.

We're trying to teach the concept of "gentle", but it's something that's going to take time.

Now we have to go take our cold-y selves off to the store, since we need toilet paper and dinner.

I just put Motherlove Pregnant Belly Solve on my belly, and now the cat is licking it!

It does smell yummy, but not a smell I'd have thought a cat would appreciate.

I'm whining. Feel free to ignore.

I'm sick with a cold bordering on a sinus infection. Yuck. Im staying home from work though I'm not sure it's actually bad enough to use a sick day because I don't know if I can stand another day as long and boring as yesterday.

I signed up for a self hypnosis class at the experimental college which was supposed to start yesterday. I went to the room printed on the receipt, but no one else showed up. I suspect they gave me the wrong information - the dates printed on the receipt were wrong (Mondays, Jan. 21 and 28), and I'd already called to confirm the date, but didn't think to confirm the room as well. I really hope they'll give me a refund - it's only a two week class, so I've already missed a good portion of it, and I really can't afford to pay for a semi-useless class right now.

The cat is acting bizarre, crawling around in boxes and being generally destructive. Weirdo.

I'm debating whether I want to go ahead with the AFP test or not. It's a blood test that they do to determine whether there is a risk of certain birth defects. If it comes back positive, they'll do an amniocentesis, which carries the risk of miscarriage. The thing is, it has a very high rate of false positives, and a pretty high false negative rate as well. I'm not planning to have an abortion if something is wrong (a lot of the terribly bizarre completely incompatible with life legs growing out of the head type birth defects have already been ruled out by the first ultrasound, though we're not entirely sure that she isnt actually a hamster), so what is the point of risking an amnio over a test of questionable reliability? And what's the point of taking the test of questionable reliability if I'm not planning on acting on it and I'm just going to get myself all worked up over the results?

The college dropped me from the classes I signed up for, presumably because I haven't paid yet. I signed up again, but wasn't able to get back on the waiting list for the online class, despite spaces remaining. It's closed for some reason. I'm still going to the class for the orientation tomorrow to see if I can get into it, but I'm not counting on it.

If I can't get into it, I'm just taking the one class (assuming it doesn't get cancelled due to low enrollment! Agh!) and not graduating this semester. Antelope Valley College appears to have plenty of women-oriented courses, so I should be able to finish the degree with a class from there sometime next year. Or take an online class from SCC in the fall or something. I'm not going to kill myself going back and forth from Sacramento twice a week for the rest of this semester. I just don't think I'll be able to keep it up towards the end.

In other news, I got the TV card working the other day. I can watch TV again, yay! Now I just have to see if it will work properly with the VCR so I can stop begging other people to tape Buffy for me. I'm two weeks behind, now. The local station put off this week's episode until Sunday because of a basketball game. I'd be really annoyed by this except that I would have missed it anyways because of the stupid non-existant self-hypnosis class.

Now I will go back to sleep or something.

That cat-on-a-leash experiment yesterday was a dubious success.

They now realize that the big room with the blue ceiling is a real place, not just a movie screen. They also realized that the screen in the window of the front room is loose.

We came home today to find them waiting outside for us. Weren't sure exactly how they'd gotten out, because someone had kindly put the screen back in place, but a few minutes later I caught them trying to break out again.

If it weren't for Jaycee's bad eye, and the fact that they've been raised indoors their whole life, I'd just go along with it and let them be outdoor cats.

In any case, they're getting name/address tags ASAP.

Now they've calmed down, and have stopped frantically throwing themselves at the window, and are back to curling up on my lap. Nice cats. Monsters, but nice.

Walking back from doing laundry just now, I saw the most darling kitten.

It jumped out from the bushes at me, and then bounded over to the jungle gym and jumped on the slide. I stopped and called to it, and after a minute it came over and let me pet it for a few minutes before bouncing away.

It didn't walk, like cats usually do. It jumped a foot or two at a time across the grass.

I sat on the tire swing to watch it. It came back over to me, and put its paws up on the swing, so I picked it up and held it on my lap for a bit before deciding I should go back to my house and pay attention to my own cats instead.

It followed me about halfway home, running beside me through the bushes by my feet. As much as I wanted to watch it, I forced myself to ignore it so it would stop following. If you look at them, it just encourages them.

I adopted my cats as adults, and I regret that I didn't get a chance to see them as kittens. I wouldn't want cats to stay kittens forever. I've raised kittens, and probably still have the scars to prove it. But kittens are special, and I'm sorry I missed that part of their life. I doubt they would have been as lively and playful as this little one - they were apparently pretty sick as kittens. I still would have liked to see them.

I also wish the poor cat wasn't chronically ill (cat herpes, which caused serious damage to one of her eyes. They both have it (they're littermates), but the other is much less severely effected). I look at her bright, beautiful, (essentially) normal eye, and wonder how she'd be different if her other eye was normal. Would she be as clingy as she is now? Would I even own them, as the main reason they weren't already adopted was her eye? Is she in pain from it? Should I have it taken out? One of the SPCA people recommended that, and it probably would be a good idea, but it's hard to bring myself to do it. She does seem to have some amount of sight out of that eye, though with the way it's been getting worse lately, I don't know if she will for long.

Poor kitty.

I have a love/hate relationship with weekends.

I look forward to them during the week, and don't like them to be over, but the weekend itself never feels long enough to relax, while being too long to not get bored out of my mind and depressed.

I need to clean, since chances are good that the person who wants to see the other room will show up sometime this weekend, and I have a pile of dishes that needs to be taken care of before that. And I'm sure the cats would appreciate it if I cleaned their litter box.

Litter boxes and small apartments do not mix. I wish they were healthier kitties so I could just let them outdoors.