Wait, I haven’t posted anything tonight? Really?
This isn’t Damien’s X-Ray. It is a cat, though. I Googled it. The image is from the University Hospitals of Cleveland radiology website. The childrens’ department.
It’s pretty much what I imagine Damien’s x-ray looked like, had I remembered to ask for it, though. With a little more “hallelujah!” thrown in. Yeah, I guess the little bastard bumped his elbow. Against a Buick or something. I watched him gimp around the house for three days before I couldn’t stand it and took him to the vet. I just got back.
He’s okay, but there’s one more expense I could live without. And I hate his vet. Vets. Whatever. Different rant for another night.
It’s not a fracture, but a bad bruise. I have to give him anti-inflammatories for a few days and “keep him quiet for a while longer than that.” Huh. Thou doest not keep the Prince of Darkness “quiet for a while.” So I asked for specific instructions.
Vet: “Oh, keep him in a small dark room. Like the bathroom. Even the cat carrier. He’ll just think it’s a very long night.”
Me: “But I’m going away for Christmas.”
Vet: “No problem.”
Me: “I’ll be gone for two weeks.”
Vet: “He’ll be fine.”
In a box. For fourteen days. What is the matter with people? If my cats are shut up in the house for two hours, they get antsy. If you locked Damien in a tiny box for fourteen days, he’d be a howling psychotic. More of a howling psychotic. Seriously, it would be bad news.
December 12, 2007 — 8:07 pm
Comments: 34
My poor pussoes
This is the point of the trip where I start to feel guilty about my cats. I imagine them shuffling around the house going “miaowwwwww…” in forlorn voices. They always have HUGE eyes, like those paintings.
In truth, I left them a way in and out through the basement, so they’ve probably had the time of their lives. And I’ve undoubtedly been feeding their friend, the Big Black Cat Who Is Not At All Intimidated By Me. Dude eats out of their bowl even when I’m IN the house.
Damnedest thing. My two are usually territorial (especially Charlotte), but they don’t seem to mind this guy.
October 29, 2007 — 7:26 am
Comments: 4
They get the last LOL
There’s been a certain amount of hatin’ on the lolcats lately. But check out this Business Week article on blogs that make money (Cheezburger is the third one in the slideshow). BW estimates Cheezburger is pulling in $5,600 a month in ad revenue.
Now, that’s not a spectacular amount of scratch for the big blogs (witness some of the others on the list), but Cheezburger only started in January of this year. And it’s entirely driven by user submission. Who’s LOLing now?
My promise to you, my faithful minions: I will never sell out. Not unless I really, really need the money.
July 19, 2007 — 4:30 pm
Comments: 22
What this blog needs is more gosh-darned catblogging
Charlotte’s got that whole cowl thing going. With the pointy ears and the slitty green eyes, she looks a right Batman. In truth, she’s a sweet and stupid animal who stands with all four feet in the litterbox and somehow manages to piss all over the floor.
Damien, on the other hand, is an evil little fucker. I bet if you shaved him, he’d be covered in gang signs and six-six-sixes.
Some day, let us shave him.
Usually, when they find themselves this close together, it results in fuzzy chunks of free-floating catskin (hers, mostly) and the sound as of earth’s mighty tectonic plates grinding together. If tectonic plates were made of cats and razorblades.
Here, the dog next door has caught their several eyes and evoked a rare moment of feline solidarity.
June 20, 2007 — 6:20 pm
Comments: 45
Damien communicates with the mothership
I tend to fire off dozens of photographs at a time and then evaluate them solely by thumbnails. As a result, I often don’t notice oddball images like the one above, taken when Damien was about eight weeks old. Directly above his face, just out of the shot, is a two-bulb fluorescent desklamp of the kind once used by draughtsmen (I got it from work when they shut down our ink-and-paper drafting operations), but with modern warm fluorescent bulbs. This light frequently confuses automatic exposure controls, which seldom get the white balance right for it. I take a lot of very yellow pictures under this light.
The cats are oddly fascinated by it. Charlotte in particular — who experiences the world largely through her nose — greets this lamp by starting at one end and smelling carefully down its entire length. And sometimes all the way back up again. I suspect it smells like delicious houseflies.
March 27, 2007 — 5:54 am
Comments: 4
We’re naming the next one Mr Whiskers
Question: How do you make an authentic Texas chili?
Answer: There’s no doubt that the quality of the beef is an issue, whether ground beef or steak is used. First, brown the meat thoroughly in very hot bacon grease and pour off the excess fat.
Most importantly, however, before you begin cutting up the peppers and onions, make sure you rub the surface of your cutting board vigorously with a cat’s rectum.
March 16, 2007 — 1:45 pm
Comments: 3
Damien Weasel, Cat Scientist (episode two, hydrology)
Damien is an ordinary gray stripey tom, but it’s interesting how much he shares with bengals. Bengals are a mix of some South American wild cat and ordinary gray stripeys…but I wonder how many of their famous weirdnesses they actually owe to the domestic side of their heritage? Damien’s fascination with water isn’t quite as powerful as a bengal’s, but I have to scrape him out of the sink to brush my teeth.
There’s a Norwegian guy on YouTube who’s filmed his bengals a lot. He caught them making peculiar chattering noises at birds out the window. Damien does this, too. I think of it as mimeenking — it sounds like he’s saying “mee…mee.” The “M” sound is rather hard for cats, as I learned when I caught my mother trying to teach the family cat to say “Mama.” It’s a noise Damien makes when he knows he can’t reach something interesting; like a fly buzzing around at ceiling level, or me, tapping on the window from outside. It’s a frustration sound.
March 6, 2007 — 8:06 am
Comments: 17
Damien sez: more global warming, please
February 26, 2007 — 5:06 pm
Comments: 2
Here’s something cute. Now fuck off.
Damien at about ten weeks. Click the photo to see the big color hardcore Cat Lady version. He still has magic testicles at this point, albeit rudimentary.
Started out with the best intentions today, but I got all jammed up. Stupid work. Stupid deadlines. Stupid not-being-born-rich.
Oh, and Thursday’s Weasel sucked. So I killed it.
February 21, 2007 — 7:31 pm
Comments: 6
Damien Weasel, Cat Scientist
Poor little bastard was set up. She went out first and planted herself at the foot of the stairs. They are arch enemies, so his only escepe was to take a flying leap over her head. The walk was covered in an inch of smooth, melty ice with a skim of water over the top. This is his first Winter and we haven’t had a good freeze yet, so he doesn’t know from ice. He took his leap, hit, made it all the way to the end of the walkway on his ass in one smooth, wet, flailing pinwheel of knees and paws and elbows and turned around with this amazing “whoa! d00d!!1!!” look on his little mug.
Imagine if he still had balls.
February 19, 2007 — 6:15 am
Comments: 8