The Litterbox

Odds and ends and bits and pieces, all bundled together with flushable clay.

Sunday, January 30, 2005 , mid-afternoon

Parrot food

What do you feed your parrots? We’ve got 6 parrots of varying styles and sizes—an African Grey, a Goffin’s cockatoo, a peach-fronted conure, a dusky conure, a cherry-headed conure, and a white-capped Pionus. For some reason our birds have a tendency towards liver problems, with our Pacific parrotlet dying from liver disease in 2004, and our Pionus recently diagnosed with an enlarged liver and high cholesterol. The peach-fronted conure is also prone to beak overgrowth, so I’m watching his health as well. All these liver problems are surprising, as we’ve never been ones to just toss our parrots a handful of sunflower seeds and call it “dinner”. All our birds are pellet eaters—most were raised as pellet-eaters from fid-dom—and while they’ve always been fed supplemental seed, just a small amount has had an adverse affect. When Pepe the Pionus was diagnosed with skyrocketing cholesterol in November, I took it as an opportunity to wean all the birds off seed. Now they receive a pellet and fresh food mix every day, rather than a pellet/seed/fresh food mix. In the afternoons they’re given a “seed snack”, but it amounts to only about a tablespoon of parrot seed mix.

I’ve maintained the usual fresh food routine, as the vet says it sounds healthy and the birds all seem to enjoy it. Every morning I mix up half a cup of instant brown rice, half a cup of instant white rice, about two tablespoons of some sort of small pasta, and half a cup of uncooked (but soaked) beans, and cook in the microwave for 5 minutes until the water is absorbed. I then add a half-pound of frozen veggie mix (lima beans, corn, carrots, peas), about a half cup of greens (usually collard greens), and some sort of fruit (often raspberries or blueberries, but sometimes mango or even banana). I then heat the entire mix in the microwave again, not really to “cook” it, but just to thaw and warm it. The birds are served a quarter-cup of pelleted food, topped with the warm fresh mix. I’ve also been sprinkling the mixture with Prime vitamins, as they seem to enjoy the taste. Total prep time, including “serving”, is usually about 20 minutes. It’s a good opportunity for me to visit with the birds, check their overall health, see who’s got an appetite, etc. I’ve noticed that Pepe’s beak overgrowth has really slowed down, so hopefully we’re on the right track with this diet.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/30 at 04:58 PM
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Thursday, January 27, 2005 , late at night

I’m moving!

I decided today that I wanted to move my blog to another domain I own, http://www.TheBlogPound.com. It fits nicely with the “theme” of my blog (i.e., all I do is talk about my pets), so I thought I’d give it a whirl. If you’re reading this on http://www.CynicalBlog.com then you can check the new url and see if I’ve been successful, and if you’re reading this on http://www.TheBlogPound.com , then Yay, me! :)

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/27 at 11:31 PM
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Tuesday, January 25, 2005 , late at night

Playing catch-up

There’s now a trailer available for the Wild Parrots movie if you’re interested in viewing it; it can be downloaded from http://www.wildparrotsfilm.com/trailer.html. I loved the trailer and have a VHS “preview” copy of the film sitting on my coffee table, so I hope to have time to watch it later this week. I knew Mark Bittner aspired to be a musician, but until I saw the trailer I had no idea he had any talent ;-)

Random things… our kitchen window still leaks and tomorrow it’s supposed to rain, so it’s back to towels on the windowsill for a few days. The builder says he’ll fix the problem but it will involve the “ripping out” of stucco, so we need to wait for nice weather. We used to have nice weather all the time in Vegas, but then Bush got re-elected and it seems that it really pissed off Mother Nature. The cats are all doing well and getting more sociable with each other, so in the evenings our livingroom turns into a regular kitty circus with cat toys flying everywhere. Derek continues to be my lovebug and cuddle bunny and I just adore him so much. I still do miss Sweet Pea as I think we really understood each other, but getting to know Derek has been the bright side to Sweet Pea’s death. Even the dogs are adjusting to having the new cats around, and Eli only whined for 30 minutes tonight rather than her usual hour. I can’t wait until our camera is repaired (it should be by next week), so I can fill my blog with photos of feline fantastic-ness. Fantasticosity. Cat pictures.

I don’t want to get into how I found this today (I didn’t look it up myself, let’s just say that), but it was brought to my attention that my name was mentioned in the “Secrets of Angels and Demons” press release. I’m amused and humbled by the fact that I’m the only contributor to not have some sort of descriptive modifier after my name—I didn’t even get called, “writer”. It’s like I’m being subtly referred to as a “passer-by”—we have no idea who this person is but her name is here anyway so just try to ignore it. I obviously need to give myself a title and/or marketable skill.

Want a little excitement in your life? I know you do. Treat yourself to a glass of Manila Gold calamansi juice and then go listen to the adventures of Maritess as she works for truth, justice, the American way, and clean floors. And when you’re done all that, go enjoy the web comic Gay Balls of Fire. Be sure to post a little blog comment to the artist to say hi, but don’t mention the chicken.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/25 at 11:31 PM
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Friday, January 21, 2005 , late at night

My dark side

I’ve discovered that I have a dark side, my own personal Mr. Hyde. The magic potion which changes me from mild-mannered webmaster to seething and calculating revenge expert is carried by teenagers—angry, dramatic, text-messaging, bitching teenagers.

A few years ago, Nancy and I made the mistake of starting a “fan site” for a “celebrity” (and I use the term loosely). We had no particular interest in this celebrity, but knew she’d be having a brief moment in the spotlight and thought we’d try to take advantage of that. Our original plan had just been to throw together a quick but thorough site so search engines would consider us “an authority site”, but eventually the site became our pet project and we decorated and enhanced it with all the bells and whistles we could pay for. We still didn’t care for the “celebrity”, but wanted to see if we could make a truly great website.

We did make a truly great website, and people flocked to it by the thousands. People also incessantly stole content from our site, taking everything from entire text passages I’d written, to our entire photo gallery. In every case the thieves were teenagers, and if you asked them to stop stealing your hard work, they’d just laugh and say it was “public domain” because it was “on the Internet”. Many a night I lay awake fantasizing about flying to Australia to strangle other people’s rude and obnoxious brats who were taking credit for my hard (and in many case, expensive) work. We were able to cut down on some of that sort of theft by using anti-hotlinking code, banning the IPs of troublemakers, etc., but we then started to find even bigger headaches on our message board. Teenagers by and large insist on writing in text messaging abbreviations, which are impossible for non-English speakers to read, and are pretty much impossible for me to read as well. They don’t even all use the *same* abbreviations—they make up their own based on their perverse concepts of spelling. If you ask them to write in “proper English”, you get called “uptight”, or even worse, a (sic) “communist Natzi”. A large number of teenagers feel the need to lie and tell outrageous stories—if I had a nickel for every teenager who’d claimed to have suffered multiple, dramatic injuries, or the number of teenagers claiming to be millionaires with butlers, or the number of teenagers who insist they’ve had sex with their teachers, I could retire wealthy. I just wanted to have a message board where young people could have nice conversations with other nice people, but nearly every day there’s some new person who wants to brag about how drunk they were the night before, how many people they slept with, how their gym teacher has a crush on them, etc. If they’re not bragging, they’re angry and depressed, and talking of getting tattoos to commemorate the times in their lives when they nearly committed suicide. They’re just so self-centered and feeling sorry for themselves, and I rarely see any of them attempt to seek out positive experiences. I suggest they volunteer at an animal shelter during their summer vacation, but instead they paint their walls black and write bad poetry about how much their lives suck. I just despise them! I know I was never like that! I know I was sensitive and took things very seriously, but I also had an interest in the world around me, and read a lot to expand my horizons. My dreams were to travel and to go to college and to to have exciting jobs—I know I never fantasized about the days I’d be able to get into bars to get drunk. If I was a teenager today, would I be self-centered too? I really hope not.

In any case, that “celebrity” website is causing me so much agitation that it’s about time to close it down and move on. It was an experiment, I learned some stuff I didn’t really want to know, and now I’ll work on some project that’s less interactive. I’ve reached my celebrity fill, and Ellen Degeneres, this means you, too.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/21 at 11:28 PM
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Sunday, January 16, 2005 , late at night

The Chai Master

On January 12th I mentioned that the adoption coordinator from Best Friends had called to tell me about a cat up for adoption named “Derek”. We did arrange to go see Derek on Saturday just as a courtesy, and because I really wanted to meet some of the staff from Best Friends (a place I’d love to work for them one day). As luck would have it, I met Derek and it was love at first site. He is a beautiful, short-haired blend of tan and grey, with little white accents on his feet, head, and the bridge of his nose. His eyes are the most gorgeous pale blue. What sold me on him was how he purred with ecstacy when I massaged his feet—my cat Sweet Pea only let me touch her feet when she was literally moments from dying. I was never able to touch Sweet Pea’s stomach at all, but Derek rolls on his back for belly scratches. When I picked him up to hold him for the first time, he grabbed on to me with his paws and that was it—I knew he had to come home with us.

The adoption representatives from Best Friends were very friendly, and the whole adoption process was fairly quick but thorough. I have to say that their adoption policies are great, so if you have the chance to adopt from them, I’d highly recommend it. Their policy is to allow us to return Derek if we can’t care for him for any reason at any point in his life, and they’ll also provide assistance with medical expenses above and beyond basic care. Derek came home in an almost-new kennel carrier with blankets, toys, a big packet of information about his background and general cat care, and a month of free pet health insurance. He also had recently had all his shots, been neutered, microchipped, and had a dental cleaning. It was a great start to what I hope will be many long and happy years with Derek, who may be 7 or may be 13, depending on who you talk to. He was rather chatty in the car on the way home as he apparently doesn’t enjoy travelling, but once in the house he settled in like he owns the place. He strolled downstairs, had some face-to-face time with the big and little dogs, browsed the bird room, and has toured most of the upstairs furniture. So far he enjoys climbing on the cat tree, looking out the window, and sleeping under the chair. He’s been completely comfortable with us from the moment of his arrival, and I once again have a cat who will sit on my lap while I watch TV. He’s an absolute sweetheart. His background report said that he was found as a stray in Kanab, Utah. I have no idea where he spent the first years of his life, but he must have been happy to have developed such a nice disposition. Oh, he was given the name “Derek” at Best Friends, but the person who originally took him in as a stray called him “Chai”. We thought “Chai” was a nice name, but it seemed too feminine, so we decided to stick with “Derek”. As an acknowledgement of his roots, and a tribute to his zen-like qualities, we now refer to him as Derek the Chai Master. Photos will follow eventually, once our camera is out of the repair shop.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/16 at 11:24 PM
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Saturday, January 15, 2005 , late at night

Introducing… Mr. Derek Chai!

Oh, it’s such a long story and it’s late, so I’ll tell you tomorrow. Go Vikings!

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/15 at 11:12 PM
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Thursday, January 13, 2005 , late at night

Bears with clothes

I love teddy bears, and today received a birthday parcel from my parents which contained this little bear and her doggy pal:

My Mom included a note in the package commenting that she knows I “don’t like bears wearing clothing”, and I guess that’s sort of true but it also sounds a bit kinky. I like to think that I prefer teddy bears in their natural, wild state—unclad, as if they’ve just wandered in from a day in the forest (where they perhaps enjoyed a picnic). I don’t mind if they want to wear clothes, though—even in Vegas it gets pretty chilly.

And while we’re on the subject on birthday gifts, my fabulous birthday sweatshirt from Nancy:

Before Christmas we traded in a number of “bonus points” we’d accumulated from an online advertiser for a very large gift certificate from Amazon.com. We split the gc in half and each placed an order for things we coveted. I bought a Dremel Mini for grooming bird and dog nails, as well as a couple of CDs (Sarah McLachlan’s Afterglow Live and Gwen Stefani’s Love, Angel, Music, Baby). Mainly though, I bought BOOKS, and today a big, glorious box of new books was dropped on our doorstep by those nice guys at UPS. If you want to know what Brown can do for you, well, they can deliver books (and English muffins from Wolferman’s). I can now look forward to lots of great reading, ranging from Jeff Corwin’s Living on the Edge to Tom Robbins’ Jitterbug Perfume. I’m reading the latter solely because Ami Cusack of “Survivor: Vanuatu” listed it as her favourite book. I’m sure that sounds very pathetic, but I figure it’s a more mature way of showing my adoration than camping on her front lawn or having her name shaved into the back of my head. I’m all about being practical.

In sad news, our Olympus C-5060 digital camera had to be sent to the Olympus hospital in California today for emergency surgery. Sparing no expense, we enveloped it in swaddling bubble wrap and asked the aforementioned Brown to get it to its destination safely. It’s been a fabulous camera since we bought it last April, but it’s having some sort of electrical problem that’s causing it to (among other things) take photos on its own. It could turn out an exorcism is the more appropriate solution, but I hope it’s just a mechanical glitch. As soon as we dropped the camera off at the shipping store the cats started to do the most adorable things, and of course we couldn’t take photos of any of it. They’re deliberately inconsiderate.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/13 at 11:14 PM
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Tuesday, January 11, 2005 , late at night

Cats is cats

We’re under the impression we still have two cats, although they might just be sofa gremlins and figments of our imaginations. After 5 days with us, Jackson and Chelsea are still quite jumpy and nervous, and ready to bolt at the slightest provocation. Chelsea let me pet her head and neck for a while today, but she made it clear that she was merely tolerating it and not really enjoying it. She makes the strangest sounds—I never know if she’s purring or growling.

I received a phone call from Best Friends Animal Sanctuary today and we discussed Scooter. Unfortunately, Scooter won’t be able to come live with us for a couple of reasons. For one thing he’s a “dirty” cat—he tends to leave fecal trails because of his lack of hind legs and subsequent litterbox problems, so he requires a lot of extra cleaning. Also, our carpeting would pose a problem because it might give his little butt rug burns. Scooter will do better in a home with a linoleum floor. We also talked about a cat who just came up for adoption named “Derek” because he’s used to both parrots and dogs. Derek will be in town on Saturday and up for adoption, although it would be impossible to adopt him now that we have Chelsea and Jackson. I did say we’d come down and meet him, but the adoption attendants won’t be holding him for us and will adopt him out to any interested individual. It’s unfortunate it worked out this way, as I’m glad we were able to give C & J a home, but do miss having a cat around who actually likes us :p

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/11 at 11:35 PM
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Thursday, January 06, 2005 , evening

Cats!

We theoretically have two cats, but because they’re in hiding, it’s as if they don’t really exist. When we brought them home, one immediately fled behind the bar and crawled up on a shelf, and the other vanished under the couch. One is probably still under the couch, and the other is lurking under the edge of the sofa cover, hissing at the German shepherd. I wish they’d just let me show them where the litterbox is located. Ah… the joy of pets!

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/06 at 08:39 PM
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Wednesday, January 05, 2005 , late evening

There’s such a thing as “too much cabbage”

I had wonderful Polish food for lunch today, but have discovered that there is such a thing as “too much cabbage”. The meal opened with cabbage soup, then we had cabbage rolls, and then we had hunter’s stew with cabbage, and wow, the ol’ digestive tract isn’t sure what to make of it all. It all tasted fabulous, but we were saddened because what had been a fully-themed Polish restaurant had become a “European” restaurant which also features a bar and gambling. Instead of being bright and airy, it was dark and smelled of old cigarette smoke, like a casino. I guess the place wasn’t making it on Polish food only, which is a shame. We were the only customers in the place for lunch so we had the complete attention of the server, who provided a surprise piece of birthday cheesecake for dessert :) I’d told her it was my birthday in an attempt to get her to improvise a “sampler platter” of food for us (something which used to be on the menu), but it didn’t work. I did get free cheesecake, though. Complete with a candle.

After lunch we went to two malls in town to exchange a sweatshirt Nancy had ordered online for me for a smaller size. I’ve now completed my mall visit quota for the year—I just don’t enjoy them anymore. I’d much rather shop from the comfort of my computer, but there are the occasional clothing size glitches.

Remember those two cats I mentioned not wanting to adopt in yesterday’s entry? They’re coming home with us tomorrow. I felt really trapped by the idea of the cats being put to sleep if we didn’t adopt them, so in the future if we want to add any pets to our home we’re going to keep quiet about it. The current owner was kind enough to pay for full bloodwork for them and all their shots, so we know they’ll both have a clean bill of health, but it’s going to be a big adjustment for all of us. If the cats can’t get used to the dogs and parrots, I don’t know what we’ll end up doing. I’m crossing my fingers that this will have a peaceful and simple resolution.

So, those are my big birthday memories as I turn 39: gas and cats.

P.S. I almost forgot to mention my biggest surprise gift of the day—Camden Toy sent a lovely autographed photo of himself as the flesh-eating demon, “Gnarl”, complete with an appropriately creepy birthday inscription. Camden Toy is a very sweet and thoughtful guy :)

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/05 at 10:09 PM
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