"I have been but little in," said Ninian hastily...

At the apartment opposite, they have a bird feeder by the window. There is a squirrel who comes to eat the bird food. It was there today. A whole line of birds were standing behind it. And the orange and white cat that lives in the apartment was peering around a curtain, watching.

:-)

Don't really know what else to say about it. I just miss his company. I miss his charming manner and his cleverness and his playfulness. I know that I should just be grateful for having had the pleasure of his companionship and not make a fuss about him being gone. But right now, I just really, really miss him.

Nic and Finn are getting extra hugs, whether they want them or not. :-)

I miss my little sweet Busby buddy like blazes.

But it is very nice to have the rest of my cat-family back together.

(as they chow down collegiality on their dinner in the kitchen)

The Buzzmeister is feeling well today.

Very late call around 10 pm from the vet's office to say that the results of the biospy on Busby's tissue sample came back and the lab confirmed that it really is just a nasty, long-standing infection. They said that multiple pathologists looked at the sample and were sure it was NOT cancerous.

I am very relieved. He still has a huge healing task to face, but it's so good to know it's not something (essentially) unbeatable.

Ugh. Lots of things need to be done. All together it's way too much to contemplate, so I lie on the couch and watch Swedish TV mystery programs. So I've broken down everything into bite-sized tasks, doing a couple of which earns me a little extra something, like half an hour of Annika Bengstzon: Crime Reporter and a cup of tea. Still, about 30 task-items are going to take the rest of today and a couple of evenings this week.

Nicholas has gone to visit his aunties for a few weeks. At this point, I'm not entirely sure what we expect to accomplish from this, other than to give them a bit of cat company and allow everyone (feline here at #4 to have a bit of a timeout and reset. Maybe when he comes back, thigns will be a little less tense. I may take this opportunity to replace all the cat boxes, too. Several of the current ones are many years old, tatty, and *round* (Neta's idea). Who the heck makes a round cat box? Not someone who ever tried to scoop it with a square scoop, that's for sure.

Odd scrabbling noises from somewhere at the far end of the house. Under the floor? In the wall? In the attic? On the roof? Hard to tell. It's happened before. I think maybe a squirrel has a stash in the eaves somewhere.

Nice gaming yesterday (1866), saw Argo, and then had dinner with C&M and watched the opening match for DC United. Some good things, some not so good; Houston is a tough team, so I don't have a problem with us not winning there. Talked to C&M about grad school and got some unexpectedly negative reactions that I'm goign to have to ponder over.

Argo was awesome, BTW. I was remembering as much as I could of Guests of the Ayatollah as I was watching it. Despite it having some institutional flaws, I do admire our Foreign Service. I so wish I could have been part of it. Good work by Affleck (who is one of those people, Julia Roberts being another, whom I seem to be the only person to enjoy their work; ah, well). Marvelous acting, too from Alan Arkin and John Goodman. Nice cameos for Kyle Chandler, Bryan Cranston, and Victor Garber.

Had a very nice date this morning with someone I will call The SCAdian. Brunch in Arlington, lots of good conversation, very appealing person. Hope to see her again.

Right, on with the chores!

from The Giddy Limit

I've an update or two owing: various things happening and the first books read of 2013. But that will have to come later. In the meantime, I have for your entertainment pictures of cats and pictures from the holidays.

I got a new humidifier. Hopefully this will last better than the last one, which was similarly expensive, seemed to do little good, and got quite foul and icky rather quickly.

I had forgotten that Nicholas was fascinated by the idea of something with water in it THAT YOU CAN'T GET AT and was always pawing the other one. This he seems OK to watch with interest, only pawing it occasionally, maybe because it has clear reservoirs that allow you to see the water.

For some reason, though, these occasionally get air bubbles that percolate loudly to the top. The burbling noise they make when this happens sounds disturbingly like a cat in the initial stages of bringing up a hairball...

So, I had to take the cats out of the apartment yesterday. We won't even go into why, because I will get all angry and distracted, but suffice to say that, against my wishes, my apartment had to be vacated by all humans and animals for an indeterminate part of the middle of the day yesterday. Since I was down to work nine hours Friday and was acting PM for my team, I couldn't take the day off to handle it.

Some friends kindly allowed my guys to come stay with them for the day. I took them over first thing in the morning and came back in the evening to collect them. When I had dropped them off and asked if there was a particular room to stash them in, their hosts just said , "Oh, let them loose--they'll be fine". Nicco got out of his carrier right away and started exploring. Finn didn't get out until I persuaded him to, and then went and hid under a couch. Busby also didn't get out right away, but when one of the resident cats (a very sweet, friendly kitty named Tesla) came over to investigate the carriers and proceeded to walk into his, he seemed to feel that maybe there was really not enough space for two cats inside and squeezed out as she was squeezing in.

Well, come evening I arrive to collect my boys, hoping they have not been bad guests. No, apparently they've been so good that they've been invisible. Finn was still under the couch where he'd been when I left (being ill, rather noisily). Busby turned out to be hiding in an uncovered wall space (apparently favoured by many visiting cats), but came out when I grapsed the scruff of his neck and pulled gently. :-)

But Nicco was nowhere to be seen! We looked in the hidey holes they knew cats got into, under the furniture, in the upstairs rooms, no Nicholas. When asked if he could have gotten out, no one was quite sure, but they didn't *think* so. Calling, rattling a bowl of cat crunchies, rattling his jingly ball, nothing got him to show himself. So in the end I had to bring the other guys home and leave him there; the hosts promised to snag the deserter if he appeared and call the provost marshal (me). But it's a bit of a mystery, and when I woke up at 4 in the morning and realised he wasn't here, I confess I had some bad moments imagining how he might be feeling and what he might be doing if he *had* gotten out and was wandering around a strange neighbourhood in the dark trying to find his way home.

I miss my kitty. :-(