Hello Kitty.

On August 9th, Forth and I brought home a new addition to the family: a happy, bouncing, bundle…..of fur. A gift of sorts from Viana_17 courtesy of her farm-dwelling friend, Viana got attached to the cat and offered to help pay for some of its necessities if Forth and I would take him. Since we’d been jonesing for a cat for some time and Viana will easily be able to visit the kitty when she comes to visit from UW-Madison….we accepted.

So meet Atticus Mandarb:

First name courtesy of myself and our literary tendencies, middle name courtesy of Viana and the Wheel of Time book series. Anyway, while he’s cute and all, I would absolutely suggest owning a baby animal of some kind before getting all retarded over babies. Because let me tell you–this thing is close enough to a real newborn human to make me absolutely confident that Forth and I will be the last to spawn of all the weddings we’ve been to in the last four years.

Sure he’s cute and all but the first night we brought him home it was a waiting game to see if he was going to poop or pee and if he was going to do it in the correct place. We placed him in the litterbox frequently to make sure he knew where to do his biz. Of course after that as we were trying to go to sleep I rocked him and scratched his belly until I thought he was out cold but of course he woke up and felt the need to yowl or jump around on the bed or paw at our faces each hour on the hour from 11 p.m. till 8 in the morning. Forth and I took turns placing him in the litterbox in the middle of the night, or bringing him to his food and water dishes to make sure he had the proper sustenance. Sure cleaning the litterbox isn’t quite like changing a diaper, but it’s as close as I’d like to come for now.

This all goes without mentioning the disciplinary actions that need to be taken with what went from a shy, timid kitty to a jumping, scratching, obnoxiously hyper juvenile cat. I prefer lifting him by the scruff and yelling when we discover he’s been messing with the candles on the windowsill, peeing in the giant potted palm, clawing at the doorjambs, scratching up the bedspread, knocking over glasses of water, chewing up unattended pieces of paper, and et cetera. However, Forth will merely lift him by the scruff and explain calmly to the kitty that he has done something wrong. It’s very obvious when you take a look at our two personalities, but those sort of mixed signals would seriously mess a real child up.

At least the thing sleeps for 16 hours of the day, we can leave Atticus alone with a giant bowl of food and water for a weekend (plus RocLobster enjoys catsitting), and my vagina is still in tact, so I’d say that a baby kitty >  newborn–at least for the next ten years or so.

**Back.

O Guppies, Where Art Thou?

I notoriously suck at having fish. During my college career I’ve been able to keep two beta fish alive for only about three months at a time. First there was Cleo–the pretty purple fish. I thought I was doing everything correctly taking care of her, but then she started to float sideways and a week later I wake up one morning to find that she had very primitively retreated to the plastic cave at the bottom of the tank to die. A few months later I decide to try being a fish-mommy again with fire-engine red beta Mose. Lo and behold a couple months later his fins start flaking off, he starts to get transparent, and then dies.

After blaming both myself and apparently untreatable Minneapolis City tap water, I decided to take some time off from rearing water-creatures. But since Forth and I passed up on getting a free cat a week or so ago, I was bitten by the pet bug and decided to break out the old aquarium and bought three tiny male guppies named Mercutio, Benvolio, and Balthazar–because that is how sweet it is to be an English major.

I placed them in the tank after the water had been sitting out for awhile, and then conditioned. I plan on only changing out about a quarter of the water every week and feeding them twice daily. I made sure the tank decorations were clean and that the water temp. is 75-82 degrees. So please, PLEASE if anybody knows what I can do to spare these poor aquatic beings and actually keep them alive as long as possible, let me know. If these fish die, I’m officially going to be seriously concerned about my and Forth’s future spawn.

**Back.