cat tower project

Well, we built a floor-to-ceiling cat scratching post and climbing tower. It was much less than half the cost of buying one, including buying tools. I took about 10 hours for the two of us, totally inexperienced, to build it, and that includes doing all the cutting, carpeting, and so on. Not bad. Here's a photo journal of the construction process:


stuff to build it

box construction

nailing the box together [the box is ridiculously overbuilt, with supports in the four corners and around the hole in the top, where the 8-foot 4x4 post goes]

carpeted interior, two doorways for kitty egress/exit/ambush

carpeting exterior of box

Alexander helping out

Arthur helping out

what would we do without their carpeting supervision?

or without Arthur's quality control?

luckily, it passed

They played on the tower for about an hour last night and a little this morning, before it got hideously hot. Siesta time now.

landmark 361st post

Last night, the kittoises slept almost through the night. When I woke to the alarm (a cd player alarm; the Monkees, I swear to it), they were curled up on us, sweetly sleeping. As usual, Alexander immediately woke when he saw me moving, and as usual, Arthur was the first one downstairs in the kitchen to beg for breakfast. But they didn't wake me up, at 5, or 4:30, by jumping up and down on top of us wrestling and biting each other (and us). This morning is also the first morning in the past week when it was actually chilly (we've had record temperatures until yesterday).

From this I conclude: the kittens are heat-activated.

But that's not what I meant to write about. No, that would be

Doc Nagel's Top 100 Things

25. Notes sung in the "dog register." I just love 'em.

Last night we went to the Cow State Santa Claus Chamber Singers (a.k.a. Daniel Afonso's Elite Republican Guard) concert. These are the top-shelf choral singers on campus, and they never fail to impress. Last night they were a little bit impressiver than usual, particularly the altos. Altos tend to sound weaker in choral groups, in my experience, but this group are quite strong. My loveliest (a one-time soprano-trapped-in-an-alto's-section) suggested that it's hard to find traditional college-age students who are strong altos, because altos develop later as voices deepen.

In any case, a couple of the numbers featured extremely high notes from first sopranos, which is just about my favorite thing that ever happens in choral music. The more the sopranos have to reach, the more I like it. They weren't hitting Ds or anything, but there were definitely a few As, and I believe a B or two.

I don't know what it is, exactly. I feel those dog notes in my bones. Perhaps I'm a dog. Perhaps, as Afonso once suggested to me, I have a sadistic urge focused on sopranos. Well, so did Mozart, so neener-neener, sopranos!

24. Musical dissonances. I just love 'em.

There wasn't as much of this as there sometimes is, but there was a smattering in Eric Whitacre's "Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine," an uplifting (hah!) modern piece in which the choir evokes dreaming, flying, wind, and machines, and the siren call of the will to fly.

Dissonance may not be a word Whitacre, or anybody who knows anything about music, would accept as a description, but by it I mean a tonal tension that sounds like something weird has happened to the piano. I love those moments because I love the feeling of being on the verge, or about to be shoved off the cliff, or about to let go of the rope. I only love that feeling in music, art, literature, philosophy, and theater, and I don't just love it, I have to have it, or I don't feel like anything very important has happened.

Like the Bach piece they did last night. Bach, it struck me, is just like Leibniz. Music is a universal language, Bach's concertos and whatnot are generated by a Leibnizian calculating machine, and each piece in Bach's Werke is the perfect solution generated by the machine. Bach is just the mechanic. Contrast Mozart, who is just like Kant: everything perfectly rational, but also sublime and beautiful, and he swears up and down that's the same thing, and he can prove it, if you'd only sit down and listen, honestly, he's got the whole thing worked out, it's, you know... this!

Okay, seem to have wandered a bit. Last day of classes. Wooo!

still further evidence

Oh, good grief! Do you have any idea how much strain seeing cuteness like this simply does not cause? Can you imagine the degree of pain and suffering we do not face as a result?



Then again, Arthur has developed a fascination and talent for attacking and biting hands, because he has not distinguished (a) human from kitten flesh, nor (b) calming petting behavior from exciting combative behavior.

Dyson

People who read this blog (I could name approximately 3) know of my predilection for freshly-vacuumed carpets. With a fluffy cat and two long-haired hippies living in the house at the time, vacuuming was more than a hobby.

A couple months ago a pair of Kirby door-to-door hacks came by, gave us a demo of the honestly astounding cleaning power of the Kirby, and tried to sell us a Kirby do-it-all machine for the bargain price of $1500 $1200 $1000 cash. They were competing, they said, to try to win Kirby vacuums for themselves, to advance in their salesforces, and to compete for a vacation prize. This, it turns out, is a scam: the vacuums they sell door to door, the demo models, are generally rebuilts, and their stated sticker price, which ranges from $2000 to $2500 (our dudes said $2500), are huge premiums over Kirby's suggested retail of around $1200.

Anyway, the machine impressed, though we made a quick Google search of the vacs while the demo guy was shampooing our living room carpet, found out the scam, and didn't bite. We did, however, come to a chilling realization of the gross inadequacies of our Dirt Devil Jaguar. More research suggested that Dyson's machines are at least in the running with Kirbys for performance standards. My loveliest's family swears by them. So we've been talking about getting one.

Doc Nagel's Heap of Things

26. Dyson vacuums. I just love 'em.

Last weekend we saw the Dyson Slimline on big big sale at the local Kohl's, while there looking for something completely different (I wandered a bit). They were out. We got a rain check. I was disappointed, but whattayagonnado?

Today, I decided to bring out the ol' Jag to clean up while Alexander and Arthur were at the vet's being neutered (successfully; Arthur is, of this writing, woozy as all heck and complaining, and Alexander is, typically, resigned to the whole thing). I wasn't getting any suction, which is the whole point, if you will, of vacuum cleaners. So, as usual, I assumed that a clog of cat fluff and human hair, along with Arthur's kittie-litter-redecorating detritus, had developed in the beast. I cleaned all pipes, tried again, and still nothing.

What I wish I had said: It's dead, Jim.

What I actually said: Well, it looks like you and Lancelot finally got your revenge against the vacuum. Good boy, Lance. A posthumous kill.

So, we plied the Internets looking for someone who would sell us a Dyson on the quick, and found out, to my surprise, that Target sells them, for competitive prices. Gots it. And boy, howdy. This thing sucks.

I vacuumed the upstairs, and the stairs themselves, and overfilled the dust tank. The stairs look like they're coming out of a terrible dirt hangover, all kinda disheveled but managing to stand up on their own and smile wanly at the sun.

Perhaps I take vacuuming a little too... existentially.

home alone

My loveliest is off at some sort of bridal brunch kinda thing, so I'm here with the monster kittens (as of this writing, Arthur is in the middle of a freakout session; Alexander is eating us out of house and home) and a stack of papers to grade. I haven't quite started yet.

I'm listening to Winterpills, which I rarely do when Lauren is around, for some reason. My musical tendencies swing toward the mopey alternative, especially in mid-morning, and that's not as often her thing, I think. How that might affect my students' grades, I don't know.

Lately, we've been thinking about having green kittens. This turns out to be difficult to get solid information about, and in some ways difficult to achieve. The main thing we're concerned about, obviously enough, is kitten waste. It's startling how much waste two 3-pound kittens generate in a day (which I realize is hardly breakfast conversation), and for the most part, our options are to flush or to bag this waste. The State of California officially discourages flushing, but bagging means tossing away a plastic bag of kitten poop every day. Lauren looked up composting, and it does seem like it's feasible, given about a half-acre or so of land to give yourself some distance, and appropriate composting techniques. (Even given that, there's dispute about the presence of a toxin in kitten waste, if they've been eating mice or other wildlife.)

An article in the anthology I use for Contemporary Moral Issues cites the statistic that people in the US and the EU spend $3 billion more annually on pet food than it would cost to feed hungry people worldwide. I don't know whether that's true, or if true, a distortion, but in any case, a simple glance around your local big-box pet supplies store should give you a perspective on the amount of resources we do expend on pets. It's all gotta come from somewhere and go somewhere, but just like Target, the Pet Extreme (or whatever) doesn't at all show you what place in the resources-and-wastes chain you and Fluffy or Xerxes occupy.

On the other hand, there've been some incredibly idiotic eco-pets ideas, like turning your cats on to a vegetarian diet. As much as we'd like to have green kittens, there are few ideas we've found so far that aren't impractical for us or totally hare-brained.

home sick

Not homesick, but unwell, and not teaching classes today. Bleh.

But I did have something to share:

How To Use The Litterbox by Arthur

Step 1: Hop into the box.
Step 2: Kick approximately 1/2 cup of litter out of the box, with 4 quick, deep kicks.
Step 3: Twist around to face the other way. Repeat 2-3 additional times.
Step 4: Kick approximately 1/4 cup of litter out of the box.
Step 5: Jump out of the box.
Step 6: Jump into the box.
Step 7: Kick litter into one corner of the box. If necessary, repeat steps 5-7.
Step 8: Do your business.
Step 9: Cover between 1/2 and 3/4 of your business by kicking litter randomly around in the box.
Step 10: Jump out of the box and run away.

Then there's:


How To Help Arthur Use The Litterbox by Alexander

Step 1: Watch for Arthur jumping into the litterbox.
Step 2: Run past the litterbox, either chasing Arthur out or feigning to.
Step 3: Return to litterbox, watch intently.
Step 4: As Arthur spins around in the litterbox, pace excitedly by the box. It may seem to irritate Arthur, but it's actually supposed to be encouraging. Enthusiasm is contagious, so if you display a lot of enthusiasm, Arthur will be enthused, too.
Step 5: Squeak at Arthur. (See Step 4.)
Step 6: When Arthur jumps out of the box, run to the box and either cover or uncover his business, by scratching litter around randomly.
Step 7: Run after Arthur.

And of course:


How To Use The Litterbox by Alexander

Step 1: Jump into the box.
Step 2: Scratch at litter once.
Step 3: Do your business.
Step 4: Scratch at litter once.
Step 5: Jump out of box, run away.
Step 6: Leap onto Arthur's head.

even more disturbing evidence

The kittoises have doubled in size, and although I don't think they've doubled in cuteness, they've certainly taken to some extremely cute



mutual face-biting


sleeping


waking up

and lens-cap attacking.

weekend & cross-posting& kittens kittens kittens

In one of my classes, I'm requiring students to participate in an online threaded discussion board. We'd been reading about Foucault and surveillance, and a question came up about the adjustments people have made that allow them to relax about the constant surveillance we're under, especially in social networking sites.

I took it in this direction:

I'm not usually a fan of trend-thinking (identifying and analyzing passing trends), because it often seems to be either a kind of futurism, or else devolves into fairly obvious commentaries on something essentially already passé. In the case of social-networking sites and the mode of self-disclosure, there does seem to be a change in the way we deal with matters we keep secret and those we disclose.

An example of this is journal or diary keeping. The electronic language of on-line journals alters relationships between self and others, both known and unknown, both intimate and anonymous.

We could interpret this as a genre of narrative, as well, and track how online self-disclosing expressions operate as performances or constructions of self or of identity. I keep an online journal, in the form of a blog. It's fairly self-disclosive, but in the shape of a narrative of personal events, world events, ideas, and so forth, that are genuinely expressive of certain shapes of my identity. I even have a name for this identity (as do many online diarists - their handles or screen-names): Doc Nagel.

Am I Doc Nagel? At least provisionally, at least in some respects. That identity is located somewhere between/among my instructor-identity, my academic-identity, my activist-identity, my philosopher-identity, my gourmet-identity, my hockey-fan-identity, my kitten-obsessive-identity, and my private life. All those intersect, are played out, and are shaped and addressed through the journal. I'm careful about how I write in it, though not all that careful. (Then again, I'm not all that careful about what I say in any public forum or in any university venue.)

Exposure, surveillance, and discipline are decidedly at issue. At one point, I was asked by a university official to either take down or to eliminate a link to my online journal, because its contents were printed off and mailed to the university in order to try to get me into trouble (it's a long story, and no, I'm not telling). Some people have been fired for criticizing their employers in online journals, and a good friend of mine has changed journals three or four times to evade being identified as the blogger in question (though not because she's particularly critical of anybody).

In other news, I have completed 4 weeks of non-stop work, stress, and craziness. I am taking the (vast majority of the) weekend off. Penguins-Rangers in just over an hour. Woohoo!

Kittens kittens kittens kittens. Alexander is now 2.12 pounds, and Alex is 2.07. Pictures to come soon. Stay tuned. They'll get nipped in 3 more weeks. Meanwhile, total kitten insanity reigns.

caution: this could be very bad for your eyes

Colorless green ideas may sleep furiously (we may never know), but littermate tabby kittens sleep adorably. What you don't even see here are the variations on these poses, some of which are even cuter than these dangerously cute pictures (as always, I'm concerned about liability): Arthur sleeping lying across Alexander's middle, so that Alex's side looks like Arthur has grown a strange, bushy, gray and black striped beard; Alexander and Arthur sleeping tail-to-head like a ying-yang symbol; the two of them in the wicker basket in the kitchen where we keep extra placemats and napkins.

We keep nearly missing videorecording them playing in probably illegally cute ways, like playing swats through the open toe and heel parts of a sandal; or the sudden random leaps up to the second stair, followed by limboing under the stair railing and walking up the flat incline on the side of the steps, while playing swats through the railing bars.







In other news, I'm busy as hell, and the economy is going foom. Bon appetit!

update

The kittens now have names. They've also had their first vet visit.

The silver tabby is now officially Alexander (for Alexander the Great). The orange tabby is now Arthur (for King Arthur, Arthur Dent, and Arthur Pewtie). Alexander weighs 1.07 pounds, Arthur 1.01 pounds.

A quick peak into some of the action:



Arthur in deep thought, contemplating his next move.



Arthur and Alexander investigating the sliding door, with special attention to the track.



Establishing dominance over the fuzzy streamer toy. (Alexander made the revolutionary discovery that it's the stick that really runs the thing. If you dominate the stick, you dominate the streamer. Unless it's wrapped around your head. That's just confusing.)



Alexander exhausted from all the activity.

here are our kittens

News flash:

KITTENS!

where are our kittens?

We've spent hours and hours since Wednesday afternoon trying to find kittens to adopt, exhausting almost all options. It's frustrating, but more than that it's becoming very upsetting to me.

I feel like adopting kittens is the last thing we can and should do for getting through Lancelot's terrible death. The adoption is inextricably connected in my mind with Lancelot's end. We're adopting kittens because Lancelot isn't with us any more. If he were, we wouldn't be thinking of it. For two months now, there's been a very obvious and definite hole in our lives and in our place, and it has never stopped hurting. I will always be hurt by the loss of that incredibly excellent cat, but it is time for there to be cats again.

It would be easier if we weren't in the kitten market. There are adult cats to be adopted probably everyplace in the US. We want kittens because we want to raise them to be used to things like having their claws trimmed and being brushed. And, well, you've seen kittens. What's better than a kitten?