Memorial Weekend: Cats, Cons, and Games

[rowyn]

After work Friday I'd planned to go for a jog, but Lut suggested we mow the lawn instead, since it was supposed to be a rainy weekend. So I went out to mow the ditch in front of our house with the electric mower while Lut mowed the rest with the riding mower. This isn't so much "cutting the grass" as "hacking all the weeds down to uniform height." I do not love yard maintenance.

Yard maintenance doesn't love me, either. The weeds and ground of the ditch were still wet from rain on Wednesday, and I slipped and fell a few times. I twisted my right ankle a little, and did something horrible to my right hip, which proceeded to enact its revenge by sending ferocious spasms of pain through me whenever it moved in any fashion that resulted in any kind of twisting. Walking was okay; sitting and lying didn't hurt. Everything else, including moving from a sitting to standing position, did.

Despite this, I did some cleaning around the house while on the phone with koogrr. I was cleaning as the end result of the following conversation with my boss earlier in the day:

Boss: I don't suppose you have any interest in getting another cat ... ?
Me: Actually, Lut's been saying we should get another cat as company for Ash, so she might be less hopelessly lethargic.
Boss: Really?! You would?

Her brother and his wife had adopted a stray cat a month ago, but she didn't get along with their current three cats, so they were looking for a new home for it. She was a mostly-grown cat, estimated at ten months. I agreed to take her in, contingent on her and Ash adapting to one another. Since she's not a kitten anyway, I'm not worried about hurting her chances of later adoption if it doesn't work out.

So the sister-in-law called me Friday evening and planned to bring her over on Sunday at noon.

Saturday morning, my hip felt even worse. ConQuesT was this weekend, and while I hadn't planned to go for the whole weekend, I had intended to go on Saturday. But even before my hip started giving me grief, I hadn't been terribly enthusiastic. Lut asked , "When were you going to head out?" Lut hasn't gone to a con himself in ten years and isn't interested in them any more.

"I dunno. Maybe around 3." At about noon, I logged on to City of Heroes. terrycloth was on, and after a bit of dithering, we decided to play our villain epic archtype characters on the Virtue server. Lut and Terry are playing wolf spiders, and I'd made up a blood widow.

We'd played them a couple of times so far and they hadn't been a whole lot of fun yet. I kinda wanted to level them faster, to get them to the "interesting" stage. Bigger groups in CoV get an exp bonus, so I asked the others if they'd mind me looking for some strays to add to the group.

With a core of three, gathering more wasn't too bad. Some people even do use the "looking for team" function in CoV, much to my surprise, and that made it easier.

So for most of the session, we had a group of 5-8 people, which was a nice change of pace. After a couple of hours, Lut asked, "Did you want to leave for the con at 3PM, or get there at 3PM?"

"I'm not sure I want to go at all. Don't worry about it."

Around 4:30, Lut said, "I'm hungry. I haven't eaten anything all day."

"Me too. But I figure in a little bit Terry will want to head out and we can let the group break up then." Which proved to be true. After struggling through one more mission (I really should've reset it at a lower difficulty after the team lost a couple of 15s and replaced them with a sidekick and a 13), we broke up. We'd made six levels over the course of the session, which felt nice. My widow got superspeed, so even if she's still not much of a fighter at least now she's fast. Whee!

Lut and I went to Buffalo Wild Wings for lunch -- well, dinner by now. After dinner, I dinked around a bit on the 'net while Lut played Age of Conan, then went back into CoH. To my surprise, Terrycloth was on again so we teamed up. Terry was playing a rock-insect from the elemental plane of earth, who liked the Rogue Isles better than her native plane because not much here tries to eat rocks. I played Little Terror, who's also part insect. We RP'd a bit with them, which was cute because they're both rather weird concepts.

Around 10PM, I told Terry, "Believe it or not, I actually do want to drive out to the con to go to room parties for a couple of hours." So I logged out, threw on some comfortable congarb and my flat-heeled boots (no way was I wearing heels) and headed out.

I specifically went to attend jimmy_hollaman's RoomCon 4: RoomCon of the Dead. The theme was to have all dead writers and fans as guests of honor, with more of a Mexican Day of the Dead celebratory feel than a gothy or morbid tone.

Bland Lemon Denton was playing to a crowded room. He's been at every RoomCon so far, but this year he brought better equipment and a friend who also played guitar. They sounded great. They played a mix of covers and originals and fannish stuff, with Denton doing some things solo and some with accompaniment. I snuggled up to Jimmy and listened. Among other songs they did a good version of "Werewolves of London" and, by request of course, "Freebird". Denton told the room, during the guitar solo, "You're supposed to go 'woo' and sh*t now." This ... was a mistake, in predictably fannish fashion.

I got a souveneir death shroud (yay!) and RoomCon 4 button (yay!) nkcmike came by in a daze and didn't notice me, and since my hip hurt every time I got up or sat down I didn't get up. aminita came by and did see me, so we said hi and I got to see her new corset, which looks awesome on her. I also got to see Tracy and skyflame and Kerri. I told everyone, "I just got here. I'm not attending ConQuesT this year, just RoomCon." I drew a picture for the RoomCon art show because that's traditional.

But I didn't spend the whole time at RoomCon. I meandered down the hall to investigate the other parties. I found Mark, whom I've not seen in at least five years, so that was really cool. He's working as database admin at UMB now, and has the distinction of being the only person I've met who likes working at UMB.

I caught verminiusrex in the hall and ran off to chat with him for a bit. Then wandered back down the hall with Skyflame in search of the party that was handing out dragon stickers, which I never found. I did catch Julianna and Geoff in the Australian room party, though. The Australian room party had quite a nice feel to it, with eight ot ten people spread across chairs and bed, and one conversation that everyone was listening to and participating in, mostly about weather differences and customs across the world.

After three hours, it was late enough that I decided to go home. I spent a little more time cuddling Jimmy before I left. He looked around the room, which even at 2AM was still hosting over a dozen people, and said, "Someday I'm going to have to host a good party. You know, one people will come to."

I grinned and hugged him. "You mean where it's not just you and me and the musicians?"

I was glad I went, and got to see most of the people I wanted to see, if not for very long. It was very much a RoomCon experience: just like a regular con, only smaller and briefer.

I went to sleep on the couch, because it's easier to get up from. Woke and had horrible pains again moving around afterwards, but cleaned up the foyer for the new cat despite it.

The new cat is a calico, which they've been imaginatively calling "Cally". If I keep her, I'll probably give her a new name.

The sister-in-law brought her in a cat carrier, which I asked her to leave so I could leave the two cats in the same room for a couple of hours and not worry about them clawing each other.

It started out like this:

Cally: Meow. Mreow. Mew. Mreow.
Ash: *sniffsniff*
Cally: *hiss!*
Ash: *hiss!* *claw cage*
Me: Ash! Be nice.
Ash: *gives me look of perplexed innocence*
Cally: Meow. Mreow. Mew. Mreow.

Repeat with variants for 45 minutes.

After that they ran out of enthusiasm and glowered at each other vaguely through the carrier bars. An hour after that, I took Cally out to the extension and let her loose. The extension of my house exists pretty much to give an enclosed stairwell to the basement. There's about a 6'x8' "room" on both the first floor and basement level. I used to keep the litterbox out there, but for the winter I've had it in the kitchen and Ash hasn't been out in the extension.

So I set up food and water and a litterbox and a scratching post and a cat bed for Cally out there. I petted her for a bit after letting her out; she purred and seemed all right. I left her there.

sophrani called shortly thereafter, and I spent an hour chatting with her and going for a walk, because I needed some exercise and walking didn't bother my hip that much. Lut played more Age of Conan, I took a nap and played more CoH.

Cally, meanwhile, hid in the basement. We accidentally flushed her out from under the stairs at one point, and she bolted upstairs to cower on top of some boxes and mewl piteouslt at Lut, who was trying to say hi. He gave up after a bit; I stuck around to try to calm her down. Eventually she let me pet her, but she didn't purr or seem happy. I left her alone for a few hours. When I came back she was still up there. This time she purred when I petted her.

Monday morning, she was back to hiding under the stairs. Lut and I went to Panera for lunch and to Walmart for groceries. After that I talked to koogrr and telnar on the phone and went for another long walk. After the walk, the pain from my hip decided to migrate to the small of my back, where it is still lodged today. And where it annoys me no matter what I'm doing. Blah.

Last night I was pretty worried about Cally, because she hadn't apparently eaten, drank, or excreted since arriving 30+ hours ago. That she didn't eat didn't bug me, but that she wasn't urinating or (apparently) drinking did, because cats dehydrate quickly. So I flushed her out of the basement again, searching to see if there was some concealed nook she was using in lieu of the litterbox. No luck. I held her in my lap and petted her and told her she didn't have to hide in the nastiest, most miserable part of my basement like an unwanted pest. She purred at me for a while peaceably, then climbed out of my lap and hid under the stairs again. Sigh.

I moved a little food, water, and litterbox to the basement. I also set a little food and water upstairs. Only a little food, so I could tell if she'd eaten or not.

This morning, all the food was gone and Cally'd used the litterbox. So at least I know she's not going to kill herself with kidney poisoning or dehydration, yay.

Cally herself was, of course, hiding under the stairs. So, so far she's at best kinda getting along with one of three members of the household. Not sure this is going to work out long term, but I'll give her at least a week to see if she adapts.

Comments

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

We had a cat who ended up living under the stairs in the basement for *years*... we couldn't flush him out because none of us could fit back there.

I don't know what happened to him, but he must be dead by now. Hopefully he's not a little skeleton still hiding behind the stairs...

[rowyn]

Fortunately, I'm small enough and the space under the stairs is large enough that I can get to her. But she's still hiding under the stairs. At the rate, if I'm keeping her, we're gonna rename her GhostKitty. Or Phantom. Or something.

I really don't want to take care of a cat that hides under the stairs for the rest of her life, though.

[(Anonymous)]

Really missed seeing you at ConQuesT last weekend. I was playing Gary Gygax ("Hi, I'm Gary Gygax and I am... [rolls dice] ...pleased to meet you.") at the Con of the Dead, but I must have left before you arrived. My wife and I were tag-teaming on the parties -- one of us had to stay in our room with the sleeping kids while the other was out for an hour. I was there for Bland Lemon Denton's first two songs, then my time was up and I had to leave.

Sorry to hear about your injuries. Hope you have gotten better.

We don't expect to be up in the KC area until ConQuesT next year, so I'll have to wait until then to see you; unless you come down to Tulsa for Conestoga in July. I'll be there to give a couple of lectures on Scottish history as background for Diana Gabaldon's appearance.

Oops!

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry, forgot to add my name to the end of the previous post!

-- (formerly) MenziesClan