new cat, not the same as the old cat

Oh, right, here’s a Thing that’s been happening. Um, well, you know Lilu died at the end of January and it was horrid and I grieved (and still do). I am croggled: how does the loss of an 8-pound cat make our gigantic house seem so empty?

So in April I started campaigning for a cat from the local shelter. I didn’t want to raise another cat from infancy – turns out you get too attached when you do that, and besides, shelter cats need rescuing. After considerable debate (A Certain Husband may have changed his mind a few more times than was strictly necessary) we settled on a black foundling named Mona. She still needed to be fixed (the pound is very against unnecessary kittens) and vaccinated and given ID-tattoos (badass pirate kitty). Then she needed 10 days to recover, and someone from the pound visited our house to make sure we know what we’re getting into and we’re not living in filth or buying cats to feed to our alligators or something, and then on Friday we got to take her home and change her name – because srsly, James Taylor wrote a song about a pig named Mona and that’s a song virus I can live without. Now she has to live inside and poop in a box for six weeks, and then we can let her out.

Maybe. 

Extispicy!

… is the practice of reading the future in animal guts. The Babylonians did it, and so did the Etruscans, who passed the practice on to the Romans. I have no idea how to pronounce it, but in my head it sounds like “extra spicy!”

Working in academia –> awesome factoids.

Song du jour of the day: Love Train, by the O jays!