Tag Archives: Striker the cat

Self Isolation Day 12: A Day of Leisure

26 Mar

I slept so much of today away I would consider it a waste of a day, except I had nothing to do today soooo not like I missed out on something by sleeping.

I initially woke up at 7am, which is disturbing, so like any sane person I rolled over and went back to sleep. With Striker’s approval of course! I figured I’d wake up in another couple hours but not quite, I ended up waking up around 2pm!

Now, I could try to justify this by saying I haven’t been feeling 100% and my body obviously needed to rest. Or that because I did so much physical stuff yesterday, when not well, I paid the price today. Or it could just be because I am lazy. I’ll let you pick!

I wasn’t able to work today thanks to system glitches so I basically did nothing. Well, if you consider cuddling a cat for the majority of your day nothing, which I assure you neither Striker or myself do.

Taking a break from my lap to sleep on the ottoman.

I did try a new to me beer with dinner but didn’t like it so poured it out. A waste of beer I know, an act that should be illegal, but no way was I ingesting all those calories if I didn’t love the taste!

Just not for me.

It is with a heavy heart I report I am now out of beer. Guess I’ll be moving onto wine!

Random Updates:

I’m now on Season 4 of Criminal Minds and still loving it. I decided I have to stop being online as much because I keep thinking it’s a good idea to buy stuff. Oh, and my Golden Oreos are almost gone, which means I soon will have absolutely no reason to get up and may wither away in bed perpetually.

How is your self-isolation going? Broken into the junk food yet?

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Self Isolation Day 11: Cleaning Has Commenced

25 Mar

Except for the pantry and fridge organization way back on, what was it, Day 3?, I haven’t done any extra cleaning. I had other projects to work on and prioritized those over boring ‘ol cleaning.

Sadly, I have run out of projects, and all I have left is cleaning..and organizing, but really, I lump those together.

First thing this morning I attended a virtual WW workshop, which if you don’t know what that is it’s fine, if you do know what that is, aren’t they great? I chatted with my parents for a bit after the workshop and decided that while yes, I was still cozy in my pjs, I was two mugs of tea in to the day and I might as well stay up…my original plan was to take part in the virtual workshop then go back to bed lol

Since I was up I made use of all that extra time one has when they actually get up in the morning and I cooked myself a hot breakfast sandwich, which, fyi, was delish. 🙂

Eventually the cleaning started. I had intended to do more of the deep cleaning type stuff but found I had a lot of organizing, and putting away, and the like, to do before pulling out the cleaning products. So organize I did! My desk is a work of art! I actually sat at it after I was all done with my tidying for the day and wrote a letter, and two cards, and did tasks one normally does at a desk, I felt like such a grown-up!

I tidied and organized more than my desk but that is the part I am most happy with.

After all that I decided I deserved something more substantial than a bowl of cereal so I did the unthinkable, I cooked!

Using the last of my bag of salad, well, the last of it that hadn’t gone slimy or brown, I made a lazy person’s taco salad.

day 11

The salad had salad (duh!), ground turkey that I mixed taco seasoning in with, sauteed onions, shredded cheese, horribly cut tomato, and a blob of sour cream. Those little tots on the side are cauliflower tots that I bought on a whim and decided to try. They were…ok. I tried the ones made from broccoli a while ago and those were better, these just tasted like mushed cauliflower, which is not something I think is all that great. Oh I forgot! After I had mixed the salad up so it no longer looked picture ready I crushed some tortilla chips and sprinkled those on top.

The final effort was ok. Not amazing, but not horrible, I didn’t give myself food poisoning so I count the meal as a win. 🙂

My apartment is tiny, and has 2 windows, one in the living room and one in the bedroom. Both look out on fences so neither is amazing. I do my best to keep the windowsills empty for Striker, he occasionally likes to look outside and since being stuck at home I learned he has a daily routine of going on to the living room windowsill to sit in the tiny sun patch we get every day.

Today however he wasn’t all that interested in the sun patch so I moved those plants I re-potted last week on to the windowsill to catch some rays. I should confess, not all the plants made it, two have died, sigh. But four have lived! With luck they will continue to live until I get them back to the office where they will have daily exposure to sunlight.

day 11a

I tried to position them so some of each of their leaves were getting sunlight, which means they overlap each other, I figure they might like that though, since they were so close to each other for so many months. They might get lonely without each other nearby…or are plants not like that?

Anyways! They took over the windowsill and Striker didn’t seem to mind but a little while later he decided to take a closer look at the havoc I wreaked to his space…

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I thought I was going to have to leap up to save a plant from being nibbled on, or swatted at, but nope. He hasn’t gone anywhere near them since the above pictures were taken. Now, either, he is tricking me in to thinking he doesn’t care and tonight he will destroy them while I sleep, or he really doesn’t care, and if that is the case they may just stay there until I go back to work Sunday. It all depends on what he does to them tonight!

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Self Isolation Day 9: Student Loan Confusion

23 Mar

Nothing special happened today. No epic cleaning or organizing took place, no big project completed, it was just a normal day. Well, normal in the way of our new normal.

I started the day with a headache which had me going back to bed in the hopes of sleeping it off. I only have 4 Advil left and I feel this strong need to hoard them, make sure I have them if something worse than a headache comes along. The nap did help the headache go away, which makes me glad I didn’t pop that pill.

Once I was up for the day I did some work online, had a lot of cat cuddles, watched more Criminal Minds, I am now on Season 3 if anyone cares. Of course there was time spent scrolling through social media and a happy thing that came of that was a friend I hadn’t talked to in ages and I reconnected. It is 100% my fault we stopped messaging each other and I’m so grateful she is a better person than I and forgives my having been an ass. I’ve really missed her. Once all this chaos is over we have agreed one of us will fly to visit the other, she is in Los Angeles, so not that far away when we aren’t in the middle of a pandemic. Or are we not in the middle yet? Are we still considered to be at the beginning of it? Oh now that’s a depressing thought…quick! insert cat pictures!

I came across someone who is in an Acting Vancouver BC group on Facebook who is looking for people to collaborate with. Not in person right now, obviously, but eventually, when people can hang out again. So I reached out and we chatted for a bit. He has a good director demo reel and we’re gonna keep in touch. It may turn in to nothing but it doesn’t hurt to try.

My one thing I really wanted to accomplish today was to chat with someone at the NSLSC, the National Student Loan Services Centre. They have on their website a big ‘ol banner saying if you are repaying a student loan you don’t have to make payments, and interest will not accrue, until the end of September, which is amazing and makes me so happy. But! When I was checking my email I have an email from them, auto generated, informing me of my new monthly payment. So uh, do I have to pay or not? And if I do have to pay, what date within the month is the payment due? I tried calling, and the first time it cut off. The second time I got their incredibly annoying automated system and couldn’t get an option to get to a human, and their system eventually hung up on me. I called back and had something similar happen. So I called back again and eventually got the system to give me an option to talk to a person, I selected that option and the system informed me they are having technical issues, I can’t talk to a person today, and hung up on me.

Not wanting to give up I went back to their website and saw a message saying they are performing maintenance and their system is temporarily unavailable. They really didn’t want to talk to people today! I’ll try again tomorrow, not like I don’t have the time lol.

Let’s see, what else…I found a 28 day fitness challenge I shared with my Dragon Boat team. So far only one person has decided to do it with me (well, with me but not physically with me cause ya know, social distancing!). We start tomorrow, feel free to join in!

day 9c

Oh, and I finally cracked open the alcohol. I’m not a big drinker, and purposefully didn’t drink during these past days because it seemed the wrong time to start drinking alone in my basement suite. Today though, well, why not? The Heather Ale was delicious and I highly recommend it.

day 9a

My take away from today is that some days you may have a plan, a specific thing you intend to accomplish, but not everything is in your control and maybe you can’t complete that task you set yourself to. When that happens just chill, grab a drink, pop something fun on the screen to watch, and hug a cat, you can try again tomorrow so no reason to let it bring you down today. 🙂

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Self Isolation Day 5:Work An Stuff

19 Mar

Ok so while I’ve been working all this time, today I got more done than on the previous days. Glitches were fixed, I was able to access what I needed, it was good.

Still, the amount of work I can do from home only takes up so much of my day. When not working I did some projects around the apartment, personal paperwork type stuff so nothing to take a fun picture of.

I also took a quiz to see which Disney duo best matches my best friend and I, apparently we are Peter Pan and Tinkerbell…

Very scientific obviously. We aren’t sure which of us is supposed to be Peter Pan and which is supposed to be Tinkerbell but do sort of agree with the description.

There was The Look I kept getting when trying to work…

day 5b

Not. Impressed.

There was an unhappy cat for a while today as my laptop was right exactly where he wanted to be, on my lap. At one point I left him curled up on the chair with the cushion and heating pad, sound asleep, and moved myself and the laptop into the bedroom so I could work sitting at a desk and he followed me in just to glare at me. He also at one point jumped onto my lap and sprawled on my right arm drastically reducing the speed at which I could type but if you think I moved him out of the way you are obviously insane. He eventually moved to the bed and glared at me from a distance. Letting me know just how much of a disappointment I was being to him.

I went out for my daily stroll, today I took a trail that gets me to the ocean where I took this picture…

day 5c

A reminder for all those full on stuck inside that the outside is still there waiting for you.

Honestly, today I didn’t do much. I’m trying to actively not think too much about how many changes have happened and may still happen to how society runs, because the idea of walking into grocery stores and seeing empty shelves, or not being able to go see my parents, or being stuck inside for longer than 14 days, kinda freaks me out.

To combat the freaking out I have submerged myself in to cheesy 80s movies because I get distracted by the hair, and the clothes, and the makeup, and the lack of technology. I watched 3 Men and a Baby and have so many questions!

Was it really ok to have a baby in a car seat in the front of the car in the 80s?

Why do they keep showing off all the guy’s chest hair, do they think people find that attractive?

What’s with the super short running shorts the guys are wearing? And why are they all oiled up?

If the guys didn’t want to lose the kid why didn’t they just call social services on the mom?

Did nobody the mom knew notice she all of a sudden didn’t have a baby?

Was it common to have three guys, who I’m guessing were supposed to be in their mid 30s, be roommates? Is that a New York thing?

Did you not need a plane ticket to get past security in the 80’s? They got through just fine even though none of them were flying and were doing the classic trying to catch someone before they get on a flight thing. But in movies now when people try that they always have to buy a ticket to get through…or sneak through like the kid in Love Actually. Were airport rules different back then?

See? Oh so many questions!

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Scarf Season

19 Nov

Last year Striker (the cat) scratched so much at his neck he created a bald sore spot. And by spot I mean decently large sized wound. It took a lot of gauze neck wraps, kid polysporin, and me physically stopping him from getting to the scab when it hit the itchy stage, before it all healed up.

This is when he started wearing scarves. He hit a point in his healing where he didn’t need a gauze wrap but he did need something around his neck to make it harder for him to scratch the scab. My friend L made him a scarf, which he loved! So then she made him two more, and cat scarf season officially became a thing.

He never wanted me to take them off, if I did he’d get upset and try to get it back on. They were sized to be loose enough he could easily slip it off if he chose, I was worried about the scarves being a choking hazard if he got up to mischief while I was at work, but he never took them off. Unlike the gauze wraps I tried my best to make impossible to take off, which he got off multiple times. Cats!

Today I got home after work and exercise class to a fur massacre on my chair.

Of course he pulled out the white fur and left it on my black chair. He is nothing if not dramatic.

So I did what any sane person would do, I pinned him on his back on the bed and made him let me look at his neck and what did I see when I moved fur around but an area he’d yanked that fur from and the beginnings of an owie. Oh, and in case you worry I was hurting him, he was purring through all this because he thought it was a game, or a chance to get a good chin and neck scratch.

We had a good long cuddle, where I alternated between reminding him about last year and how much it hurt and how annoying the gauze was and how stressed he made his human, and just holding him and giving him love and telling him he was perfect and I’m so sorry this happened again.

Yeah I’m a sap, so what?

Then I grabbed his favourite of the three scarves and it instantly became Scarf Season.

scarf season 2019

So dapper. So handsome. So stress causing.

He hasn’t taken it off yet and it has been a couple hours. In fact he’s sleeping in the blanket fort I make for him every night and seems perfectly content. Let’s hope the scarf stops this whole situation from becoming like last year, and instead we can just enjoy a lovely, slightly longer, Scarf Season 2019.

Oh, and if anyone has a tip for where to get him more scarves I’d appreciate it, I feel bad asking my friend to make more when she doesn’t even make them for her cat.

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Pet Parent Guilt

18 Nov

Anybody who has a pet that they consider to be part of the family is probably familiar with Pet Parent Guilt. That guilt that settles on your shoulders when your pet is unhappy, or sick, or living anything less than their perfect life.

The cat that owns me (because that is definitely how our relationship goes! lol) is unhappy, and the only things I can do to make him better long-term are making him miserable short-term, sigh.

Last week I came home late and found Striker had ripped out a chunk of fur from his neck / upper chest area. The exposed skin was raw and weeping and looked like it must hurt terribly. I scooped him up, kinda freaking out because omg I was looking at a chunk of sore looking skin and what does he do? He starts purring and acting like everything is cool.

What. The. Hell.

Of course this happens at night, on a long weekend, because cats definitely have excellent timing. *rolls eyes*

We went to bed and he slept like the angel he most definitely isn’t while I kept waking up to check on him. In the morning while I was distracted getting ready for work he started messing with the area and made it bleed. The fur in that area is white so he looked like he’d been through some sort of massacre. Again with me freaking out and not knowing what to do, and being even more panicky because I had to go to work and no vets in my area would be open on the stat Monday. While at work I was telling some co-workers what was going on and they told me about a new 24/7 vet hospital near-ish work that had opened. So I did what any sane person would do, I left work 2 hours early so I could go check this place out and see if I could get Striker in to see someone.

The place looked nice, I spoke with someone about what to do to treat Striker at home, and off I went to buy gauze, and Polysporin for kids, and more gauze. Then for the fun part, bandaging a cat’s neck, which is kind of like taking your life in your hands, only you’re putting your life in the hands of the cat’s claws and that is much much worse. 😉

Surprisingly he let me put polysporin on his wound, and wrap gauze around his neck (and a bit around his torso to make it harder for him to get it off), without any complaint. He then went in to “I can’t function” mode because putting anything around his neck or body is like putting kryptonite around Superman, makes him unable to do anything and collapse where he is. He is quite dramatic about the whole thing, which is hilarious when it is me putting his harness on because we are about to travel or putting his Christmas sweater on for a quick photo op, but makes me feel horrible when it is a bandage that is going to have to stay on for a while.

Being the crazy cat lady that I am I arranged for my Tuesday shift at work to be covered, cancelled on my friend that I work out with Tuesday nights, cut back everything I had to do all week to the bare minimum so I spent as much time at home with Striker as possible. All he wanted to do was curl up either on or right beside me, so that is what we did. I sat and he picked where he wanted to cuddle, and we both spent hours not doing much more than that. Turns out you can end up napping due to sheer boredom, who knew? We worked daily bandage changes in to our routine and each time I tried something new in an attempt to make it more comfortable for him, harder to get off, and harder to damage with claws…I won’t say I was all that successful but points to him for enduring all the things I tried out on him.

It’s been a week and we have downgraded to a bandanna around his neck. This wasn’t actually my choice so much as when I was at work Friday he got the bandage that was under the bandanna off and I thought we’d give wearing just the bandanna a try. He scratches at the bandanna and twirls it around his neck, which is kind of adorable, but also results in fabric damage. Only two days of wearing it and I had to take it off yesterday because it was shredded and I was worried he’d end up eating pieces of it. sigh. My hope was the area was far enough along in the healing process he didn’t need anything covering it anymore but he got all obsessive about cleaning that area and he was getting dangerously close with his back claws when he was scratching his neck so I found some cloth I could wrap around his neck, just temporarily, until I can find something better to put on him.

I can’t figure out if the area is actually itchy or if he was messing with it just because…I mean, he is a cat, I can see him messing with it just to screw with me lol

So this is where we are at. I have guilt because he was unhappy enough, or itchy enough, or whatever enough, that he took out a chunk of his own fur, hurting himself, and even though it has been a week he is still miserable because I keep wrapping things around his neck.

A random thing, how impressive is it that this wonderfully complex creature sits so quietly and lets me wrap things around his neck, he doesn’t even try to get away, just waits till I am done. The level of trust that he has in me is humbling.

Another random thing, when he is upset he stops eating and drinking, which is another thing I have been stressing about. Until I realized if I bring his water dish to him and encourage him to drink he will, and if I bring his food to him and encourage him to eat he will. For days I have been serving him where ever he has decided to rest all in an effort to keep him hydrated and fed…which seems to have created a bit of a monster because not only did I serve him I also put dishes of food and water on a table that is the same height as my bed so he could easily reach them when I had to go out, and now he meows at me to refill those dishes before we go to bed so he can have late night snacks without actually having to leave the bed. What have I done?!

IMG_2557

So graceful, so majestic, so spoiled.

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