Featuring: Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra and Tamrielo
Tonight we talk a bit about some technical difficulties that almost prevented us from recording the show. As a result if anything sounds weird we are on a different server, and will likely be on yet another different server next week. Grace was able to join us so we finally get to talk about Paper Diablo aka Book of Demons. Throughout the weekend I saw the strangest comments over our staff slack channel about a game called What the Golf and Tamrielo finally explains what the hell is up with that. Kodra and Tam talk a bit about the close of Kentucky Route Zero. Bel talks about diving further into Spiders games and playing Technomancer and how once again their ambition outstrips their technical prowess. Ash talks about CrossCode and we wrap things up with a random topic about the perils of opening a Game Store.
This week has been full of craziness and as a result I don’t have an awful lot of gaming news to talk about. We are in full prep mode for my wife going out of the country, and I am trying my best not to think about it. Last night for example I didn’t properly get set down in front of a screen until almost 9 pm… which generally speaking on a normal night I am trying to wind down about that time. As a result you are going to get a Josie picture and some talk about how that is going. Unfortunately you are only getting a single picture because I am nowhere near the prolific cat photographer that my wife is, namely because when I get home I rarely have my phone handy.
One of the struggles of late is trying to figure out how best to deal with the fact that Josie needs a steady source of water. Kenzie and Mollie prefer to drink out of a cup and Josie has not exactly mastered the art of doing this and just ends up knocking it over and making a mess. When we have had the traditional water dish, the older girls end up playing in it and also knocking it over and making a mess. Some years back we purchased a little water fountain but it never took off because the water more bubbled up than streamed. As a result I spent some time on the interwebs looking for a better option and finally landed on something else.
The above picture doesn’t exactly show off the final device that well, but it is the product shot from the amazon page. The diameter is almost 14 inches wide and when filled with water the entire thing is extremely heavy… enough to keep it from getting slid around on the kitchen tile floor. One of the favorite things for our cats is to get up in the sink during the winter time when we are dripping the faucets and to drink straight from the tap. This in theory mimics this and I have already seen them using it more than the previous option. Josie has figured this out as well and is now using it, so in theory I think we have a winner. It is dishwasher safe and everything unlocks easily so in theory it should be pretty easy to clean as well unlike the previous option.
As far as Josie and her adjusting, she is still very much in kitten “everything is new and exciting mode”. She loves stealing silverware and pens and playing with those so we now have to be way more cautious about such things. She continues to be mostly oblivious to the other cats borderline hostile reactions, and the frequency of those is reducing. Kenzie more or less gives a half-hearted growl when she sees her like she is somehow obligated to keep up the ruse that she doesn’t like Josie. They sniff each other often so I think at some point that rampart is going to fall and for the most part Kenzie is back to her normal behavior.
Mollie on the other hand is a bit of a hold out in this department. They also sniff each other and the other morning Josie came bounding into the kitchen and headbutted Mollie. Mollie was sorta stunned and just sat there for a moment and long after Josie had walked away gave a delayed growl. It is working far better than we would have hoped for, and now we mostly have another snugly baby. The photo is of her snuggling with me on the sofa… in the spot Kenzie normally occupies. Shortly after snapping the photo Kenzie came over and laid on arm of my chair beside me. Were it Mollie who had trespassed on Kenzie’s territory… she would have growled and pushed her out of the way because I have seen her do it numerous times. The kitten however seems to keep getting deference from both of them, which ultimately tells me they are adapting fine.
It has been an interesting weekend, but also a very productive one. Friday night my wife spent the evening in her office penned up with Josie as we had been doing for the last several nights. Saturday morning we took her to the vet to get a brief checkup and to establish her with the practice. They said that she looks like a very healthy young cat and while there is a bit of a bump where the incision for her surgery was, that this was more or less normal. Young female cats especially are active and stress the muscles around the incision causing some inflammation. We were told to watch it and watch her behavior and if anything strange happened to bring her back in.
Josie was getting bored of being penned up in the office and had become a rather successful escape artist darting out between our legs the moment we opened the office door. On Saturday we more or less just went with it and let her out into the world to roam around and explore. There were some hisses as to be expected but no violent reactions. In fact Josie seemed adorably oblivious to any shade that Kenzie and Mollie were throwing her way. There were a few times where Kenzie was intent on blocking her path and Josie just ran quickly around her like nothing was going on. The one that I have been the most surprised by is Mollie who seems to be having the biggest reaction. All of this time I have attributed the dynamics between Kenzie and Mollie as Kenzie being a bully. However watching Mollie with Josie is making me start to doubt this.
Always in the past Kenzie would try and get close and sniff Mollie… and then Mollie would make the first hostile sounds which would lead to Kenzie reaching over and bopping her on the head. I always sorta took this as Kenzie being the aggressor, but it could just be the Kenzie is big and adorable and doofy and couldn’t figure out why Mollie didn’t want to play. I am not sure if I am ready to attribute all of the malice here to Mollie, but so far Kenzie seems to be relatively chill about this whole thing with occasional bouts of hissing. However there have been long periods where they have both been in near proximity without any sort of violent reaction. The truth is this is going as smoothly as I could possibly hope, because Luna several years back would have horrible clashes with Kenzie and I never knew how much of that was Luna and how much was Kenzie. We eventually had to find her a new home with a lovely lady where she could be part of a single cat home.
Saturday night she went back up to the office for the night, and then after I got breakfast and did the morning tasks I let her out. I fed all three cats in the same room from separate bowls and for the most part that was acceptable. From that point however she was out the entire day, including a period of time when we went out and ran some errands leaving the girls along at home to fend for themselves. For the most part things seem to be smooth, enough so that we opted to leave her out over night. She crawled up with us in bed and slept there the entire night, or at least as entire night as our conscious selves were aware of. I know she tolerated being adjusted several times without getting up as I ran to the restroom around 2 am and she largely ignored that I jostled her. There was a short period of time when I had both Kenzie and Josie side by side on the bed… and while Kenzie hissed and eventually hopped down that was all that came of it.
The major transgression happened Sunday morning however while I was editing AggroChat. Josie had been dragging this cat toy around with her and she drug it into my office because she apparently wanted to be close to me and be able to play with it at the same time. It isn’t like she was trying to bring it to me to play, she just wanted to roll around and attack it while being nearby. Various things happened and it ended up down in the landing along with one of the Kenzie’s hairbands that she loves to play fetch with. My wife decided to toss both up since Kenzie and Josie were sitting a few feet apart near the entrance to our two offices, and Josie completely misread the signal. Both Josie and Kenzie dove for the hairband at roughly the same time… but Josie was a little faster and snagged it running off quickly causing Kenzie to ponder this sequence of events and run away herself. Kenz had this massive “what the hell just happened” look and decided retreat was the best possible course of action.
For now at least I am trying to spend most of my time downstairs on the sofa, so that the other two girls can snuggle in a manner that is “normal” and uninterrupted while Josie roams around and does her thing. While Josie regularly comes to visit, I am trying to choose Kenzie and Mollie time because they are both bonded more closely with me and I don’t want them to view this as some grand betrayal. While they have shown a bit of hissing and minor aggression towards my wife they continue to still be willing to love on me so I am guessing this is working as intended. Tonight I will likely be downstairs on the sofa again playing things remotely through Parsec with my fuzzy blanket and in theory will have Kenzie on my legs and Mollie on my side. At some point Josie will need to learn the joy of the fuzzy blanket, but for now I am trying to remain a sanctuary for our elder girls.
All of that said… things are going as smoothly as possible, and I think we have our cats introduced as well as could be expected. Four days of isolation, two days of partial interaction, 1 day of full interaction and now we are just in seemingly permanent free roam mode.
This weekend we did something that I was not expecting to do. But first… let me back up a bit. If you have read this blog for awhile now, you will know some months back that we lost our elderly cat Allie. It had been something we were expecting for awhile, but it is nonetheless extremely hard because she was absolutely my baby. She regularly lay across my chest while playing video games and snuggled into my beard. After her passing I was absolutely not ready to contemplate another cat, nor did I think we really needed more than the two we already had. However after having three for so long there was just something that felt off about the balance of our home.
Kenzie however around the same timeline was diagnosed with Diabetes and we were going through the process of trying to get her to a sustainable dose of insulin. It involved trips to the vet for glucose curves to the point where if she even hears the cat carrier door now she runs and hides. Luckily she has reached a point where she is now going back every three months instead of every two weeks. We have reached a state of equilibrium in our home and it is in this that I realize that we need a third cat in the mix. Kenzie and Mollie have never really bonded. Mollie had been friends with Allie and there are times when it seems like Mollie understands the absence and misses her. My futile hope is that by adding another baby into the mix, that once again it might cause Mollie to bond with them.
So for the last week or so I had been watching various sites like Pet FInder just to see who all was available in the area. In my travels I found my way out to the city pound, and among the various cat pictures there was one that really spoke to me. Ultimately that is what I had been looking for… that animal that I had an instant connection with. According to the paperwork her name is Jillian but it is highly unlikely that we keep that. We are in the process of trying out a bunch of other names to find one that suits her more. She is a sweetheart and we’ve not been to visit twice and put in all of the adoption paperwork on Saturday, so that she is “ours”. Unfortunately we have to wait until next Friday before we can take her home, but it has given us time to set up an isolation suite for her to live in for the first week or so as she gets used to us and the smells of the other two animals.
I fully expect to shut off my office for example and take her in there with me so she can roam and explore while I do other things. I already love her so much with only having had two extended visits. Yesterday I didn’t take any photos, but she came to us pretty much as soon as we opened the cage door. I wish we could have taken her home on Saturday, but I understand them wanting to make sure that every animal is spayed or neutered before leaving their custody. We would have happily taken her to our vet, but I am not sure if they would spay at her age. They say she is only three months old, but she seems older than that. The workers didn’t have all of the information but she came from a foster home because she arrived as a baby kitten. You can tell however that she has had attention because she is pretty sociable. My hope is that we are still getting her young enough that she will bond extremely strongly with us.
I am not sure if we will be going out today to visit, but I am low key planning on popping by either on my way home from work or at lunch over the next few days. The staff says that they really appreciate it when someone comes to visit during this awkward period of waiting for the adoption to finalize. There is a chance that we may get her before Thursday, so I am holding out hope for that. I know next weekend is going to be extremely busy but we need to spend as much time as possible with her. As such I am hoping to maybe spend the week nights taking care of as much as we can so we have just large blocks to time to spend with her on the weekend. If you follow me on twitter you have already seen most of these photos, but since it is technically a holiday for me I figured I would just knock out a quick post about the adorable kitty baby for anyone who was not watching.
