Cats

Gracie the Mess

by

Friends… this is one of those mornings when I got nothing. I could rattle on about the New World PTR some more but I am honestly not feeling it. I could just skip a day and not make a post. Instead, I think I am going to lean heavily on how cute my furry children are, and post about the cats. The ominous shadow in front of a very blue picture of John Oliver is Gracie. She has decided that she really likes standing in front of my monitor and watching the television. Yes, I know this is bad for her eyes just like it is bad for anyone’s eyes… and as much as I place her elsewhere when she decides this is a thing she wants to do… there is no stopping her. There is a shelf that I use as a monitor riser, and she loves standing on top of it and monitoring what happens to be going on with my screen. This is how my morning started out.

She is a bit of a mess and has finally discovered something that every cat discovers. In the living room, we have this rock ledge at the top of our fireplace, which is easily accessible from the balcony. At some point, every cat we have ever had discovers this ledge, and the same is true with Gracie. Thankfully she has only stepped out onto it and then backed up onto the balcony. Mollie our weirdest cat… has actually managed to jump from the ledge onto the sofa in the room below. Since Gracie appears to be a cat without fear… we both figure it is only a matter of time before this happens. She is growing so fast, but still very much in full kitten mode all of the time. I do wonder what an adult Gracie is going to be like since she seems to be in everything currently. I will be thankful when she is a little bit slower and a little bit bigger… so we don’t have to live in mortal fear at all times of her sneaking out the front door. I don’t think she necessarily wants to go outside but she LOVES rushing through open doors.

She makes up for the madness though with how sweet she is the majority of the time. Lately, she has spent a lot of time sleeping on a blanket I have placed on my desk. When we first got her, she was very much attached to my wife and that was the only human she really cared about. Since then, like happens with all cats it seems… the person who feeds them ultimately becomes the center of their attention. So lately Gracie has spent a lot more time following me around during the day than she did previously. It frustrates my wife to no end that she cannot seem to get her to just lay down and chill, whereas that is mostly the default mode in my office. Sure she roams around a bit, but more often than not she just ends up snoozing beside me.

While I do not have a photo of this specific event, I am hoping maybe to see a repeat of it today. I was a bit slow in throwing away the empty soda flat, and Josie has adopted it. Yesterday Gracie had decided she needed to also curl up in the not-quite-empty soda flat beside her. It was adorable, but I happened to run downstairs without my phone. Josie has been adapting to having a little sister, but it seems to have been a bit of a hard transition. The two of them play constantly, and will get really close to snuggling… but never quite do so. Josie is I think struggling with no longer being the little kid, and even though I am attempting to supplement with a lot of extra attention… still seems stressed. I am hoping that over time this will settle out because adding a third cat has absolutely uprooted the stable peace in the household.

There are times Josie becomes super snuggly, like the other day trying to squeeze between me and my laptop and figure out how to snuggle. Her usual location is on my legs, but Gracie has decided that she also loves that spot. When Kensie was alive, she would lay down on my legs even if Josie was on them… and Josie has not quite figured out that she is much larger than the new kitten and can basically do whatever she wants. There is more than enough room for both of them, but Josie tends to avoid taking the same spot that Gracie has already commandeered. Maybe she remembers being frustrated when Kenzie used to take a spot from her. It has been frustrating to see my baby girl stressed though, and I am hoping that given enough time it all calms out.

I always feel bad that I never have as many photos of Mollie, but she is a much harder cat to capture. She will lay beside me for hours, but when I turn on the lights in my office and grab my phone… she often bolts. She is constantly moments away from running out of the room and has been that way since she was small. I love her but she is a complete mess of a cat and is completely uncertain of what to think about the kitten. There are moments that I think she is trying to play and other moments that she seems like she is on the offensive. I think she really needs to be in a single-cat home environment honestly, but you take a cat for life when you adopt one and she seems to be happy enough. Everything is a process for her, and while she now sometimes crawls up in bed with us… it is eternally short-lived. Getting attention from her is so special because it is so hard fought.

Anyways this friends is what happens when I don’t have much to say about gaming, and instead, I lean back on talking about my kids.

A Land Without FOMO

by

Do you ever find yourself not taking action because you can’t wrap your brain around exactly how you want to do something? This is something that has plagued me my entire life as I sit back and overanalyze a situation and end up just postponing actually doing anything. If I am under pressure I am extremely good at making snap decisions, but when I don’t feel that sense of pressure… I tend to sit on something indefinitely without actually ever taking action. So much of my life, I put myself into situations that artificially cause that pressure and tension… so that I actually go through with things.

For example I’ve had an additional camera for our security system for two years now, but never quite got around to figuring out how I wanted to mount it. Yesterday I decided that I would mount it by the end of the day… and in truth, it took me all of ten minutes to do it. However, I spent two years at least once a week mulling over what angle and position I wanted to mount this damned camera when in truth it doesn’t really matter that much. Its entire purpose was to let us watch Tripod, the three-legged calico that has been living in our backyard for going on three years. I put it up and it is finally serving this purpose… and also letting us know that apparently Splotchy, the cat that is patiently waiting on Tripod to finish eating… is back hanging out in our yard again. I think while phantom (the cat we found his original owners for) was around he had made himself scarce.

Last night I made marinated boneless pork ribs and stovetop stuffing and sat down after dinner to play some more Quantum Break. Yesterday I have to admit I was not entirely sold on this game but felt obligated to see it through to the end. Yesterday however the game hooked me and by the time I got through the fourth chapter I am honestly on pins and needles to see how this all shakes out in the end. I have to give credit to Remedy for a handful of things. Firstly they make extremely interesting landscapes for your characters to roam around in. Even in Alan Wake which was basically a blue-toned rainy woods simulator… there were some absolutely stunning setpieces. Control was a visual feast and each time you discovered a new area you were introduced to some situation that should not be able to exist in the real world.

The other thing that I have to give them credit for is creating very interesting stories. A time travel story is something that has been done so many times, but they managed to figure out a way to make this feel fresh. I guess another aspect of this is that they seem to be able to capture really great acting performances both with in-camera live-action sequences worthy of a high production value show and in the orchestration of assets to create very believable digital actors. I mean I have been impressed by acting performances in games before, but always it was in the voice-over delivery… never really in the digital manifestation of those actors in video game form. Sure there is a noticeable difference… but it feels natural when you shift between the player-controlled digital sequences and the live-action denouement at the end of each chapter.

It is extremely likely that I am going to wrap this up in a few hours this evening, and now I am not really sure what I am going to roll into next. Right now I am thinking probably Ghost of Tsushima, which I left in a very partially completed state on the PlayStation 5. My goal for today… like my goal of putting up the camera yesterday… is to stop calculating how to do it… and just move my PS5 setup downstairs to live beside the Xbox Series X. Ultimately this NEEDS to happen before Horizon Forbidden West launches next week. Essentially most of this single-player gaming has been me in a holding pattern until that game releases, but I have been greatly enjoying this time.

One of the core problems that I have playing MMOs is the constant sense of FOMO that they instill in the player base. There is always some new thing that is coming around the corner and will only be available for a limited amount of time. Be this a new season in Destiny, a holiday event in FFXIV, or the feeling of needing to do your daily chores so that you don’t fall behind in World of Warcraft. It is the aspect of those games that I like the least and honestly, over the last few years, it has been one of the major turn-offs. Instead of making me want to engage and no-life something until I have ticked all of the boxes… it makes me want to check out completely and not even participate.

Playing all of these single-player games has made me realize that more or less they are completely immune to FOMO. The game exists as it is and the experience will more or less be the same if I play it tomorrow or if I play it three years from now. They are experiences that happen on my schedule and on my terms. There is no need to rush around and make sure that I get this thing done by this deadline… because the game will always be there waiting on me. That is not to say that I don’t want to play MMORPGs anymore, but this week and watching the zeitgeist scurry around Lost Ark has made me realize that maybe just maybe I am done for a while. I greatly enjoyed the story of Endwalker and I do want to return at some point and play more… but I also don’t really feel like I am on a specific timetable for that.

Wolfendooms

by

It was a really bizarro weekend. First off I opted to talk off Friday afternoon, which in itself isn’t too strange other than the fact that I more or less went home and slept for a couple of hours. I normally can’t take naps but I guess it was a week worth of not sleeping super well catching up with me. For those who have read this blog lately you will know that my wife was on a work trip in Portugal. Whenever she is gone the house and most specifically the bed feel very wrong and as a result it greatly impairs my sleep patterns. She flew in safely during the time when I would normally be recording AggroChat, and due to scheduling problems with lots of people we just skipped doing one of those this week.

She is safe and sound and past the first day of culture shock seemed to really enjoy the trip. I am enjoying having her back and she has adjusted back to our standard schedule a lot faster than I would have expected. We wound up going to bed around 10:30 on Saturday night after getting her home and a rapid round of unpacking. Then she was up around 6 am and managed to keep it together until around 8 pm last night. Then we were up as per normal around 5:30 am and hopefully she makes it successfully throughout the day without crashing. I have a silly belief in the totemic power of the purple coffee mug that I sent her off to work with, and I hope it shields her throughout the day. We have a lot of bright and colorful mugs, but the purple one is by far the most important.

This weekend there was a test for Phantasy Star Online 2 on the Xbox One and I booted up my console for the sole purpose of participating. As I understand it there will be a later test for the Windows client, and I am mostly just going to have to tide myself over until then. For those who may remember I went through the nonsense process of getting set up to play PSO2 some time back and then proceeded to stop playing it after the initial few weeks. The Japanese client jumped ahead four versions and I felt like I was missing so much stuff and had no clue who any of the characters were. I am hoping that when it finally comes here officially we can play it properly from the very beginning. I didn’t spend a lot of time playing but it did make me realize that I am probably going to go back to my good ole fashioned RAcast instead of the HUmar I was playing during the beta this weekend.

As far as traditional gaming goes, I spent quite a bit of time this weekend playing Mars: War Logs. As I have said before there is just something about the way Spiders makes games that I find appealing. I greatly enjoyed Technomancer and Mars: War Logs comes considerably before that game in a timeline and explores an area of Mars that is mentioned in Technomancer but that you can never quite go to. I am somewhat glad that I played the games in the order that I did because there are some interactions that I would have viewed in completely different light had I known things that transpired in this game. Much like the difference between Witcher 2 and Witcher 3… this game is a much more simplified version of the same formula that I have seen in other games like Greedfall and Technomancer. As a result it is way more streamlined and other than the fact that the game has horrible quest advisement… it is way easier to follow what you need to do in the world.

On the cat front, Josie is pretty bonded with me after having spent a week with me being her only human. I am hoping that over the next several days she starts snuggling with my wife again, but all day yesterday she was pretty much glued to me. I mean I guess it makes sense because not only was I the only human around for a week but I am also the human that provides food twice a day every day. The whole feeding thing goes a long way for an animal friend. It is in part why I keep hoping that someday the outdoor cats will let me pet them. The latest Josie trick is that she has learned how to climb the ferret cage that is still in the kitchen, and has also figured out how to climb halfway up and then parkour her way into the windowsill. She is adorable, which is good for her because it gets her out of trouble for all of the messes that she inherently makes during her manic play sessions.

And now to the title of the post. The above thread is courtesy of Thalen who posted it on the AggroChat staff slack. I am completely on board with calling shooters Wolfendooms. Does that mean that Destiny would be a Wolfendoomtribes though? The whole transition from “Doom Clone” to “FPS” is still one that I find interesting. I’ve been struggling to figure out a term for the Bioware Dragon Age/Mass Effect genre since I have been playing so many Spiders games that are desperately trying to fill that niche. I’m also really curious if there are more games out there like that from smaller studios that I just never encountered. Anyways time to wrap this up and head to work, but if you have any Bioware-esc games that you know of that might not be on my radar drop me a line in the comments.

State of the Cats

by

Since this is a week that brought us pretty fraught other “states of the”, I figure I would present some alternatives and talk about the cats. At this point we have had Josie the Pussycat since January 21st and in those 18 days she has adapted swimmingly to our home. Prior to my wife’s trip I was not exactly her favorite person. We got along fine because I was the person who feeds in the morning and evening, but we weren’t exactly on cuddling terms. This was fine because in reality I needed to be spending as much time as possible with Kenzie and Mollie to make sure they knew that nothing was going to change in how much attention they were getting. If fact as I am typing this I am reaching over and petting Kenzie who has appeared beside me wanting attention.

This week of being the sole “parent” however has reached a place where Josie is fully bonded. This means that pretty much all of the time I have both Kenzie and Mollie with me, and at certain points I have had all three girls trying to snuggle at the same time which while precarious has worked fine. The thing with Josie is she moves really fast and shifts positions pretty often. The above photo is a case of “suddenly cat” as she came bounding in from out of nowhere and hopped up on my chest to snuggle into my beard. She tends to prefer sitting on my chest, draped over my mouse arm or snuggled in beside me on the right side. Some of these work better than others… like last night I was playing some destiny and she was bound and determined to half sit/half stand on my chest and make me crane my neck to look around her while playing. She for whatever reason likes watching the screen while I play games.

Kenzie and Josie get along pretty well which is good, because I was concerned they absolutely would not. Kenzie and Mollie do not at all get along, nor did Kenzie and Luna. However in both cases I am starting to wonder if it was more of a Luna and Mollie thing than a Kenzie thing. Luna would absolutely attack first with Kenzie which is ultimately why we ended up finding her a new loving home. Mollie is skittish as hell and we blamed that on Kenzie wanting to be up in her business, but again Mollie always makes the aggressive noises first and then Kenzie turns around and bops her. Whatever the case Kenz and Josie seem to be buds and I am super fine with this.

In fact at one point last night they were chasing each other and it was the sort of back and forth friendly chasing. Josie would chase Kenzie… then give up the chase and Kenzie would turn around and chase her back. This went on and on back and forth across the living room for a good ten minutes. They also regularly rub up against each other which I take to be a good sign, and last night I saw Kenzie grooming Josie a bit. I am hoping with time that they end up snuggling with each other, because that will make the logistics of me sitting on the couch with three cats a little easier. At all points however I seem to always have both of them. As I write this Kenzie is on the box laying beside me like she often does and Josie is sprawled out on the floor behind me.

Mollie unfortunately is still the odd duck of the group. She is bonded with me, but only just barely. Our working theory has been that she was in a shelter for too long and way too early in her life. More specifically she was in a shelter where she was the only cat filled in a room full of very loud dogs. She will snuggle with me but if I sneeze, cough, or even clear my throat she is gone like the wind only to return after a significant passage of time. She has been snuggling with me again this week so I am going to take that as her starting to settle in. Everything with Mollie takes way longer than it would with any other cat. You mark progress with her in millimeters not and not meters.

At first she was very much not into Josie and still to this day there are squabbles between them. However I have also caught her sniffing Josie and the other day little britches came running in and head butted Mollie who more or less was okay with it. Given enough passage of time I think things will reach a stable truce, or at least as well as there has been with Kenzie. Mollie loves that there is a hammock upstairs and she pretty much spends the vast majority of her time in it. The hammock downstairs is now populated by Josie, and Mollie seems to be okay with this swap. My wife’s office is pretty much always a warm room and that probably adds to the enjoyment for Mollie.

I wish I could somehow wave a wand and make them all be the best of friends. However for two weeks in we have made more progress than I was honestly expecting. Kenzie and Josie are now my partners in crime which is awesome. There is a reason why I had chosen Kenzie as my Palico in Monster Hunter World, and if I had the ability to create two… Josie would absolutely get added into that mix. Little britches certainly is making life interesting in a good way. I am anxious to see what happens when my wife gets home from Portugal on Saturday. I expect that Josie will be excited to see her since it has been shown that cats remember their humans for long periods of time. If nothing else it will be nice to have another human in the house because Josie pretty much wants constant attention.

I am super looking forward to having my wife back because I have missed her. I keep thinking I see her out of the corner of my eye while sitting downstairs. There have been a bunch of times I almost made a random comment only to realize that it is just me and the cats. I’ve not done anything terribly exciting during my bachelor mode time. Probably the most exciting thing was using Door Dash for the first time to try ordering from a restaurant I have never eat at… only to get what I am pretty sure was a minor case of food poisoning about 24 hours later. Needless to say I did not touch those leftovers. I am ready for life to start being back to whatever normal passes for in our household.