Matt’s Random Thoughts

Yesterday we took Caesar to the vet for neutering. Good-bye manhood! In addition to going under the knife, the poor guy also tested positive for Coccidia, some nasty intestinal parasite that causes diarrhea. The bad thing is that this can potentially kill a kitten if it can’t fight it off. Granted we had known he had diarrhea for a week, nothing showed up in his poop before. With this new information, we were given even more medicine to give him, and the instruction to separate him from Cleo. The question is this: How? Our apartment isn’t that big. And we couldn’t keep him the bathroom still! We have guests coming tomorrow!

The Solution: Kitty Quarantine! How were we going to keep Caesar away from Cleo? We could get a cage to put him in. But that would involve spending a bunch of money we don’t really have, and after he’s better, where would we put it? Then it hit me! I had a kiddy camping tent. Surely a “kiddy” tent would work for a “kitty” as well! We needed to put him in something to not only keep him away from Cleo, but also to prevent him from pooping everywhere! (And poop is nasty!)

I rearranged my room a bit to get the tent up. It takes up a bit of space, but it’ll only be there for about 10 days. The sad part is that Caesar cries all day if he knows we’re home. Cleo tries to look for him. The first time he cried and she heard him, she ran up the stairs to the tent to try to get him out. It was so cute! I think now she knows she can’t, but that doesn’t mean she can’t stay in the room with him. In fact, she likes to climb up to the top of the tent and look down at him.

The funny thing (as if it’s only ONE thing) is that Cleo has trouble getting down. She doesn’t jump. I think this is actually difficult because the tent isn’t as firm as other things. No, instead she likes to slide down the side of the tent. It’s like a diagonal slip and slide. She just goes “voom” and she’s on the floor! It’s very funny, especially the look she gets on her face. I swear, life in the apartment has surely gotten exciting since we’ve gotten the two kitties! I just hope Caesar gets better!

On June 11th I awoke early to journey to William and Mary to take the Praxis II: Social Studies Content Knowledge test. After waiting in a massive line, I was directed to the room where I would be taking the test. As it was passed out, the facilitator read the instructions. We began.

Holy crap! The test began with US History questions. I knew a lot of them. Then it went to World History questions. I knew some of them. (Hey, there’s a LOT of World History out there!) Next was Political Science, Geography, Economics, and Behavioral Sciences. After the test concluded the others who also took it were complaining about the economics. I only took Macro. I left the building as the proud new owner of a freshly ripped second ass hole.

Flash forward to this past Thursday. I received my scores. I had no idea how it would be scored. I couldn’t find anywhere that I needed to get “X” number right to get the passing score of 161. All I could find was an article someone had written about missing 40 questions and still receiving a 186. That made me feel good. Perhaps they judged the test more leniently since it covered so much. Regardless, I stood with the ETS envelope in my hand. I ripped it open and slid out the sheet of paper. 165! I PASSED! It may not have been a great score, but it was a passing score! Not bad since I didn’t study.

So, my $125 I spent to take the test was used wisely. Now I’m on my way to becoming a teacher. Hooha! Look forward to another post in a few days about a potential advancement!

Our two kitties are so great. They’re very loving and playful. In fact, Caesar is so nice, he left me a present one morning. You see, our kittens love to sleep with us. Well, mostly me. I woke up one morning at 3AM to find both Caesar sleeping on me. Cleo was sleeping beside me. I went to pet Caesar when I felt something gooey. The light was dim, but I could clearly see something on my hand. Caesar had left me a gooey poopy. Ewwww…

So yes, our cats both have diarrhea. Apparently Caesar brought something home from the human society and Cleo caught it. We took Caesar to the vet first, because we didn’t realize Cleo had it too. The vet did some tests and gave us medicine for him. The downside, the medicine was in pill form. Now I’ve given pills to dogs. You simply wrap it up in a slice of cheese and they’ll swallow it whole. Cats, on the other hand, aren’t that easy. They’re smart. They don’t want to take a pill, especially when it tastes like metal. The vet showed us how to give these, and it looked easy, but after trying it ourselves we had some difficulty. He just wouldn’t take it.

Luckily when we ended up taking Cleo we got liquid medicine. Apparently they had put it in the wrong refridgerator, but the second vet found out. This was still a bit hard to give. They said it was poultry flavored, but judging from their reactions, it’s not good poultry! Cleo is a bitch to give it to. Caesar is more relaxed and just accepts it. Cleo will fight to the point that Tara has to wear oven mits to avoid being scratched while I squirt it into her mouth. We have about 3 more days of this. Fun fun fun!

Hopefully their diarrhea clears up. I miss having them sleeping with me! MEOW!

About two days after bringing Cleo home with us, I decided I wanted to go to PetSmart to look for these SoftClaw things that go over a cat’s claws to keep them from scratching. While we’re there we looked at the cats up for adoption. Cleo had been awfully playful with us, and I thought it would be good for her to have a playmate. You see, she liked to wake me up at 5AM by licking me in the face. Anyway, we saw this orange and white cat named Buddha. He was cute.

We continued to walk around PetSmart and I eventually found the SoftClaws. Unfortunately, they were out of kitten size. We also found something else. The Isle of Wight Humanitarian Society was there with bunches of cats, kittens, and puppies to adopt. We looked at them and found one we really liked. He was grey and looked a wee bit bigger than Cleo. We took him out to hold him, and we decided we wanted to adopt him. He didn’t have a real name, though they referred to him as “Jimmy Steel”. We decided to name him Caesar. (Get it? Caesar and Cleopatra???)

He’s been really good too. He was timid at first, but he’s slowly warming up to us. Cleo was a bit pissed off at first when we brought him home. She would try to pick fights with him a great deal. She still does, but it’s more playful than anything else. They’re really cute together though. I’m glad we go them… although they both seem to be suffering from kitty diarrhea at the moment. NOT FUN! But that’s another post.

Last night Tara and I went back to Lancaster to get our kitty. My sister’s cat BB had four kittens, three were orange and one that was black with orange patches. This was the one we chose, and we named her Cleo. (Call me now!!!) She moved a bit on the way back to Newport News, but when we brought her into the apartment, she went crazy!

The first thing we did was get her litter box ready, in which she made poopies! At least she’s trained. We put that in the bathroom. Afterwards she ran around like a demon scoping out the place. She enjoyed going up the stairs and jumping off.

I wanted to sleep in the living room last night so the cat wasn’t alone. Enter a moment of cuteness: she fell asleep on the futon as I was working on some web stuff. When I went to lay down I put her on a pillow on the floor. She started meowing. I picked her up and she stopped, so I put her back on the pillow on the floor. Again she started meowing. Tara said it probably was because she had never slept by herself before. She always had BB and the other kittens. So I picked her up and laid her on the futon with me and she went to sleep. This was hard because I was afraid I’d roll over on her. At points during the night she woke me up and was licking me and stuff.

This morning we got up and she was back to being neurotic. She’s running around again. She sees me typing on the laptop and she jumps onto the keyboard. I’ve had to correct this several times because of her “help”. She’s fun though. I’ll post some pictures soon!

Tara kindly brought to my attention that one of the Grand Theft Auto games had been found to contain pornagraphy on it. As one who has been playing video games for 20 years now, I’ve always been interested in video game news and controversy. Remember that one game? Night Stalker I think it was. That was one of the games that really got the ratings board going. Then there was Mortal Kombat with blood. I didn’t think that was a big deal. I’m not sure how I feel about the Grand Theft Auto issue though.

I found a video clip of the alleged porn on a website. I’ve hosted it here so as to not steal their bandwidth. Please view it and tell me what you think by posting a comment. It’s about 8.24 megabytes. Not a problem for high speed, but you dial-up folks might want to think before downloading it.

GTA Video Clip

Please VIEW the clip first. You can’t make a proper judgement without doing so.

Greetings from Hawaii! Tara and I arrived around 8:30 last night (about 2:30 Eastern time). We checked into our hotel room, bought an upgrade for $10 more a night, and went to bed. We woke up refreshed this morning. The time change didn’t seem to affect us much.

So far today we’ve visited the mall. It’s interesting that they have so many stores that we have back home. The funny thing is that of all the stores, only one had a “Welcome Kiwanis” sign. This was the ABC store. Then we were off to Hard Rock Cafe for lunch.

I spent a good part of the morning trying to find internet access so I could work on class stuff. I found it in the lobby of the convention center. However, it turns out it wasn’t the wireless from the convention center. Apparently I picked up a signal from somewhere else. Regardless, it was good enough to get my assignment posted. I’m actually in the center now, and it turns out you have to pay for internet access ($14.95 a day). That’s ridiculous, but I had no other choice I have to do work.

To sum things up, Hawaii is gorgeous. I can’t wait to see more of it.