And when the planet hit the sun...

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I am officially in my new house, as of this past Friday. I am still in the process of moving everything over from the old house, and cleaning the old house, but all of my furniture is now here, as are the cats.

phaballa reclaimed Max on Sunday, so it is just me and the seven cats here. They (other than Rasputin and Wilbur) were skittish at first, but everyone has settled down now. This place really feels like home already.

I owe great thanks to Sarah, my girlfriend, for helping me a lot with the move this weekend. She herself just recently moved to Austin and has had her share of moving drama and stress, but she was happy to help me with my move. I guess I haven't mentioned Sarah in here yet, which I know is shocking given how frequently I update my journal. Those of you who see me regularly will no doubt meet her before too long.

The new house is an older house (built in 1952), and I've needed to do some repair work on it. I've already had most of the house rewired by an electrician, and I am likely going to need to have it repiped by a plumber as well. The seller gave me some money for repairs, but the cost for all of this has already exceeded what he gave me. However, I am still happy with the purchase. I was aware that these repairs would be needed based on the inspection. I really like the house, and spending money on the house doesn't bother me so much, since it will be increasing its value. And it's still such a novelty to actually own the place that I live.

Also, Sarah Palin is a nut.

House stuff!
My offer was accepted for the house I mentioned previously, and we're on schedule for a closing date of August 29th (next Friday). I've never signed so many papers in all of my life, but I'm excited at the prospect of owning my own home. Probably the first week after closing is going to be spent doing some minor repair work, having a dishwasher and garbage disposal installed, and various other things that I'd like to get done before me and the cats move in. I'm hoping those tasks will be completed within the first week of September, so I can spend the next three weeks moving. My lease isn't up until the end of September, so I will have a full month of overlap between the two places.

Oh, speaking of moving! Does anyone have any recommendations for moving companies here in Austin? I've decided to hire movers for the big stuff. I'm sure my friends are heaving a big sigh of relief to learn this. My specific concern was my television. It's sufficiently expensive and unwieldy that I'd like to get it moved professionally by someone who is insured, so that I'm covered in case it gets damaged during the move. I've heard mixed reviews of Unicorn Moving. They're a local company, which is a plus, and their name is obviously a plus. Some folks have been very happy with them, others said they were careless or unprofessional. Have any of you had any experiences with them? Or with other movers around town? My moving job won't be a complicated one -- I'll be moving anything that can fit in my car, so all that will be left for the movers is stuff like furniture, the TV, the foosball table, etc. Anyway, any advice or experiences you can share would be appreciated!

If you're curious, I've posted some pictures of the house. Note that some of them were taken from the outside, through windows, so the quality on those is lacking. But some of them were taken from inside, fear not.

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: What People Are Made Of - Modest Mouse

Much quicker than expected
The first house I looked at today was great, and I'm going to make an offer on it. It's comfortably within my price range and the house appears to be in excellent shape. Of course I'll be having it inspected to look for any non-obvious problems.

Even though I really liked the first house, we went ahead and looked at all 5 of the properties I had lined up for today. All they did was really solidify in my mind that I wanted the first one. It's not a perfect house -- ideally I'd maybe have one more room in it. But it has 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, living room, dining room, and kitchen. It comes with all major appliances other than a dishwasher, which I'll need to put in. It's in Hyde Park and within walking distances of all the local establishments.

I'm very excited. My realtor is going to send over the paperwork to me today, and the goal is to close just before the end of the month. If we can pull that off, it'll give me a full month to move in, which should make it considerably less hectic, even if it does mean I'm paying on both places at the same time.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that nobody else has made an offer on the place. The price was just reduced on Thursday, so if there was an offer, I'm guessing it would have had to happen since then.

I'll post some photos and such once I'm sure the house is within my grasp.

On sale!
Oh, and one other thing I forgot to mention in my last post. If you've read any of my past posts (post 1, post 2) about the Squeezebox streaming music players, you may be interested to know that they're on sale now on Amazon for $229.99. If you love music, I highly recommend this product. It's more expensive than some other streaming music players, but well worth the additional cost. I'm planning on picking up another one for myself while they are on sale.

Current Music: Yuppie Pricks (Theme Song) - Yuppe Pricks

Various and sundry news items
First, I'm planning on buying a house in the next couple of months. Ideally I'll buy one before my current lease is up at the end of September. If I don't find a suitable house before that time, however, I plan to renew my lease month-to-month. I suppose if my house search looks completely bleak, I could just renew here for a year, but that's the backup plan at this point. It's not that I especially dislike where I am now, but I'd like to move back into Austin proper. I'm hoping to find a house in the Hyde Park area, although houses there certainly cost a lot more than in other parts of Austin. Still, other than having 7 cats, I don't especially need a large house. On Saturday afternoon I am touring several houses that look promising, so I'll see how that goes.

Second, on the mouse front, it is still just Felix, Wilbur, and Dusty who are eating them. But in truth I haven't devoted a lot of time to trying to entice the other cats. Tonight did mark a milestone in their mice eating, however -- it was the first time they ate their mice with no meat snack smeared on them. So at this point those three recognize the mice as food, which is good. I got some advice from a co-op member about how to persuade the reluctant cats to eat the mice. Her suggestion is to cut the mice into small pieces and mix it into their normal food. Then over time make the pieces larger and include less of their normal food, until they are just back to a whole mouse. This is a somewhat gruesome suggestion, but in for a penny... I plan to give it a try this weekend, if my stomach can handle it.

Finally, and probably of the least interest to anyone reading this, I just wanted to vent about the umpires in the local leagues here. Every game I played in this past week had cases where the umpires had the rules wrong. On Sunday night I play in a league in Round Rock. The game situation was runners on first and second base with one out. The batter hit a pop fly to the second baseman. The umpire correctly shouted infield fly while the ball was in the air. The runner on second had started running as soon as the ball was hit, and never looked back -- he rounded third and headed for home. The second baseman made an error and the ball was not caught, but of course the batter was still out due to the infield fly rule. However, not only did the umpire rule the batter out, she also ruled our runner who started on second to be out. She said he needed to tag up. However, this is not the rule -- he only needs to tag up if the ball ends up being caught. The infield fly rule means that runners can advance at their own risk. I immediately argued when she called the runner out, but she was adamant that he was. Oddly, he also thought he should be out. In Round Rock they have an official scorekeeper, and that person was agreeing with me. Eventually the umpire essentially conceded that I was "probably right", but that since we were winning by 12 runs, did it really matter? And it did not, we won 26-3. And I wasn't arguing because I thought it was going to make a difference in the game. I just wasn't aware that a big lead meant the rules were no longer followed. I did apologize to the umpire for arguing, even though I don't think I really said anything rude or inappropriate. I just didn't want to be on her bad side for the rest of the game.

On Tuesday night I had a game down in Austin at 6:30pm, which is the earliest time the games are played. The other team only had 9 players show up -- 5 men and 4 women. A lot of teams end up short players, but for the 6:30 games you usually cannot find subs, because nobody is already out there. Now, the rules say that you cannot play with 8 players, but that 9 is fine. You can be missing one guy or one girl (you can't do something like 6 guys and 3 girls) and still play. But the umpires insisted that you could only play with 9 if it was 5 women and 4 men. Eventually the other team ended up getting the wife of one of the players to stand in right field for them. She refused to bat and so they took an automatic out for her anyway, and she didn't attempt to field anything, so it really pointed out how stupid the umpires were being by insisting that she had to be out there. Quite apart from the fact that they had the rule wrong anyway.

Finally on Thursday (in Austin again) there were actually two things. Before our game started, an umpire from another field asked our umpires if a team was allowed to play short 1 girl. And no, it wasn't the same umpire as Tuesday. The umpires on our field did not know, but I told him that it was allowed, and he took my word for it. Anyway, in our game we were the visiting team, meaning that we batted first. The opposing pitcher was really struggling and he walked a few of us. Some other guy showed up and replaced the pitcher. Once we finished batting, we took the field, and they batted. When they got out, they took the field again, and both the original pitcher and the new pitcher were on the field. One of them was pitching, and one was in the outfield. This is an illegal substitution, and I pointed it out to the umpires. Basically, if you sub into a game for someone, then you are taking their spot in the lineup. If they want to come back in, they have to sub in for you. In other words, once you sub in for someone, there is no way you can both be in the lineup at once. Yet the umpire claimed this was fine since they had not both batted yet (which was true -- only one of the two of them had batted). Anyway, we were winning by a fair amount so I didn't push it, and we ended up winning.

In all of these cases I double checked the rule once I got home, and in all cases I had it right. I think what really bothers me about this is that this is really their only purpose for being out there -- to know the rules and to enforce them. When they don't know the rules it just frustrates me. We won all 3 games, so from that point of view it didn't matter. But what if the games had been closer? It could have mattered. We just got lucky that it happened this way. I keep telling myself I need to bring a copy of the rules with me to the field, but I also know that if I asked an umpire to look it up they would just get belligerent.

In the case of the Tuesday game where the other team had to field a reluctant player I did write to the league about it to let them know. They confirmed that I had the rule right, and they were alarmed to learn that someone was forced to play who didn't want to do so. So maybe they'll educate the umpires in that case. I didn't contact the league about the other two cases. I don't want to become known as the guy who always complains to the league. It's just silly that the umpires don't know the rules. They had to take classes and training to be umpires, so how the hell do I know the rules better than they do?

Anyway, I guess I should wander toward bed in the near future so I can be awake during the house tours tomorrow.

When I read articles like this that have quotes like "...people have been generally unaware of what happens to animals on farms," I think they are kind of missing the point. I think people consciously or unconsciously choose not to think about how their food comes to end up on their plate. It's easier not to think about it and enjoy your hamburger.

I'd be vegetarian even if the meat industry was humanely run, but as it is now I don't know how anyone can condone the way these animals are treated. And yet, anyone eating non-free-range meat is implicitly condoning it.

Current Mood: frustrated

Assorted cat news
No protective mouse cut needed today. I took more photos this morning, but I think my last two posts have really shown all there is to see when it comes to cats eating dead mice.

Felix did not want his extra large mouse this morning, although he happily licked all of the meat snack off it. Matilda also did not want her large mouse. I ended up giving Matilda some meat snack instead, and Felix ended up eating Matilda's mouse. Wilbur and Dusty both ate their extra large mice, and Wilbur also ate Felix's spurned extra large mouse. So, all mice were consumed, all cats were fed, but still only three cats have eaten the mice. I will keep working on Matilda. Even if only those three cats eat them, I can live with that. It'll be a treat for them, and the other cats can just have the raw meat diet.

In other cat news, I recently agreed to house

phaballa's cat Max temporarily, as her current living situation is not very cat friendly. The plan is for Max to stay here until around October. Max was brought over here today, and he is fitting in very well so far. For the most part he and the other cats are just giving each other wide berths. There's been a small amount of growling and hissing, but no fighting.

I was given to understand that Max is not an expert at navigating cat furniture, but I have photographic evidence to the contrary:

Max on the top floor

He seems to be enjoying himself up there. In this shot you can see the Soft Paws he has over his claws:

Max shows off his fancy paws

After I took this shot I went to take a shower. When I returned downstairs, this was the scene:

How did it get down there?

I'm not sure how the fabric cave ended up on the floor, but Max appears to be intact, so all is well. He seems quite serene up there:

Calm Max

So it's been a cat-tastic day so far. Unfortunately I am watching the Yankees beat the Red Sox right now, but no day is perfect, right?

Mousecapades 2: The Revenge
As before, do not look behind the LJ cut if you do not want to see graphic photos of cats eating (dead) mice!

( It's like Animal Planet, but just cats, and in my kitchen... )

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: The Day The Aliens Came - The Mountain Goats

Mousecapades
Last night was mouse night, and my previous predictions about which cats would eat the mice were incorrect!

Do not follow the LJ cut unless you are prepared to see pictures of dead mice being eaten! You have been warned!

( Gory details (and photos!) protected behind the cut... )

Current Mood: accomplished

Also...
I have become hopelessly addicted to three Facebook word games: Scrabulous (aka Facebook Scrabble), Scramble (aka Facebook Boggle), and Text Twirl (aka Facebook...anagrams? Word Whomp?).

Dead mice
I've been feeding my cats a raw meat diet for a few years now. Keri and I started this originally because Felix has a strange condition which conventional veterinarians were unable to successfully treat (unless success is measured by the number of times Felix got sick or ended up in the emergency hospital). This eventually led us to try a homeopathic treatment (Dr. Will Falconer specifically). Keri has always been interested in eastern medicine, and we both figured that it couldn't do any more harm than what the conventional treatments had been doing. I'll admit I was leery when Felix was given treatments such as sulfur crystals and arsenic crystals. However, whether it was these treatments, or just the absence of the barrage of medicines he had been given, he began doing much better. One of the conditions that Dr. Falconer sets with his clients is that they read through his web page and follow his advice about such things as vaccinations (should be given as infrequently as possible and only if that cat has a reasonable risk of being exposed to the thing they are being vaccinated for) and diet. He advocated a raw meat diet that simulated what a cat would eat in the wild. Not necessarily the exact types of things they'd eat in the wild, but a diet made up of raw meat, some veggies (which would have been in the stomachs of their prey), and some supplements to make sure they get the nutrients they need. The recipe I am currently using is raw turkey, mixed animal organs (at one time we just used livers), salmon oil (previously we used cod liver oil), and veggies. Originally we bought the meat products from Whole Foods, but as it was rather expensive, we ended up finding a raw meat co-op here in Austin (the Austin Raw Feeders' Coop). The coop is a bunch of local folks who prepare raw meat diets for their pets, and combine to make bulk orders from organic meat suppliers. Most of the folks in the co-op prepare these diets for their dogs, but there are cat people as well.

ANYWAY, all of that is background for the fact that a couple of weeks ago someone posted to the coop mailing list that they were considering switching their cats to a whole prey diet. Not a simulated whole prey diet, which is what I've been doing, but giving her cats actual entire animals. She had found a company (RodentPro) which sells intact (but dead) mice, rats, guinea pigs, and chicks for this purpose. She wanted to know if anyone else in the coop wanted to go in with her for an order, since there were certain bulk discounts. If enough people are interested, it may become a regular order for the coop. Anyway, I was intrigued. I'd had a conversation with one of my vets (yes, *one* of my vets -- tell me about it) about a study that showed that one of the healthiest things you could feed your cats is a steady supply of mice. I guess that's not really so surprising. So I decided to give it a try. I placed an order for a bunch of mice and they arrive tomorrow. I know that at least four of my cats (Rasputin, Matilda, Wilbur, and Dusty) will love the mice. Two of my cats (Dora and Domino) may need some persuading. And Rasputin is somewhat set in his ways, so I am not optimistic that he's going to devour any of the mice.

Right now I'm planning on just supplementing the raw meat diet with the mice. For one thing, I suspect that feeding them the mice is going to be a messy and time consuming affair. In the past they've eaten raw chicken wings -- it took them a long time to finish them, and left the kitchen floor looking like an abattoir. The cats were also more possessive about their wings, which led to one or two chases around the house after a cat with a chicken wing in their mouth. But those experiences have left me confident that as long as I leave enough time, and only feed a few cats at a time, I should be able to pull it off. The thought of watching them devour the mice makes me a little squeamish, but in a way I prefer to seeing the animal that they are eating -- why should it make me feel any better that their food has been ground up beyond recognition before I receive it? I became vegetarian myself because I knew I wouldn't want to kill an animal in order to eat it, and I was only eating meat because I could conveniently ignore the fact that an animal had to die in order to provide me the meat. I know that cats cannot really be healthy as vegetarians, so I have chosen to feed them meat, and I kind of feel like I should really confront the fact that animals have to die to feed my cats. But whatever, I know that's probably just me being weird.

So tomorrow night, assuming I can thaw out the mice quickly enough, my cats will be dining on mice. I've promised Keri I will take pictures for her. I may post select shots on here, but I promise I'll put them behind a cut so that they will not be thrust upon the unwilling.

I know, I know, I never post and now I do and it's all about dead mice. Oh well, what're ya gonna do?

Current Music: Muleskinner Blues - The Cramps

It's weird being single after not being single for so long.

Seven cats is a lot of cats to pet on your own!

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Sugar World - Magnetic Fields

News
Keri and I are broken up. We decided a week ago, but it was kind of on its way for a while before that. It's amicable, not one of those drama filled things. She is in the process of moving into her own place. Not sure what to say about it. I'm not happy about it, but it's the right decision.

Current Mood: melancholy
Current Music: Iowa - Dar Williams

Reading things like this always leave me angry. How can there be anyone out there who thinks this sort of thing is okay? It is appalling.

Current Mood: angry

I completely agree with this:
Good article on how humans treat animals

Squeezebox on sale
I've written two previous entries (link 1, link 2) on the Squeezebox streaming music player. I own three, and it's some of the best money I've ever spent.

Anyway, they're on sale right now, in case anyone is interested. They're still more expensive than some streaming music players, but well worth the cost in terms of audio quality, versatility, and excellent customer support.

Current Mood: hungry
Current Music: Try It Again - Bobby Byrd

Keri is out of town, and I have rented horror movies. Tonight I watched "Camp Slaughter" and "Resident Evil: Apocalypse". I ended up fast-forwarding through both. Quite a disappointment, even for cheesy horror.

I have remaining:
The Ordeal (actually some French title, which I forget)
Slither

And two non-horror that I do not think Keri would like:
The Aristocrats
Fever Pitch

Although she is not back until Sunday, so I may need to rent more.

Suggestions?

Everyone be sure to vote! Early voting runs through this week. Vote early, vote often!

Keri's out of town for the weekend again. Time for a trip to the video store for horror movies that she has no interest in watching. The last few times I've been there the same clerk has been working, and I can't help but wonder if has noticed that I come in every month or so, late at night, and rent several hororr movies, and then return them usually within 24 hours. It seems like it would be cause for concern for a woman working alone at a videostore at night, but I guess it's countered by the fact that I appear quite unthreatening. Except maybe when I've gone a few months without shaving or a haircut.

Anyway.