Notjenny vs. Catzilla

Shortly after going to bed last night I became vaguely aware of rustling noises over by the door, where the laundry-on-the-way-to-the-laundry-basket was waiting, and SNARR GROWL GRARR thing happening. Got out of bed to see what the problem was and found our small house guest valiantly protecting me from the dire threat of clothes in need of a wash; she was growling and sort of wrestling with my bra.

This being Do Not Want, I escorted the laundry to where it should have gone, if I hadn't been lazy while going to bed (the laundry basket is at the other end of the flat, in fairness), and brought back an old tea towel and a cardboard toilet roll tube for kitteh to play with. These seemed satisfactory, because she kept herself busy by killing them for the next couple of hours.

I take it this means she's feeling better.

Tatty has been released from quarantine (the ensuite) and given (temporary) access to my bedroom, upon proof that her coat is free of nasties (it is) and that she can use the litter tray responsibly (she can). This has meant I can use that bathroom again (yay!) and that kitteh has pledged her undying love to me. She wants nothing more than to wind around my feet purring, and promising that she would follow me to the end of the world, except that that would mean going out in the corridor and she's Not Allowed Out There.

It's highly adorable, and hilarious, except that it means I have to walk in BIG GIANT STEPS around the room to avoid treading on her.

( Also also! )

sitting in the Dark Horse about two weeks before Christmas

Me: Is the bartender wearing a knitted jumper with a banana on it?
manic_deadpool: [looks over] Well, you can't deny it's got appeal.

*crickets*


In other news, if I make my New Year's resolution be "learn to crochet (sort of)", I'm way ahead of this 2012 game already.

Have been reading Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought recently - pleased to discover that the linguistics part of my brain hasn't gone entirely rusty - and for some reason this had me thinking about the use of the term "revert", in the sense that people's annoying bosses* use it.

The email:
Please read the following list and revert back to me with any comments or edits.

What your boss means:
Please read the following list and email a response to me, with any comments or edits.

What you** interpret from this:
Please read the following list and then return to your previous state, in which you were, in fact, me.

So the recipient is a figment of the boss's imagination, or some sort of employee-construct homunculus whose sole purpose is to do the bosses's bidding before being reabsorbed back into The Boss, like some kind of primordial extra limb. (This is a pretty reasonable assessment of Anet's employee relations, actually.)

Or... this is a perfectly reasonable new/emerging use of the term "revert", and I should get the hell over it. (But did I ever tell you about the time these employers made me spend a whole afternoon chasing a pigeon?)

[Edit: Wow, "bosses's" is totally not a word.]

*Specifically, my annoying boss from three years ago.
** By "you", I mean "I", which sort of invalidates my entire argument here.

Good weekend, overall. Rocky Horror on Friday night went very well - good crowd, good atmosphere, lots of fun people, lots of effort put into costuming. Usual small annoyances from staff; seems that the people who do the least work do the most yelling and throwing of weight around (one cast member in particular is particularly bad for this). But generally fun. Hard to believe it's been five years!

Went over to my folks last night to do dressing up and giving out of sweeties to children. Wore my conference-attending suit, plus cat ears and collar with bell (left over from kitty rights protest). Small children had no problem being served sweets by Business Cat but parental household cats were very, very unimpressed.

Baby walked into the sitting room where I was reading my book, between trick-or-treaters, and stopped and stared with an appalled expression on her face, for a whole minute (no exaggeration). When I stood up she went MARP and ran out of the room at 30mph, as they do. I settled back down and realised a couple of minutes later that she was peering at me from behind the couch. Again, she ran away when I went towards her; two minutes later she was back peeping out again. Maybe it was the cat ears? Got the same treatment from Chippy and Sam later on - full-on WTFing - although they weren't quite as freaked out. (Tempted to experiment a bit more with the cat ears and the Island cats...)

Also carved a very cool pumpkin, if I do say so myself ;-)

( Daily Mail in vaguely tolerant stance shocker )

In other news, I went down to feed the basement kitties around midnight last night, as I do, and had five show up - my usual three, and two pet cats who tagged along to see what the scéal was. One of the pets is a very cute fellow called Melbourne belonging to a couple that live in a ground floor flat, so gets to tootle in and out a lot and plays chasing with one of my strays (which is good - makes it hard for people to complain that the strays are making life difficult for pets!)

Anyway, I had come back up and was heading off when Melbourne's owner started calling him from their front window. So I waved to him, and he waved back.

And THEN I realised (I have crap eyesight and was distracted by cats pursuing me) that he was stark naked. I'm assuming he didn't expect there to be many people wandering around at that hour... I strode off purposefully, pretending nothing was out of the ordinary, but thinking "Our next conversation may be a bit awkward". Still, if you're going to call your cats in in the nude, perhaps you're accustomed to this kind of thing happening.

Henry was back down having lunch when I went to feed the cats this morning. Still cross with me - hid behind the bikes - but looks more mobile anyway. Very glad I didn't scare him off permanently.

We may try the vet thing again (a bit more surreptitiously) if he's not too jittery in a few days, but will leave him be for now.

There must be some sort of cat hideyhole in the complex somewhere. Curious to find out where it is now...

so I went down to the basement car park to feed the strays, and they were all like, oh hai, it's raining out there so we came in to sleep on the warm car bonnets, except for henry who seems to have claimed the cardboard box with the blanket in for full-time now

and I was like, so how are you guys, and what are you living on, air? since you definitely haven't been eating the delicious Whiskas With Cod (TM) that i've been leaving out for you the past few nights

and momma cat was like PETTINGS

and splodgey was all like PETTINGS and also CLIMBING ON THE BIKES

and henry was like, well I was actually quite comfortable in the box until you came along and disturbed me and no thank you i would not like pettings.

so i was like, well you seem to be getting on all right so I'm off to bed now

and splodgey was like RACE YOU TO THE DOOR


(and in unrelated news, the Judge Dredd drinking game where you drink every time anyone says "judge"? that's a lot of drinking.)

So apparently Google's What Do You Love? service has a long list of rude trigger words, which if you type them in the box will redirect you to "kittens". (Good choice, Google. I guess if you typed in "pussy" then you get what you were asking for, though, hur hur hur.)

I like long lists of rude words, as some of you who assisted on a linguistics project of mine back in 2006 will recall!

Going through the list, a few things occur to me, though.

a) It'd be unfortunate if you happen to love
- Vikings ("cnut")
- being a patent attorney ("cipa")
- chess ("pawn")

b) What the hell is a... never mind.

c) The theory that any word can be made more offensive by adding -face, -bag, or -head to it seems to hold true.

d) People really, really cannot spell.

e) "Feck" is on there, which seems a little oversensitive on Google's part, given that it's just likely to lead you to Irish blogs and many, many Father Ted fan sites, but whatever.

Still, creative new heights of obscenity!