From Aquarium 11-18

Those are otters. There’s lots of otter pictures.

From Audrey 11-12

That’s Audrey with her new toy - it’s a rattly ball with yarn on it. I’d gotten her another new rattly ball recently, but that one was too small - she lost it somewhere under something. I think.

From Audrey 11-5

These pictures are from Audrey’s half-birthday, the day of her first introduction to catnip. She had fun, as you’d expect. =)

From Audrey 10-30

Various assorted Audrey pics - the first couple pics are from her field trip to Esther’s, when they were testing the fire alarms in my apartment building.

Audrey’s had a thing about my bedside table for a while now, ever since she first managed to leap up there. She’s only knocked over the glass of water I normally keep up there once, which isn’t bad, really, and despite the picture above, she hasn’t shredded the antenna cable for my clock radio. But she has picked up a very strange habit in the last few days - climbing on top of the lamp proper, inside the lampshade. I’m not sure how she manages to get there, but it requires some serious contortions. It looks all the sillier because my lamp is made from glass - so from my position in bed, which is where the pictures were taken, I can see, well, all of her through the lamp. Good thing I have one of those florescent low energy consumption bulbs - she’d be burning herself if I had an incandescent one.

The name is taken from Mom’s nickname for a particular way Scooper tends to sit - the picture above is the first documented case of Audrey performing full Meatloaf Kitty. There are a number of other pictures up as well.

Audrey discovered that she can climb up onto the media center (with all my home electronics in it) a few days ago. Today, she started hanging up there and dozing off - I couldn’t figure out what the point was. Then I realized - it’s hot up there. The TiVo, home theater, and cable box are all giving off heat (actually, so’s the X Box 360 power brick), all rising to the top of the media center…where Audrey absorbs all that excess heat. Ah-ha!

From Scooper 9/1

From Audrey 9/21

I am terrible! I’ve gone almost a month since last posting pictures - so here are three sets of pictures for your viewing pleasure. The first set are the last set of pictures I took before heading back east for Labor Day. The second set are of Scooper, my mom’s cat - he’s a wonderful kitty, but, well, a bit stupid. He hasn’t figured out how to chew yet. He’s 11. And he poops in the TV room at mom’s for no obvious reason. And he *screams* for food, but if you give him too much at once, he’ll just inhale it all and vomit it right back up again. He’s like a goldfish crossed with an infant. But he’s cute, so check out his pictures. Lastly, there’s the third set, the pictures I’ve taken in the last couple weeks, since returning from Massachusetts. So enjoy all the pictures!

So Audrey’s been playing out in the airwell some lately, and a few days ago, after I closed the screen door to the airwell, she bolted up it. The picture above is actually from the later stages of the climb - she’d already started backing her way down. Now I’m careful not to leave the glass door open enough to let her climb up that high when the screen door’s shut.

Some of the later pictures come from yesterday, when Audrey was freaked out and hiding under the loveseat for an hour. Here’s an email I sent to a friend, with the subject “Audrey is having a terrible, very bad, no good day”:

It was fine at first - I found a way of sitting that provided her with a curve to curl up in between my hip, the couch, and the laptop, and she liked that very much. Then she dozed off on my arm during a meeting, which is always nice. But then there was a growly noise that started coming from the airwell, something engine-ish, or mechanical. It got louder, and louder, and Audrey bolted - she’s been hiding under the loveseat for the last half hour or so. I took pictures of her under there - she looks very sad. It turns out there’s a guy on a ladder blasting the walls of the building next to mine with a high-pressure hose, scraping off pigeon crap, pigeon nests, and at least one dead pigeon (I swear I saw two fall!). And it is *loud*. And the guy is just outside my window, and no part of the apartment is quiet. Even the other airwell is loud. In addition, the screen of my window is now getting covered with pigeon yuck. And I’m afraid that this is going to drive the pigeons off for a while, cutting down on Audrey’s entertainment. Stupid cleaning people.

Some context - I’m talking about my other airwell, the big one between me and the building next door. It’s a favorite hangout of pigeons - in fact, there was a dead pigeon right outside my bedroom window for a few months. Kinda stinky. The walls of the other building were positively covered in pigeon crap, feathers, nests, etc, along with at least one dead pigeon in a cranny. The water-blasting went on for a total of like two and a half hours. Audrey was not happy, though I did eventually coax her out from under the loveseat with the cat dancer and treats. And now opening a window onto that airwell smells *terrible* - unsurprisingly, considering that the air there is now filled with disintegrated pigeon leavings. Anyway, all the pictures are here - enjoy!

Ok, so it’s looking like every two weeks, there’ll be a new batch of pictures. And here’s this one - enjoy!

So yeah, I’ve got a thing for putting Audrey in bags. This time, I tried some new angles. I think it works. Anyway, pictures here. Enjoy!

Earlier last night, she was in her normal fort (I now leave my normal seat’s footrest extended all the time, with a blanket covering it when I’m not sitting there. She had started hanging out under the footrest/blanket combination while I was working, and now likes to sleep there when there isn’t a convenient person around to sleep on). Dad and I were getting ready to watch Citizen Kane, and I was grabbing remotes from the bookshelf or some such thing, when she started batting at my feet through the blanket, a regular activity of hers. This time, though, she somehow managed to get a claw through the blanket and directly into an artery in the middle toe of my left foot. It *hurt*. I went to go change her litter when I discovered a red splotch on the kitchen floor - I was confused and thought it might be tomato sauce, when I realized that there were more splotches, and then that my toe was covered in blood. So I scurried off to the bathroom, ran my toe under water in the sink (always an awkward proposition) and bandaged it up. What I didn’t realize is that Audrey took advantage of this opening to bolt into my room and hide there. I shut the door afterwards, not realizing she was in there. An hour later, I realized I hadn’t seen her - Dad eventually checked my room and found her staring up at him inquisitively from my dirty clothes hamper. Luckily, she didn’t defecate anywhere. =) When I emerged from my room half an hour later, after a phone call, I found my dad sitting with his arms crossed (a normal pose for him) and Audrey splayed out across his arms, asleep. It was very, very cute - I wish I’d gotten a picture.

Today’s the actual car race down in San Jose, so it’ll be the fourth day in a row that I’ll have been out of the apartment for 4+ hours. I was going through Audrey withdrawal yesterday - I’ve become totally accustomed to just spending my day hanging out with her.

Today’s the first Friday I’ve actually remembered to do this! Not much new today, but here it is.