Burroughs has died.

I only really heard something was wrong on Sunday, and even then, it was a suspicion. Then he was taken in to the vet on Monday where they apparently took a lot of fluid out of his chest. The vet said it was one of two conditions, one of which treatable, the other not, but didn’t elaborate further and said that my mother had to wait for the lab results on the fluid. She heard this evening that it was Feline Infectious Peritonitis which is, for a cat, a death sentence. She opted to have him put down rather than struggle trying to breath a few more weeks of life. Only two weekends ago he was fine… I’ve also heard that apparently he had an abnormally large heart that may have been the cause of this and the virus was some ancillary thing, I don’t know….

I fear for my cat now, who has been staying with my parents for a little while. The vet apparently said that there was no chance of transmission, but the websites I’ve visited suggest otherwise. In any case, I think I’ll make good on my offer of Midnight to my mother, they’ll both be happier.

Hobbes and Missy lost to coyotes most likely, and now Burroughs, who probably had enough wits about him in the forest to evade those predators for life, felled by some apparently rare disease, from where I wonder. In any case, if there is a higher power, it apparently is most interested in killing our cats.

I think it’s sad that this blog even has the entry where we first got him, it was one of the first entries of the blog… 2.5 years of the big-faced cat. I wrote another entry once when we thought he was lost to the woods, and that we would wait long for his coming…we will indeed wait long for your coming,

Goodbye Burroughs

Alicia came over tonight, to get together, and she gave me birthday presents. Went to a nearby Starbucks where I opened them. She gave me a card where she wished me a 27th birthday, which surprised me since I was 26 (she added a disclaimer to the card when I showed her), hehe. She also got me a copy of the last Harry Potter book, as a pre-order, so I along with untold thousands of people can finally finish the books (it’s amazing how I can casually read the first one on a bet, and then go on to own them all, hah). And a touching gift of a portrait of me in a nice frame. She caught my flattering side, which is no *actual* side exactly, but an imagined side, as I think her rendering made me look thinner. I’m going to hang it on me wall so the cat doesn’t get it.

In the source photo, my mouth was open,
the same could be said about most photos of me.

We watched Knocked Up, which I enjoyed, Alicia thought it was so-so. The trick is all these types of movies have typical plots, which is sort of what makes them romantic comedies. Though my favorite of this kind I think is Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human (which seems to have a lower score, whatever). Then we had dinner and I took her home (that is I went on the TTC with her and watched, including a very very packed bus with a driver experimenting with instant acceleration).

It’s starting to get hot here, I think I need to get a few bottles of Drysol, put it in the tub, and soak in it (and eventually scream, I think).

I decided to take my new camera out for a spin, to work, to take pictures of co-workers, including a sort of mascot plant now in my possession, named later in life Penelope. But she’s had a hard life. Passed around from one owner to the next.

Will this plant ever bloom

No one knows her origin other than Jen, who will not speak of it. She kept the African Violet in her cube for quite some time. Apparently the only water it ever got was because of another person called Jason, who later left, and the plant started to die.

One day I was talking to Colleen, Jen’s cube-neighbour, and we happened to mention the plant, and to our surprise when we looked over (to acknowledge the plant we were talking about) the plant was gone. It’s new home was the trash. Colleen rescued it, but soon after she left, so then another person named Mike claimed Penelope, and one day he left too. I inherited this plant, on the mend, but still in bad shape. I incubated Penelope under a light, and Elena, my cube-neighbour, brought little plant food sticks, special sprays, and also gave the plant new soil. And the poor plant is really doing well. Actually, the leaves are crowding each other a bit now.

One day, Penelope shall bloom, one day…

Another bus story,

Already incredibly tired and frustrated from today, on the bus ride home a woman and Little Boy get on the bus at some point between work and home. Little Boy simply cannot help swinging from the (utterly useless) hand-holds suspended above, blocking other passengers as they attempt ingress or egress. Woman seems a little too old to be Little Boy’s mother, Little Boy appearing to be around 8 or so.

As about 10 stops from my destination, Little Boy decides it is fun to swing from the bar, while reaching up behind and toggling the Request-Stop button on the vertical bar next to him, avoiding the gaze of his .. keeper. After a few stops where no one gets off, the bus driver gets a little irritated and punishes all by waiting, a very long time, at the 3rd last stop of my trip. Then he gets going again, and stupid Little Boy does it again… finally the bus driver just sits at the stop, now only one stop away from mine. Another bus comes up along side and stops, and almost everyone on the bus gets out and onto it. I walk up and ask what’s going on, the driver says he won’t move because of the people messing around with the signal. So I tell him Little Boy did it.

The *mother just says “I didn’t see it, so it wasn’t him”… I really wanted to say “Well, that just means you’re negligent”, but I decided to demonstrate how Little Boy did it, saying how I saw it several times from the perfect vantage point I had at the back, also telling him that swinging around wasn’t a very good way to stay inconspicuous, he should stay still while pressing the button. By now the bus was already moving again, with I think only me and Little Boy and *mother on it. Then I say “But now I’m pressing the button” and the bus driver confirms that this is my stop. I leave, annoyed.

I don’t enjoy telling off other people, or their kids, especially on what I will laughingly call Toronto’s Transit system, but today, ugh.

The annual sigh. I was pretty down about it, lots of other stuff going on, hard to tell if there was any causation there. One year is so much like another, if it weren’t for the anniversary, I’d probably forget how old I was.

To the next…

Curtis came over on the Sunday and Monday of the long weekend, being the only person who was free to hang out. He gave me my birthday present, and I could never have guessed it in a million years. It was a desktop catapult, which I will use to terrorize co-workers. It’s pretty neat, despite my inability to photograph it properly.

Now I need little explosive charges

We just hung out that night, he slept over then on Monday we went to the ROM. Tell me, what is a museum without dinosaurs? Whatever it is, the ROM is now. Pretty well the entire 2nd floor was closed, and that has the stuff I find most interesting. But we went to basically every exhibit that was open, made an afternoon of it.

Today Salman snuck into my workplace and we hung out for an hour or so, he missed our re-org so it seems things are all changy, but that only happened recently. Shouts out to Salman if he’s reading.

My birthday is tomorrow. The annual sigh.