Telling it like it is

I have a cunning plan. Well. Sort of. We've come up with a set of rules we'll have to follow strictly about letting her in and out. We'll deal with the neighbour cat as and when. Dory is going to have to wear a collar - something I know she'll hate, but that's the bottom line. Then I can upgrade the catflap to an IR-activated flap and she can come and go when we unlock it. At night she'll be in. When we go out, she'll likely be in. When we're in, she can come and go at will. That's the plan anyway....But then the plan 4 days ago was for her to become an indoor cat.

Dory has figured out how to get between the tarp I put over the cat flap and the flap itself. She was extremely insistant this morning - meouwing badly and pawing the cat flap. We've got to remain firm though. Paula's doing a great job. I think tonight I'm going to put the steel plate back on the bottom of the flyscreen so there's no light coming through the cat flap. We'll try her like that. She did come out last night - chicken was the key. It took about an hour to get her to come upstairs again but she was fine. She had a l-o-n-g drink of water and ate the rest of her food, and we played with the feather toy at playtime.

Dory spooked when someone came over to see Paula this afternoon and has hidden behind the washing machine downstairs in the laundry room. Paula can't get her out so we're just going to leave her for a couple of hours to come out of her own accord. I hope she does, and I hope she can.

Paula is dealing with Dory very well. Dory has been upping the ante in the "please let me out" stakes but she's been kept inside. This morning she exhibitted a distinct change in behaviour - she didn't eat her food when Paula put it out, but instead followed us around. I'm worried now that she's having a change of behaviour.

At last I don't need to worry about my monitor exploding or setting fire to my cube. I have a brand new Dell 20 inch LCD display, and my - what a nice display it is.

We're having a bit of a stressful day or two with our new cat, Dory. Well - not so much with her as with the neighbour cat. It's our own fault - we used to let him in and he'd lounge around the house. But that was before we got Dory. Now we're trying to decide how to keep him out. There's only two options, realistically. Either Dory wears a collar so we can put a magnetic / infra-red cat flap in, or she becomes a house cat and never goes out again. We know she likes to be outside, and we know she freaks out when we put a collar on, so it's a difficult decision. We covered the cat flap early last night and she didn't seem to make any motions to go out. I kept it covered this morning after feeding her and she stayed in, obviously. But when Paula went to do the litter box this morning, she found Dory had pooped on the carpet for the first time. I hope this was an accident - a bum too close to the edge of the box or something. I hope this was the case and not t

Hillary Clinton collapsed in front of a crowd today whilst giving a speech. Apparently some bug she had made her feel faint. But the classic reporting comes from CNN who reported that as she was being helped out of the room, "walked out of the private club where she was to speak under her own power" Classic. How else, pray tell, do you speak? Is that a split infinitive? You don't think perhaps they meant to say "walked out of the private club where she was to speak , under her own power" Ah the lowly comma. So often misused or left out. Original story

Today was a busy day in the world of e-commerce, Amex and travel. In one day I booked two return flights from Salt Lake to Reno, a rental car in Reno, two return flights from Salt Lake to Amsterdam, and two return flights from Amsterdam to Palma. Eesh. With some clever posturing, the September flights to Amsterdam cost me $200. How? Well for 50k Delta miles, you can get an Award ticket. I had 94,000 miles in my account and needed two tickets. For $200 they allow you to buy 6000 miles. That topped me up to 100,000 and the tickets were then Award travel. Which was nice. Because paying for those tickets in cold hard greenbacks would have been over $1500....