I hadn't been planning to post about yesterday's unfortunate activities, since I was in a terrible mood even after arriving home and playing with the cat. Who is no longer limping, by the way. However, I received a glowing comment on the last post, and figured that if my blog has been compared to daily news, I ought to make a better attempt at posting daily. So for yesterday, here goes:
I played with Charlotte all morning, instead of doing work, partly because I was trying to erase bad feelings associated with the claw-clipping attempts I had made the night before. The other part was simply alleviate bad behavior that had been forming over the last few days. Now about a week. This behavior includes climbing legs, biting fingers, gnawing on knees, and generally being a moody little cuss. She is teething, poor thing, but that is no excuse for bad behavior.
So I figured playing with her would help get some of the tension out, and give her an opportunity to pounce/gnaw/destroy something that was intended to be a victim - the jingle toy. It worked beautifully until about noon, when I got ready to leave for campus and she deployed her delaying tactics. I really hate these. They aren't the innocent ones, where the cat flashes eyes at you and does the cute routine. These are the destroy-something-quick-so-she'll-have-to-clean-up-the-mess kind of tactics.
Regardless, I went to class and left the chair where it fell. This chair is the one Koibito gave me. It's large, solid, has four sturdy, untippable legs, and is not going anywhere anytime soon. Charlotte knocked it over. She has supercat strength, a burst of kitty adrenaline, if you will, when she perceives that I'm leaving. I have no doubt that if she got outside, she could lift the back of my car to prevent my driving off.
The class I observed was excellent, full of good advice and whatnot, and then I blogged about it before yoga. Here's where the day turns sour, surprisingly. Yoga is the one thing I reliably look forward to every week. None of the other weekly activities always lures me in. Sometimes, I look forward to the others, and sometimes I don't. Yoga never fails to excite me.
Wednesday's yoga class was terrible for me. The mat I bought at Walmart is not up to par. Sticky mats are supposed to provide failsafe anchors for hands and feet that are being pushed in ways that normally result in face-to-floor encounters due to appendage slippage. My mat is a "slicky" mat. It does not anchor a damn thing. So I spent the whole time desperately digging in with toes and fingers, and couldn't actually stretch out for any of the poses due to my not wanting to meet the floor. We did several balancing acts, many of which required an anchoring mat, which I did not have. I was distracted the whole time, got nothing but frustration and tenseness from the class, and left feeling too upset to work out afterward. The pants didn't help. I'm buying jazz pants this weekend, and am going to look for a real sticky mat to replace mine. The pants needed to be hiked up every time I needed to really move my legs, so between the mat and the pants, I might as well have skipped the class.
I came home in a really pissy mood, and thought about blogging, but decided instead to stretch out on the futon and invite the cat for a little nap. She almost always takes me up on this. I was really hungry when I got home too. There were pizza coupons on the desk, candy corn and M&Ms on top of the fridge, and a bottle of fizzy water inside the fridge. But Charlotte and I napped until ten, and then I got up and ate a bowl of oatmeal. I figured I needed something calming and stable, instead of something (like delivery) which is patently non-stable. Then I read a bit for class, and went to bed. The time spent on the futon, with the cat wrapped in a loose oval near my navel rally helped. Good kitty.
That was Wednesday. Consider it blogged.
Today, the cat was not a good kitty. She started off by waking me up with her crying an entire hour before the alarm went off. I let her in the room and went back to sleep, waking with the alarm to find that she'd been digging under a pile of heavy books to drag out a card I'd received from my mom. She was in the process of eating it. I saved all but a corner of the card and started making my breakfast. I decided on a ham sandwich with cheese, which I know isn't exactly breakfast food, but hey, it's close. Think of it as toast, plus a ham and cheese omelet, minus the egg. See? Now it looks like breakfast, doesn't it?
When I was ready to leave, and packing my bags, Charlotte started getting agitated again. I sensed the stalling tactic coming, and cringed. What happened was not like any other stalling tactic I had yet experienced. She launched herself from the futon, bolted across the living room, leapt into the air, and anchored herself (claws mostly) into my leg near the waist. Keeping my language clean, I will say this: It hurt. It also worked, as I had to disinfect the bleeding puncture wounds and use two bandaids in a crisscross over the holes.
I honestly don't think this is *all* a product of teething. But we'll see how she reacts when she tries this maneuver with clipped claws. I'd really enjoy seeing her scramble around and finally fall as gravity wins. Maybe she'd learn then. Short of putting on body armor every morning, I am unsure of how to dissuade her from doing this. More on that tomorrow.
In the meantime, I'm here at school, and need to start grading for the day. The goal is to get it all done by Friday at noon. We'll see.
End.
I played with Charlotte all morning, instead of doing work, partly because I was trying to erase bad feelings associated with the claw-clipping attempts I had made the night before. The other part was simply alleviate bad behavior that had been forming over the last few days. Now about a week. This behavior includes climbing legs, biting fingers, gnawing on knees, and generally being a moody little cuss. She is teething, poor thing, but that is no excuse for bad behavior.
So I figured playing with her would help get some of the tension out, and give her an opportunity to pounce/gnaw/destroy something that was intended to be a victim - the jingle toy. It worked beautifully until about noon, when I got ready to leave for campus and she deployed her delaying tactics. I really hate these. They aren't the innocent ones, where the cat flashes eyes at you and does the cute routine. These are the destroy-something-quick-so-she'll-have-to-clean-up-the-mess kind of tactics.
Regardless, I went to class and left the chair where it fell. This chair is the one Koibito gave me. It's large, solid, has four sturdy, untippable legs, and is not going anywhere anytime soon. Charlotte knocked it over. She has supercat strength, a burst of kitty adrenaline, if you will, when she perceives that I'm leaving. I have no doubt that if she got outside, she could lift the back of my car to prevent my driving off.
The class I observed was excellent, full of good advice and whatnot, and then I blogged about it before yoga. Here's where the day turns sour, surprisingly. Yoga is the one thing I reliably look forward to every week. None of the other weekly activities always lures me in. Sometimes, I look forward to the others, and sometimes I don't. Yoga never fails to excite me.
Wednesday's yoga class was terrible for me. The mat I bought at Walmart is not up to par. Sticky mats are supposed to provide failsafe anchors for hands and feet that are being pushed in ways that normally result in face-to-floor encounters due to appendage slippage. My mat is a "slicky" mat. It does not anchor a damn thing. So I spent the whole time desperately digging in with toes and fingers, and couldn't actually stretch out for any of the poses due to my not wanting to meet the floor. We did several balancing acts, many of which required an anchoring mat, which I did not have. I was distracted the whole time, got nothing but frustration and tenseness from the class, and left feeling too upset to work out afterward. The pants didn't help. I'm buying jazz pants this weekend, and am going to look for a real sticky mat to replace mine. The pants needed to be hiked up every time I needed to really move my legs, so between the mat and the pants, I might as well have skipped the class.
I came home in a really pissy mood, and thought about blogging, but decided instead to stretch out on the futon and invite the cat for a little nap. She almost always takes me up on this. I was really hungry when I got home too. There were pizza coupons on the desk, candy corn and M&Ms on top of the fridge, and a bottle of fizzy water inside the fridge. But Charlotte and I napped until ten, and then I got up and ate a bowl of oatmeal. I figured I needed something calming and stable, instead of something (like delivery) which is patently non-stable. Then I read a bit for class, and went to bed. The time spent on the futon, with the cat wrapped in a loose oval near my navel rally helped. Good kitty.
That was Wednesday. Consider it blogged.
Today, the cat was not a good kitty. She started off by waking me up with her crying an entire hour before the alarm went off. I let her in the room and went back to sleep, waking with the alarm to find that she'd been digging under a pile of heavy books to drag out a card I'd received from my mom. She was in the process of eating it. I saved all but a corner of the card and started making my breakfast. I decided on a ham sandwich with cheese, which I know isn't exactly breakfast food, but hey, it's close. Think of it as toast, plus a ham and cheese omelet, minus the egg. See? Now it looks like breakfast, doesn't it?
When I was ready to leave, and packing my bags, Charlotte started getting agitated again. I sensed the stalling tactic coming, and cringed. What happened was not like any other stalling tactic I had yet experienced. She launched herself from the futon, bolted across the living room, leapt into the air, and anchored herself (claws mostly) into my leg near the waist. Keeping my language clean, I will say this: It hurt. It also worked, as I had to disinfect the bleeding puncture wounds and use two bandaids in a crisscross over the holes.
I honestly don't think this is *all* a product of teething. But we'll see how she reacts when she tries this maneuver with clipped claws. I'd really enjoy seeing her scramble around and finally fall as gravity wins. Maybe she'd learn then. Short of putting on body armor every morning, I am unsure of how to dissuade her from doing this. More on that tomorrow.
In the meantime, I'm here at school, and need to start grading for the day. The goal is to get it all done by Friday at noon. We'll see.
End.
posted by Rehkmira @ 12:11
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