Cautious Man

Cautious man, because that's what we are after coming home to a house ruled by cats for two and a half days while we went to Dallas for a swap meet and to see the kids.  So far, so good.  We closed off the den and the bedrooms upstairs before we left, but the cats jimmied their way into the front bedroom and the closet door was open.  Someone appeared to be desperate to vomit onto the bed.  Joy.

Mr. L suspects our inappropriately peeing kitty is sending a message that he or she does not like the World's Best Cat Litter I've switched the household over to.  And, frankly, if they are going to pee outside the box, I guess I don't much care for it either.  I'd far prefer to have cats using the litter box, and if that means using a litter I'm less happy with, so be it.  Despite that, I plan to keep making World's Best available for a little while, I also selected two other litters from PetSmart earlier today to try.  One is recycled paper, and the vet uses it or something like it.  The other is a walnut shell-based product.  Maybe it has a more clay-like consistency?  I got a small bag of each to try to see if it's better received.  Before we left, I made up a fresh box with only Tidy Cat in it, and that was the box used the most by the time we got home.  The other World's Best and World's Best/Tidy Cat mix boxes were used far less -- maybe by two or three cats, and Lady was boarded this weekend, so that means five or six (at least) cats prefer Tidy Cat.

I didn't want to leave Lady in a cage while we weren't home -- the other cats think it's great fun to stretch a paw to pull her food bowl to the side of the cage and eat her food, so we'd have had a hungry kitty when we got home.  Plus, I could see her water getting tipped over, and that might not have ended well either.  Since last week's experiment with leaving her loose while we were gone for almost twelve hours resulted in us arriving home to a cat fight in progress, we decided it would be best for everyone to board Lady while we were out of town.  This should have worked out well, because her medication came in (Reconcile -- kitty Prozac), so they planned to start her on it, so she'd be used to it by the time I get her on Monday morning.  I feel better about that, because if she has a bad reaction, they'll be there to help her.  I haven't heard from the clinic, so I presume all is going well with that process.

I got all the CDs fed into my Mac Mini and iTunes.  I did a little bit of database clean up (several albums imported as compilations when they weren't really compilations).  I haven't tested to make sure everything imported properly.  I have 384 albums (!) and 4587 items taking up 20.89G of hard drive space.  I can listen for 20.5 days before getting a repeat.  I was surprised to find that many CDs.  I found four bad CDs.  I found one I decided I didn't want, but I suspected Stephen might, so he now possesses that one.  One of the bad CDs, I kind of want, so I'm looking at replacing it with a different CD that contains all but one of the songs I want.  I may make an individual iTunes purchase for the other song, or I may not worry about it.  I mean, I have 4587 others.  Do I really need that one?  Probably not. I'll copy the iTunes folder to an external hard drive, and I'll have the full library available for either the Air for the Pro when desired.  I don't listen to music much, because I consider listening to music a private thing, so I don't do it when anyone else is around.  Also, Mr. L doesn't like ANY of the music I like (one insurmountable problem from being from two completely different eras on the cultural timeline).

I did a scene from Polar Bear on the Loose.  It's all wrong. I need to redo it.  I did a little other puttering for my short stuff, but overall, it wasn't a stellar writing week.  Talked with Stephen about the Secret Project alluded to last week.  Thinking and mulling.

I got the bare essential winter tree stuff done.  I still have plenty that should be done, but I got the critical stuff done.  I took the shredding upstairs but have to actually shred the stuff.  

I do have an extra George Strait album (found a dupe) if anyone like George and wants the CD, I'll mail it to you.  I believe it's the "Somewhere Down in Texas" CD.

Mindful eating is going well.  I wore a pair of jeans one size smaller this weekend (haven't been able to wear them for a year or more).  I have an older, bulky Tanita body fat scale.  I've been hankering for a fancy WiFi scale, and today I sprang for the Withings Smart Body Analyzer.  This thing is supposed to do weight, body fat, heart rate, and room air quality, automatically transmitting it to my app.  I synced the Fitbit and LoseIt! apps, and it should feed the weight and body fat data to those apps -- not sure how much of the other data it will share.

The week ahead sees us traveling to San Antonio to do spring tree work and other sundry items around the house down there.  We'll spend about 2.5 weeks down there, and I'm going to try to not have to go again for a while after this trip, but who knows what will happen.  That reminds me, I need to gather a few items for Goodwill and Half Price Books.  Those are two things I should focus between now and Tuesday morning.  That and getting the yard here squared away -- it needs mowing and bagging.  I got a new litter pan today, and I believe I'll bring that down there with us for this trip -- we only have two litter boxes down there, and the kitties might appreciate a third option.