Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

Well, it's actually only Wednesday, but it's wet and ick outside and the cats are cloud grey blobs curled up in the office. It's probably the best thing to do (or else follow tanais's lead and get on a plane to California).

The were a bit more active the other evening, and I managed to take some interesting portraits of them. I rather like the resulting effect, the cats' faces filling most of the frame, the shallow depth of field of a big zoom lens leaving the background dark and out of focus.





Putney, London
August 2010

There's nothing that stares quite so well as a pissed-off cat.

And there's no cat quite so good at being pissed-off as our Ben. When he gets his snit on, it's quite clear the whole world is against him, and that it manifests its bile in the shape of everything around him. Especially in cameras.

Me, I'm keeping back at a safe distance.



Putney, London
September 2009

Here's Jeoffrey as I aim to remember him, twice as large as life and calmly taking everything in his stride.

There's nothing quite like a Maine, all ruff and dignity wrapped up in a calm self confidence - and still willing to take risks. Shortly before we left on this trip, he jumped out onto next door's roof, a brave leap even when he had all four legs. He seemed most unconcerned, even when we had to climb a wall to fetch him down...

He will be missed.

Pebble poses for the camera.

I didn't do any blogging yesterday, so consider this a belated Friday Cat Blogging.



Putney, London
December 2008 

We lost one of the Putney mogs at the weekend. Not the Jeffster, who's recovered remarkably well from his amputation. Instead it was a sudden and surprising loss, as Calli the little yellow cat was found dead by our downstairs neighbour who was cat sitting.

I'd only been away less than 24 hours. We're completely shocked, and terribly sad.

Calli had been rescued as a semi-feral kitten back in 1998. She was very affectionate, and followed us around the house, protesting with her high pitched mew if she saw us leaving the safety of the house. She'd done outside, and inside was so much nicer. We're going to miss our little yellow shadow, who followed us from room to room, making sure her humans never got too far away.

Here's the last photograph I took of her.

He's back from the vet, minus one leg (and looking rather bald), but doing surprisingly well.

In fact the first thing he did was climb to the top of the house, where he's now sitting in a wardrobe. I suspect I'd be doing much the same if I was him. He's due a check up in five days, and the stitches should be out in ten.

Thanks to all for their thoughts and good wishes - and thanks to Richard at Roehampton Veterinary Centre for an excellent job.

What we'd thought was an abscess on the Jeffster's rear right foot has turned out to be something a lot worse.

After noticing some swelling last week, we'd taken him along to the vet's, where the summer locum gave him some antibiotics. These hadn't done anything, so he'd had a different batch at the end of last week. While Jeoff was doing OK, the swelling hadn't gone down, and we could feel something hard under the skin. We took him back to the vet's this afternoon, and the vet (now back from holiday) rushed him off for an X-ray.

The resulting image wasn't good news - it turns out that what was causing the swelling was a tumour in one of the bones of his foot. It looks like it hasn't spread beyond there, but these are aggressive cancers (the vet reckoned that it had only been six weeks or so to get to where things are today), and there's really only one thing we can do to prevent it spreading. So tomorrow Jeoffroy will have to have his leg amputated.

We're completely shocked, but this will be the best thing for him - even if he does find it a little harder to get around in the future. I don't suspect he'll be climbing over the rooftops for a long while.



I'll take him to the vet's for the operation early tomorrow morning, and we'll see where it goes from here.

...as the rest of it has been a mix of upgrading the lounge PC ("Media Center needs memory badly"), worrying about the abscess on the Jeffster's leg (he's been to the vet, so it's a just a matter of waiting for the antibiotics to work), finishing a 4.5K word piece for IT Expert, conducting an interview about software development tools via Skype to Santa Cruz (with a brief digression into the subject of ice cream), and working on the outline for a piece of commercial writing...

I was hoping to write a piece on the latest volume of Ian Douglas' fascinating wide screen space opera series that mashes military SF with Arthur C. Clarke-style deep history speculation, early Gregory Benford xeno-archaeology and a touch of Greg Egan mathematics, but ran out of time. That's a project for another day...

Instead here's Calli lazing in a window on a hot, bright sunny day.



Putney, London
July 2008

Calli in the window, on a hot summer's day.

Putney, London
July 2008