Plinky said, “Pick a new pet to take home for free.”

Great Pyre­nees

There’s no such thing as a free pet, as any respon­si­ble pet own­er knows! Beyond the costs of hous­ing and feed­ing the ani­mal, you have to pro­vide for health care such as pre­ven­tive med­ica­tion for heart­worms and oth­er par­a­sites (for dogs and cats, at least), reg­u­lar vac­ci­na­tions, and check-ups. That’s with a healthy, young ani­mal! If the ani­mal gets ill or injured, of course, there are more expens­es.

How­ev­er, if I had an appro­pri­ate home and could afford all the con­comi­tant expens­es, I’d love to have a big dog. I’ve nev­er stopped miss­ing Kar­li, the Great Pyre­nees cross who was stolen from our fam­i­ly. She had a love­ly tem­pera­ment, and I adore large dogs in gen­er­al.

Live­jour­nal’s Writer’s Block ques­tion of the day is, “Cats or dogs– which do you pre­fer, and why?”

I don’t pre­fer one over the oth­er. I’ve shared my life with cats and dogs from my ear­li­est years and love both. My par­ents would­n’t con­sid­er allow­ing dogs inside the house and weren’t hap­py about hav­ing cats there, but small­er crit­ters are eas­i­er to sneak in, so I got more time to snug­gle with the cats. Recent­ly, I haven’t had a home with a fenced yard, so I haven’t had a dog. It seems unfair to have a dog with­out giv­ing him a place to run around and play off the leash every day. The cats deal with an all-indoor envi­ron­ment more eas­i­ly. But as soon as I’m able to do so, I’ll have a canine com­pan­ion again!

The NaBloPo­Mo prompt for today:
What is the first thing you see when you walk in your house?

Right now, the first thing any­body sees is Sam’s desk. No, that isn’t pre­cise­ly right. If you’re look­ing straight ahead at the wall, you see a col­lage by Katie, which is much love­li­er.

I’m try­ing NaBloPo­Mo again! The theme this month is “Return,” although I’m not at all sure what the heck that’s sup­posed to mean. I got today’s post in just under the wire, obviously—but I did post! Tomor­row I’ll try to do it much bet­ter. And I’ll even include pho­tos of the new kit­ten! Maybe he’ll have a name by then.

This is just too cute for words.

That’s an old pho­to of Katie and Kiyoshi. I’m not the fam­i­ly pho­tog­ra­ph­er. She is, fol­lowed by Sam. But there’s a pho­to, and this post real­ly needs one.

In much lighter news, The Girl is in the Pacif­ic North­west! For three weeks! She’s scout­ing col­leges and see­ing friends and so on. She’s already in geo-love after just a few days, say­ing she’d like to live there. Her hosts seem like Very Good Peo­ple, and I hope to meet them when they come to town for Dragon*Con.

Kyoshi is utter­ly uncon­solable, though. He wan­ders through the house look­ing for her, return­ing fre­quent­ly to her door (still closed, and no, I won’t open it to let him in), the front door, every sin­gle window—hoping in vain to catch sight of her. I’ve nev­er known such a one-per­son kit­ty! He does come to me and Sam (a lot), fran­ti­cal­ly at times, and he lets us pet him. But he won’t set­tle in our laps long at all. He has to dash to the front win­dows every time a car goes by, just hop­ing it might stop and dis­gorge the girl. I hope he gets more attached to us by the time she returns. Wher­ev­er she goes to school, though, I think she’s going to have to take the cat with her!

I’m less demon­stra­tive than the cat, but I do miss her. I know she’s with good peo­ple, and she’s hav­ing a great time, and she’s a smart young woman with a good head on her shoul­ders. But she’s my baby and she’s way far away and we’ve nev­er been apart for more than two weeks in her whole life!!!

Ok. I’ll try to rein that back a bit.

I gig­gled so much while watch­ing this video on ‘s jour­nal that I had to re-post it.

Oh, for a work­ing cam­era!¹

Katie cleaned the top of the file cab­i­net next to my chair with a Method clean­er that is strong­ly mint-scent­ed. Kyoshi won’t let us put the scan­ner there as intend­ed, because he’s lick­ing the cleaned sur­face and rub­bing all over it orgas­mi­cal­ly. (Cat­nip is in the mint fam­i­ly, and I guess this stuff is close enough.)