Caption Contest

Chaplin likes to come sit on my lap while I'm trying to read things on the computer. Fortunately, my computer has a built-in camera so I can capture him making goofy faces like this one:


If only I could figure out how to make the flash less bright so it wouldn't completely blow out his fur.

Now soliciting comments to improve upon the the title posted at Flickr (linked from the picture).

When Fleas, Six-Day Weeks and 5:30 PM Call Times Collide

It's been hellaciously hot in L.A. this week, so the fleas that I thought I'd gotten rid of are back with a MASSIVE vengeance. The only real solution is to flea-bomb the house to kill 'em all.

The problem is, flea-bombing is a stupidly elaborate and time-consuming process, since it has a tendency to cover everything in a sticky, disgusting, chemical-filled film. You therefore have to cover some stuff up in advance, and wash a lot more stuff off afterwards.

I'm also working ridiculously late (or early, depending on your perspective). Our crew call was really late, and my call was 5:30 PM. That means they expect to be shooting until at least 5:30 AM. You know it's going to be a long night when the thing that will cause filming to stop is the sunrise.

All that in mind, here is my rough schedule for the next 36 hours:

Now-6AM: Work in my office where they've turned off the air conditioning. Possibly longer.

6-7AM: Drive back to Santa Monica, try to obtain a flea fogger at Ralph's (the grocery store).

7-8AM: Prepare apartment for fogging by putting all open food and dishes in either the fridge or the dishwasher and sealing.

8AM-9AM: Drop Chaplin off for flea dip, go to pet store and get flea fogger if Ralph's didn't have one.

9:30 AM - Set off flea fogger. Flee to Nate's house and take a nap for 2-3 hours while flea fogger does its bit.

12 Noon-1PM - Go home, open windows and let apartment air out.

1PM-2PM - Return to Nate's and napping, let apartment finish airing out.

2PM-3PM - Retrieve cat from groomers, take him home. Start to clean up.

3PM-9PM - Continue cleaning and laundering. Probably pass out from exhaustion. Hopefully will not die from whatever toxic fumes remain in my apartment.

9PM-11PM - Wake up, realize I never made it to the gym and that now I have to go in the morning. Finish cleaning.

11PM-6AM - Sleep.

6AM-9AM - Get up, go to the gym, go to work.


If I don't post for several days, send help.

A Brief List Of Things I Am Doing Instead of Posting

1. Killing fleas.
2. Washing all my bedding.
3. Working.
4. Itching.
5. Working.
6. Eating.
7. Itching some more.
8. Working some more.
9. Driving.
10. Killing a couple more fleas.
11. Applying calamine lotion.
12. Working.
13. Going to the gym.
14. Itching.
15. Wishing Chaplin were not so susceptible to fleas.
16. Maybe, just maybe, sleeping.

The Best Six Bucks I've Spent in Some Time

Aw

My next door neighbor just took this picture after hearing Chap whining and then seeing him stick his paws out under the door:



Poor bored kitten. He looks so hilariously pathetic in that picture.

Ruh Roh

Two things causing concern.

First, I got on the scale, and was happy to see I'd lost another pound. The bad news was, I realized I hadn't weighed Chaplin in a while, so I picked him up to do the whole "weigh self holding cat, weigh self, subtract" method to see how much he weighed.

The big fucker weighs 18 pounds! Somehow, he's put on two pounds in the last few months. I've been feeding him roughly the same amount, so I'm a little mystified as to how he's porked up so much.

Second, I'm trapped in my apartment. After months of fighting with my landlord, they finally replaced part of my rotting doorframe. However, when they re-hung the door, they did a piss-poor job of it.

At first, the door was just sticking, which I could live with, but it's deteriorated badly. Now it takes a ridiculous amount of effort just to enter and leave the damn apartment. It's worse than it was before, which I didn't think was possible.

What's sad about this is that it really doesn't affect me too much at all, since I've barely been leaving the house anyway. Hopefully they'll get this fixed by a reasonable hour tomorrow, and I'll be able to at least take the trash out and go to the gym.

Not Dead

Just not doing anything terribly interesting, and have had a serious drop in motivation this week. After working for a couple weeks, to go back to doing nothing is awfully frustrating.

I will note a few random things I've noticed in the last few days:

- Chaplin falling asleep on my chest means I will, without fail, be asleep within 15 minutes as well.

- If ever you're cleaning out your apartment and you find old letters or printed-out emails from your ex, for the love of god, do not start to read them. Save them if you must, but shove them in the drawer before you start reading them. Do not do that to yourself.

- I have to vacuum up dirt and cat hair substantially more often now that I have hardwood floors, but I doubt there was actually any less dirt or cat hair when I had carpet. I'm not grossed out by much, but that thought grosses me out just a bit.

- Apparently the new guy next door to me is some sort of classical pianist. It's kind of interesting when the music bleeding in matches up with whatever movie or TV show I'm watching. And sometimes its hilarious when he's playing some delicate thing while I'm watching an action movie.

- No matter how much food I buy for a party, it's inevitably way, way too much, and I wind up freezing a bunch of meat and throwing out a bunch of buns. I just cannot get the calculus right.

- I have several hundred DVDs, most of which I never watch, so I thought I could sell some to bring in some extra money. But combing through them, I can only find about a dozen that I'm actually willing to part with, most of which will not bring me a damn dime because nobody else wants to watch them either.

Free Stuff!

The company I used to work for (not the show itself, but the much smaller company that technically employed me) has hired me for the week to clean out their old offices, which were basically unused by more than one person for over two years.

They're selling much of the old furniture to the incoming tenants, but they've decided not to store any of the remnants, so they're giving away what they couldn't convince the new kids to take.

I scored a very nice lamp, which will now bring light to my attempts to read on the couch, and a great overstuffed chair that conveniently matches the color of the couch.

There's only one minor issue: The chair has been sat upon by two dogs in the fairly recent past, a pug belonging to my former employers and a husky/Aussie shephard mix belonging to another employee.

This was slightly concerning, since I know Chaplin doesn't get along very well with other animals (this is a large part of why I have him in the first place: while he's a sweet kitty on his own, he didn't get along with his previous owner's other pets).

After I dragged the chair into my apartment this evening, Chaplin flipped a bit, sniffing and scratching and scratching and sniffing at it, and seemingly generally concerned.

At least he was until he decided to bury himself in the chair, working his own little groove into the seat. It'll be covered in cat hair in no time.

And that's when I'll know that the chair is definitely mine, since the defining characteristic of about 90% of what I own is that it's covered in cat hair.

Who Wants To Feed A Starving TV Industry Employee?

This is looking increasingly likely to become a reality show starting Friday.

At least the mediator the Feds are sending in is a black belt in aikido, and can kick the shit out of the moron negotiators if they have another fight over chairs.

Looks like me and Chaplin are going to be fighting over who gets to eat the cat food.

Shopping Signs

I'm not sure what this is a sign of, but it's got to be a sign of something.

I can be completely out of every ounce of substances edible to humans, but if I'm tired, I'll just say "Fuck it, I'll pick something up tomorrow."

But if I'm even almost out of cat food, it doesn't matter how exhausted I am, I'll go to Ralph's and haul out eight pounds of food for my little buddy.

I mean, I generally eat three meals a day at work and can order in when necessary. But I still find it a bit odd that I'll feed Chaplin long before I feed myself.

That Can't Be Good

I knew Chaplin wasn't going to react well to me being back at work all day today, after being home with him for the last 2 months.

Puking all over my bed, though...that's a new one.

Bad kitty. Good thing I was already planning on doing laundry tomorrow.

Unintentional International Commerce

When I found fleas on Chaplin, one of the first things I did was order up some Frontline Plus, having gotten assurances from several other pet owners that it will keep fleas off him for good.

I bought it from an "Amazon Marketplace" seller who listed her location as Wisconsin for about $20 cheaper than I'd been able to find it elsewhere online, and waited.

Usually when I order stuff from anywhere in the US, it takes less than a week to get here even with slow-boat service since the mail service in LA is actually pretty efficient.

It still wasn't here as of Monday night, so I was wondering where the hell it was since my credit card got charged for it last Saturday.

I emailed the merchant, and she said "Oh, I use a drop-shipper, so I'm not sure when it was shipped. It should be there in the next couple of days though."

I went down to get yesterday's mail this morning, and I realized why it took so long: The drop-shipper was in Australia.

What's really funny is the drop-shipper put a receipt in with the Frontline, despite a specific request from the Amazon merchant not to printed right on the receipt. I could see why: It showed the price the person I ordered from paid, which was $18 less than I paid her.

I think next time, I'll order direct from Australia.

Fleabag

It is a moment many a pet owner has had, and it's never good. You look at your pet, and you think you see something moving.

And you move some fur and you look closer and you realize: It's a flea. Your pet has fleas. Oh god, there are FLEAS IN THIS HOUSE! AAAAAAAAAAAH!

That was me this morning right after I woke up. I leaned over to pet Chaplin, and when I ran my hand up the back of his head, out crawled a big, nasty flea.

I'd seen something on him yesterday but couldn't conclusively identify it, and decided to ignore it out of wishful thinking. However, having looked at pictures online, I knew this second one would be the start of a very long day.

I have to say this: God bless L.A. and its mobile everything. By 9:30, the groomers had picked up Chaplin and whisked him away for a flea bath.

Certainly not the cheapest solution, but money well spent in my opinion, since it allowed me to keep my blood on the inside of my body. I don't think that would have been possible had I tried to give him a bath.

But the real pain in the ass was the washing. When you find fleas, you have to wash...everything! Every blanket, every pillow, every single thing that might possibly harbor eggs that you can cram in a washing machine, you cram.

The problem with this is that the washer is downstairs. I'm still on the pegleg, so going down stairs is a painful hassle, involving taking stairs one at a time while clinging to the railing with whatever free hands I can muster.

I can't carry anything heavy while trying this and it's hard enough to carry anything unwieldy with two good legs, so it was damn near impossible with one. I did five loads of laundry and I thought my shin was going to disintigrate.

But I got it done, and I vacuumed the couch and the mattress and his carpeted scratching post to get any last little whatevers out of there. I also went online and ordered up some Frontline.

Chaplin came back from the groomers smelling like Mountain Fresh Tide, and substantially whiter in the white portions of his fur than he did when he left. I'm still not sure they didn't actually bathe him in detergent instead of flea-bath.

So now I'm left, in a substantially cleaner yet still somehow dirtier-feeling house, paranoiacally looking at every wee movement I catch out of the corner of my eye, praying it's not another flea.

Because I am not washing all this shit again, I can tell you that much.

Fat Kitty

Using the tried and true method of "weigh self holding cat, then put cat down and weigh self, then subtract," I was aghast to discover that Chaplin now tips the scales at almost 17 pounds.

I put him on the "weightloss/hairball control" formula of cat food when he hit 16, and while he stayed at 16 for a while, I can't figure out why he's suddenly started gaining again.

The only thing I can think of is that since I'm now home to notice that his food dish is empty as soon as he finishes with it, I might be feeding him more.

Still, it explains why I fear my ribs are going to crack whenever he comes and sits on my chest.

I'll have to keep a better eye on his food, otherwise I'm going have to get him a little kitty treadmill.

Chaplin Loves the Colbert Report

So much so that he decided to do his impression of Stephen Colbert in front of the Gigantic Damn Television:

click to enlarge

Way Ahead of You

No need for anyone to send me this story about what I can only imagine is Chaplin's long-lost brother.

The detail that it was a black and white cat was not lost on me.

My Cat Is Insane

Tonight's reason: I had to put on a bunch of IcyHot because of a sore shoulder/neck, and he's been trying to lick it off.

Obviously, I am not permitting him to do so as it is definitely not edible for humans or cats, but I've chased him away several times, yet he still keeps coming back.

Weirdo.

Bad Kitty

Kitty apparently decided to sit on my cable remote just as my TiVo was trying to turn the channel to get Prison Break recording.

Because of this, TiVo recorded an hour of some weird OnDemand program about gardening and building large sculptures out of PVC pipe instead.

I believe I'll be hiding the cable remote somewhere kitty can't get to it from now on.

Fun With The CrapCam

Chaplin is still adjusting to the new apartment.


Guess which one is the real Chaplin and win a prize!*

note: prize is the satisfaction of being right.

An Unexpected Snag

Packing is going to take a lot longer than I thought it would if Chaplin keeps up his current trend of jumping in every single box I try to pack.

I know cats really, really like boxes, but this is ridiculous.

The World's Most Expensive Cat Toy

It is here. It has to charge for sixteen freakin' hours before I can use it to entertain Chaplin, so the full report will have to wait until tomorrow night.

However: I am fucking giddy about trying this out. I own a robot! This is the coolest thing ever.

A Rich Fucking Tapestry

The most exciting moment of my day was when I came home and discovered that there was no cat puke anywhere in my house.

I need to get a life.

edit: But first, I need to pass along this portrait of Chaplin as a young cat.

Drugs

Well, drugs ain't gonna get Chaplin to stop biting me. Well, maybe they would, but they cause him to puke like the kid in The Exorcist, so I'm not going to find out.

Poor dumb kitty.

Spot The Hole In The Logic!

Having taken Chaplin to the vet and determined that his tendency to use me as a chew toy isn't caused by any underlying medical issue, the vet suggested putting him on Prozac for a couple of months.

Let me repeat that: In order to get my cat to stop biting me, I have to make him take a pill every day.

Anyone who has ever owned a cat, particularly anyone who has ever tried to make a cat take a pill, please feel free to point out the problem with this idea.

A Modest Proposal

I was describing my ongoing troubles with Chaplin to my mom, and she mentioned that when her old cat was acting up, the vet suggested she try and interact and play with him more.

I said, well, that's all well and good, but I'm out of the house about fifteen hours a day most days, there's really only so much interacting I can do.

So we got into a discussion of other things he could interact with. Another cat has been ruled out because of his history of fighting with other animals, and a guinea pig was ruled too small.

Then, the solution came: Get a Roomba.

It's actually kind of ingenious: Not only will it keep the cat occupied, but it might actually encourage me to keep crap off my floor.

I'm taking the cat to the vet to rule out any medical causes of his misbehavior, but if it turns out he's just being a little twit, then perhaps I'll occupy him with his very own Most Expensive Cat Toy Ever.

Home Sweet OW!

I don't think Chaplin was happy with me leaving him alone for two days. The evidence:

1. Kitty puked in a couple of strategic places that were not immediately obvious upon my return home. That was fun when I finally found it.

2. Kitty, after curling up on my chest for a while to lull me in to a false sense of complacency, woke up and then bit my face so badly that I'm now wearing two band-aids.

To add insult to injury, he also managed to bite me right where I had hit myself in the head with a phone reciever about a day earlier (shut up, it was a lot lighter than I thought it was by looking at it).

Little bastard. Anybody know any good way to stop a cat from using his owner as a chew toy?