Death to Vermin!

This morning I jogged my route at home again. I measured it with my car as well, and I think it's about 1.2 miles. I can jog almost the whole thing without resting, but not quite.

Not too bad. It's still taking me a little over 14 minutes to do my 1.5-mile route. I figure when I can jog the whole thing without stopping I'll be down around 12 minutes or so. Soon, soon...

After jogging this morning I went over to a nearby vet to pick up Advantage for my cats. It's a topical chemical which you apply at the back of the cat's neck, and it spreads over the ensuring hours/days over the cat's body. It kills adult fleas on contact, so it says, and lasts for up to a month. For $32, you get a 4-month supply. Not too bad. I decided to give this a try rather than the flea-sterilizing Program because I think my cats picked up fleas through a fluke which I will endeavor not to allow to occur again. Plus, it will hopefully make them happier faster.

Since I haven't yet taken my cats to the vet since I moved out here, I picked one not-at-random; there's actually a cat-only hospital a few blocks from my home. It turns out they wanted to see the papers from the kitties' last physical exam, and when I got there it turns out they didn't realize that I hadn't been there before! But, they showed the papers to the head veterinarian, who came out and introduced himself to me, and said everything looked fine and I'd be able to get the drugs. He also said that he knew my vet from Madison personally, and had just seen her recently at a national conference. Which is pretty cool (and I wonder if that had something to do with why he let my 'paperwork' go through), but I guess not too surprising since I suspect the number of good cat-specializing clinics in the country are fairly small.

I also got to see several other kitties who were waiting to see the vet. There was one who was meowing pitifully, another who was lying in his cage and meowing regularly but calmly, and a third (a very elegant and handsome gentleman!) who was there to have his stitches out, and who meowed only until someone paid attention to him, and then he watched them and looked around the room.

I like cats.

I will probably make an appointment for the kitties to have their annual check-up and shots at this vet in the next month or so.

Anyway, tonight I gave the cats the drug, squirting it just above their shoulder blades. Neither of them really struggled much; Newton rolled over and wanted to be petted afterwards. You could see the liquid over the next 30 minutes slowly working its way down their back, making their fur damp. The stuff is supposedly mildly toxic for a few hours after it's applied, which is why you place it on them where they can't get at it.

The kitties have been twitching and jumping around a little more than usual; I suspect they find the stuff on their back a little uncomfortable, and I also suspect that the fleas are probably dying en masse and their falling off, or just running around trying to escape while they still can. But, they're screwed, trust me.

Hopefully in a day or two the kitties will be all back to normal and not scratching anymore. And a month from now I'll give them another dose, and hopefully that will be that.

(Today's entry's title, by the way, is not only relevant to this topic, but was a common cry in Vernor Vinge's SF novel A Fire Upon the Deep, which is excellent, and you should read it if you haven't.)

Today I received e-mail from (I think) two members of a rock group called Left Undone, who I saw open for the Freddy Jones Band two years ago. I rather unceremoniously dismissed them in my journal entry of the time, and I must admit I have only the vaguest memory of them now. One e-mail asked me to see them when they play the Regent Street Retreat in Madison in a week or so, though since I no longer live in Madison obviously that's not going to happen. The other seemed a little more indignant about my attitude in that older entry.

These e-mails were another reminder that people really do read what I say here, and since this is a permanent archive, I could be called to account for statements I made years ago.

This raises the issue of just how careful I should be about what I say here. I generally take responsibility for anything I write here, although of course my opinions change over time. (Would I like Left Undone more today than I did at the time? Maybe. Maybe they had a bad night, or I had a bad night, or they'd be more to my tastes, or they'd just be a better performing group after two years' more work. Who knows?) But, I'm not a professional reviewer, and I have neither the time nor the inclination to give a complete accounting of everything I experience. If I dismiss something curtly in my journal, then I think that that says something right there.

It is rather eerie to get e-mail from professionals about things I write on my Web page. (I have, for instance, gotten e-mail from the lead songwriter of Sonia Dada, and from SF authors Jack McDevitt and Stephen Leigh.) Sometimes what I write is perhaps an ego boost for them, and other times perhaps it's upsetting. But, I don't think I'd be doing the subjects justice if I didn't write what I see as the plain truth about something I read, or hear, or see. I try not to be nasty about it, I think usually lapsing only when something is really egregiously bad or disappointing. Which, really, most things aren't.

The bottom line, I guess, is that I do remind myself that it's not my job to review things tactfully, or even necessarily completely. If people like or agree with what I have to say, then great, and if not, well, I'm willing to listen to objects or criticism, but it is my forum.

Warts and all.