Nilknarf News

And I thought that my back was doing pretty good, too... until I twisted it wrong and went to my knees. Since than I'm back to being overly cautious. I'm not really sure if having that one muscle seizure undid all of the good that's been done up until now, I certainly hope not. I really don't want to start all over again.

And... I'm getting bored, really bored. Yes, the WWW has a lot to offer, but still. The weather has been beautiful here this last week... and I'm unable to enjoy it.

20:24...
And now... the nightmare of all cat lovers.

The old "Cat in the Dryer" joke.

Only... it's not a joke. Not at all.

I'd been working on computers off and on, hoping to get another one cobbled together. Karen was in the kitchen when i went out to her computer to pull a hard drive off of it, and I asked her what she had in the dryer.

She went back and opened the door to the dryer and started screaming.

This was my cue to go do something heroic, I guess. I shooed her out of the room and pulled Sam out... he was very, very hot and panting and there was blood all over the place.

I yelled at Karen to bring me a pan of water, for much the same reason that men usta be asked to boil water whilst their wives were having babies... the water was useful in this case, however, I needed to get his temperature down as fast as I could.

Retrospectively, I should have just brought him into the bathroom and put him in the tub, but I didn't think of that at the time. Next time I will... only there's not gonna be a next time.

I had Karen call the vet while I was sponging him down, and we got him loaded up and out there pretty quickly, considering the five o'clock traffic.

The first thing Mike did was take his temp... 107.5°F... supposed to be 101.5°F. Then they dumped him into a cooling bath and brought it down slowly over a 30-minute period. He also gave him a drug - solu-something - that is supposed to keep him from going into shock. They wanted to give it IV, but they couldn't find a vein, so they gave it IM.

We were going to have to take Sam to a different vet, one that's open all night, so that they could monitor him, but since they couldn't get the IV in he decided that was silly. So we brought him on home.

There is a possibility that his eyes were damaged... neural damage from the heat, not just from getting banged around inside the drum. He did lose a coupla teeth, though, poor thing. He was just as limp as a rag when i got him out....

But he acts like he can see a little bit, anyway, and that's probably a good sign this early.

And I have to admit, Sam is probably my least favorite cat, out of all of the cats that we've had. I almost feel bad admitting that... but not really. I'm just glad that he's survived this ordeal.

He and I got off to a bad start... shortly after Karen started letting him in he was hiding in the bedroom when I went to sleep, closing the door behind me, of course. So, he needs to take a crap. And he does, right on my chest. What woke me up was him trying to cover it up... y'know, claws going right through the blanket into my chest?

And poor Karen, poor Karen... she's having a helluva time about it. She keeps blaming herself for the stupid cat being in the dryer. Personally, I think that it's entirely the cats fault. But... he's a stupider-than-normal cat, so I suppose that it's the right thing to do when we protect him from his own stupidity, heh.

So, I jolted my back several times during that ordeal, but it seems to have simmered down somewhat now.

And I finally did get my problem computer to run Linux... I loaded Linux on another system, then pulled the HD and installed it into the problem one. I should'a done that a long time ago, I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner, it's really not that complicated.

So now I've got four Linux systems and seven Windoze ones... all running SETI, of course. Anybody who wants to join right in with the SETI, give me a holler and I'll help you get set up. All you need to do is keep your machine on pretty much 24-7-365 and get connected every little once-in-a-while.

And here's hoping that Sam is still with us in the morning....