Tuesday, July 05, 2005

My fault

When I make a mistake, I admit it, and I made one with the scanner. Not buying the one I did, but in installing it. At the suggestion of the Customer Service representative, I tried resetting it, but it didn't help, so I took it back to the store and exchanged it for a new one, figuring I'd give it one more try. This time when I set it up, I realized that I had missed one of the steps--when you turn it on, it prints an alignment sheet, and you're supposed to put it on the scanner glass and scan it, and that supposedly sets the alignment. I don't really know why the first one worked until it got shut off and then back on, but this one seems to be working fine.

It isn't really a very high resolution one, but I think it will be fine for my purposes. I was looking for something over the weekend and found some old pictures of Doña, so I used those to try it out.

What a beautiful cat she was!



Dinah's body type is very much like Doña's was, and her fur is kind of the same, too, very soft and fine. Black, of course, rather than white, but with the same long tail and long legs.

I took both of the cats to the vet last weekend. It was time for Pyewacket's annual check-up and innoculations, and we had been having such a terrible time with Dinah that I called and asked if I could bring her in, too. They said it was fine, so I loaded them up in separate carriers and took them up on Saturday morning.

Pyewacket loves the vet, and walks right out of the carrier and says hello to everyone. She rolled around on the floor and presented her tummy to be scratched, and marked all of the examining corners, the vet's shoes, and his assistant. Dinah, on the other hand, had to be poured out of her carrier--the vet simply opened the door and turned it so the door was pointing down, and she kind of fell out. We used to take the carrier apart to get her out, but this was pretty efficient.

We still don't really know what her problem was; he said it sounded like a territorial thing (she was growling and hissing any time Pye came into the room, so things had gotten pretty tense arond the house), and he said that it sounded like we were doing all the right things. We had set up food, water, and a litter box in the basement so that one or the other of them could retreat if they needed to, and Dinah had been spending a lot of time down there.

He also asked if we had been using the "kitty drugs" -- actually cat pheromones that come in a spray or as a plug-in like an air freshener. We had them, but he suggested moving the plug-in up to the bedroom closer to the bed, since that's where most of the problems seem to be. And he expressed her anal glands, which get plugged up, and that would make anybody grumpy. The Felineway is extremely expensive, but if it works--and it seems to--it's worth it.

Things are still a little weird, but they've calmed down a lot. Dinah isn't freaking out every time Pyewacket walks into a room, and she isn't hissing at Bob everytime he turns around, so for whatever reason, things are going better. We're just keeping our fingers crossed that it stays that way.

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