Parallel Cataverse

Spunk still radiating a blue aura after slipping through a tear in the space-time continuum to get back home.

Spunk’s recollection of his disappearance is that he fell into one of the many wormholes on the property and slipped into a parallel cataverse, like so many other things that have mysteriously disappeared around here. He said he believes he was in the same location, but everything was different. A snow-covered, plowed field was where our house is now. There were other buildings by the cottonwoods, but the only structure he recognized was the “chicken shed”. He said some of the cottonwoods looked similar but smaller and there were trees he didn’t recognize. He said when he stood in the field where our house should have been, he could hear us calling him but he couldn’t find how to get back to us. The days turned into a week and then another week. He caught a few mice and stayed in the chicken shed for some protection from the cold nights. On Monday he said he heard a cacophony of voices, hundreds of voices calling his name “Come home Spunk! Come home Spunk!” He followed the voices and found a spot where he could slip through a tear in the space-time continuum and slipped out of the parallel cataverse he had been trapped in. After he stepped through the rip in space, he thought he might have come to yet a different parallel cataverse than the one he was looking for because the deck now had doors and it was wired in like the catio, keeping him from going up to the French doors on the sunroom. But then Laurie came out and collected him and he knew he had made it back to the proper cataverse.

I called to make an appointment with the vet to have Spunk checked out and they had an appointment available today. Since Spunk was sneezing and acting a little dumpy, I figured I should go ahead and take him in at the first available appointment. I drove home from work, collected Spunk, and surprisingly, he only meowed a lot on the way to the vet, instead of is usual “get me out of the crate!” maniacal behavior he goes into while driving to the vet. I dropped him off and went back to work. He got tested, examed by a young, pretty veterinarian, and he got attention from cute veterinary assistants, so on the way home he acted like his normal maniacal self in the crate meowing, clawing, and rolling around like an alligator trying to drown its prey. It was a long drive home with all the stupid drivers really annoying me given I had a wild cat trying his darndest to break out of the carrier so he could make me crash the car. We finally made it home where I had to bless him multiple times and give him a lot of extra attention for what he thought amounted to cat abuse for taking him back home after being in kitty heaven among all those beautiful women at the veterinary clinic.

All the tests came back normal. He has a slight kitty cold. The vet thinks it’s viral so we will just keep an eye on him. But he does not have a fatty liver or other maladies that can result from going weeks without food or water. The vet noted he had lost “a little weight” but was now about the weight he should be. All our fat cats noted that Spunk being a fat cat himself before he disappeared served him well during his time trapped in a parallel cataverse with little or no real food and water.

Spunk, Laurie and I thank all of you for sending out your hundreds of calls for Spunk to come home that led him to the tear in the space-time continuum that allowed him to slip back into the proper caterverse.

The way Spunk described the property while he was in the parallel caterverse. Our property circa 1958. The chicken shed, which is the only building left standing, is on the right. You might notice there are no towers on the Sandias. That’s an outhouse and goat shed on the left under Resa’s tree.

Silver making what he said is a wormhole between his paws and legs. Silver thinks Spunk is full of kitty malarky.

Spunk Heard You Calling

Spunk happy to be home snuggling on me.

Spunk heard everyone’s calls telling him to come home. He showed up at around 12:40 this afternoon after being gone for almost three weeks. Laurie texted me a photo of Spunk and called me at 12:50 with the news. All of your collective energy through prayer and positive vibes caught Spunk’s attention and helped bring him home. While he wasn’t able to hear us calling him, I didn’t think he could ignore his fans. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you to everyone for helping to bring Spunk home. Our world has started turning once again.

Spunk is thinner, but he does not seem injured or starving. So far he is eating and drinking like normal, wanting attention, and hanging around his favorite spots. I asked him where he had been and what he had been up to, but so far he’s not saying much about it. We’ll keep an eye on him and I’ll take him in for a check-up in a week or so unless something comes up that needs immediate attention. Spunk hates being put into a carrier and riding to the vet. I see no need to add to the stress with a vet visit right after he makes it back home. It was hard enough for him to come home and find the deck wired in. It’s like we had changed the locks on him.

Hoodwinked

The newly wired-in deck in panorama.

Before Spunk disappeared, we were not allowing the big cats to go out freely. Since the kittens seemed to be on the verge of figuring out the kitty door to the rest of the house, we didn’t want an open kitty door that would let them outside. I have plans to extend the catio, but since the kitties always want to be with us on the deck, I decided to wire in the deck so we can open the kitty door and they can go out and hang out on the deck, but they can’t go beyond the deck.

I added three doors where the steps to the deck are and wired in the rest of the deck. The whole time I was working on it the kitties were in the catio meowing at me to let them onto the deck and beyond. I kept telling them to hold on, I was almost done. When I finished hanging the double doors, I opened the kitty door and called at cats to come out on the deck. They came running but soon became very confused that they were wired in, separated from the great outdoors beyond the deck. They felt hoodwinked. So far Sasha is the only kitty taking advantage of access to the deck and the deck furniture. All the kitties liked lounging on the deck before it was wired in. I think Loki, Silver, and Marble are being defiant and registering the kitty complaints for being hoodwinked.

Sasha lounging on the chaise lounge.

The newly wired-in deck in super-wide-angle.

Sasha on a comfy cushion. She doesn’t feel hoodwinked. She appreciates access to the deck.

Silver: “Give me free access to the great outdoors or give me couch!”

 

No Spunk

One of the last photos of Spunk before he disappeared.

I sadly have to report that Spunk is missing. He has been gone for almost a fortnight. He had been up to his usual game of coming to the window, making Laurie interrupt her class to let him in, and then he would go through the house, back outside, walk around the house and show up at the window again. Then he didn’t show up at the window, not surprising, as he often found other things to get into.  When I came home from work, he was not waiting for me as usual. He wasn’t always waiting for me, but most of the time he was there. He had disappeared for more than a day a few weeks earlier. We figured he’d found a friend at one of the neighbor’s. Spunk is a social kitty and very friendly with strangers.

The next day after he didn’t come home, I called neighbors and stopped by and asked neighbors if they had seen Spunk. None of the near neighbors remembered seeing him. I called animal control, but they had no cats recently.  Since we have ended end up with cats for weeks on end that turned out to belong to neighbors several properties over we didn’t know, we are still hoping Spunk is at someone’s house and will eventually get out and come home.

Deer at Dusk

White-tailed deer on the Rio Grande at dusk.

A white-tailed deer came out of the bosque on the east side to the Rio Grande to forage on a sandbar. This is the first deer I have seen in the bosque and along the river.

 

Colorful Crow Highway

Coming in from the north.

The crow highway was in full swing at dusk with thousands of crows flying south over the Rio Grande and bosque.

Heading south.

The Sandias in dusk purple make a beautiful background.

A lone crow taking a break in a cottonwood that stands between the clearwater ditch and the irrigation ditch.

 

MacMemories From 1984

I’ve been cleaning out shelves in my office area and I came across the media packets that came with the first Macintosh we got in 1984 followed by the first Macintosh Plus we got in 1986. The Macintosh had 128K of RAM and one 3.5 inch diskette drive, no hard drive. The process for using it was 1) you booted the computer with the System diskette. 2) You ejected the system diskette and inserted the Program diskette and opened the program, such as MacPaint. 3) You MacPainted to create your graphics. 4) You selected Save to save your graphic file, which ejected the Program diskette. 5) You inserted a diskette to save your file. 6) If the diskette wasn’t formatted, then you would have to click on Yes to format the diskette, and 7) save your file.

I’m trying to remember if when you quit the Program and Shut Down the Macintosh if it asked you to put the Program diskette and then the System diskette back in before it shut down, or if it simply ejected whichever diskette was in the drive before it shut down. I think there was a lot of ejecting and inserting the different diskettes before it shutdown.

We got an external disk drive with the first Macintosh Plus, which meant we could have a program diskette in the computer and a file diskette in the external drive. Our next Macintosh plus had two disk drives. We got external hard drives for the Macintosh Pluses before the SEs and SE/30s came out with internal hard drives. When we got one Macintosh Plus and a Macintosh Laserwrtier in 1986, the pair cost over $10,000 — around $3K for the Macintosh Plus and $7K for Laserwriter. That’s around $23,700 ($7.1K and $16.6K respectively) in 2020 dollars. Macintosh computers always came with the system software and at least a sample of programs.

Those were the really expensive, bad old days of computing. The first IBM PC we got, with similar specs (it had two 5.25″ floppy drives) was around $3K in 1981 (~$8,600 today) plus you had to buy whichever DOS you wanted to use, plus buy the programs, the drivers, etc. Nowadays you can easily pay $7,000 or $24,000 or more for a new Macintosh Pro. However, you get a lot of CPUs, RAM, and disk space for the money and a lot of powerful programs included in the price. But most computers today cost a fraction of what they did in the bad old days of computing.