Posts tagged with "qubit" - Faerye Net

Felis catus is your taxonomic nomenclature...

2011-11-08T22:22:31+00:00

Yesterday I found myself rubbing my cat’s tummy and telling her out loud a list of diagnostic anatomical features that convince me she can be classified as a felid.

I’m not sure what the implications may be for the famous xkcd Cat Proximity graph.

Stages of Feline Grief

2009-02-28T14:45:51+00:00

Ryan periodically takes a week off from his fifteen foot commute and goes down to California for some face-to-face meetings.

This is the single greatest tragedy in Qubit’s life.

She has a very short memory. One could probably figure out its precise length from the fact that she treats Steve, with whom she once lived, like an acceptable piece of furniture, and Ruth, who picked her for Ryan as a kitten and lived with her for a while, as a potential moving man or monster. But she is particularly prone to forgetting times when she was less pampered than today. In her mind, I’m sure, Ryan has ALWAYS worked from home, and I have always been ~~semi-unemp~~ a writer. Unfettered access to humans at all waking hours is a Ceiling Cat-given right.

And then Ryan goes to California. Which brings us to the Stages of Feline Grief, as observed in Qubit. They may also occur when I leave town, but I doubt they’re as floridly expressed.

Alarm. Marked by whining and running around, trying to figure out why the schedule is off and Ryan is using his luggage to pack things in (instead of letting her sleep in or scratch up said luggage.)

Indignation. Once he’s actually gone, she stalks around with an air of affronted dignity. He’s not in this room! Well, I never! He’s not in this room, either!

Affection. This is my favorite part. She really doesn’t bother with me much, these days. My workspace doesn’t even have a door, after all: I’m her secondary human and I’m devalued by my constant availability. At this point, and periodically throughout the absence, though, she jumps in my lap constantly, purrs at the least provocation, and generally treats me like I’m the center of her world. I think she wants to make sure she holds on to the backup human, at least.

Suspicion. Qubit starts eyeing me from a wary distance, then searches the house. She chooses a closed door (usually the bedroom, since it stays closed) and sits next to it, wailing her distress. This is the door behind which I have obviously imprisoned Ryan, because there’s no other reason he would leave her for over 24 hours. This stage will randomly occur in between bouts of affection.

Joy and Nonchalance. I see her rehearse this every time I come back from a walk or a grocery trip. She runs to greet me, utters a few sharp exclamations about the nerve of leaving her all alone or surprised pleasure at seeing me again, then runs off for a few minutes to make it clear she didn’t miss me. She exhibited this behavior just now, when her horrible ordeal ended and I brought Primary Human back through the door*.

As you can tell, Kübler-Ross didn’t study cats.

*This was supposed to post last night. I guess I failed to press ‘Publish’?

Are they gone?

2008-10-15T09:20:39+00:00

Qubit took refuge from the movers and emerged cautiously onto a world transformed:

Sloth, thy name is cat

2008-09-09T14:21:37+00:00

I know, I know, hardly news. But when I awoke this morning, Qubit did not greet me. This, also, is not remarkable; ever since I graduated and entered a stay-at-home limbo period, she has gotten used to thinking of me as a useful part of her surroundings, not to be taken special notice of. Do you break into your important sleeping and eating routine to greet your sofa and bookshelves? Breakfast done, I thought, “Still no cat? I am going to TIME her and tell Ryan how many hours it took for her to think she might want to see me.”

I just finished lunch, and suddenly it hit me that the timer was still ticking. Four hours and twenty minutes, and that cat had not tried to shove the lapdesk out of my lap, walk on my laptop, or anything else of the sort. I hadn’t even heard her scratching my toilet paper to shreds or trying to get into the cabinets to sit in my clean pots and pans.

I admit it, I panicked a bit (she always gets me, this cat). I checked my study, the bedroom, every cabinet, the bathtub, empty cardboard boxes for packing/Qubit qastles. Then I remembered Ryan telling me about a time recently when he had panicked about a missing Qubit, and found her in his office closet. Sure enough, all my whistling and calling and shaking of treat bags had been unable to dislodge her from her perch, in an open bin of stuff and storage media three feet up in the back corner of his office. I shook the treats again. She blinked.

Four hours, forty minutes and counting.

Qubit helps

2008-08-29T09:56:39+00:00

This is her helping with the newsprint I meant to pack things in.

Morning

2008-06-02T11:01:28+00:00

The silver cat coils around my calf, then pauses. She sniffs along my knee, intent, as if she can smell the cat I dreamt last night.

A poem

2007-04-19T22:52:51+00:00

A silver cat paws the edge of my mirror
waiting to be let in.

Theorizing

2007-04-06T23:17:29+00:00

Theory: cat tranquilizers are placebos. They are intended to make your cat sleepy by inducing her to fight you tooth and nail to avoid swallowing the pill, thus tiring her.

Data points collected: It took 45 minutes to force-feed the pill to Qubit, who wails on car rides. She mewed three times total. Tazendra, who usually is barely annoying at all on car rides, swallowed her tranq on the first try, and whined a third of the time.

Inconceivable!

2006-09-30T18:55:30+00:00

Peaceful coexistence!

Musick hath Charms to sooth a savage Breast

2006-09-14T21:46:41+00:00

Here in our house, one of us amuses herself by captioning the small furry inhabitants. Often this goes something like this:

T: Someday, I will defeat you, Old Master! I will master your Ear Fang Grasp Technique and use it to bring the world to heel!
Q: You are confident but foolish, young one! No one can stand against my sleeping wrath!

Sometimes it is less dramatic, and more like this:

T: Whatcha doooin’?
Q: Eating your food. Leave me alone.
T: Will you be my frieeeeend?
Q: No! You smell bad! Learn to wash!

As you can tell, Qubit is grumpy a lot of late.

But today, the dynamic was different, for today there was a soundtrack. I took out my hautboy and decided, rather than playing in my messy playspace, to play out on the landing — if not en plein air, then, optimistically speaking, en demi-plein air (half full air! I kill me.) The response from the felines was immediate. Whilst we of the double reed are more used to being told we sound like snake charmers — and, indeed, to emulating them in some pieces — the mammalian audience was fascinated. They paced back and forth looking curiously at the instrument. Each of them in turn climbed a nearby desk and put out the super-tentative ‘is it alive?’ paw to touch the bell of the instrument. Neither seemed particularly to trust the sound, but neither was particularly inclined to leave, either.

That was while I was warming up and playing exercises. When I broke out my adored Mozart Concerto (K 314), things changed. Soon, Tazendra started circling me and mewing in a desolate tone little befitting a warrior. Just as I was beginning to think the mewing meant something was actually amiss, Qubit charged the kitten and…started washing her face. For the rest of the oboe practice, Tazendra continued to stare at me in a disturbed manner and occasionally mew plaintively, and Qubit continued to snuggle up against her, wash her reassuringly, and generally act as if she actually liked her. She also wreathed my calves appreciatively.

It was simply bizarre. Odder yet, Qubit looked at me longingly after I stopped playing, and haunted the site where the music stand had been until at last she concluded I wasn’t going to play anymore. At that point, she ran across the room and started a fight with Tazendra. So apparently Qubit likes Mozart to the point of personality change…. That’s actually kind of creepy.