Kaku has always been an anxious shy girl. Most recently she has been grooming her pee pee region till it is almost bald and now the baldness is spreading to beyond that, around the sides of her bottom too. I can't pinpoint a single stress factor that could have contributed to that. She still allows me to pet her and the other cats haven't been bullying her as far as I can tell (maybe Buffy - there was some staring too when Kaku went into the living room). She still scurries around as usual. I should monitor her a bit more.

Speaking of anxious kitties, Boy has been very attention-seeking the past few days. Even to his Dad, who mentioned it today and gave him a pet. I ask myself if I have been petting him enough, or giving him enough attention. Additional food seems to settle him down. But looking at it, it doesn't seem like a case of excessive bullying either (although Tux did dethrone him from his living room chair but he did dominate the TV for a while). He is presently undisturbed on his couch head napping.

Very perplexing...

For the past 3 days Boy has been howling on end, running from me whenever I tried to approach him. I suspected Buffy and Sam giving him a hard time.

Yesterday I petted him outside the bedroom door while the 3 Naughties looked on. Only when I closed the door did he allow me to pick him up. Aha!

I soothed him and carried him into the bedroom, seating him by his usual spot by my feet while I worked from my laptop. When I got up, he followed me.

I noticed he'd been hungry a lot faster as well. Frequent feeds seemed to allay his howling and also allay the other cats from bugging him.

I remember reading that cats are more territorial when they are hungry. Perhaps I should reduce the time between each feed.

Right now, he is peacefully napping on his favourite couch head while the vacuum cleaner is on. The other cats have sped for cover. :p

My third poetry collection Dark Dreams is now on sale at Naked Snake Press and Project Pulp.

Plus: The Gathering appears in Poe Little Thing #4.

Get them today!

Bound for Venus: European Probe to Arrive at Shrouded Planet

Håkan Svedhem, Venus Express project scientist, and his colleagues hope to better understand how trapped carbon dioxide, water vapor and sulphuric aerosol gases factored into the “greenhouse effect” that appears to superheat Venus’ atmosphere to an average temperature of about 869 degrees Fahrenheit (465 degree Celsius).

Venus Express is expected to begin its primary science mission – a 15-Earth month period that translates into two of Venus’ long sidereal days – in June after a series of maneuvers to reach its final operational orbit.

Universal Superlongevity: Is It Inevitable And Is It Good?
by Mark Walker
Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies

To the extent that it is possible to predict the composition of the future population of the world, I argue that the most likely scenario is that (almost) everyone will choose to adopt technology to live hundreds of years, perhaps indefinitely. Further, ethically speaking, this seems like the best option for our world, for such a world is one where there are higher levels of happiness and achievement.

Read the full paper.

Boy decided to spend a quiet day with me dozing on his Dad's blanket while I tried to find a comfortable position to work in. BB has apparently wedged his head between my pelvis, making it increasingly difficult to sit more than 10 minutes or to find an acceptable sleeping position.

Boy's ear has been looking a little mangled again, probably because of stress, and I caught Tux and Buffy chasing him last night. I thought the quiet workday would suit the two of us better. He seems very at peace today, especially after I gave him another small portion of wheatgrass to eat.

It looks like it may rain today.

Last night we bought some wheatgrass from NTUC on the advice of the kids's Aunty Mini. It looked suspiciously like the type of grass we used to retrieve for Boy back when we lived near my Mom, although their Dad said it wasn't.

This evening, Boy took one sniff of it today and chomped a whole lot down. Kaku came to sniff it curiously but was too shy to stay and eat. I left some on her plate. Dunno if she ate it up. The 3 Naughties sniffed too but were not enticed to eat it.

Looks like Boy has a monopoly over the bag of wheatgrass. :D

Which door would you pick?

(Source: Bad Astronomy)

The concept has always been a bizarre one to me, as natural as it is to most other people. Intellectually I know it isn't quite creating something out of nothing, emotionally it is another story. All these years I have been a parent to those already alive. Often I lie awake wondering what the hell am I doing bringing another (human) into this existence.

I used to have a list somewhere in the bloody old files of my brain that cited reasons why people have children: meaning to life, narcissism (a mini-me would be nice), someone to love you when you're old and have no more hair, and someone to take care of you when you are old and have no more hair. I can safely say I am having a child for the first three reasons but I do hope that I'll always have hair.

One more: to have something that is part of me live on.

Okay, okay. Nothing will live on forever... somewhere along the line, the genetic line will break because someone decided not to reproduce, got drowned in the rising sea levels, or got shot in the head or something. Or even if they live that long, at the rate the space program is going, the sun will supernova by the time we get around to building the first dang ship.

Or even if we head out to deep space and occupy the universe, the increasingly expanding space will render space travel almost impossible (unless we can start controlling wormholes - and then there is the unpredictability of wormholes - may get squished while one opens and closes as it pleases).

Or if the other peeps are right, the singularity after the universe contracts, will crush us all. The only hope is if we can escape into another dimension before the final crunch. Hah... tiny probability my gene pool will make it that far.

Anyhow, even if that happens, what does it matter? I'll be long dead - my consciousness won't be preserved that long. Even stored in a quantum chip, I'd be bored shitless.

Mm... okay maybe not this one.

Where was I?

That's the problem with these late night rantings... the point is usually lost.

Oh yeah, becoming a mother.

Well, the other part of me that has reconciled with my mortality has decided that it is a life experience I do not want to miss. Life is really short and it is up to me to savour what there is to savour during my brief moment here.

I will raise my son to have courage, hope, and compassion. Yeah, it is a pretty lofty ideal but I do know what sort of person I hope he will be: a happy person, a strong person, and a man of integrity.

Poor Sam freaked out when my 3 year-old niece came over to visit the cats (plus the rest of the human family). He is generally scared of visitors in the house but this time, I forgot that the door exiting the living room was closed.

He remained hidden for the longest time while Tux tried to be hospitable to a little girl who kept calling him Cat. Boy did some PR as well but then got bored and went to nap. Buffy, oddly enough got daunted by the commotion and stayed away.

We did our best to teach Kaitlyn how to let the cats smell her fingers first, then gently pet them. I thought it was a great opportunity to let her enjoy the joys of living with cats and also prepare the cats for the addition of a new human child in the family. There must have been too many people in the living room as even the most sociable cats seemed to shy away.

Out of nowhere Sam suddenly appeared, darted around the room several times and ran into the glass door (no breakage of glass thankfully for him) twice with loud thuds. His Dad opened the study door and he sped out.

We hunted him down after the visitors left and found that he had some random light bleeding around where the circumference of where the bridge of his nose is. It stopped fairly quickly but I worry about internal damage.

Other than being rather shaken, he seems fine now. I'll continue to monitor him.