Kitten!

Had two bits of fun yesterday… One was setting up the web server for multihoming. The other was hanging out with Dirge & Shar and their family and playing with their new kitten, Penny. Thinking about it now, I’ve realized that unix machines and kittens have a great deal in common… They both give unconditional trust to people they like, and they’re both really easy to fool.

I’m just going to write about the kitten in this entry, if only to spare those of you whose eyes glaze over when I geek out. Instructions on setting up virtual hosts will come later…

Kittens will chase anything that seems to be alive. You can toss a crumpled up bit of paper, shake a string, rustle a bag… pretty much anything will set them off. And they’ll flip right over and fall flat on their backs if you dangle something over their head. They have no fear whatsoever. And you can whip something around and hide it behind your back and they’ll have no idea where to look for it.

Penny is completely in Matrix mode too. She’ll use two or three surfaces as jumping-off points on her way up to attack a handfull of red gift wrap. And if some of those surfaces are also people, all the better. And then after twenty minutes of stalking, pouncing, attacking and shredding, she’ll wander back into her favorite spot and sleep for a while.

Sounds like a heck of a good gig to me…

My wife is pining a bit for a new kitten. Actually, I think it’s more the idea of a new kitten that is appealing, the cuteness, playfullness and the clumsy running around. The reality of it wouldn’t be as fun. Besides, we’ve got the two wierdos already. Throwing a kitten into their social mix wouldn’t be fair to any of the animals. We’re already going to be disturbing them a bit when we do our catsitting for my sis-in-law’s cat, Meow, over the holidays. We need to do a bit of re-arranging and cleanup so that we can keep the Meowser segregated in the basement, away from the weirdos. I’ve heard tales of how Vandycat gets slapped down hard when there’s any debate about who outranks who in the kitty pecking order…