deadcatbounce

When I got back to Atlanta, there were two small fuzzy things waiting for me. Here is Ragnarök Rex, a stray Christmas kitten, and Mdogo, a Christmas yeener.

They quickly became bestest buddies.



Ragnarök's new favorite game is to have someone perch the hyena up on a table or other high ledge, so that he can stalk it, pounce it, knock it off the ledge, and grab it in a throat hold, in what is essentially a reenactment of a lion suffocating a wildebeest. After Mdogo is "dead," Ragnarök purrs and cuddles up with his kill and grooms it.

Based on this behavior, I suspect the kitten may have some emotional issues.







Ragnarök will attack the hyena the moment he sees it, so it was tricky trying to balance the hyena upright, keep the cat distracted long enough to turn the camera on, and then catch the final kill on film. I finally succeeded, except he was so distracted by the keys I was using to divert his attention that he took forever to notice Mdogo, and when he finally did, it was a less-than-impressive attack. His cuteness is still evident, though.



ETA: Travis and I drove back from D.C. together, but he accidentally left one of his med school books in my car when we got in to town last night. He came over this afternoon to pick it up, but to avoid driving home in the ATL rush hour, he decided to study over at my place while I was working on job apps. So we were sitting at the kitchen table, when Ragnarök crawled up into his lap to sleep. A few minutes later:

Travis: "Uh... not to alarm you, but have you taken the kitten to a vet yet? Is it possible he has some sort of heart condition?"
Me: "Err. Yes he's been to a vet, but no, there was no heart condition I don't think?"
Travis: "Okay. It's just it sounds exactly like he's got a kind of heart arrhythmia that humans get sometimes, sort of mechanical sounding."
Me: "You've never had a pet cat have you?"
Travis: "Well, no..."
Me: "That's called purring."

As you may have seen in the news, SNOW.

The official amount was two feet, I think, but in the courtyard behind my apartment, the drifts were easily three feet high. Which is hilarious to watch a four foot tall kid walk through.

The snow was crying out to be played in in. All day yesterday, I cajoled friends to come over and make a snowman with me, and none of those assholes would. Only one of them even had the courtesy to lie about "needing to study," the rest just said "um, no."

So this morning I decided I would go out and play in the snow all by my damned self. The snow, sadly, had not gotten melty enough for snowmen, but with all the snow at my disposal, I was determined to make a ginormous snowfort.

About five minutes into it, I heard someone laugh from the walkway above, "Oh look, she's using a law textbook -- best use for those I can think of." They were talking about me, I knew, because I was using my Property Law book as a shovel, as it was the most boring large flat object in my apartment. I looked up and and saw two guys about my age wandering over towards me. "Hey there," one said. "Can we help you with that?"

I was pretty pleased, I'll admit. All right!, I thought. Now I've found someone to play in the snow with me! So I told the dudes something along the lines of, "Sure! You can help if you want. I am building a ginormous snowfort."

The two dudes looked at me funny, and then one said, "Oh, we thought you were trying to clear off your walkway." And then they left. How is it even possible for people to be that boring? They were nice enough to wander over to offer to help a stranger clear her walkway, sure, but then they were suddenly unwilling to move snow around when it turned out the purpose was to build an icy replica of Minas Tirith rather than to simply clear a path.

Luckily, a little while later a trio of kids showed up, and awkwardly started playing football next to me in the snow. It was very obvious that they were eying my snowfort enviously, with the three of them taking turns shuffling closer to it before shying away again. Finally I told them, "You guys can help if you want to, you know," and, boom, three new construction crewmembers were instantly acquired. So I ordered them about on where to place new piles of snow, gave them some instructions in advanced snowball throwing techniques, and, finally, we created a snow-wall that was taller than a fourth grader.



After it was a decent height, I dug a hole through the bottom of it for the kids to play in. And by "the kids" I mean "me." Because the tunnel was fourth-grader-sized and not lawyer-sized, however, I could only barely fit. I had no room to crawl, but I did not want to wriggle my way through for fear of collapsing the fort. Solution: Slide about halfway through head first, then stick out my hands out and tell my construction crew to each grab an arm and pull me the rest of the way. Success!

Later that afternoon, after hearing some kids yipping loudly in laughter for a while outside my window, I looked out again to see that the wall had been demolished. So long as it was my little crewmembers who got to enjoy destroying it, awesome! But if it was some other group of neighborhood kids that did it, those little bastards suck. Luckily, however, before the wall's destruction, my roommate got a photo of it.

The Australian Embassy is directly in between my place and Dupont Circle, so I walk by it fairly often. Tonight on the way home, I noticed they had their Christmas lights up, and their display is kinda cute. Since I've got a few Australians on my flist, I thought I'd share: