Author: Rita de Heer

Writing is what I do. What I think about. What I meditate on. What I dream up. Listen to. Imagine. Sometimes I sleep. Sometimes I eat. And I walk. Pull out environmental weeds. There are a thousand more things I do, though writing comes into a fair few of those things too.

Cat Tales 17

Mystery paw prints

One night while I did sentry duty around the house, I saw an amazing display of “cheekiness” in the backyard. Me looking through the glass doors to the deck, you understand.

First, in the moonlight, a dance of several critters that I haven’t seen the like before. Pointy snouts, and stripy bottoms. Four of them littler than the one about the size of a rabbit.

Prey! Spit drooled from my mouth. The mother surely had too many young?

Oh no! A large pale winged shape flew over. All of the critters flashed in under the rosemary bush.

That was an owl checking out my backyard? All I could do was angrily sweep my tail. Back and forth. Back and forth.

After a while, and when the critters didn’t show their noses, I went to the front of the house. To see what I could see. That owl maybe. Or the birds roosting near the nestbox.

In the morning, the pernickety old woman noticed a havoc when she walked out to the sun-room table. Thunk! She set teapot down hard.

“What on Earth?” she said. Sliding open a door, she went striding out. Me with her. “Dear dear dear! Who’s been digging in our planter?”

I tried to tell her but she didn’t listen. She quartered the yard, hunting for clues. I led the way to the dance floor.

“Aha!” she said, staring at a pair of alien footprints. “I think I have the picture.”

Back we went to the planter. She surveyed the mess with knowing eyes. “Bandicoots,” she said. “Digging for my precious worms and beetle grubs.”

I put my paw up for the job of scaring off the critters but of course the pernickety old woman looked right over me. She carried over logs of wood, and searched through the garage for shiny things she’d thrown out and retrieved twice before.

“That should keep them guessing.”

Modem vs IOS

When I finally knuckled down and dedicated a couple of hours to the problem, I learnt that the trouble was the ever-renewing IOS, macOS Sonoma 14.1.1 in this case, that was refusing to shake hands with the now five year old modem. How is that good for the world to come, Apple.com? We need tech that is compatible to old as well as new.

Let me tell you this image is 20! years! old! I think I made it using one of the first versions of the ProCreate design program installed on an early iPad I had a taste-test of. It represents a techie, of course. How we imagined techies in those far gone days.

First the wait for contact on the help-line. Twenty minutes. Then the wait for my turn with a technician. 45 minutes. By about half an hour of waiting, I settled in, having already spent/used/wasted too much time to want to do it all again at a later date. Nothing has changed in 20 years in that respect.

I don’t know how many people have got an Archer VRI 1600, Version 2 modem but if it was a popular one, there’ll be a lot of people like me out there with modems stunned into silence, even hibernation, by new and brashy operating systems. Hence the long wait. Which is how I comforted myself.

I told the technician helping me reset the system, it is almost as if new operating systems are sweeping the old out to make room for the new.

Madam, she said, we don’t recommend our customers to just update their systems willy nilly.

I wanted to tell her I just do as I’m told, and my technical equipment the same. We upgrade to stay in the game. I don’t know what’s in an upgrade. Who out there is going to explain?

Yeah yeah. I could go to a forum and find out there. But tell me … do you do that?

But anyway the point is moot. Rion gave me a task that needed my attention. Find the xyz in System Settings and tell me what it says.

She is good, knows her stuff, and she’s patient. Took me through the process step by step. Even tested my mobile while we were at it. There, she said at the end, no new modem needed.

Her name is Rion and she works at the TPG call centre, if you need help retreading your modem.

Cat Tales, 16

Ever seen a cat with a medi-collar on? That’s what they put on at the vet’s before they put me in the carrier. They thought to stop me scratching, licking and biting the bandage. Huh? I am the Hand-of God, I don’t do that sort of stuff.

The vet cut my toe off. Just hanging by a thread, she said. So I’m a two-toe wonder now. Most cats that happens to, lose their whole foot, she said. That’s all while I’m still caged in the recovery room.

They gave me wet food. I hate wet food. I’d rather eat a spiny gecko tail. I turned up my nose and the vet nurse laughed. I turned my back then.

As soon as I heard my human in the waiting room, I started a racket. Yowling and throwing myself against the wire front of the cage.

“Take her home, for peace’s sake,” said the vet. “Come back later to pay and for the meds.”

That’s what happened. Me in the shed. The pernickety old woman fetching the meds which she now knew how to toss down my throat. The vet nurse had demoed presumably. I saw her apply the method to some other poor creature. One good thing, to get these meds into me, the pernickety old woman had to take the collar off me.

To open my mouth, the pernickety old woman squeezed my jaws apart at the joints. Then, having tossed the goods into the gulch, she clenched my jaws together to stop me spitting them out! Honestly, where do humans learn this tricks?

But, as a treat, I was then allowed to sleep on her bed within the klamboe—that’s the mosquito net—usually a serious no no. On the understanding that I wouldn’t rip the bandage off.

I gave her my best expression of disdain. Why would I rip off the bandages? Did you know cats can do 247 different expressions? Proven fact. A couple of people studying cats in a cat cafe. In Japan. You find out more? Just do that thing humans always do when they want to know something, using the thing you talk into.