Rats!

To many of your chagrin Kate and I have two new pets, Doublev and I Grec. The names are the French pronunciations of the letters W and Y. I get that two Vs make a W but what the hell is I Grec? We got the pair from the SPCA, like the humane society in Ontario. It was quite a mess in there, animals everywhere, confusion, most of the people were volunteers I think. We managed to barge our way in and take a couple of rats, although I was yelled at for touching a kitten on the way, how can you not when it's rubbing up against the cage it's in meowing?

We got a cage the next day, the first night they stayed in Jedi's cat carrier. The first night they were in the bedroom but they make a lot of noise so now they stay elsewhere although we haven't really found a permanent home for them.

Brewski is adjusting to the rats much better than Jedi. He is curious and a little scared of them but has shown no hostility towards them at all. Jedi is her usual oblivious self. We took her to the vet last week, turns out she has cataracts. I've been saying for weeks her sight is poor, but there is little we can do. I'm sure her aggression comes from a fear that is derived from not seeing what's happening around her. Maybe her sense of smell is a bit weak too, who knows. She was only in attack cat mode for an hour or so after the vet so that's good. I do not look forward to moving her to a new place.

We have found a place that we like enough to see a second time but we want to investigate other areas of the city so I'm not sure if we'll actually be serious about this first place. It does have a lot of wood inside the house that could be stained to look pretty good. There are a few other things we can do to the place and the tenant pays 800 a month in rent so it seems not too bad. We looked at 2 other places when we first saw the place we like, they had obvious flaws, one had a backyard with a view of the Tralier Park Boys meet Chernobyl. The fat bald man being helped through a window by his 8 year old bald fat son was the deciding moment for me. That was the first thing I saw when I stepped into the backyard, the neighbours house being broken into by it's owners, a normal thing right? Then he comes back out the window and sits on the porch. his wife comes out the door with a drink. I think the guy forgot his smokes in the house or something so rather than go around he had his kid push him through the window. We passed on that house.

I've got my French exam Saturday morning at 9, gonna have to step up the studying, today I've got some lab work to do so that will help. Then tomorrow and Friday will be memorization and practice. Oh and it turns out that some of the things I'm learning, the hard things, aren't actually used in speech by many people, probably because it's too hard to get it right. C'est la vie.