Cats on Twitter

My husband enjoys Instructables.com, and today he sent me a fun link. Here's a description from the site:

Give your cat a Twitter account and have her post updates automatically whenever she sits down on her bed or when she leaves her bed. In addition, capture pictures of your cat when she's on her bed and upload those as well so you can keep tabs on her antics while you're away from home.

In this instructable, I'll walk you through the process of
* building a cat sensor out of a simple momentary switch, foam core and foam strips
* reading the cat sensor on your Mac or PC using Arduino and Processing
* automatically posting status updates to Twitter when your cat takes a nap or wakes back up
* taking pictures of your cat on the bed with a webcam and uploading the pictures to a webserver

Want to see a twittering cat in action? Follow @zooooey on Twitter.

Maybe when my husband wants a new project, I'll see if I can convince him to set this up for our kitties. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the link and fat burner reviews. :-)

Dinner

Someone sent me this and I thought it was great!

Back to Atlanta

We traveled back from Orlando to Atlanta last weekend after a nice and refreshing break. We had a really nice Thanksgiving dinner, where I had seconds and even thirds... I'm going to have to go on a weight loss diet soon!

The kitties loved their time in the warmer weather, spending much of their time on the porch where they could see the ducks, birds, and squirrels and chase bugs and geckos.

Coming back to Atlanta, we had the cats loose in the car again. Lewis in his usual fashion curled up between the front two seats and stayed there the entire trip. The car doesn't seem to bother him at all. Ebony, on the other hand, was another story. She cried and cried for 2 hours after we left Orlando. She kept pacing around the car and driving me nuts (I was driving). Finally, I pulled off the highway to a Walmart and picked up a cat crate. We have a soft-sided carrier for them, but I was worried that it wouldn't be a comfortable place to leave them for a long period of time. I thought perhaps she would feel more at ease in the crate. At the very least, it would keep her from getting in my way as I'm driving.

She still cried, but I felt that they weren't so desperate of cries. We'll definitely use the crate for her in the future. Lewis does fine without it, so I'm not sure we'll get one for him (it's a small crate, only big enough for one cat).

Next time we go on a long trip with the cats, we're going to try and get some sedatives to at least take the edge off. Poor kitty.

Adventures in Orlando

The kitties really love visiting Orlando!

They have been spending a lot of time on the big porch. They can see all sorts of animals from the porch - geckos, birds, squirrels, ducks, bugs, etc. They certainly love "hunting" and following their natural instincts! :-)

The cats have already brought two geckos inside.

Lewis was chasing a gecko on the porch, and the gecko ran up the screen. Lewis followed. :-)

The second night we were here, Lewis got shut into my parents' room for the night. I noticed he was gone and was really worried. I figured out the last time I'd seen Lewis was right before my parents went to bed, so I went to bed telling myself that he was probably just in their room and not lost outside somewhere! You can imagine my relief the next morning when my parents woke up, let Lewis out, and he came to remind me that it was breakfast time.

Believe it or not, he was closed in their room again last night too. Sneaky cat! We think he's hiding in the closet, among the clothes and Christian Louboutin shoes. We'll have to do a better job of checking tonight.

Visiting Orlando

I'm typing this from Orlando, where we're visiting my parents for Thanksgiving! It's the baby's first Thanksgiving, so her grandparents are excited that we came. I have always brought the cats with me when coming to my parents house, and this time was no different. It was the first time we traveled in the car with me, my husband, the baby, and Lewis and Ebony.

It was funny - the cats kept climbing into the carseat to look out the window. The baby didn't seem to notice at all, but I chased them out anyway. I thought it was funny.

Lewis and Ebony drove me nuts in the car. My husband said they weren't acting any different than normal, so I wonder if I am just short of patience with them. My parents offered me their dog's old crate for us to contain the cats when going back to Atlanta after Thanksgiving.

I normally let the cats have free run in the car, but after writing this post last May, I began to wonder if that's the wisest choice. I don't want them to cause an accident and then having to rely on things like social security disability. We'll have to talk about it more before we leave.

Lewis and Ebony

Some recent pictures of Lewis and Ebony.

Happy puppies

Someone sent me this video yesterday and I couldn't help but smile.

The caption:
"My Dogs greeting me after returning from 14 months in Iraq"