New Scaratings

When we got to SRO OT, the system was on, but none of the boxes or the iPad app would allow us to sign on. I called BT, and after being on hold for ten minutes, talked to a tech, who talked to the night manager, who told me that whatever was wrong with the system couldn't be fixed until the next day. When we realized we couldn't get to another location by the start of SIX, we went home. As we turned into our home street, I saw a cat hunched in the middle of it. We ended up taking it in (beautiful fluffy Siamese with no id), but he was in pain, having seizures, and refusing food and water. So this morning I took him to our backup vet, who said the kitty was dying, probably from internal injuries including a brain injury, so he was euthanized (something I've never had to do before despite having cats all my life). If that story had had a happier ending, missing Sci-Files would have seemed a fair exchange, but it didn't.

Anyway, that's why SRO OT was MIA. Anyone remember the literature questions?

Brooke/AARDVK

Jerry Pournelle CoDominium was one.

Sorry to hear about your stray pet experience. That's got to be tough even if it's not your cat.

A couple of years ago we found a stray dog. No collar with no idea who owned it. I had the idea that it might have a microchip so I put it in the car and took it to my vet. At the vet's office I was trying to get her out of the car when she bolted. She headed straight for a very busy street. I closed my eyes and thought "Don't let me get someone's dog killed trying to help out!"

Fortunately a couple of college guys saw what was going on and stopped traffic allowing us to catch the dog and eventually find its owner.

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Glad your story had a happy ending. I also had one a number of years ago with another kitty. I was driving home through a more commercial than residential area when I turned a corner only to find two eyes in the middle of a street reflecting my headlights. So I stopped the car and got out, intending only to move the kitty out of danger. However, a Houston Police Department car drove up behind me and asked over the bullhorn why I wasn't moving. So I said, "I'm rescuing a cat," picked the tuxedo kitty up, and brought him into the car with me. As it seemed unlikely given the commercial nature of the area that he had a home nearby, I took him home with me. Fuzz (short for Fuzzmobile) lived over ten years with me before succumbing to complications of his FIV-plus condition he acquired one time when he got outside.

Four years into that period, I found out why he'd been in the middle of the street: he was congenitally blind, except he could perceive very bright light--like those from headlights. We had always thought Fuzz was a little off --he'd wandered into rooms and start meowing, had to be rescued from bookshelves and window sills, and played obsessively with the roll-the-ball-around-the-ring toy, but nothing else. However, he was also adept at chasing our Siamese, Aardvark (the inspiration for AARDVK) into a corner, where she'd whomp him on the nose, and none of us--not my then-husband and me, our daughter, the vet who neutered and examined him several times, or any of Fuzz's human friends (he was a life-of-the-party cat) ever thought he couldn't see until I suspected something had happened to his vision when I moved following the divorce, and Fuzz had trouble for a few days navigating my condo.

Back when we could play under different handles locally and still get Players Plus points, I sometimes played a FZZCAT box. (NTN/BT wouldn't let me play under Fuzz or Fuzzy.)

Brooke/AARDVK