What a Great Day!

You know, after a week sick, this weekend all I wanted to do was things I'd had to give up while housebound.  So yesterday I went out and about.  I went to antique shops with Jen, and spent the evening watching PCU with Michael and the Aldritches.  It was great, but I was pretty tired when I got home.

So today, I got up and made a pot of coffee and started cleaning.  I ran the dishes, washed the sink and counters, swept and mopped the kitchen floor, cleared and polished the table, tidied and vacuumed the livingroom and diningroom, cleaned the litterbox, vacuumed the hall, tidied, dusted, and vacuumed my bedroom, cleaned the vanity and sink, and then the toilet and bathtub, bleached the bathtub, and swept and mopped the bathroom.  In short, I cleaned every room in the house still under my jurisdiction. 

When I'm getting over being sick, I always like to kinda clean up a little.  I don't know if it has to do with allergens or dust or lingering microbial threats, or if it's just psychological, but I woke up this morning and was nauseated by how dirty the house was.  I felt a very strong urge to leave the house, to be away from it, but I knew if I left, it would just be there when I got back.  So I cleaned, and I do feel better.  I febreezed all of the carpeted rooms with "antimicrobial" febreeze... normally I use "pet odor eliminator" febreeze, but the microbial seemed really appropriate this time.

I also did my grocery shopping, ran two loads of laundry, and took a bath.  And now, here I sit, wrapped in a towel, feet in my terry slippers, in a gloriously clean house.  How lovely!

(no subject)

So I was watching Animal Cops: Houston on Animal Planet, and featured on this episode was a caracal which had been purchased online from an exotics breeder as a cub. It had been spayed and declawed, and then after these permanent physical alterations had been taken to a local vet to be put down when it grew up and became too large and aggressive.

Now some of you may know I'm not a big fan of animal breeders period. I think that a lot of breeders keep their animals poorly and I think in a lot of cases they overbreed animals and make them miserable with birth defects like faulty hips and squashed faces. I think many breeders are concerned mainly with breeding large numbers of animals that they can sell, and not maintaining a healthy genetic line. I think many animals in shelters miss out on homes because of these people breeding fashionable designer pets.

But to me, it is the height of irresponsibility to breed wild animals in captivity with the purpose of selling them as pets. Wild cats are not just cats that haven't been raised by people, okay? F. Silvestris Catus, the domesticated cat, has been breed selectively over thousands of years... we selected the ones that were the tamest and least aggressive toward us and kept them and bred them, so thousands of years later, we have an entirely different type of animal on our hands, one that was bred to be a companion.

Wild cats, such as caracals, are wild animals, and no amount of early handling by humans will change that. They still have highly developed hunting instincts as well as instincts that help prevent them from becoming dinner for some larger more effective predator. They are aggressive, have specific requirements beyond what a housecat needs.

People are insane. Just because it's small (and I say small relative to big cats; caracals can reach up to 40 lbs) doesn't mean it's a pet! Stop it!