Second round of cat interviews

Today was beautiful out. I should have played hooky from work and gone for a bike ride all day. However there was this little matter of a spreadsheet I've been working on for a week and was to present my findings to a team of data stewards. Plus meet with the Chief Inspector to go over the parts of the spreadsheet of interest to him. Busy.

In between these meetings I was out for my first lunchtime run from work in a while. At Talisman I only ran at lunchtime once, I think, as part of a 5K United Way thing. Penn West has a nice locker room and shower facilities so I took advantage.

The tough part was getting stuff out of my swim bag that I would need. You know, shampoo, comb, that sort of stuff, and get it all into the pack that I use to tote lunch and a few other things back and forth. I forgot my lock, but there was no need. Even though I was there on the dot of noon, and got back shortly after 1, I had the place to myself.

Normally downtown people run north to the Bow River path and join the herd. I do mean herd. The bike path is easily the width of a two lane road, and at lunch time it's full. It's a very nice run along that river, but I didn't feel like such a crowd. I ran south about the same distance to get on the Elbow path near the Talisman Centre, and ran down to where Stanley Park begins. I wanted to keep going. It was so nice, warm and sunny. Good scenery. It started off a bit clunky and gradually got better. My left knee was feeling a bit wonky towards the end.

I didn't do anything special, just ran easy for 45 minutes, keeping it aerobic. I got further than I thought I would. What I might do one day is run home from work. All I'd need to do is bring an extra change of clothes, and make sure I don't forget my card key so I can get back into the building the next morning.

I know most of you are waiting for me to talk about cats. Some of you know that Amelia is off to the catnip fields. The time has come to get another pair of cats to run the house. We visited MEOW foundation on Tuesday to get some first impressions and see if anyone was interested in us. There were several possibilities. We checked them out on the website, and talked to one of the staff. We narrowed the choice down to several, which is very hard, and went tonight to visit them a bit longer. One needs a vet visit to look at teeth and make sure followup from the spaying operation is all ok. We could have taken the other tonight, but we decided to hold off till we can take them both at once. That way the first kitty doesn't grab all the good stuff. Hopefully that will make it easier for them to get used to each other. We should know next week when we can bring them home.

Being interviewed by cats is very stressful, especially when you aren't totally sure how well socialized the cat is. Some are spooked by humans and run if you get too close. Some come right up and want attention. Some just lay there and look at you. I guess it's hard for them, because they see so many people go by. After a while they must get tired of the parade.