We got some sad news from the shelter. One of the cats, Cynthia, had to be euthanised yesterday. She seemed fine up until this weekend. The vet said she was anemic — she had barely any red blood cells when they tested her. They think it was a parasite she picked up when she was a kitten, so now her two brothers need to be tested.

Another one of the cats has an enlarged heart & cardiomyopathy. She’s been taken upstairs to the office to be taken care of for as long as she holds out, which probably isn’t very long.

I’m reminded of an absolutely ignorant comment on Reddit the night we brought Daisy home:

There is no such thing as a no-kill shelter. No-kill shelters will not take in animals that are not adoptable. Thus they are taken to shelters where they will be taken in and killed. The “Low-Kill” shelters kill the sick, injured, or dangerous ones. Most shelters adopt out almost every adoptable pet. The money thrown into the hands of the pretty, fancy no kill shelters only increases the problems with understaffed, overcrowded municipal shelters. I urge everyone to spay and neuter, and don’t fall for the no-kill lie. And PETA people are idiots.

Cat Guardians has residents with all sorts of health problems — old cats, one-eyed cats, and diabetic cats. When our cats are sick and need medical care in their final days, we take special care of them. The vet bills are already high, as you’d expect for a place with 50 animals. I imagine these two are going to be expensive, too. Pretty? Fancy? Not this place. We can’t afford it.

We do it out of love.

On the up side, I guess this means we’ll have openings to take in a few more cats who need a safe place to live and find new homes. I guess I’ll have a couple new buddies to play with.

Meow.

I don’t normally listen to the Escape Pod podcast, but the 2/21 episode was linked to off of Boing Boing and sounded cool.

Escape Pod features readings of short sf stories.  This episode, Edward Bear and the Very Long Walk, is a touching story of a brave AI toy bear given a very big responsibility.  I wont give any more spoilers.

According to Jason Scott (of BBS: The Documentary fame), the first computer bulletin board system went live on February 16th, 1978.  While there is still a nostalgic BBS underground, it’s interesting to note that BBSs fell out of favor before the 20th anniversary (1998).  I still remember dialing into a few Renegade systems from NIU in the mid 90s to play Barren Realms Elite after hanging out on the Internet.  But outside of that, there wasn’t much attraction to emailing & chatting with locals when I had access to the entire world.

Of course, those were the days of Trumpet Winsock on Windows 3.1, and thankfully NIU’s computer science department had their own BBS set up where you could download the software you needed to connect your PC to the Internet.  Wow, the whole concept seems so alien today, where I have wireless Internet access anywhere in the house.

Like many geeks in their 30s and beyond, I have fond memories of carrier whistles and ASCII art.  I remember leaving the modem going while I grabbed dinner in order to download 320×200 256-color GIF images and marveling at how photorealistic they were.  I remember upload/download ratios, and a local sysop who ran four or five genre-specific Fidonet-style message networks.

Those days are gone.  The BBS is as old as I am, and I’m starting to get grey hairs and back pain.  Someday I’ll be telling my kids about 2400 baud modems and ANSI codes, and they’ll look at me like I did when my dad told me about his family’s TV.

Tomorrow night, Amy and I are going out to celebrate PhuSioN’s birthday.  I think we need to raise a glass to absent friends, to the BBSs that were my introduction to the online world.