The fix is in

My family has a history with cats. When I was little, our cat Agnes was scheduled to be spayed right after Christmas. On Christmas Eve, she went into heat, got out through the basement door, and got pregnant.

So I was nervous about Susu. Between traveling and work, it just hasn't been possible to schedule her for the operation. But she's getting close to six months old and I know we're in a race against her ovaries.

Hanging out on a shelf

I booked her for next Tuesday, when I have some time off. But sure enough, two days ago she started acting funny, rubbing against me and yowling a lot. I was sure she was about to go into heat, and the timing wasn't great. I'm going to Aceh today and I didn't relish the idea of leaving our half-crazed cat locked up by herself with every tomcat in the neighborhood howling outside the door!

Happily the vet agreed to take her early and give her back to us Monday, minus ovaries. I took her down in a cab yesterday. She seemed to be her normal self again.

Getting sleepy in the cat carrier

Spaying and neutering are not as common here as in the States. Even our landlord and his family, who are not impoverished, and who love their dog to pieces, don't seem to plan on getting her "fixed." When I asked him if we could have a cat, he advised me to get a male so I wouldn't get stuck with litters of kittens. (I didn't mention that we actually had the cat already. Minor detail.)

But there are some organizations working to popularize neutering and improve animal welfare. One of my favorites rehabilitates dogs off the street and gives them to good homes. They hang posters of available dogs at the vet's office. At the bottom of every poster are the words: "Our dogs are intended for dog lovers, and not to be used as doorbells or lawn decorations." Right on!

Consider yourself unwarned

The US has finally lifted its travel warning on Indonesia, which is excellent news. Now more people will come see places like Mt. Bromo:


which I will blog about more soon.

We finally put the June issue of the magazine to bed, and that will be my last. Tomorrow I finish work, and after that I have two weeks off! I'm going to Aceh for the weekend, and then I'll spend most of the two weeks taking a picture of everything in Jakarta that has made me think "I need a picture of this." I may slip out of town for a day or two, but I've been traveling and working so much lately, all I really want to do is hang around, play with the camera, pet the cat, and go to the gym.

Junk food of the week: Uffy Snacks Special Roombutter

I wasn't really so interested in these cookies as cookies. I just wanted to write the name Uffy Snacks Special Roombutter in the blog.




In fact, I think I'll just do it again: Uffy Snacks Special Roombutter. Too fun!

The cookies themselves were better than I expected: kind of shortbready and very buttery-tasting. They could have let themselves go a little more wild on the chocolate chips if they wanted.


Here's how they went over at the office:
Haviva - thumbs up
Howie - called them lousy but ate 37
The girls in Marketing - giggled; ate some; giggled

Overall, I'd say they did pretty well.

Sorry about the poor photo quality; Chad has the good camera in Thailand and I killed my nice Sony cameraphone last week by dropping it in Susu's water bowl. Now I'm using a cheap replacement. That Sony phone was annoying in many ways, but man, I really miss its camera. And Susu hasn't even offered to pay a cent toward a new one!

Update

I've clearly fallen behind on my blogging again, heh. I have much to talk about, including a new job, sexy dangudut videos on long-distance buses, and a large fruit bat (none of those things are related to each other, for better or worse). But right now I'm traveling with friends in North Bali, and the internet connection is so glacial I'm not going to try and post any photos. So, I'll get back in blog mode Sunday when I return to the Jak.