What type of person would do that?

Kinderdijk

Over the last couple of days I spent a lot of time downloading and installing OSX Lion which is the new operating system for the iMac and Mac Air and - when you also upgrade your iPhone and iPad to their new operating system - you can use iCloud which stores all your stuff in one place and every time you change anything on anything it gets changed everywhere by something. How cool is that.

It is supposed to be simple and for a normal person using their native language it would be, but as the only store I can use is the Austrian one it always turns out to be one of those goat things and it took me almost two days to get everything working because nothing is ever as it seems and it would almost be worthwhile me paying Mr. esbboston to come over here because I am sure he could do it in a jiffy if I made him one of my special toasted chicken sandwiches with my special Australian bush spices.

In the process I finally realised that I would have to do something about my photo library which is growing like topsy and has many problems – not the least of which is that when I upgraded from iPhoto to Aperture I did not do it effectively and for some time was running two photo libraries concurrently.

This is a problem that will only get worse – we took more than 1,000 photos on our last trip – mainly of windmills – so I have to get rid of the iPhoto library.

At various times I have added photos to both libraries so the only way to make sure that I do not lose any photos is to merge the two libraries and then delete the iPhoto library – after backing it up to an external hard drive – and I can tell you that at the thought of all this taking place the goats are having a barn dance.

So this has occupied me for days because I have about 35,000 photos in each library and first I had to merge them and then I have to run a software program to identify the duplicates and then I have to delete them manually. Yes manually. This will take a month. 

In the meantime Sissi is going through a sleepless stage and is leaping and bounding about the bedroom and house at various times throughout the night.

Muffin – before she departed – did not teach her much – but she did teach her to leap – in the dead of the night – from the ledge behind the bed – onto on our almost lifeless forms – so as to wake us with a with a startled shriek. Us not her. 

And Monika – who rarely does anything at all – has started dragging around the apartment a piece of cord that came from a cosmetics bag that Cate had – and which the cats now use for a toy. Their only toy. 

Of all the things which we have bought them – this is the only one they treasure. We have wasted money on any manner of things – balls, furry mice, scratching poles, lined baskets, rugs, trinkets, knick knacks –whatever. The only thing in which they have evinced a sliver of interest is this scruffy piece of cord – approximately one metre long. They play with it constantly.

So each morning at about 4:00 AM Monika drags this into the bedroom squeaking like a demented bat. She does not meow – she squeaks. For some reason she has never learned to meow.

What can we do. It is her only toy. A piece of frayed cord. What type of person would take a piece of frayed cord from a cat that cannot meow. Her only toy.