Okay, okay, so I’m keeping her. I probably knew it would happen. She has a bed now, and a catnip mouse she’s going CRAZY over, and I’ve named her Dorrie. It means ‘gift’. She went poop actually IN the litter tray this evening. I’m disproportionately proud of her. Looks like I’ve officially become a Cat Owner.

There was a knock on the door at 3.30pm today. It was a little boy, one of the kids from round here, with a black and white kitten in his arms.

“Do you want to buy a kitten?” he asked. “We don’t want it.”

I took the kitten off him, and asked where his parents were. He said they were away, so I asked to speak to an adult. He took me to his 19 year old uncle, who told me the kitten was one of two they had, and the little boy was mistreating it because he could barely look after one. I could keep the kitten, he told me.

I went back to my house, and tried to calm down the shaking little thing. Ten minutes later, when I was on the phone to a friend asking how on earth you look after a cat, there was another knock at the door. It was a group of girls, kids again.

“Are you selling the kitten?” they asked.
“No,” I said, “and I’m on the phone.”
“If it has babies,” they said, “can we have one?”
“Sure, just go away,” I shooed them off.

Five minutes later, another knock at the door. It was the little boy again, flanked by two of the girls.

“My mum’s angry we gave away the cat, and she wants it back,” he said.
“I thought you said your mum was away?” I replied.
“Yeah, no, but she’s gone to the shop,” he said.
“Ok. We’re going to talk to your uncle then,” I pointed that way.

I took the kitten with me, and asked his uncle what was going on. His uncle gave him a clip round the ear for lying. Honestly, he told me, if I didn’t take the kitten, the kid would end up killing it.

I took the kitten, and went out to buy some food, a litter tray, and a pet carrier for it. Only cost twenty quid. I’m making an appointment to see the vet tomorrow. It’s exceedingly cute, and completely pulls at the heartstrings, but I don’t think I can keep it. I don’t have the time to devote to caring for a kitten until it’s old enough to be left on its own.

Several years ago, I worked for a technology company on a service contract for a financial company. I didn’t particularly like it there and, to cut a long story short, didn’t mesh with the company values or some such management-speak bullshit. As a result, I was more or less forced into resigning, done in an extremely underhand manner that left a really bitter taste in my mouth.
Despite living in the same city, I’ve not seen any of the people I worked directly with since I left there over four years ago. Saying that, I frequently see someone I knew there on the tram through the city centre. For the first time, I said hi to him this evening, and asked him if he was still working there. He said he was, that not much had changed, and I asked after the people I’d worked with. My ex-manager’s boss was now an account manager, he said, and no longer based in Sheffield. He didn’t know one of the women I worked with. My ex-manager, on the other hand, had been made redundant when the company lost the service contract.
“Well,” I said, “I’d say I was sorry to hear that, but they screwed me over, so I’m not.”
And I didn’t feel a shred of guilt.

Dad asked me last night to update the header picture on his blog with a new one. An easy job to do, I logged into his account on Blogger… and managed to delete the FTP password. I set it up myself when the blog was first created, and it’s been so long since then that I don’t remember what it was. As a result, Dad can’t post anything at the moment. I’ve emailed Blogger to get help, so now I’m just waiting for them to get back to me.
Sorry, Dad.

It’s Registration Week here at the University, or Fresher’s Week, if you prefer. I’ve spotted a few foreign students wandering around in the past couple of weeks, getting their bearings, but today is the first day that the new students will be about.

Thirteen years ago today, I was in the same position. September 18th was a Saturday, and my parents loaded up the car with all my stuff, and we drove down to South Wales. I had a place at the University of Glamorgan, and a room in Forest Hall, one of the on-campus halls. I’d visited the University over the summer, and they were refurbishing Forest Hall. It was pretty much a complete gutting of the old building, and it was due to look pretty impressive when it was finished for the new term. Unfortunately, the best laid plans never work out the way you want them to, especially when it comes to construction, and me and mum arrived at the halls to find them still being finished. Plans were in place for returning students to temporarily accommodate them in halls at Cardiff University, 25 minutes away. Buses were laid on to get students to and from the University, and we were told we should be able to move into Forest Hall within two weeks. Heading down to Cardiff, we discovered the halls were a) huge; b) deserted; and c) scattered. We weren’t clustered in any one specific area. My mum, never one to be quiet, complained bitterly to the poor student union rep, a guy I had a crush on for the majority of my first year. She threw in the fact I had epilepsy, and that if anything happened, etc.. Medication controlled it well, but it was a pretty solid argument, and they weren’t to know. In the end, the University agreed to put me up in B&B accommodation along with a girl I’d made friends with. We stayed in excellent comfort just fifteen minutes walk from the University for 10 days before moving in to Forest Hall.

I know that making my way out of the University today at lunchtime is going to be like getting through a concert crowd. There’ll be students everywhere. I should sharpen my elbows in preparation.

A simple game, devised while reading Wikipedia, a six-degrees-of-separation sort of thing:
1. Choose two completely unrelated nouns. I chose Pontypridd, the Welsh town I went to University, and Augusta (Georgia), where I often go to visit friends.
2. Through clicking on links in Wikipedia only, get from your first wiki entry to your second choice in the fewest number of clicks possible.

For me, I did it in 7 clicks:
Pontypridd -> Tom Jones (who’s from Ponty) -> Treforest (born specifically in this area of Ponty) -> University of Glamorgan (located in Treforest) -> University -> List of USA Universities -> Georgia universities -> Augusta (where the Augusta State University is located).