Stray Kitten

On a cold winter night, on the way to walk the dog, we suddenly heard a mournful cat cry, and my beloved followed the cry to find a newly weaned one-month-old kitten. The kitten was not afraid of people and was particularly clean and odorless, so my darling judged it to be a domestic cat. A quick examination of him followed and revealed standard legs and feet and no obvious pathological signs. The inspection also announced that its stomach was bulging and should have just finished eating, which inferred that the kitten was abandoned. Typically, a mother cat would not be this far away from her newly weaned kittens, and this is a roadside park adjacent to many neighborhoods that their owners may have abandoned. Say the owner has no conscience. He raised the kitten just to the weaning period and fed and thrown away; say the owner has a conscience, he can not throw the cat at 12 am. Because of the fear that the kitten was frozen to death at night, we decided to take the kitten home first and then decide on the next step.

When you get home, isolate both dogs to avoid contact between them. Because there are infectious diseases between dogs and cats, in addition to this, there are also fungal/bacterial/flea and other problems to consider. So until we can confirm the kitten's physical condition, we need to isolate the aboriginal people in the house. Although we have always had plans to get a cat (Maine), we have never put them into action (our home is too small), so many appliances are substituted. No cat litter, we got a big cardboard box with some soft cloth inside; no cat litter, we used a dog pee pad as a substitute; no cat food, we pouted a few ham hocks instead. After working for a while, the kitten was finally placed.

The next day we took the kitten to the vet for a physical examination. We found that in addition to the gastrointestinal flora disorder and some fleas on the body, there were no significant problems, no feline distemper, no feline nasal branch, and no rabies virus. So we bought some cat dewormer and gave it a go. As mentioned earlier, we both wanted to have a cat, but we all had yet to act or have any experience. So on the way back, my lover and I agreed: three months is the limit. If both people want to keep it, the kitten will stay; if either person does not want to keep it, the kitten will be released. Three months later ~~ we bought the dewormer just in time to use it up (not) ~~ the coldest part of winter is over, and the kitten's most fragile weaning period is successfully passed, so the chances of survival are higher if released at that time. Of course, if you stay and raise it, that's a different story.

After a brief discussion, we named the kitten "Isaac". The name is inspired by the game of the same name, hoping that Isaac can be reborn after these trials and tribulations and grow into a solid and brave cat. Since we decided to keep the cat for at least three months, we started to prepare the surrounding area for the cat. We purchased cat food, cat litter, a cat house, a cat capsule, and a cat scratching board from Tmall Supermarket and temporarily commandeered the kitchen as the kitten's home. Because we have two indigenous people in our house, we need to let them get in touch with each other slowly to get used to each other's presence. Otherwise, Naihu could bite Isaac's head in one bite, which would be a brutal scene to accept.

The difference between the experience of having a cat and having a dog is huge:

• Isaac is very independent, full of his ideas, and doesn't care what the humans are doing
• Isaac is only a little over a month old and can jump on our standard-height kitchen table (doggie tears), for which we have to pack up everything on the table that might get chewed up
• Isaac walks without any sound and can appear on the balcony next to me very suddenly

The above is the feeling of having a cat for less than a week. I hope Isaac can get along well with the dogs and us.

Free Mastodon

Considering the mess after Twitter was acquired, I decided to try the open source Mastodon. Currently, I have registered an account @xuanwo@mas.to on mas.to, so feel free to come along and play.

Mastodon is unique in that it is decentralized.

• Each node is independent, has its own rules, audit policy
• Each node is peer-to-peer, there are no more equal nodes, and you can set your policies to prevent specific nodes from connecting
• Each node is interoperable and can exchange data through a unified federation protocol

My account is registered on mas.to, but I can follow and reply to messages from friends on fosstodon. You can migrate your account to another instance by creating an alias and redirecting it. All follows and followers will be migrated automatically. Still, tweets that have already been posted will not be migrated, so choosing a relatively well-maintained instance is essential when creating your account.

For now, I plan to continue posting Chinese content on Twitter and start posting English content on Mastodon so I can meet some new friends.