No one likes a leaky butt... And, something fannish, for a change!

Life with Olive continues apace. She is warming to me a little more, now that I've started letting her outside. I finally had to give up trying to keep her indoors, with my goal of eventually letting her outside when I could supervise her. She is alarmingly clever and inevitably found ways to escape, and nothing I could do would bring her back in. I have never had good luck with outdoor cats; I've come to believe that if you love your kitty, you'll keep it indoors -- having lost cats to poison, hit by cars, getting chewed up in an engine, infections from animal fights, FeLV, etc., I vowed that when I was on my own, my cats would be indoors with outdoor privileges (supervised). I was lucky with Emma; she never much liked the great beyond outside the backyard and mostly stayed in the fort's perimeter except for the occasional wild hair when the great cat consciousness called her to venture forth.

But Olive, alas, has been an outdoor kitty. She mostly stays within the fortress backyard, but she must, at least once a day now, leg it up the alley or the street just to see what sort of trouble she can poke her pink nose into. The other day I was watering out front, thinking she was safely napping under the peony leaves out back, when who do I see marching up the street? She took a shine to the neighbor's porch and decided that, despite the ire of their own cat, she should take up residence there. I gave up after a while trying to get her back in.

The biggest problem is that she has had chronic diarrhea since I brought her home. And... how to say this delicately? She kind of... leaks. I have to take my new comforter in to the cleaners today after one such episode, and one of the main reasons she's scorned me as a new mommy is that I'm the evil person who chases her around, wiping her private bits. I finally figured out that if I scruffed her, she would submit more easily to wiping up. Sadly, though, I often don't know that she's making a mess (I feel very bad for her, because it clearly distresses her, too) until it's too late. Emma never responded to being held by the scruff, so it didn't occur to me for all these weeks that I could try this; 17 years got me out of the habit, I suppose.

I took her in for a vet visit since her stool sample test didn't show any parasites. We decided to try a special diet for a while to see if she could have developed sensitivities to something. She gobbled the venison I gave her when we got home, but then shunned it; so rabbit it will be for a while. Poor bunnies. But three months of this, with no treats, etc., is going to be hard. Not that she responds to treats, but she does like milk, though I've given her only the smallest amount of it.

When we were there, the tech took her away for tests, and it was right after explaining about the leakage problem. She said to the cat, "Aww, no one likes a leaky butt," as she picked Olive up, and I thought, well, that just about sums it all up, doesn't it? If only we were all cats, and that was the extent of our troubles.

On to something fannish! For a change, yeah.

I have been watching Burn Notice, USA's new summer series with Jeffrey Donovan (from the American remake of Touching Evil). It is really quite enjoyable -- a little like MacGyver crossed with the Equalizer and a dash of Bourne movies. Donovan plays a spy, Michael, who was given a burn notice -- basically, completely shut down, no money, no nothing, in the middle of a job, but he doesn't know by whom, and he ended up stuck in Miami, where his mother lives, stranded there until he can get back in the game. In the meantime, he is helping people by using his spy techniques -- Equalizer with a comic edge.

Though I have to agree with feochadn that Donovan's face looks like a giant potato, he's great in this role, and his easygoing sarcasm is a perfect fit with his co-stars, Bruce Campbell (when did he get fat? No, seriously, somewhere in between Bubba Ho-Tep and here, he became portly, and it is very odd), and Sharon Gless, as Michael's chain-smoking mother. All the guest characters come with these dramatic freeze-frame name introductions that are often quite funny. Donovan rocks his sunglasses, and he seems really believable as someone who isn't really do-gooding because he wants to, but mostly because he has little else to do, and it keeps his skills honed.

The best part for me might be that for once, besides Monk, this is a USA/Sci-Fi series that isn't filmed in freaking Vancouver (best line in Studio 60: "Vancouver doesn't look like anywhere! It's like Boston, California!"). Vancouver is truly one of my favorite cities in the world, and I adore spending time up there. But I am so, so sick of everything being set there, and filming in the exact same locations, and using the same 12 actors, and... one week, I watched four separate series and they all used the same tiny lagoon spot in Stanley Park and I just about sploded my head. It's really egregious when a show is supposed to be set in a sunny city like Santa Barbara and they stick a couple of palm trees in the frame and turn up the lighting way high to convince us. You're not fooling anyone, you little rascals!

So far, a number of Dexter's actors have turned up, and I look forward to seeing who else might show up. It's got snappy dialog, multifaceted characters, Michael is now driving his father's classic Dodge Charger, so what more could you ask for in a summer series? I know that I always seem to go for the odd shows and never the popular ones that everyone's gaga for, but... you should still check it out. Think of all the times I've been right and you missed the series when it was originally airing!