(Jul 06, 2012)

Monte hates being separated from Carlo, and he quickly works himself into a desperate and distraught frenzy trying to get back to him.

This morning, Monte slipped into the bathroom without me noticing just as I was leaving, and I accidentally ended up locking him in. I got back at lunch and did not notice anything very amiss, except for the fact that while Carlo trotted up to greet me as usual, Monte did not. Then the scratching/tearing sounds coming from the bathroom. I think that given another a hour or so he would have made it all the way through.

Self-portrait

(Apr 30, 2012)

Self-portraitt

Self-portrait

(Apr 22, 2012)

I forgot to lock up the paper towels before heading out.

Self-portrait

(Apr 11, 2012)

It is what the they do best ... when they are not tearing the place down.

(Apr 04, 2012)

Just after shutting off the shower, I realized that my printer was running. WTF? I go and check, and find dozens of pages of the same image being churned out. Go to the living room and find Monte and Carlo sitting on my laptop, watching a cat GIF playing on my desktop that they had somehow opened and requested to be printed hundreds of times.

And, for reference, here is the GIF that was the focus of all this interest, paper, and ink:

(Apr 02, 2012)

So, for my birthday I got Monte and Carlo some Whole Foods Greek meatballs. They seemed to love it. When I went back to the kitchen though, the entire floor was covered with bits of meatball: they had utterly destroyed them without eating a scrap. I spent a good half and hour cleaning the mess up. When I was done, I went back to living room, and found both of them licking a plate clean: they had eaten my birthday brownie down to the last crumb.

(Mar 31, 2012)

Frontline Application Part II results are in: ~40% on target, ~30% on fur, ~30% on my face.

(Mar 15, 2012)

Got back today. I had forgotten to shut the laptop lid. Found that Monte and Carlo had somehow renamed a bunch of documents on my Desktop to things like ",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,", "jjjjjjkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk" etc. Going to take a while to fix this ...

(Mar 12, 2012)

Monte and Carlo are not big fans of programming. Especially when it interferes with play/petting time. Here, Carlo communicates the pains caused by the programming with his eyes while pointing to the laptop, while Monte gives me a stern look of disapproval: "see what you have done to him????!!"

(Mar 04, 2012)

Settling down for a little catch-up reading while the crazies re-energize.

(Mar 04, 2012)

Over the past few days, now and then Monte & Carlo would sometimes disappear entirely. When I call or if they hear me moving around, they come out running, but I had no idea where they were coming from. Today, while searching for them as quietly as possible to and try and figure out what was going on, I noticed two fat bulges on the underside of mattress box-spring, each bulge having an associated cluster of four paws visible through the material. Poking one of the bulges yielded this.

(Feb 26, 2012)
  1. I cannot not believe there isn't a clean, pure-Python implementation of Mahalanobis distance calculations.
  2. Finally breaking down and deciding to roll my own has eaten up my entire Sunday night.
  3. Monte and Carlo were extremely unhappy with this incredibly pointless distraction from entertaining them, and finally decided that enough was enough, and took to oc-cat-upying my laptop.

(Feb 25, 2012)

Carlo got a collar today. He hated it. Luckily for Carlo, Monte loved Carlo's collar: Monte chewed on it till it came off (breakaway collar) and then ran off with it. After a few rounds of this, I managed to get Monte to forget about Carlo's collar by distracting him with a shoelace. Unfortunately, during this time, Carlo figured out how to take off the collar by himself without Monte's help. He was pretty smug about it.

(Feb 24, 2012)

Monte watches "Portlandia". He watched the entire episode, and obviously likes Carrie Brownstein.

(Feb 21, 2012)

The perfect storm: (1) Carlo sticks his head into a paper bag on the floor; just as (2) washing machine kicks into spin cycle; which causes (3) Monte to jump off table onto said paper bag. Result: 2 minutes of 'cat'-astrophic chaos as Carlo goes into sheer panic/rocket mode, tearing around apartment with paper bag loop stuck around his neck, clearing a pile of plates and cutlery off the kitchen counter-tops, knocking over a garbage can, a standing lamp, and a kitchen stool. Clean-up/recovery time: 40 mins.

(Feb 17, 2012)

Over the last few days, Monte & Carlo have been waging an all-out assault on every curtain, drapery, and wall hanging in the apartment. Non-stop. I pick up one to stop the attack, but then the other goes charging behind me or between my legs to continue the assault. Sometimes, one distracts me by running to the kitchen, so that the other can give the curtains their due without any interference from me. Today, they scored a victory.

(Feb 14, 2012)

Despite considerable investment in a kitty beds and perches, Monte and Carlo have decided that my office chair is theirs.

(Feb 12, 2012)

And sure enough, with a little bit of burn-in, Monte and Carlo quickly find regions of high probability

(Feb 12, 2012)

Monte and Carlo on their way to start exploring the posterior probability of life with me.