Oliver

My second cat, Oliver, died yesterday. He had had low-grade chronic renal disease for a long time, and for unknown reasons it rapidly worsened over the past several days, to the point that his kidney were irreversibly shut down.

I don't know how old he was. The shelter from which I adopted him told the story in a newsletter a short time later:

It still makes me choke up to see how sick and miserable he was. Compare that to how cozy-comfy he got once he had settled in with me:

His favorite place to perch was on top of my recliner:

He thought it was an even better spot when I would sit in the chair with him above me:

Sometimes this would result in a head bath that I thought was unnecessary, but Oliver obviously thought otherwise. This was the first of what would turn out to be many:

My main regret is that I could never get Oliver and Lucy to be friends. Mostly, they just barely tolerated each other. This isn't a great photo, but it nicely illustrates the prevailing mood:

But once in a while, there would be a real dust-up. Oliver usually picked the fights, and always came out the loser:

Sometimes they would nap calmly in fairly close proximity, showing a glimmer of mutual tolerance:

And once in a great while, there were moments of what appeared to be affection, which would always send my hopes soaring that a better inter-feline relationship would come:

The best I can say is that in the last several months things were improving between them--though at a glacial pace.

He was a pretty derpy, messy cat. His tongue often stuck out, and he would make giant messes out of his food, water, litterbox, and everything else. But he did have his moments of letting his handsome flag fly:

One of his best features was that he had eyeliner on fleek. Women would die to get their eyes done this perfectly:

He was constantly affectionate.

He was endlessly funny and entertaining.

Looking through my photo/video archives, I just want to show you all of it. But that would be self-indulgent, rather than a proper tribute. So I'll call it quits with this:

For the last time, Oliver says "blep."

I already miss him terribly.

Life update

I adopted a second cat. His name is Oliver. He's had a hard life. He was abandoned by persons unknown, and left to die--and he very nearly did. He has no teeth and no tail. But now he'll have enough love that it won't matter.

Training a cat

As most cats with a regular feeding schedule will do, Lucy is prone to an hour or two of yowling when she thinks it should be dinnertime. Because, you know, on any given day I might FORGET TO FEED HER or something if she doesn't insistently remind me.

Fairly soon after adopting her, I resolved to extinguish this behavior, lest it drive me mad. So I instituted a simple rule: even if it's her dinnertime, she doesn't get fed until she has been quiet for five straight minutes. This has been remarkably effective, and it's rare these days (maybe once a month or so) that I have to actually enforce it. She just knows that meowing to remind me to get her food backfires.

I was feeling pretty darn clever at having trained her this way. Instead of putting up a fuss, she instead developed a habit of crawling into my lap, if I'm at my desk, or onto my legs if I'm on the sofa and just waiting quietly for dinnertime.

Lately, however, she has developed an alternative way to communicate the fact that she's hungry--one that doesn't run afoul of the vocalization rule: She jumps up on the couch, where I'm relaxing in front of the TV, sits on my chest, and stares at me, eyeball to eyeball.

It looks a little something like this:

Here's the reverse angle on the staredown:

I bought a tablet computer a while ago, and some nights recently I've been playing games on it instead of watching TV. When that happens, she carefully steps over the tablet, planting herself between me and it. I haven't been able to get a selfie of that, because it makes me laugh so hard.

If I still have not gotten her food after what she deems to be an adequate time, she just lies down to continue giving me the message:

The only thing that breaks her concentration--other than me actually fetching her dinner, of course--is taking pictures of her posturing. Then she's all like, "Hey, why u take pikchur uv me? I did not giv u mah permishun."

The whole thing is just completely hilarious, and if my neighbors are listening through the walls, they must wonder what has me laughing like a maniac every night lately.

It's also completely ineffective, because her food time is set in stone at 9:30 a.m. and 9:30 p.m., and will not be moved earlier on the basis of any cat entreaties, no matter how intrusive, pathetic, funny, or insistent.

It does make it rather difficult to either play computer games or watch TV, though. So I gently move her down to my legs, which is where she has usually settled for our snuggle time. Every few minutes, though, she crawls back up to my face, just to be sure that there is no chance I have forgotten to FEED THE CAT.

It would be impossible for me to forget to take care of such a delightful, endearing creature.

Lucy's Christmas treat

Lucy's favorite treats are chunks of freeze-dried turkey from a company called "Whole Life." But they're really expensive, so most days I just break off a little piece from one for her. For Christmas, I gave her a whole one. 

At first, she could hardly believe her good fortune. 

"Is that what I think it is?" 

"Ooo, it is! I hope nobody's watching."

"Attack!"

"Ooo, that tastes good!"

"I chomps it." (At this point, it finally occurred to me to turn on the camera's flash, which is why the remaining pictures are so much less noisy.)

Going...

going...

gone.

"That was super-yummy!"

I hope all of you get what you most want for Christmas.

Photo quiz

I realize that this is completely out of the blue, but so what?

This is a picture I took this morning of Nina's yard. Her cat, Loki, is in the photo somewhere. Can you find him? It's like "Where's Waldo?" but with a kitty.

Right-click/open in new tab to embiggen.

Give up?

Scroll down for answer.

Proud (and possibly crazy) cat daddy

Oh, come ON! Just how ridiculously adorable can she get???

Gratuitous cat photos

Lucy is usually camera-shy; as soon as she sees me pointing the thing at her, she walks away, or at least stops doing the cute thing she had been doing up to that point. Today, however, she lay down in a nice beam of morning sunlight from the window, and calmly let me snap a few shots showing off how beautiful she is. I couldn't pick just one favorite, so I'm posting all four, like a ridiculously proud cat-daddy. 

Merry Christmas

Christmas this year finds me more generally content with my life than I have been in a dozen years. I hope the same is true of you and yours.

One of this year's new contributors to my happiness continues to be my kitty, Lucy. Here's a video of her that only her daddy could love--her Christmas present. It's a big hunk of freeze-dried turkey. Usually she gets these (her favorite treats) only a one-bite size piece at a time, but today I gave her a whole one. I had hoped to be amused by watching her claw it open, but her reaction was a little underwhelming. Oh well. As you can see at the very end, she went kind of bonkers once I helped her get past the wrapping.

Cashing out of Juicy Stakes, part 1

In January, when I knew I was going to be moving to North Carolina, I checked all of my online poker accounts to be sure I knew how to get into them, find out how much money I had left, get the software updated, etc. I wanted it all to be ship-shape before I had to start getting all my contact information changed. I wrote a blog post about this, here.

Here's what I said about one of them:

Cake/Juicy Stakes 

The Cake Poker network sort of merged with Lock Poker and became the Revolution Gaming Network last year. I had had a dormant account on Cake for a few years, and threw $100 onto it last summer to try out the new entity. I played one SNG and then never went back--not so much because it was terrible, but because I was concentrating all of my online play on BCP for a while.

Since then, Cake stopped doing business with U.S. players, and transferred their accounts over to a skin called Juicy Stakes Poker. See here for details. (Why doesn't anybody consult me on these names they pick? I could tell them how awful they are in advance and save them the embarrassment.)

I downloaded the new software, and my previous Cake log-in worked without a problem the first time, and my account was at $95, where it should have been. I played a $5 SNG to test things out, busted early.

Today somebody (I think it was KevMath) tweeted something about a new twist in the ongoing problems that Lock Poker is having with players getting their money out, pointing to this news story: http://pokerfuse.com/news/poker-room-news/lock-poker-allegedly-offers-expedited-cashouts-to-high-volume-player-25-09/ That story contained a link to this site which publishes monthly grades on how well the sites do at processing withdrawal requests. I had not heard of it before.

I checked it, and saw that Juicy Stakes was getting F ratings just like Lock was. Ruh-roh. So I decided to see if I could get my remaining $90 out of there before the whole thing implodes.

When I went to request a withdrawal, however, the cashier page informed me that the only withdrawal option was a check (fine; that's my preferred method anyway), but (1) the minimum amount that could be withdrawn by check was $150, and (2) no, you can't deposit more just to get to $150 and then withdraw it.

So I wrote to customer service:

I would like to cash out my account, balance is $90.80. When I went to the cashier, the only option it offered me was check, which is fine. However, it then said that I don't have the minimum to use this method of withdrawal, yet it gave me no other alternative. So, how do I get my money out? 

Thank you.

The answer came admirably quickly, within just a few minutes:

Thank you for your email.  

 I'm afraid at present the only cashout option for US players is via check which has a minimum cashout of $150. (Please note that players are not permitted to deposit with the intent to reach $150 and cashout). We apologize for the hassle caused by the cashout limit but do hope to add new cashout options in the near future. Please let us know if you require any further assistance.  

 Kind Regards,  

 Jack  

 JuicyStakes Support 

Well, now, that simply won't do. When I made the deposit at Cake, there was no forewarning that I was depositing less than the minimal amount I would ever be able to cash out, so that I would have to win another $50 or kiss the deposit good-bye.

 I replied:

That makes no sense. You accepted a deposit of $100, with no warning given to me that the only way I would be able to retrieve that sum would be to win enough to push it up to $150. You need to provide another answer than the one below. It is not acceptable that I cannot get my money off of your site. 

 Again the response came very quickly:

Thank you for your email.  

If you wish to cashout your entire balance we can have the Cashier make an exception in this case. We understand the situation is far from ideal but these limitations have been forced upon us with the lask [sic] of cashout options available within the US.  

Can you please provide us with the following to activate your account for check cashouts ?  

Please scan or take clear digital photos of the following and send as color JPEG attachments in reply to this email: Required information: 

 - The front and back of the payment card used to deposit with us (for security purposes you may obscure the middle 8 digits and 3-digit CVV code as applicable).
 - A recent Utility Bill or Bank Statement, showing your name and mailing address as registered on your account (for purposes of privacy you may obscure account numbers, balances, etc...)
 - A government-issued photo ID (passport, Driver's License) in color
 Upon successful review of the above we will be able to proceed with a cash out. 

Another quick exchange told me the last four digits of the card used, since I didn't have that recorded anywhere. This presented another problem, however. The card I used was a Visa debit card tied to the checking account at the bank I used in Las Vegas. But that bank has no branches in North Carolina, so I closed that account soon after I got established with an Asheville bank. The card no longer exists.

Fortunately, I keep good records of my online poker transactions, so I was able to easily find the date on which I made the Cake deposit. Then, because I also kind of obsessively keep papers, including bank statements, after a few minutes of shuffling through file folders I was able to find the monthly statement on which the transaction appeared. I scanned that page along with the other documents requested. In my email, I explained the change of banks, and pointed out which item was the Cake deposit, complete with transaction number.

Frankly, I thought they would use this slight irregularity as an excuse to deny my withdrawal request, and I was mentally composing the jeremiad I would unleash on them. I was pleasantly surprised when, within an hour, I was told:

Thank you for your email. Now that we have verified the personal information on your account, I have approved your account's ability to cash out via check. You can now request a check from your Cashier screen. Please check that your address and phone number are up to date before requesting a cashout. You may need to restart your client to allow the changes made to take full effect. Please let us know if you require any further assistance. 

So despite Juicy Stakes Poker's "F" rating, I'd say so far they're doing all right by me. Yeah, I wish I could have just clicked "withdraw" and be done in one minute without the back-and-forth with customer service, but they turned out to be pretty reasonable in working with me.

Of course, important questions remain: Will there be some huge fee to withdraw? Will they actually send the check? If so, how long will it take? And will it clear when I deposit it? We shall see.



Bonus material: Gratuitous cat photo

I snapped this shot of Lucy a few days ago, while she was looking extra-cute, with her little paddy paw up on the window. Understand that by definition, any photo of Lucy is a good photo. But even given that reality, this is one of my favorites of her. Unless she's sleeping, she doesn't often hold still in good light long enough to catch her face well. So this shot is one of the few I have that really nicely shows her lovely green eyes, with direct afternoon sun highlighting her pretty orange stripes and patches. There is no need to enter her in cat shows, because it is already plain that she is the most beautifullest cat there ever was. It really wouldn't be fair to all the other entrants.

Open-face Chinese poker problem (quasi-poker content!)

Cardgrrl's house is now finished and she has moved in. Last night I was over there for dinner and recreation. I taught her how to play OFC poker. I've only played once before for money, though a few days ago I bought an app for my Android phone and have been playing some no-money games with friends around the country. So my experience with the game is not quite zero, but pretty close to it. Which means that situations I haven't seen or thought of are going to come up from time to time.

Last night, for example, I ended up making this hand:

Cardgrrl had fouled her hand, so I potentially had a big score here--a scoop plus a royalty for the full house. But neither of us knew whether this hand was valid or fouled because both the top and middle had J-10-7. And it's not like Cardgrrl has a few Chinese Poker rule books sitting around the house that we could consult.

So I posted the picture on Twitter and asked for opinions from those with more experience playing. I was surprised but pleased that the answers I got were unanimous: It's a valid hand.

But then that just made me wonder why it's valid. Is it because:

(A) Jack of spades is a higher card than jack of hearts?

(B) The two hands are considered equal, and being equal is valid?

(C) The middle hand is J-10-7-5-4, which is better than just J-10-7 on top?

Here Twitter delivered some variability in the explanation, with all three possible rationales getting at least one nod. But the answers from the most experienced players were consistently (B). Apparently two hands tying is as valid as the stronger one being below the weaker one. So, for instance, if you happen to make a seven-high straight on both the back and the middle, that's a legitimate hand, not fouled. To put it another way, I had been under the impression that each hand must be stronger than the one above it, but the actual rule is that no hand can be stronger than the one below it--which is not quite the same thing.

So now you know. (Or maybe, unlike me, you already did.)



BONUS SUBJECT AND PHOTO:

Both Cardgrrl and I had long been wanting a cat but were in living situations where it could not happen. As you know by now, I remedied that very soon after moving in to my apartment. (If you want to watch a couple of stupid videos of me playing "cat hockey" with my darling Lucy, see here and here. Do not expect cinematic epicness.)

Well, on Saturday Cardgrrl also cured her catlessness. She went to one of the local animal shelters and brought home a tiny bundle of feline furriness named Loki. He is, as she accurately puts it, ALL OF THE CUTENESS ALL OF THE TIME. My guess is that if you did a chemical analysis of him, he would turn out to be 99% cuteness and 1% carbon/nitrogen/oxygen. See more of Loki's sweetness here.

Here's the three of us last night posing for a selfie:

Survey question: How adorable are we?

1. Very.
2. Extremely.
3. Super-duper.
4. OMG!

Kitty treats

(Warning: All about my cat, zero poker content.)

When Lucy first came home with me, I was having some trouble getting her to use her litter box consistently. I finally figured out the problem, thanks to diagnostic help I found in the excellent book The Cat Bible: Everything Your Cat Expects You to Know, by Tracie Hotchner. All I needed to do was get her a larger box where she had enough room to turn around and find a spot that she liked. (Nearly all commercial litter boxes are quite a bit smaller than most cats like, so go to any discount store and buy a large (mine is 35 inches long), flat plastic storage box from Sterilite or Rubbermaid.)

I was so grateful that this book helped me find a cheap, easy, and 100% successful solution to a frustrating problem that I sent a letter of thanks to Ms. Hotchner. She emailed me back a nice note saying that she was glad she had been able to help, that she was going to read my letter on her next radio show, and that she was going to send me a coupon for some free premium kitty litter from one of her sponsors, Precious Cat--which she did.

This apparently got me onto her list of people to send stuff to. A few weeks ago, she picked up a new sponsor--Whole Life pet treats--and I got in the mail several packets of sample flavors. I arbitrarily opened one of the turkey packets and gave one of them to Lucy. She went nuts over it. She started playing with it and stalking it as if it were a mouse or something. I had never seen her act so bonkers, so I picked up my cell phone and recorded her for about ten minutes:




(The big boxes you see in one corner of the room are not just me being a bad housekeeper. They're Lucy's playground. She loves jumping in and out of boxes, and napping in them.)

I sent the YouTube link to Ms. Hotchner. She posted it on her Facebook page and forwarded it to the Whole Life people, who posted it on their Facebook page. They must have liked seeing it, because today in the mail I got an even bigger box of samples of their products:

This is going to keep Lucy well-stocked with all the treats she can handle for a long time. This post is intended to thank the good folks at Whole Life for such generous sharing, and tell any fellow pet owners (the products are the same for both cats and dogs) that these things are really great. They are pure freeze-dried meat with nothing else added. My kitty lurves them.

How much does she lurve them? Well, when I got the first batch of samples from Whole Life, and saw how Lucy was pawing and sniffing at the box, trying to get at them, I knew I would have to put them somewhere secure, lest she snarf them all down as soon as I went off to bed. So I stashed them in what I assumed was a place she could not get at: the cupboards above the sink in the kitchen:

But the next morning I discovered that Lucy was both more agile and more determined than I had judged. She had been in the cupboard and had ripped open four of the treat packets!  The only way I can figure she got in would be to jump from the counter up to the top of the cupboards, then open one of the doors with a paw, and sort of snake herself in from above. It seemed so nearly impossible that I briefly entertained the thought that it was a mouse that had gotten in, not the cat. But I found a tuft of Lucy fur there, and there were some heavy items pushed around that a mouse could not have done. I wish I had a hidden-camera video of her cat burglary (sorry), because it would have been a pretty amazing feat of feline acrobatics.

Anyway, that's how much she lurves these things. And now she has several months' worth of them. Thank you, Whole Life!


On an unrelated note, I recently discovered Lucy's first act of kitty vandalism. Look what she did to the cables at the back of my television:

I'll have to get some protective casing for the replacement wires. Fortunately, this is an isolated case, and she has shown no interest in attacking all the other wires and cables I have around here.

Things I've been doing

Work, mostly. There has been a steady stream of it, for which I'm grateful.

But I moved here primarily so that I could spend more time with Cardgrrl, and I'm very happy that that has been happening. She comes to my place every Tuesday for dinner (yes, I cook!) and to do laundry (her rental place has no laundry facilities; this will no longer be an issue by July 1, when she moves into her brand-new house, which is almost finished). Then every weekend we get together either once or twice for something fun--like the Chimney Rock hike of the previous post.

Some other recent examples:

A stroll through the gardens at Biltmore Estate (we both have annual passes).

Seeing Shakespeare's final play, "The Tempest," at an outdoor amphitheater, performed by the Montford Park Players.

An evening of barbershop-style singing by the Land of the Sky Chorus.

Reading. (This part doesn't involve Cardgrrl.) I've been plowing through books much faster than I used to in Vegas. I've been here four months now, and I've read:

Denial: My 25 Years Without a Soul, by Jonathan Rauch.

Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity, by David Foster Wallace.

Control: Exposing the Truth about Guns, by Glenn Beck.

Gospel of Freedom: Martin Luther King, Jr's Letter from Birmingham Jail and the Struggle that Changed a Nation, by Jonathan Rieder.

Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas, by John Scalzi.

Bacon and Egg Man, by Ken Wheaton.

Elders: A Novel, by Ryan McIlvain.

The World Made Straight: A Novel, by Ron Rash (soon to be a major motion picture, having recently filmed right here in Asheville).

A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing, by Lawrence Krauss.

God, No! Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales, by Penn Jillette.

The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins.

And I'm currently in the process of reading three more:

Maud Martha, by Gwendolyn Brooks.

The Joy of Hate: How to Triumph over Whiners in the Age of Phony Outrage, by Greg Gutfeld.

Nothing Gold Can Stay: Stories, by Ron Rash.

How's that for an eclectic list?


And finally, a cat. If you follow my non-poker Twitter feed you are probably sick of hearing about the cat. But I can't help it. I'm in love. Cardgrrl recognized this when I had had the kitty home for only about 24 hours, and the adoption was still on a trial basis (to see if she triggered my allergies in some uncontrollable way), and she didn't even have a name settled on yet: http://www.somebeaut.com/2013/02/26/petting-kitty/

I have only become more smitten since then. Lucy is the best thing to happen to my life since Cardgrrl came along four years ago. She brings me delight and laughter every day. She sits on my lap for a couple of hours a day, sleeping and purring while I work. When not there, she is usually on her window perch about three feet away, often making the most squee-worthy series of cute, snorgling vocalizations.

I am mightily tempted to here produce a photo dump of every exposure that has her beautiful little face in it. But I shall restrain myself and post only a few of the best ones. The first two were taken by Cardgrrl, the rest by me.

Isn't she just the most gorgeous, adorable thing you've ever seen? ("Yes." The correct answer is "Yes.")

So that's what I've been doing since settling in here. To my shame, I still have not reassembled my bicycle and started tackling the hilly streets of Asheville. But that will come when I get the time and sufficient mental motivation.

I do miss all my Vegas friends*, and I miss poker. But in case you couldn't tell, I am very, very happy here.



*Not nearly as many people come visiting in Asheville as in Vegas. So far only one friend of mine has come to town: Shamus came through on his way home from a tournament reporting gig at Harrah's Cherokee in April. He, Cardgrrl, and I had lunch at Juicy Lucy's, which is very near where Cardgrrl's house is going up. This gives me an excuse to re-post my favorite photo of Shamus, International Man of Mystery: