tag 标签: deterrent

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  • 热度 23
    2014-12-4 18:00
    1358 次阅读|
    0 个评论
    My wife, Gina The Gorgeous, is quite fond of animals. She has two stupid dogs and two stupid cats. How stupid are they? Well, allow me to show you this video of the dogs that I made a couple of years ago.   But I fear we are getting ahead of ourselves, so let's return to the tortuous tale I have to tell. Gina has tremendous skill as an interior decorator. She's told me so on many an occasion, so it must be true. All joking aside, Gina really is great at this stuff. As one simple example, when we moved into our current house, I unpacked the boxes of books and loaded them -- along with a variety of photos and sundry knick-knacks -- onto the bookshelves in the study. It took me hours. Sad to say, however, the result was a bit of a "dog's dinner," as it were. Then Gina breezed in and spent about 15 minutes re-arranging things, moving a book from "here" to "there" or a picture from one shelf to another, and it was like she had waved a magic wand -- a beam of sunlight shone through the window, the birds in the trees outside started trilling, and everything looked like it was in the place it was meant to be and all of the books and other objects came together as a harmonious whole.   Gina is a big fan of cushions. We have cushions everywhere. And it's not the same cushions all the time -- ours are seasonal. Woe betide us if the summer cushions are still on display when fall arrives, or the fall cushions are flaunting themselves during the winter months, or the winter cushions are gracing our chairs when spring comes knocking at the door. If Gina spots an interesting cushion while she's out and about, then it's like watching Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator -- you can almost see the calculations going on behind her eyes -- range to target, optimum route to target, any potential competition in the store who might be interested in the same cushion, and so forth. It can be a bit scary, if the truth be told.     When I was young and foolish, I didn't realize how complicated this sort of thing could be. I now know that you can't simply purchase a cushion and then plonk it on a chair or a sofa -- it's more like a complicated jigsaw where each cushion forms part of a larger display. Actually, now I come to think about it, it's more like a game of musical chairs in which the cushions chase each other from room to room until the music stops, but the music exists only in Gina's mind.   When I return home from work and see a new cushion sitting on the kitchen table following one of Gina's shopping trips, I cringe inside, because I know my world is going to spend the next few days transmogrifying itself around me. (Did you ever see the movie Dark City ? Can someone please pass me my dried frog pills?)   But that's not what I wanted to talk to you about...   As a mentioned earlier, Gina has two cats. One of them is a Maine Coon. She calls it Drummer, but I think of it as Harrogate (if I think of it at all). Do you know how big a Maine Coon cat can grow? I had no clue, but now I'm starting to live in fear. I don't know the person in the picture below -- I found this on Google Images -- but the cat looks just like our Drummer-Harrogate in terms of its size and its markings. The really scary thing is that he's only just turned one year old (I believe they keep growing until they are four!).     It has to be said that Drummer-Harrogate is good natured -- he barely beats up on the two stupid dogs at all. It also has to be acknowledged that he is a curious cat. He sticks his nose into everything, and he's constantly on patrol looking to see if anything has changed since his last patrol. You can hear him gliding stealthily around the house inspecting things in the middle of the night. (I have rather good hearing -- to me it sounds like a large man tap-dancing in work boots; by comparison, Gina is a heavy sleeper and knows not the horrors of the night.) At least once a week, sometime in the darkness before the dawn, a resounding crash will emanate from somewhere in the house. This is where I put my head under my pillow and whimper, because I know that one of Gina's vases or ornaments has shrugged off this mortal coil, which means I can look forward to days of furnishings being rearranged around me until a new harmonious balance is reached.   All of this has led me to contemplate the creation of some form of cat deterrent on the basis that if curiosity doesn't kill Drummer-Harrogate I might be tempted to take over. I'm thinking this deterrent would have to be something small and inexpensive -- cheap enough that I could place one or two on each of our tables and shelves (anywhere there's a breakable object) and small enough that they won't impinge on one's consciousness.   But how should this deterrent work? A 50,000V electric shock initially had its attractions, until I realized that Gina would apply it to me if she ever found out. Vaporization by high-powered lasers is also a no-no for much the same reason. Teleportation to another dimension or the temporal equivalent into another time zone would be tempting, but it's beyond my capabilities at the moment. I've heard that cats don't like unexpected noises like a sledge hammer dropping on them from a great height, so I was thinking of something that emitted a "Pssst" sound when Drummer-Harrogate got too close. But then we come back to the curiosity thing -- knowing this monster little scamp, it's just as likely that he would end up collecting my "deterrents" as a hobby.   The other day Drummer-Harrogate managed to jump up onto a high buffet -- way higher than I thought he was capable -- and the little b###### rascal knocked my animatronic robot eyes to the floor.   I know this wasn't a malicious act -- he's just a great big clumsy lummox -- but I have to admit that there was some gnashing of teeth and rending of garb that day. Suffice it to say that the radiance of my smile has yet to lighten his life once again. I'm starting to get desperate. Any ideas?
  • 热度 25
    2014-12-4 17:46
    1642 次阅读|
    0 个评论
    My wife, Gina The Gorgeous, loves animals. She has two stupid dogs and two stupid cats. How stupid are they? Well, allow me to show you this video of the dogs that I made a couple of years ago.     But I fear we are getting ahead of ourselves, so let's return to the tortuous tale I have to tell. Gina has tremendous skill as an interior decorator. She's told me so on many an occasion, so it must be true. All joking aside, Gina really is great at this stuff. As one simple example, when we moved into our current house, I unpacked the boxes of books and loaded them -- along with a variety of photos and sundry knick-knacks -- onto the bookshelves in the study. It took me hours. Sad to say, however, the result was a bit of a "dog's dinner," as it were. Then Gina breezed in and spent about 15 minutes re-arranging things, moving a book from "here" to "there" or a picture from one shelf to another, and it was like she had waved a magic wand -- a beam of sunlight shone through the window, the birds in the trees outside started trilling, and everything looked like it was in the place it was meant to be and all of the books and other objects came together as a harmonious whole.   Gina is a big fan of cushions. We have cushions everywhere. And it's not the same cushions all the time -- ours are seasonal. Woe betide us if the summer cushions are still on display when fall arrives, or the fall cushions are flaunting themselves during the winter months, or the winter cushions are gracing our chairs when spring comes knocking at the door. If Gina spots an interesting cushion while she's out and about, then it's like watching Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator -- you can almost see the calculations going on behind her eyes -- range to target, optimum route to target, any potential competition in the store who might be interested in the same cushion, and so forth. It can be a bit scary, if the truth be told.     When I was young and foolish, I didn't realize how complicated this sort of thing could be. I now know that you can't simply purchase a cushion and then plonk it on a chair or a sofa -- it's more like a complicated jigsaw where each cushion forms part of a larger display. Actually, now I come to think about it, it's more like a game of musical chairs in which the cushions chase each other from room to room until the music stops, but the music exists only in Gina's mind.   When I return home from work and see a new cushion sitting on the kitchen table following one of Gina's shopping trips, I cringe inside, because I know my world is going to spend the next few days transmogrifying itself around me. (Did you ever see the movie Dark City ? Can someone please pass me my dried frog pills?)   But that's not what I wanted to talk to you about...   As a mentioned earlier, Gina has two cats. One of them is a Maine Coon. She calls it Drummer, but I think of it as Harrogate (if I think of it at all). Do you know how big a Maine Coon cat can grow? I had no clue, but now I'm starting to live in fear. I don't know the person in the picture below -- I found this on Google Images -- but the cat looks just like our Drummer-Harrogate in terms of its size and its markings. The really scary thing is that he's only just turned one year old (I believe they keep growing until they are four!).     It has to be said that Drummer-Harrogate is good natured -- he barely beats up on the two stupid dogs at all. It also has to be acknowledged that he is a curious cat. He sticks his nose into everything, and he's constantly on patrol looking to see if anything has changed since his last patrol. You can hear him gliding stealthily around the house inspecting things in the middle of the night. (I have rather good hearing -- to me it sounds like a large man tap-dancing in work boots; by comparison, Gina is a heavy sleeper and knows not the horrors of the night.) At least once a week, sometime in the darkness before the dawn, a resounding crash will emanate from somewhere in the house. This is where I put my head under my pillow and whimper, because I know that one of Gina's vases or ornaments has shrugged off this mortal coil, which means I can look forward to days of furnishings being rearranged around me until a new harmonious balance is reached.   All of this has led me to contemplate the creation of some form of cat deterrent on the basis that if curiosity doesn't kill Drummer-Harrogate I might be tempted to take over. I'm thinking this deterrent would have to be something small and inexpensive -- cheap enough that I could place one or two on each of our tables and shelves (anywhere there's a breakable object) and small enough that they won't impinge on one's consciousness.   But how should this deterrent work? A 50,000V electric shock initially had its attractions, until I realized that Gina would apply it to me if she ever found out. Vaporization by high-powered lasers is also a no-no for much the same reason. Teleportation to another dimension or the temporal equivalent into another time zone would be tempting, but it's beyond my capabilities at the moment. I've heard that cats don't like unexpected noises like a sledge hammer dropping on them from a great height, so I was thinking of something that emitted a "Pssst" sound when Drummer-Harrogate got too close. But then we come back to the curiosity thing -- knowing this monster little scamp, it's just as likely that he would end up collecting my "deterrents" as a hobby.   The other day Drummer-Harrogate managed to jump up onto a high buffet -- way higher than I thought he was capable -- and the little b###### rascal knocked my animatronic robot eyes to the floor.   I know this wasn't a malicious act -- he's just a great big clumsy lummox -- but I have to admit that there was some gnashing of teeth and rending of garb that day. Suffice it to say that the radiance of my smile has yet to lighten his life once again. I'm starting to get desperate. Any ideas?