Grief and White-Hot Anger

I went to Kitty City today just to visit. Andy and I aren't sure if I'm allowed to drive the rental car, but I did anyway. As soon as I walked in one of the Clark's employees said "Kitty City is locked; I'll have to let you in". I had to get some emergency rations for the kitties (I'd meant to go sometime this week, but the car accident sort of eclipsed that), and after I grabbed a bag I started chatting with the clerk checking me out. Kitty City is now locked because Mau Mau and Suzanne are gone.

It might be possible that they're somewhere in the storeroom and the worst that happened was that someone let them out. I doubt it, though. On a scale of 0-9 of cats whom I'd expect to take advantage of an open door, with 9 being the most likely, I'd give Suzanne a 2 and Mau Mau a -1. Lovie, the scruffy red guy, and Blackberry would have been far more likely. The best we can hope for right now is that someone will return them or that the people who took them couldn't afford the adoption fee or something, and the worst that might happen is they'll be declawed.

I'm the only one who has pictures of two. Our camera died en route to Lars and Yee Man's reception. We're desperately hoping it's just the battery, and we'll be going to get a replacement tonight or, if dinner isn't ready in time, early tomorrow. The guy at Ritz Camera, upon hearing the circumstances, has said that if we give him the flash card we can print out pictures of the two for $.49 apiece. At least with that we can make up some "lost" posters for them. Anyway, I'm off -- I'd rather see if we can get this done tonight.

Follow-Up

After shish-kabobs, rice, corn on the cob and salad Andy went out and made each of us a s'more. I don't know about his, but mine was perfect. Then we hopped into the pimpmobile and headed out to the mall where Ritz Camera is. As soon as I told the manager who I was he got out the battery, then asked for the flash card so we could print out the pictures. There was one good one of Mau Mau and a pretty-much face-only shot of Suzanne, so I had them printed at 4x6. There was also the last picture we ever took of Thena, so I printed it out at 6x8.

Meanwhile, Andy had been talking to the other clerk, who tried to hook the camera up to something to see if it worked. He couldn't find the adapter, so he finally grabbed the battery from the store model of our camera and put it in ours, and ours suddenly started working. I heard Andy and him talking about going to the other Ritz and asked why, and the clerk said it was because there were no batteries in stock. I then pulled out the one the manager had handed me; the one he'd set aside when I called.

It turned out that it was too late to get the contents of the flash card onto a disk, so we decided to see if the new battery did the trick, and only worry about the disk if it didn't. The clerk also suggested that if the new battery doesn't work that it might be our charger. Both Andy and I are vastly relieved that the camera worked with the store battery -- buying a new battery or a new charger is way better than having to buy a new camera. In fact, if it had been the camera we probably would have had to shunt it behind the new car, something else which Andy wants to get fairly soon but which I've forgotten, and the elliptical.

As noted in callicrates' latest entry, tomorrow we go out car-hunting. We'll hopefully be able to drop off the pictures at the adopt-a-thon and get my key so I don't have to bug the store clerks every time I volunteer. Aside from that I have no idea what we'll be doing. Charlie had suggested a birthday dinner with Andy, but that was before the accident, and we've been pretty much tunnel-visioned on the latter, so we'll see.