No more banging on the doors

I miss my Monty.

It's a bit hard to think about him still, so I try not to, but then sometimes, it just hits me that something's missing. Something warm and bright. Like tonight, when it was almost rattie dinnertime (10pm), there was no one banging on the living room sliding doors, no small furry white creature looking up at you with an expectant look on his face when you opened the doors, no one pushing past the door to get to the kitchen to see why dinner wasn't ready yet.

Goodbye Monty

Monty passed away on Friday morning.
In my hands, as I petted him and told him how much we loved him and that it was all right. My little love went, and we are left bereft, without him.

This is a poem by Rabindranath Tagore. For my Mon mon.

Peace, my heart, let the time for
the parting be sweet.

Let it not be a death but completeness.

Let love melt into memory and pain into songs.

Let the flight through the night sky end
in the folding of the wings
over the nest.

Let the last touch of your hands be gentle,
like the flower of the night.

Stand still, O Beautiful End, for a moment,
and say your last words in silence.

I bow to you and hold up my lamp
to light you on your way.

I didn't read this poem to him, but I held him, and loved him, and sang him a song about how he came to live with us, and how gorgeous he is, and all the yummy things he's eaten, and all the funny and great things he did... then he started gasping, hard, then slower. I held him and told him it was going to be all right and I love him and slowly, he went. And I know I will miss him all my life.

Here are two videos, taken recently, of Monty enjoying his favourite activity - getting his cheeks scratched.





He was such a sweetie, my Monty.

Hair cut

I cut my hair the other day.

It's now too short to tie up, has more of those layer things and is entirely at the mercy of the mischievous hair fairies. See, I thought I was growing it for the wedding... so that you know, I could just put it up and be done with it.

Now, it is wild and doing what my hair does when unrestrained by elastic - it goes Foom! The hairdresser had a euphemistic way of saying it - your hair has quite a lot of body in it.

HELP!

I think I am simultaneously both striving towards AND rebelling against, the expectation of the beautiful, well-groomed, poised, put together and shiny bride.

ROOAAAAARR!

In other news, we made an offer for a house, and it was accepted! *boggle*

Art

I like this image from Julien Pacaud

Ratties demonstrate metacognition

See this article.

Excerpt:

Researchers have believed for some time that people and non-human primates are capable of “metacognition”—reasoning or thinking about one’s own thinking. There have been studies on birds about this kind of thinking process, but results thus far have been inconclusive. The new study is the first that shows a non-primate species has metacognition—a proposal that may well be controversial.

The study involved what is called a “duration-discrimination” test—offering rats rewards for classifying a signal as either short or long. As in most such tests, the “right” answer led to a large food reward, while a “wrong” answer led to no reward at all. The twist, however, is that before taking the duration test, the rats were given the chance to decline the test completely. If they made that choice, they got a small reward anyway.

“If rats have knowledge about whether they know or don’t know the answer to the test, we would expect them to decline most frequently on difficult tests,” said Crystal. “They would also show the lowest accuracy on difficult tests that they can’t decline. Our data showed both to be true, suggesting the rats have knowledge of their own cognitive states.”

Wacky wedding dances

Wedding party seamlessly morphs into the music video from Thriller. Everyone looks awkward but game, except for the groom, throughly enjoying himself, and one suspects he came up with the idea in the first place. Hmmh! It is cool though, and fun to watch.




This one's for Sammie, Dirty Dancing fan (if I remember correctly!)
It's so sweet! Whee! Swishy dress! Rolled up shirt sleeves! Ahhh...