Greg In The Desert

My indoor cat Saturn has apparently made friends with a outdoor cat. On more than one occasion I have walked up to the back door to find my cat staring at the back door while a black cat is walking off. It usually spots me before I spot it and starts walking away.

I never hear my cat making any indication that she dislikes the black cat and as far as I can tell, they just sit there staring at each other through the glass. Mostly I only notice the quiet since Saturn has stopped running around and spazing out.

Last week I drove up into the driveway and saw the black cat sitting on the front porch, with my cat watching out the front window. The black cat wouldn’t allow me to approach it and ran off. Where the black cat was setting was a large dead rat, with it’s guts pulled out.

I’ve read that a cat will leave a dead animal for its owner as a sign that the owner doesn’t know how to hunt, the cat is trying to show them how it’s done. In this case, Perhaps the black cat was trying to show Saturn how to hunt since she cannot go outside. Or the black cat is trying to impress Saturn with it’s hunting skills.

I have no problem with Saturn learning to become a better hunter through this method. Especially if it reduces the rat population in the neighborhood. Saturn has done a great job at eliminating the crickets, scorpions and other bugs from the house. However unless I get any varmints in the house, Saturn will have to be happy with hunting twist ties and pieces of plastic from the trash.

I thought I would try to turn a negative into a positive with my scorpions situation by capturing them and keeping in them in a glassed habitat in the house. Perhaps there’s money to be made selling scorpions.

The first thing I did was to clean out a 10 gallon aquarium that was being unused.

I then added cactus from the back yard.

I then added some sandy soil (commonly referred to as dirt), also from the back yard.

I then added a pile of rocks, from the front yard this time.

I then added the scorpion (Vaejovis flavus). This one came from inside the house.

The first scorpion died after keeping it in the tank for about a month. This was despite providing it several crickets that it quickly ate.

Since Saturn the cat came along, I rarely get a scorpion before she kills them. Plus she is has eliminated the scorpion food supply in the house so I don’t know that I will get much more of them. The tank currently sits empty.

In early May I spotted the first scorpion of the year in the house. In the last few years I have been living here, this is the earliest I have seen on in the house. In previous years I didn’t start to see them until July.

I was sure they were coming in from the garage so I put diatomaceous earth throughout the garage and around the entrances to the house. Diatomaceous earth works good on insects because it’s very itchy to insects and it will suck the moisture out of their bodies. In the case of scorpions I’ve read that they will just avoid it.

Tonight I came home and found Saturn playing with something. The good news is Saturn found a scorpion the bad news is the scorpion made it past my defenses. That means that it either went around the diatomaceous earth or it came in another way.

I will start going around the perimeter of the house sealing up cracks. I’m not sure what else to do.

A 5 month old kitten adopted a coworker of mine. She showed up on his door step one day and made her self at home. He tried to keep her for about a week, he even took her to the vet and had her checked out, but for various reasons couldn’t and his next option was to send her to the pound.

Now the kitten, which I have named Saturn, lives with me. She has a grey and black tabby coat. She is a polydactyl cat with 6 toes on both of her front feet. She looks like she is walking around on baseball mits. She still needs shots, spayed and to be declawed.

OK I admit it: she’s adorable and I never imaged I would own a cat or even a kitten for that matter. It’s been a little over a week since she first came into my house and it’s been an interesting experience. I’m happy to report that she hasn’t caused any trouble with urinating on anything and has used the litter box for all her waste needs.

She seems to have four modes. Spaz mode is one of the most common. Yesterday she was in super spaz mode where she went nuts nocking everything off the coffee table, jumping on and chewing on things. That ended when she jumped off the couch, slid onto the coffee table and into a box. Both her and the box crashed into the TV. She then ran into the bedroom for about 20 minutes. When she came out she was much calmer.

Her other modes include patrol mode, where she walk around the perimeter of the house. Love me mode is where she wants to sit in my lap no matter where I am or what I’m doing. Keep your distance mode is where she wants to keep me in site and observe but not come near me.

Due to the coyotes that live near in the area, Saturn will be an indoor cat. I posted a HD video of Saturn’s first look at the aquarium on YouTube.

Sometimes doing your own repairs on cars saves money but its also good to consider how much your time is worth. I recently helped a friend to do repairs on their 1997 Saturn SC2 Coupe and the car was not drivable for almost two weeks because the window couldn’t be rolled up. A simple problem turned into long down time for the vehicle.

The powered passengers side window was having problems rolling up. The first thing I did, and in hindsight was the wrong thing, was to roll the window all the way down. Previously when it wouldn’t roll up my friend would push it up with their hands. Apparently rolling it all the way down locks the window into place and it wouldn’t roll up even with manual force.

It was a Thursday afternnon and New Mexico’s warm weather was turning to cold, wind and rain. Not the ideal weather for having a car with a window that wont roll up. I have never dealt with a window regulator, that’s what they call the scissor like mechanism that moves the window up and down on a power window. That didn’t stop me from removing the door panels to take a look. Somehow I thought that I could remove the panel, do something, and the window would now magiclly work. What that something was wasn’t clear to me at the time.

Saturns are a different kind of car, they have a plastic outer door panel and the outside panel must be removed with about 10 metric torx screws. Before the door panel can come off the door handle needs to be removed. Instead of being held in with a screw it has a plastic pin that holds it in. Easy enough, you pull the head of the pin out and it door handle comes off.

Except when the plastic pin head breaks off half way. I ended up drilling out the pin. If your intereated in how this works, I recomemnd viewing a video on YouTube by richpin06a entilted “Rear Outer Door Panel Removal Saturn S-series“. It looks so easy in the video.

Before I took the door off, I looked at removing the switch first. I couldn’t figure out how to remove it from the center console and taking it apart appeared to be a complicated mess. Taking the door apart looked easier and that’s why I started there. Mistake number two.

Once I had the door off and the glass out of the door I could check the electrical connection to the regulator motor. There are two wires when depending on the direction of the window one wire or the other gets 12 volts with the other wire going to ground. I checked the power to the motor in both directiosn and I was getting 12 volts on both wires. I determined the motor was defective.

We called around and no one had a motor in stock. I thought it would be a good idea just to replace the whole regulator since I had to pull it off anyways to replace the motor. Nobody had the the regulator either except the dealer. Saturn of Albuquerque is now part of Galles Chevrolet so we called them and ordered it. They said the part would be in town in two days.

In two days we called Galles Chevrolet and they had no record of an order being placed. They placed another order along with payment and said it would be in town in two days. Two more days passed, we called and again no record of an order being placed. I can’t imagine why General Motors is on the edge of bankruptcy.

That night we determined that Galles was getting its part from Saturn of Santa Fe. We decieded to go to Santa Fe the next day and get the part ourself. We we called Saturn of Santa Fe the next day they didn’t have the part. Where the fuck was Galles getting their estimates? Apparently from up their ass.

We are in something like a week and a half of the car setting in a garage because the window wont roll up. We ordered the part from Autozone. After another few days of waiting the part arrived. It was the correct part for this car but the plastic housing had to be modified for it to fit. The motor was installed, glass put in. I tried to roll up the window with the new regulator motor and the window would still not roll up.

I thought that maybe the realay for the window was bad, perhaps it tested fine without a load but was failing when amperage was applied. I replaced the relay but it didn’t improve the situation.

Somehow, out of desperation while sitting in the drivers set reviewing all the troubleshooting steps I figured out that hte center console didn’t have to be taked apart adn the window switch came out with enough force.

I took the switch out took it apart to find the plastic worn and black soot on the inside. I cleaned up the switch and reinstalled it and the widnow now rolled up. When checking the power to the motor I should have verified voltage using the ground through the wire, I used chassis ground. It makes perfect sense… now.

I ended up breaking the drivers side switch when I took it apart so a new one needed orderd. Both windows were rolled up so the car was at least drivable until a new switch could be acquired. Total cost was about $250 and it took about 2 weeks to get the car drivable again. Next time I will roll the window up and start at the switch.

The Bridgestone commercial with the drivers of a moon buggy style vehicle on the Saturn moon of Titan collecting rocks and dancing around to the song “Jump Around” (iTunes DRM Free AAC or Amazon DRM free MP3), is the best.