u/vianetzy

This past May, my husband and I flew into Orlando, Florida, for a week-long trip. As a part of that trip, we spent the second half in/around Miami. Had the flight and car return set for MIA. We returned the car, made it through security, then we couldn’t find our gate.

Turns out I had booked our return flight for ORL. My heart sank. An hour til takeoff, and it’s a four-hour drive away. Thankfully I got a very helpful rep at American Airlines and he got us on a flight out from MIA within 20 minutes. And it gave us an extra 30 minutes before takeoff. No extra charges or anything. And he was very kind, and helped me calm down because I was definitely stressed.

Hi all. Next month I’ll be receiving three checks instead of the usual two because of my job’s pay schedule. I still have about $4k left to pay off my car, and the extra check could help me pay off a big part of that. I am a month ahead in terms of my bills, but not my “fun” categories. Thoughts on whether I should put all the money into various categories, split it up, etc.?

TLDR: Someone’s cat is harassing our cats. He nearly died because he is allowed to roam freely. We want him to stop coming to our house.

Hi all. This is a long one. I want to be sure I give enough context.

We’ve been living in our home for two years now, and we have an enclosed back yard. We have two male six-year-old tripod cats (both missing the front right leg) named Beep and Boop who have access to the backyard from 7am to 8pm through a smart pet door. It reads their microchips so only they can come in and out. They love being out there and laying in the grass, soaking up the sunshine and the breeze. Sometimes they’ll chase lizards too.

Some six months ago, another cat showed up in our backyard. He’s not fixed or microchipped as far as I can tell, but he does have a collar on with an AirTag. At first it was fine. He would hang out with our cats, sometimes interact in calm ways, all good. But over the last couple of months he’s become more aggressive towards them — hissing, chasing, biting them when their backs are turned. And our cats can’t defend themselves well because of their missing leg (and they’re largely indoors so they’re not good fighters anyway lol). I recently saw our boys huddled outside of their door and the other cat (we call him Ringo) in front of them. It seems they were scared to turn their backs to go in through the door because he would attack (seems to be his favorite move). I had to open the whole human door for them to feel comfortable coming in. In recent days, our cats don’t want to go out because he’s out there all day and they don’t feel safe. Literally he’ll be out there all day, and sometimes he’ll be around at night as well.

Also, it seems his presence has caused Boop to redirect his aggression towards Beep, which hasn’t been fun for anyone. It’s mostly hissing and growling, but still.

We’ve taken to spraying Ringo with the hose, but he always comes back a few minutes later. We don’t feed him, play with him, or do any other thing that may make him want to stay here.

This has all been frustrating, but reached a boiling point a couple of weeks ago. My husband and I went out of town for a week. We left Saturday, and had my brother come over to stay with the cats for a few days that following Tuesday. Well, he heard yowling from our garage. Turns out Ringo got in when we left and had been trapped in there in the south Texas heat without food or water for THREE DAYS. It’s a miracle he survived. We felt awful and incredibly frustrated. If my brother hadn’t gone over when he did, Ringo may have died.

I will note that for some reason his owners removed his collar a few days prior to the garage incident and put it back on shortly after.

So now we’re over this cat. He won’t go away. He’s stressing out our cats. His life has been endangered. And I’m sure he’ll start spraying everything soon enough.

We decided to keep his collar in hopes his owners would come to look for it and we can ask them to keep him indoors, but so far no luck. It’s been four or five days with the tracker in our home. And I know it has battery because it makes a sound when I pick it up.

What can we do here? We have no idea who owns him. We’re between relocating him to a different cat-friendly neighborhood where we used to live, or taking him to a shelter. But we don’t want what we do to end up killing him. We’ve talked about putting up flyers asking the owners to come by, but my husband feels that they won’t because they don’t care enough. Any options we’re not thinking of? He’s a sweet cat (to humans) but something’s gotta give.

Hi all, I’ve had my Kobo Clara for a few months now. Big fan. I want to get some Matt Dinniman books into it, only to learn he has some exclusive deal with Amazon. I’ve been researching how to de-DRM Kindle files, but I’m confused. All the advice I’m finding is a bit old. Here’s what I need help understanding, if someone would be so kind:

In February, Amazon made it harder/impossible to still do this. Is that correct? If it is still possible:

I’ve never had a Kindle, so I don’t have a serial number. And I’m on a Mac. So is transferring a book I buy from Amazon to my Kobo even an option for me at this point? If so, what video/tutorial should I watch to best help me out?

Any insight at all would be so appreciated. Thank you!