Kitty Birth Control?

So the title of this blog is actually from a post I started to write a while ago, and then I got distracted for about a week and forgot to post anything. It's hard to stay updated when I still don't have internet in a my house (in typical French fashion, in order to get internet in your house in France you must go talk to a company and then wait till they mail you a mysterious internet "box" which may take any number of weeks to show up--in this case, many).

Anyhow, back to kitty birth control.
Did anyone else know that it existed? Because I sure didn't.
I found out about said birth control a week ago, when I was at a French Lingerie Party. For those of you who just got excited and imagine a bunch of people wandering around in lacey bras and panties, I am sorry to disappoint. I mean a party like a tupperware party, where someone comes to someone's house and shows you lots of different models and you get to buy one. In this case, I went to said FLP (french lingerie party) with my host mom--the party was being hosted by a co-worker of hers. I was probably the youngest person there by about 15 years. It was excellent--looking at a bunch lacey panties with a bunch of older women is a lot more fun than it sounds (unless you think it sounds really fun, in which case, you're exactly right).

Anyhow back to kitty birth control.
Does anyone else think it sounds absurd and superfluous? I just instinctively feel that most house pets should be fixed by default. Does this make me some sort of anti-kitty reproductive rights advocate?

On top of the kitty birth control, I went to another frisbee tournament this weekend. I feel pretty much the same about about the ultimate in France as I did before, so I won't bore you guys by repeating myself. I would like someone to come over here and explain the ho-stack and the dump. I can't do it because I am in this little backwater and not very good at explaining. But someone needs to do it. Nonetheless, I like ultimate, and running around and I managed not to be too irritable, so I'll chalk this weekend up as positive-ish.

I have had this stack of forms piling up on my desk for a while that are all requiring various missing, hard-to-locate, or mysterious documents that I don't really want to deal with, but on Monday I decided it was time. I bravely took what I thought was my securité sociale form to school with the thought of seeing if I could get the sécretariat to help me out. As I walked in to the teacher's lounge there was, as if by magic, a desk set up with 2 representatives from securité sociale sitting at it. As I walked in one of them walked up to me and started asking me questions, and I explained that I had a form that seemed impossible to fill out. I showed her the form and she promptly said "ahh!! but madame, this is the wrong form" (YES! Go French Bureaucracy!). What was uncanny though, was that because I had come to the school with the intent of trying to figure the whole mess with me, I had actually managed to bring a: copy of my password, visa, attestation de travail, and RIB. What is even more amazing was that these were the exact documents that she needed to complete my social security form. So in a strange alignment of fate, I actually managed to submit all the right documents to the right person without having to try at least three time beforehand. That is, I think that is what happened. It's entirely possible that I'll get a letter in a week asking for something like the birth and death certificates of all of my great grandparents.

I also decided to sign up for a mutuelle. In France, when you get just the basic health insurance they pay for 70% of health insurance costs but the don't cover other stuff like eye care. When you sign up for the mutelle, they pay for everything and you get a discount on contacts and glasses and you don't have to pay for birth control. Because I still have no idea what I am doing next year, I thought this might be a good idea so that I could get a year's worth of contacts while I still could. Also, now that I know I can do anything and not have to pay to be fixed, I feel like I have to have something drastic happen to me to make it worth it--NOW is my chance to have cancer! (ok maybe not--but at least a broken bone? come on!).

Anyhow, that is pretty much what has been happening to me. Teaching is going well, except that I think I have a class that hates my guts because I missed their class from 4-5 on Friday due to a miscommunication. I feel pretty stupid about that. Hopefully they'll forget sometime in the next month?

Did I mentioned how weird I find kitty birth control?