Good news – Zoe got adopted over the weekend! Whee!!!!
On Thursday, after my stint at the pet store, I went to Target. While I was there, I checked on the price of canned Fancy Feast – what I give the cats every night at Snackin’! Time! – and found that individual cans were on sale for a very good price. I piled a ton of them in my cart, I think I must have grabbed close to thirty cans, and so when I checked out, it was normal that the cashier would ask how many cats I have.
Except that he didn’t ask the open-ended “How many cats do you have?”, but rather opted for “Do you have one cat, or two?”
I was surprised by the limitation in the question, so I hesitated for a long moment before I smiled and said “Seven.”
Insert the usual face of surprise and the “Oh wow! Seven?!”
That’s right I LIED, though I don’t know why I didn’t just claim to have two cats. It’s not like the cashier was going to sense my deception and refuse to ring up my purchases. I almost always lie when a stranger in the store asks me how many cats I have because it’s always when I’m buying a lot of cat-related items, whether it be cat food or kitty litter or cat toys. The subtext of the question, to me at least, is “Just how fucking batshit crazy ARE you, anyway?”
Pretty batshit crazy, as it turns out.
I was sitting in front of the computer at some point on Friday. I had been running the Roomba in the kitchen, but she had finished the job and I’d helped her back onto the charging station (I know the damn thing is supposed to be able to find her way back to the dock on her own, but she’s rarely successful. Perhaps I got the spatially challenged Roomba. I love her anyway.). So it had been charging for a few minutes, and I was caught up in reading something, and then all of a sudden, from the kitchen, came a bellow.
“ROOMBA CHARGING ERROR. FIVE!!!!” it echoed.
I was so surprised that I almost fell off my chair, and my heart raced for several minutes afterward.
I pulled the Roomba off the charging dock and reseated her, and so far everything seems to be fine.
You’d think they could come up with a better way of letting you know there’s a problem than bellowing loudly out of nowhere. Perhaps a quiet cough and an “Excuse me” first?
“Does my butt taste funny to you, too?”
Previously
2007: No entry.
2006: You all have my full permission to skip the boring stuff to get to the cute kitten stuff.
2005: I forsee a lot of spud-teasing this evening.
2004: Phil Hellmuth is a whiny little bitch.
2003: “And then he told me he likes to have sex with you in the break room every day at 11!” he lied.
2002: No entry.
2001: Recovery.
2000: No one ever said I had a long attention span!
Now that’s funny – a machine telling you when you’ve made a mistake. And yelling at you, to boot. Rude, but funny.
The next time you are buying a ton of cat stuff and someone asks you how many cats you have, tell them none and then just stare at them…..
Roomba can talk? Seriously?
Our little Roomba seems broken. It is on an scheduler and when it turns itself on, it undocks…goes 3 feet, turns red and returns to the base. I am guessing the battery pack has essentially died. But I have never, ever heard it talking! And there have been many times where it gets stuck, lost, or just plain fails to dock.
Must be a newer version. And yes, it would scare the crap out of me to hear a voice in another room if I were home “alone” with a bazillion cats. 🙂
Gina
I have 6 cats and I like to buy a month’s worth of food at a time. My favorite answer to that question is “One very large one!”
Are there any restrictions there on pet ownership? Here we are not supposed to have more than 5 cats and/or dogs total. Not sure why but when it is discovered that you have more it is enforced.
Way to go Zoe for getting yourself adopted and you foster mommy wont have to see you in that cage anymore
Oh man. You are so funny Robyn. I laughed and laughed at your Roomba story. 🙂
My husband’s answer:
“How many do you need?”
(the real, cringe-worthy answer: 11)
Next time someone asks, just say, “Well, I foster cats and kittens while they’re waiting for adoptive homes, so right now I have [number].” They don’t need to know that none, or very few, of that [number] are fosters… and the “so” could mean “if I had fosters right now there’d be more” just as easily as it could mean “if I didn’t have fosters right now there’d be less.” (Fewer?)
Still, I like Wendy’s answer best. “None, why do you ask?”
you could finish up the answer of “None,” with “haven’t you tried the turkey and giblets dinner? It’s delicious on a Ritz.” 🙂
Don’t know if you’ve seen this or not, but it cracked me UP!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oxGHGyUVII
… news headline reads “Local Woman Has Heart Attack After Vacum Talks !”…hehehe
The canned Friskiez my girls eat, now calls itself “pate'”… Hope they don’t have to be French to eat it ! But then again they do like French fries too… hHhmmm…
Is a Roomba pointless if I have wall-to-wall carpet?
Didn’t you have an actual name for your Roomba – like Maria? I remember it cracked me up when you’d call her by her name. Please remind me.
Denise in Raleigh