Bitchypoo

So, my parents (and Benjie!) have come and gone. They arrived Thursday evening and left this morning, about ten minutes ago. In between, we went out to breakfast several times (I don’t believe there’s one single time in my entire life that I have turned down the offer of breakfast at a restaurant!), spent Friday in the house waiting out an ice and snow storm, did lots of shopping over the weekend, and went to Tuscaloosa on Sunday to visit family.

Fred and I made breakfast for us all on Saturday morning, serving up Crooked Acres bacon, sausage and eggs, sausage gravy, and biscuits (served with Caramel-Apple Jam and Pineapple Jam!). Once we were stuffed, my mother and I decided it was time to head out and do some shopping. I opted to swing by Lowe’s first to get it over with, because I needed a curtain rod, a bucket (to make another litter box), and some bird seed. We found the bird seed quickly enough, but that was the ONLY thing we were able to get. The size bucket I needed (2 1/2 bushels) was three shelves up, and no matter how hard we looked, we couldn’t find a Lowe’s employee to give us a hand. Finally, I said “Let’s go get the curtain rod and come back.” We went to look at the curtain rods, all I wanted was a simple damn curtain rod, NOTHING FANCY, and wouldn’t it figure? The longest plain and simple curtain rod they had in stock was 84″ long, and I needed one in the area of 109″ long. After much searching, I threw up my hands, and we went back to the storage aisle.

Still, not a single damn employee anywhere to be found. I pushed the button at the end of the aisle (which would summon help), but it wasn’t working. Finally, I used a board to reach up, hook the bucket, and lower it down to our level so my mother could grab it, and we could put it in the cart.

I half wished that an employee would wander along while I was doing that, so they’d yell at me, and then I could give ’em hell, but no such thing happened. We left Lowe’s, then stopped by TJ Maxx. I don’t remember what I bought, but I’m sure it was fabulous.

Oh! A hanging bird bath, is what I bought. And I was right, it was fabulous.

We went to Marshall’s, where I stocked up on Mrs. Meyer’s dishwashing liquid among other things (lemon soap, if you must know), and then finally I said to my mother, “I keep grabbing boxes of chocolate and putting them in my cart. I must be hungry. Are you?” She was, so after I paid and we left, we went down the road to O’Charley’s and had some really good salads for lunch.

Then I dragged her into Petsmart, so we could see what cats were there. (Locals. Seriously. Someone adopt Buddy. He’s the coolest looking cat, you can tell he’s got loads of character, and his story breaks my heart.) I eyeballed the cat toys, but for the first time in my life, I left Petsmart without buying a toy for the cats!

(Mark that one on your calendar. I don’t expect it’ll ever happen again.)

We went over to the fabric store and then finally, we made it to the mall. We went to the Hallmark store (local readers: the Hallmark store in the Madison Square Mall is going out of business, and everything in the store except Valentine’s cards are 50% off. That includes a TON of Yankee Candles.), Bath and Body Works, and then hit JC Penney.

I’ve lived in this house for almost 3 years now, and all of a sudden, I’m having this very strong urge to put up curtains in all the rooms. Nothing fancy, just valances, but I’ve got valances up in my bedroom, I’ve bought them for the computer room (thus the reason I needed a curtain rod), and also for the foster kitten room. I’ve had a hell of a time finding curtains for the guest bedroom, because that bedroom is painted in two shades of purple. I wanted to find curtains with just a touch of purple in them, because I felt that completely purple curtains would be too overwhelming. I found some on the JC Penney site I thought I’d like, and since my mother and I were at the mall, what better time to look?

I found some curtains I kind of liked, but they were waaaaaay more than I wanted to spend, so I shrugged and was ready to leave when a saleslady came along. She told us that the curtains I was looking at were going on sale “tomorrow” (Sunday) for 50% off, but she could pre-sell them to us at the sales price. I asked her to double-check that the curtains I wanted were part of the sale. She said they were, and I told her I wanted them. She took me to another register, filled out a form with my name and address, accepted payment and…

And then.

AND THEN.

She took the curtains, put them in a bag, and told me I could pick them up Sunday or after at the catalog desk. Which she had CONVENIENTLY not mentioned at any point prior. I thought I was going home with the goddamn things.

But what can you do? I wanted them, so I just nodded and thanked her and left.

We headed home, getting there just in time for dinner (pizza). Then we sat down and watched a movie.

That movie was called Whiteout, and I will tell you what, I am stunned and amazed that they were able to cram such a large amount of suckitude into a 90 minute movie. The only – ONLY! – thing worth watching was the first five minutes, when Kate Beckinsale got mostly naked and then into the shower. Aside from that, the movie was horrifically bad. It was like someone took a crappy screenwriting course, did a heavy-handed job of following the instructor’s hackneyed outline (“Movie shall contain at least three flash-backs to a traumatic event in the protagonist’s former life, explaining why she’s now where she is.”), and then got some serious blackmail material on a studio exec, ensuring that this horror would end up being released onto an unsuspecting world.

The only question is what the hell Kate Beckinsale and Tom Skerritt were doing sleepwalking through this piece of shit.

If you’re at the movie store and your significant other holds up Whiteout and says “Should we try this?” your only recourse is to cold cock him or her and run for your life. Trust me.

Sunday morning, we got up and headed for Tuscaloosa early (Fred stayed home because he’s a party pooper). Benjie went with us, and he’s such a good little traveler. He was in the back of the vehicle (the “way back”, if you will), and he had his bowl of water and his dog bed, and he made nary a peep over the two hour drive, just dozed and occasionally woke up and looked out the window. We went out for breakfast with my aunt and uncle, then went back to their house for a few hours and sat around and talked.

My aunt and uncle have a couple of Shi-Tzus (Tillie and Izzy), who were thrilled to see Benjie prance through the door.

Tillie.

Izzy.

Benjie and his wimmins.

Around 3:30, we hit the road back to Smallville.

Yesterday morning, we got up and went to breakfast (did I mention I love to eat breakfast out?), then went back to the house, and my mother and I headed for the mall again. I asked my father if he wanted to go with us, but he opted to stay home and “watch the cats.” HA.

At the mall, my mother went into the nail salon to have her nails done, while I headed to JC Penney to pick up my curtains. I half-expected that I’d been the victim of some sort of scam (like they’d try to charge me a second time, or claim to have no record of my purchase), but they handed the curtains right over to me. I browsed the purses, decided to buy one, stood in line, got annoyed at how fucking ASS-ACHINGLY SLOW the sales clerk was moving, put the purse back, and went down the mall to Hallmark. I bought some candles and some cards (everything, half price!), then went back to the nail salon to see how my mother was doing. She was almost done, but she’d made an appointment for a hair cut at the salon next door, so I put my packages in the car and went to check out the Yankee Candle store. I browsed the book store (given the prices at book stores these days vs. the price on Amazon for Kindle versions, I expect there to be a mass closing of book stores any minute now) for a few seconds, then wandered through the mall and ended up back by the hair salon, where my mother was almost done. We browsed through Dillard’s, and then headed for home.

I had to stop by Publix on the way home to pick up a few things, and when I went to check out, I took one of the reusable bags I keep in my purse and handed it to the bagger, who acted like he had never seen such a thing in his entire life. He put two items in the bag, and then started bagging the rest of my stuff in plastic bags. (Please note that if I had been doing the bagging, everything would have fit perfectly fine in that one bag.)

“I HAVE ANOTHER BAG IN MY PURSE,” I announced, and pulled one of them out. Again, he was bemused, like he’d never seen such a thing. And after thinking about it for a while, I am 99% sure that that exact same bagger has acted exactly that way in the past, and now that I have engraved his stupid face on my brain, I will bitch-slap him if he pulls that a third time BELIEVE YOU ME.

For dinner last night, steak, pineapple casserole, and salad. YOM.

Later this morning, they’re headed back to South Carolina, where they’ll be for the next six weeks or so. It sure was nice having them here. IF I weren’t having surgery next week, and IF it weren’t such a long drive, and IF tickets weren’t so expensive, I’d totally go visit them. Where they’re staying sounds really nice, and it’s on the ocean.

I wonder if I can convince Fred that we need to take a trip to Florida this Spring/ Summer?

On another note, guess who not only allowed my parents to pet her, but actually approached them and demanded it – and then spent the evening on the couch with my mother? Maxi! (AKA “Outside Mama.) Like Fred said, “This is the cat that the previous owners of the house didn’t take with them because they ‘couldn’t catch her.'” And then we all rolled our eyes at each other.

Also, Jake spent the first three days of my parents’ visit hiding from them and the dog. This morning, he decided not to only let my father pet him, he also decided it would be a good time to get up in Benjie’s face. Poor Benjie was hiding behind me, because Jake was approaching him, then growling and hissing until I shooed Jake away. What an ass.

Last Wednesday, the shelter manager called and asked if I could take five 3 month-old kittens. I hesitated because my parents were coming, and so the guest bedroom was going to be occupied, but then I decided that I could either put Steely Dan and Fagen in my room, or the upstairs bathroom. But then I let Fagen out into Gen Pop (and yes, referring to it as Gen Pop always makes me laugh too!) for the day, and he did pretty well, so I decided to leave Fagen and Steely Dan out for the night, and see how it went.

It went just fine, except for 2:30 in the morning when I woke up to find them fighting on my feet. I sprayed a blast of compressed air at them, and they scattered and didn’t wake me up again.

Thursday, I went to pick up the new kittens. The story on these guys is that they were all five crammed into one carrier and left outside a local business. Obviously, I don’t know what their story was before they were abandoned, but the shelter manager reported that they were gorgeous and friendly, and told me I could pick them up at the vet (where they were being spayed and neutered) that evening.

When I got the five of them home, I let them out into the foster room, and they came slowly out of the carriers, and proceeded to growl and hiss at each other like they’d never seen each other before in their entire lives. They wanted nothing to do with me, they wanted nothing to do with each other, and they all scattered to various parts of the room to hide.

We wrote the hissing and growling off to the spaying and neutering (and also I’m sure the whole experience was freaking them out). They continued with the hissing and growling until Sunday. I was starting to wonder if they were going to hiss and growl at each other FOREVER, but it finally stopped.

When I first found out that we were getting four girls and a boy, I immediately decided to name them after Charlie’s Angels (totally stealing the idea from Elephants Upstairs), but when I got the name list, I found that all the names had been used in the past. We bounced some name ideas around, and half decided to name them after the characters from Glee.

(“Sue Sylvester”? Possibly the BEST cat name ever!)

Then I was sitting in the living room with my parents, reading a magazine, when a better naming scheme came to me. I immediately got up and checked the name list, and found that none of them had been used.

I named the gray and white kitten Ouiser because she was the hissingest and growlingest of the bunch (since Sunday, I have heard neither a hiss nor a growl from her, though), Drum was the only boy, and Truvy is the super-friendliest girl. M’Lynn and Clairee got their names by default, really.

For those of you who don’t know, the kittens are named after characters from the movie Steel Magnolias, and they’ll be collectively known as The Magnolias, of course. (I can’t speak for everyone else, but Shirley Maclaine as Ouiser (correctly pronounced “Weeza” in the South) is far and away my favorite character, and Olympia Dukakis as Clairee is close behind. Though honestly, I love all the characters in this movie. But I think Ouiser gets the best lines, my favorite being I’m pleasant. Damn it! I saw Drum Eatenton this morning at the Piggly Wiggly, and I smiled at the son of a bitch ‘fore I couldn’t help myself. Everyone loves a cranky old Southern woman.)

After their first few unfriendly days, the Magnolias have come around with a vengeance. Drum and Truvy are very friendly and will sit in your lap the instant you sit down. Drum’s a talker (I’m sure I’ll get LOTS of “I HAZ A COMPLAINT” pictures of him!) and Truvy will lay in your lap on her back and insist that you rub her belly while she squirms around happily. Something about her sweet, open expression reminds me of Orange (from the Cookies litter). Clairee and Ouiser will climb in your lap briefly to let you pet them before they go racing off. M’Lynn is the hard case – she’s a bit skittish and doesn’t want to be approached or picked up. At least she’s not hiding under the chair anymore, thankfully, and I suspect she’ll be climbing into my lap before the end of the week.

M’Lynn the skittish.

Ouiser. (I’m calling her gray and white, but honestly I don’t know what to call that color. It’s more gray than brown, but it’s almost a grayish-brown. Whatever color she is, she’s gorgeous!)

Clairee in the carrier. They like to hang out in the carrier. They also love to smack at each other through the carrier “windows.”

Drum. He’s a great big baby.

“Stupid kittens. They hiss at me under the door! I just wanna be their friend!”

“I do not approve of kittens.”

Steely Dan and Fagen are out in the house all day every day, and it’s going just fine. Dan will let you approach him and pick him up, and he’ll lay in your arms like a big baby and purr. Fagen doesn’t like it if you walk toward him when he’s sitting on the floor, but if he’s a little higher (say, on the back of a couch or on my bed), he’ll let you approach him and pet him as much as you’d like.

Neither of them spent much time downstairs while my parents are here, but one night Dan came into the living room to sniff at Benjie, and he actually reached out and grabbed Benjie’s tail. So I think it’s safe to say that he’s not scared of dogs!

Stinkerbelle, in the porthole window of the dining room. I have to guess that she gets into the window by coming off the mantel (to the left). I’ve never actually seen her move from the mantel to the window, but she’s spending a lot of time there lately. (That blue box on the wall to the right is our medicine cabinet.)

Previously
2009: I was fairly certain one end of the piece of roofing was going to come right through the window and split my skull in half, but luckily I was incorrect about that.
2008: No entry.
2007: Spoiled rotten brats. The cats AND me.
2006: So, that’s the state of things with me.
2005: “Oh my god!” he said. “There’s a dead mole under here!”
2004: The man thinks that “hot” and “good-looking” are the same thing!
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: We all know I’m lazy, but this is ridiculous.

My parents arrived safely yesterday evening with Benjie in tow. When Benjie walked through the door, you could almost hear all the cats in the house fluff up. Miz Poo, in particular, did not appreciate this new development.

We spent the evening in the living room talking, and the cats had different takes on the Benjie Situation. Tommy sat on the floor a few feet away, staring at Benjie, ultimately decided Benjie was no threat, and rolled around to show his lack of concern. Elwood inched closer and closer and then would run off for a few minutes to regroup before coming back to inch closer again. Jake was NOT interested in THAT DOG, and spent the evening atop the big cat tree. Fred brought him down and into the living room, and Jake immediately puffed up and moved verrrry verrry slowly until he could get back to safety. Spanky was completely unconcerned and uninterested. Sugarbutt came in a few times to eyeball Benjie. The first (and so far, only) cat to make contact with Benjie was, surprisingly, Steely Dan. Benjie was sitting, facing my father, and Steely Dan reached out and grabbed Benjie’s tail.

Poor Benjie, who probably remembered the last time he visited (about 2 1/2 years ago, I think) and was roundly boxed about the ears by Maxi AND Newt, quietly sat by my father and wished those damn cats would go away.

I didn’t get any pictures of the interactions, but you know I’ll share ’em when I get ’em!

Have you kept records of your fosters and how long it took to get them adopted? It seems like your area does a terrific job of getting kitties adopted. Do they have any secrets that help them get furever homes for the kitties. I am really impressed with how quickly your fosters get homes.

Not only have I not kept records of how long it took the fosters to get adopted, I don’t even have an exact number on how many cats and kittens I’ve fostered! (I’ll remedy that at some point – it’s my goal to get all the entries about my fosters copied over to Love & Hisses, so I have a complete record.) I don’t know that Challenger’s House has any secrets – the fact that they’re a Petsmart Love-A-Pet partner helps a lot, I’m sure!

Re: pond in back forty – are you concerned it may become a mosquito breeding haven? Just a thought.

Not really – it’ll be back at the back of the back forty (heh). When we had the pond before, located right behind the back yard, it had water in it for at least part of the summer after we moved in, and I never noticed a mosquito issue.

Love the cat bed that Sugarbutt is in. *Wink*.

I know! Me too! I bought it especially because it matches him so well!

Just kidding, of course – awesome reader Betty sent us that cool bed back in December. First, Violet and Veruca claimed it for themselves, and then it happened to fit perfectly in the cave part of the Room with a View, and apparently Sugarbutt agrees, because he’s claimed it for himself. Maybe he thinks it’s his mother ’cause it looks so much like him. 🙂

Hey, Wild Berry Jolly Ranchers here.

Although it’s a 12-pack of the little bags. You may be way over them by the time you finish 12 bags.

It would probably take me a year to finish off 12 bags of Jolly Ranchers, but I don’t know that I could ever get tired of them, especially the Wild Strawberry flavor!

I should totally buy, like, 100 bags of those, separate out the flavors, keep the Wild Strawberry, and sell the other flavors on eBay!

What is UP with cats freaking about the slightest little change to their sleeping area?

Cats are like Fred – they don’t like changes, and they get bitchy when changes happen without their consent. 🙂

Petal sleeps on the back of the couch – which is fine, but she is shedding like MAD, and I am sick of cleaning fur out the cracks between the cushions. I put a lovely, soft throw that I purposely bought for this over the sofa back for her, and Ms. Thing had a total fit. She sat on the love seat facing the sofa, apparently perplexed by the appearance of this weird THING that had taken over her sleeping spot. I tried putting her on the throw, and she reacted like I’d dipped her in a tub full of water, almost climbing up my arm. Three days later, and she still wouldn’t go near. Removed the throw, and everything was back to normal.

Anyone have any suggestions?

The only recommendation I can think of is, instead of putting the throw over the back of the couch all at once, fold the throw up and put it maybe to the side of where Her Majesty sleeps. Once she’s grown accustomed to it being there, move it a tiny bit closer to where she sleeps, wait a week, repeat. Maybe it’s the sudden change she objects to?

If anyone has a better suggestion, feel free to leave it in the comments!

Whoa. That cheesecake photo of SDan looks exactly like a fluffy Meester Boogers. I see that a lot! How similar are their personalities?

I am sad to report that there seem to be no Mister Boogers in Steely Dan’s personality. He’s a very sweet and friendly boy, but he has none of the Boogie sass.

When I was cleaning up after I made my lunch this morning, I accidentally ran my fingers across an open can of cat food. (My elderly cat eats canned food because he has elderly teeth.) I said to myself, “Goddamn it. I bet shit like this never goddamn happens to Miz Robyn and she’s goddamn surrounded by goddamn cats.” And do you think I could get the goddamn cat food out from under my goddamn nails? And then the goddamn stink was in my nose and I swear I can still smell it. Goddamn disgusting canned cat food.

I get canned cat food on my hands ALL the freakin’ time, and the worst part is when I get it on my hand and then don’t realize it, then I’m sitting there thinking “God, what is that horrific SMELL?!” I loathe the smell of canned cat food. GAH.

I see you wash your cat beds often (or at least I see them stacked up after you’ve washed them). Anyway, how do your cats react to a clean bed?

Every single time I wash our cat’s beds (all 409 of them) she stomps around sniffing all of them, then yells at us, rinse/repeat. I do not use stinky Downey and our detergent is unscented, so it’s not that. I guess she just prefers stinky, hair beds?

Our cats are pretty good at adjusting to clean beds. They’re pretty flexible, I guess, since I rarely put the same cat bed back in the same place, and yet they don’t seem to have an issue with whatever bed I put in their sleeping spots.

I bet your cat’s issue is less that she prefers the stinky, hair beds than that the clean cat beds smell unfamiliar to her. That said, I have no advice on how to convince her that they’re HER beds, even if they don’t smell “right”. Anyone? Suggestions?

Last night, we let Steely Dan and Fagen stay out in general population all night. They did really well, and in fact Fagen came downstairs to eyeball my parents (and Benjie) from the hallway several times. They didn’t sleep with me last night, but I could hear them running around my room from time to time. At 2:30 I don’t know what on earth they were doing, exactly – it sounded like they were climbing to the top of the chair beside my bed and throwing themselves to the floor, over and over again. I said “Oh, come on, it’s TWO THIRTY!” and eventually they stopped.

They sure are sweet boys, these two.

Kara, keeping an eye on YOU.

Previously
2009: “Thank GOD you’re going for a cut and color. I didn’t want to say anything, but you have got some SERIOUS gray going on. It’s rather disturbing.”
2008: This is my entry in honor of [Spot].
2007: Obviously he just doesn’t love Joe Bob enough.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: Okay, I promise that’s the last weepy I-miss-my-kitty entry.
2003: Bleach is the shit.
2002: Just for the record, Mike Tyson is the biggest fucking idiot in the entire world.
2001: How the hell am I going to get my ass on Survivor 3 if they’re looking for model types??
2000: I was quite excited, as I recall.

You know how there are days when you have a million errands to run, but you don’t wanna run ’em? But there’s no one else who’ll run them, so you have no choice?

Yesterday was one of those days for me. Though, really, none of my errands were so pressing that they couldn’t have been put off a day or two, I wanted to get them done and over with. So I left the house a little after 9 got back home around noon. In between I:

* Stopped by Walgreen’s to look for Wild Berry Jolly Ranchers. I like the Wild Berry mix more then the original flavors, but they’re hard to find. And apparently Walgreen’s doesn’t carry them anymore, damnit, so I bought a bag of the original flavors. If I could buy a bag of JUST the wild strawberry flavor (the hard candies, not the gummies or chews), I’d be a happy camper.

* Stopped by TJ Maxx. I was at the TJ Maxx in South Huntsville last week, and saw that they had Mrs. Meyers Automatic Dishwashing Liquid for $5 a bottle. It usually runs in the area of $8 a bottle, so I decided to buy a single bottle and give it a try, figuring that I could give it a try, and if I liked it, I could stop at the TJ Maxx in Madison and buy more. As it turns out, I like the Lemon Verbena version quite a lot, so I wanted to get more before TJ Maxx sold out. I was ready to stock UP on that stuff, but they only had two bottles of the Lemon Verbena left, and the Lavender scent smells like ass to me, so I just bought the two they had, and called it good enough.

* Stopped by the place where I have my eyes examined to pick up the two boxes of contacts I’d ordered last week. I thought about looking at the glasses, but there were a lot of people in there, so I decided not to. I’ve already told Nance that she’s on the hook for going glasses shopping with me next time she comes to visit, because clearly I need someone to tell me what the hell to buy. My parents are coming to visit later this week, maybe I’ll drag my mother to the glasses place with me so she can advise me. Do I know how to show my guests a rollicking good time, or what?

* Stopped by Target because… well, I don’t think there was anything I needed, but I hadn’t been to Target in two weeks, so was going through withdrawal. I bought a few groceries, including a bag of Clementines (which are awesome), looked at the body pillows, and just generally wandered around. I didn’t end up buying a body pillow because for some reason they were not doing it for me. I’ll have to decide whether I really want one, or just think I do because the one Mary Louise Parker was hauling around in the most recently released season of Weeds on DVD looked so appealing. (Speaking of, I am enjoying the hell out of the delightfully creepy Shane.)

* Stopped by Petsmart to eyeball the cats (remember the little bitty bottle babies that I babysat for a few days, and then the woman who had them had a family crisis and decided to turn them over to Challenger’s House, so I had them here full-time for a few days before turning them over to another foster mom? The black one (Sweepie) was adopted over the weekend, and the black and white one (Sootie) is waiting for someone to come along and fall in love with him. He was curled up, sound asleep, looking mighty happy when I wandered by.) (Also, reading that entry I linked above made me realize that I REALLY FREAKIN’ MISS MY COOKIES AND MY WONKAS.)), and then look at the food storage containers. The containers I keep the cat food in right now look like this and I thought I’d prefer to replace them with a couple of these, but after much looking and dithering, I decided that what I already have works just fine. I bought some bird seed and a few cat toys, and left.

* Stopped by Publix to pick up my Synthroid prescription.

And then I was home again! Now I don’t need to run any errands for at least a few more days – which is good, because the house needs some cleaning before my parents get here on Thursday, and also I have at least three episodes of Hoarders taking up space on the DVR, so I need to get to watching!

A couple of you asked how George and Gracie did with all the rain. They were fine – when the weather’s going to be horribly nasty and rainy like it was over the weekend, Fred leaves the coop open at night so they can get inside out of the rain. Of course, if they were ever desperate, they could get in out of the rain in the dog house that Fred built for them on the back side of the coop (it’s well sheltered and elevated and stays nice and dry), but they could not be less interested in that dog house.

They thought the water was great fun, though – more than once I looked out to see them running through the water in the corner of the back forty, water that was up past their bellies.

I think that scientists need to take up the study of whatever George and Gracie’s fur is made of – I swear to god, they’ll get horribly muddy and nasty looking, and then a few hours later they’ll be completely clean again. I tell Fred I think their fur is made of Teflon, and the dirt just slides right off.

Taken not ten minutes ago. Look at those guilty faces. “We weren’t slacking off in the coop! We were, uh, investigating! Some suspicious chicken poop!”

Please shed that chicken poop ASAP, George, if you don’t mind.

This is how organized I am – I stumbled across a folder on my hard drive labeled “Stuff I bought.” This folder had pictures I’d taken of stuff I bought, that I wanted to show y’all.

This stuff I bought, when did I buy it and take these pictures, you ask? September of 2007. Good lord. And it’s not like the folder was hidden or anything – I tend to put everything in my /tmp folder before I ultimately file everything (it works for me), and the “Stuff I Bought” folder was a subfolder of the /tmp folder, so I’ve been scrolling past it at least once a day for the last two years and some months.

So here you go, here’s some stuff I bought back in 2007!

Coaster. It cracks me UP.

Refrigerator magnets.

Watermelon cat on the left, and onion cats (salt and pepper shakers) on the right.

Catnip mat. I’m not even sure where this is. I think one of the evil little bastards peed on it.

A tin of catnip with toy mice inside. The cats REALLY liked these mice, as I recall.

This is a spoon rest, but I’d like to figure out a way to mount it and hang it on the wall. Suggestions?

Fagen TRULY does not like being alone. If he’s in the room alone, he howls and howls. Luckily, Jake and Elwood are very good about going in and keeping him company (though to be honest, I’m pretty sure their interest lies more in the fact that there’s a bowl of Science Diet kitten food in there and fun toys). He ran out the door yesterday evening, so we waited to see how he’d do, running around the house.

Not very well, is how he did, and having him out running around actually made Dan start to revert to his skittish behavior. So back into the room we put Fagen. My parents are coming to visit later this week with their dog Benji (who is a very nice dog), and I’m curious to see what Dan’s reaction to the dog will be.

At Christmas, Fred’s father and stepmother offered us a few things they’d cleared out of their attic. One of those things was a basket. I liked the size and color of it, though when I took it, I wasn’t sure what we were going to do with it. I tried putting a cat bed in it, and put it in the front room, and one of our cats reacted by peeing in it. (Grrr.) So once it was cleaned up and destinkified, I put another cat bed in it, and we put it on top of the canning cabinet in the dining room, where Stinkerbelle always sleeps.

Oh, she had a FIT because we took her old bed away and replaced it with this horrible basket FILLED with cat beds to make it ever more comfy for her Highness. She made her angry high-pitched meow, she stomped around, she glared at the basket. Fred caved in less than an hour.

“I’m going to put a bed back up there next to the basket,” he said. “She doesn’t like the basket!”

“Well, give it a DAY before you give up on it!” I said, but he would not be dissuaded, and he put a bed up there next to the basket.

The next morning, I was leaving the house, and glanced into the dining room. There, curled up in the basket, looking as happy as she could possibly look, was Princess Stinkerbelle. I snapped a picture and sent it to Fred, saying “Poor, poor Stinky. It’s a rough life!”

Note that the basket is actually sitting on top of a cat bed so it doesn’t rock back and forth when she’s climbing in and out. SO SPOILED.

Previously
2009: You are correct, sir.
2008: The dog continues to improve. (Read here to see how the dog came to be in our possession.)
2007: Are ya feelin’ bubbly, punk? Well? Are ya?
2006: I think it would be hilarious if someone started manufacturing imitation Maui Jim sunglasses and called them “Oahu James” sunglasses.
2005: I figure they’re professionals and know what they’re doing, so I have no desire to clutter up the small amount of space left in my brain with that kind of information.
2004: I sense that there is a battle of epic proportions in my future, a show-down between Miz Poo and I as to just WHO the blanket belongs to.
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: But don’t tell Miz Poo I’m admiring another cat, please…
2000: It’s a conspiracy!

I can’t help it, this made me laugh and laugh, probably because Taylor Momsen strikes me as an annoying emo twit. I love a good typo.

I will remember Tami from The Real World and “It wasn’t not funny!” until my dying day, I swear.

I’m really really ready for about a month of no rain. We got pounded with rain early Sunday morning, and this is what it looked like around 9:00.

From the back door, looking left. (Large version here.)

From the back door, looking toward the right. (Large version here.)

Off the side stoop. (Large version here.)

We went out to do some shopping – looking for a new TV console – and by the time we got home about an hour and a half later the water had fallen drastically, but there’s still plenty of standing water to make it highly unpleasant out there.

Fred had a guy come out and talk to him about moving dirt around on our land so that when it rains like this, the back forty doesn’t flood, and under the Poltergeist tree (between the house and the small chicken yard) isn’t knee-depth mud from October to June every year. One of the things he recommended was – can you guess? – to have him dig us a pond so he can use the dirt from that to kind of shape the rest of the property.

Long time readers might remember that we used to have a pond, out between the back yard and the beginning of the back forty, and we had a year and a half of such dry weather that the pond was dried up most of the time, and we were all “This is ridiculous! We could use that land for so much more! Let’s have it filled in!” We had it filled in about two years ago, and guess what we’ve done with all that land?

Not a goddamn thing.

We’ll likely have the pond dug out in the back part of the pig yard so that they can get in it and swim around, rather than put a pond right back where it used to be.

Fred said something yesterday about having fish in the pond, and I was all aghast, all “But the pigs are going to be swimming around in the pond, shitting it up! I’m not eating pig shit fish for dinner!”

Fred just laughed at me. But I’m serious! No pig shit fish for me, THANK YOU.

Even the birds are sick and tired of the damn rain. (This woodpecker was on the pecan tree right outside the window over my desk. He’d been halfheartedly pecking at a pecan, then gave up and just sat there staring up into the sky.)

For the rest of the month (well, it’s been all month long, I’ve just been a slacker about linking to it!), 10 Top 10 Lists For Cat Lovers will donate money from every sale of their ebook to Challenger’s House. Go give it a look-see!

83% of the way to goal for sweet Misty!

(You can read more about Misty at her ChipIn page.)

So, on Saturday, we separated Fagen and Steely Dan for the day. Fagen was SO super friendly every time I went into the room to hang out with him, that when I opened his door that evening to go inside and he ran out of the room, I decided to let him have the run of the upstairs for the rest of the evening, and see how that went. I pulled the half-door across the hallway so that in addition to having the run of his room and part of the hallway, he could go into my room and the bathroom as well. He did a lot of low running around, and when I approached him, he’d skeedaddle away from me. We brought Steely Dan upstairs to hang out with him, and Steely Dan was more curious than scared.

At 9:30, we went upstairs to gather them up and put them in the foster room. Dan was no problem at all – Fred went upstairs, picked him up, and carried him into the foster room. Fagen, on the other hand, was hiding under my bed and wouldn’t let either of us touch him. We finally got him to run out from under the bed, and when he ran toward the foster room, Fred opened the door, and Fagen ran right inside.

So separating them seems to have had a different effect on each of them – Steely Dan is pretty much your average kitten now. If you approach him and hold out your hand to him and talk softly, he’ll come over and bump his head up into your hand for a pet. Fagen is friendlier than he was, but if you give him too much space to roam, it makes him nervous, and he reverts to his scaredy-cat ways.

Yesterday, we let Steely Dan have the run of the house, and brought Fagen downstairs to hang out in the guest bedroom (with plenty of visits from Fred and I, and Jake and Elwood, and even Steely Dan a few times). It went well – Steely Dan really likes having the run of the house, and doesn’t run from us or hide. He sat with us last night while we were watching TV. Fagen just needs a little more time, apparently!

That’s okay, we’ve got plenty of time.

When I say to him, “Fagen, are you the pretty boy?” he stops and thinks about it for a moment, and then meows. Apparently the answer is “Yes. Yes I AM the pretty boy!”

Dramatic Kitteh is Dramatic.

Dan in the guest bedroom.

Talk about your sultry look!

Suggie in the Sug Cave! (Also known as the Room with a View, which I got for half price back in December! Sugarbutt has claimed the cave part as his own, and the other cats seem to be respecting that, for the most part.)

Previously
2009: No entry.
2008: Yes, he’s cute. No, we’re not keeping him.
2007: That damn sponge will never glare malevolently at me again, I’m sure of it.
2006: “Thy-y-y-yme is my crack! Yes it is!”
2005: He emailed me back immediately. You’re already too old to die tragically young.
2004: No entry.
2003: No entry.
2002: And Mildred and Myrtle were hanging out merrily in their very sheer bright yellow bra, waving at all and sundry.
2001: Just thinking about it makes me grumpy.
2000: Y’all stay warm, now!