A Day Without Kitties is Like a Day Without...Hairballs

Aah, here's a photo of Nancy and The Kitties in happier times, last weekend. You can't see me, but I'm just to the right of the picture. With my trusty torch, melting metals. You can't see Foster, the Kitty, either. He was messing with the torch, and trying to catch his fur on fire. But you CAN see Bes. After conducting her morning bird census, she decided on a well-deserved rest in the salad bowl; as she coached Foster on the finer points of bothering Mom from the sidelines.

But now, NancyLand is a very sad place, indeed. There are no Kitties. We have reached the point in the renovations that involves toxic fumes, open windows and workmen who have no idea how to close a door. Consequently, the Kitties are "summering at the farm." And I can't believe how much I miss them.

Just today I let the dogs out - they are with me because they are immune to toxic fumes and would never exit an open door because they might miss a meal and they can't stay alone at the farm because they eat furniture - and in walks, bold as you please, a giant palmetto bug. For those unfortunates without southern roots, that is a cockroach on steroids. About the size of a lobster, but a lot uglier.

And all I could think was, if The Kitties were here, and I showed them the palmetto bug, and I pretended that I wanted to play with it, and perhaps sprinkled it with a little catnip; well, they might just poke it out the door. Then again, there was that recent incident with the mouse at the farm...six cats in the house, and my mother-in-law's little dog. Guess who caught the mouse? The Kitties didn't even feign embarrassment. In fact, I think they TOLD the little dog to get it, because they didn't want to ruin their nails.

Then, there's RatRat; poor filthy, fuzzy RatRat, favorite fetch fetish for Foster the Feline, forlorn in the foyer. I threw the damn thing upstairs just to hear it "thunk." But "thunk" was not followed by the sound of Foster skidding across the hall to tackle it. Oh, my heavy heart. I drew the line at fetching RatRat myself, so he is languishing upstairs in hardwood floor refinishing dust.

I have typed this entire entry without "help". No one has walked on the keyboard, erasing the entire piece; or spilled my Diet Pepsi, causing me to grab a throw pillow to absorb the liquid before it reached the grooves on the underside of the laptop. I have not stopped writing once to respond to that "haronking" sound, harbinger of the hairball. And I didn't have to open a can of smelly, oily fish eyes at dinner.

Sometimes it sucks to be me.