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.

Fool Me Once, Shame on You...

Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me!
(Life in RenoLand...the Second Time Around.)

I always swore I would NEVER AGAIN live in a house undergoing renovations. Clearly, I am a liar. Because here I am, with my merry band of hounds, and Foster the Kitty; smack in the belly of the beast.

Because the hounds are extremely aged and high-maintenance, and because Foster is extremely young and high-maintenance, they cannot hang out at the already-renovated and usually-empty other house while I get this one ready for market. They need Staff. And that would be me, because I can work pretty much wherever I'm planted; as long as I have a torch to melt precious metals and a whole bunch of expensive bending tools that look eerily like bending tools at The Home Depot. So the six of us, along with Foster's precious stuffed RatRat, are hanging out here for a few weeks. And I am melting things, and serving as "Staff."

This is a four-point project. Part one, new appliances in the kitchen. Cake. Deceptively easy, in fact. So easy that the Appliance Switchers encouraged me to allow Foster the Kitty to "supervise", a role he takes rather seriously. They pulled the old cook top, Foster inspected the existing wiring for code violations. They installed the new cook top, Foster sat on top to test load recs. And he shared RatRat when they broke for Chick-Fil-A. There is something innately incongruous about a Fetching Kitty on a construction site.

Part two. The icky 1987 shiny-tiny white tile and peach entry marble had to go to its just reward. A Supervising Kitty and a jackhammer is not such a great combo; and the hounds insisted on "warning" me with every blow of the hammer...Danger, Will Robinson! So the six of us retreated to my basement studio. Where hounds found renegade beads and precious metals on the floor and consumed them; causing precious and quite attractive poop. And Foster, with his innate 1/2 Siamese wisdom, employed ancient feng shui principles to rearrange my workspace. My Sam's Club bottle of Acetominophen has seen a great deal of action this week.

We are now embarking on Phase 3. Refinishing floors gouged by a collective 80 dog toenails for a good ten years. None of which will TOUCH the finished product...the are going to wear socks from here on out. Because the fumes are quite unpleasant, we will vacate the property for a couple of days. Which means that tomorrow, between reveille and 0900, I have to gather absolutely everything we might need for the next 5 days and stuff it somewhere in the rental car. My personal car, an Audi tt, is really just a go-kart with a roof. I couldn't possibly pack five days of stuff for a herd of dogs, Foster the Kitty and myself in its minuscule self. I had to rent a Hyundai SantaFe or Similar Vehicle from Budget Rent-a-Car.

Then, finally, there will be Phase Four. We will paint the walls and trim floor to ceiling. I am certain that Foster will have our best interests in mind as he oversees the spraying process...

And then...through the magic of the Internet we will connect with the exact person who wants to inhabit our lovely, renovated Atlanta Zen Zone.