Another Tough Day for Tobias

 Tormentee

Poor Tobias is beset on every side.  First The Squirrel, then Bunny, hissing and growling at him constantly, and then his archenemy, The Squirrel, back with a bagel, and taunting him from just a few inches away.  He got tired of being polite in the face of Bunny’s constant insolence, and took a few swipes at her to put her in her place. I thought for a while that I might need to take Bunny to a cat hotel for the remainder of her visit, but the swipes seem to have been effective in calming her down.  Perhaps we can be a happy family until Bunny’s mummy returns to retrieve her. 

 Tormenter with Bagel

Sadly, there is not much he can do about the squirrel.  Years ago, when Michael was the cat-man of the family, we had a real squirrel invasion.  They were in our attic, having orgies right over the heads of Rebecca and me - all night parties every night.  We were pretty upset about it, I can tell you.  Those squirrels were the boldest things! One of them, after biting himself a little entry door, ventured onto our enclosed back porch.  However, Michael the fierce was too much for him.  Michael crept out, sprang forth,  and bit the intruder’s tail right off.  Imagine our shock when Michael proudly strode into the kitchen, seemingly wearing a Pancho Villa moustache – the squirrel tail he was holding in his mouth.  Aghast, we tried to take it from him, but he hissed that he was keeping his prize.   That evening when the nightly squirrel party started anew, Rebecca said that she was comforted by thinking that one of them was up there nursing his stump.

The Tormentress

Another Hospitable Day

Formidable Bunny

Well, my great-grand cat Bunny is back!  You may recall that she was a houseguest a few months ago, and now her peripatetic mother is off on another, and a longer vacation – this time, to visit her grandpa in sunny California. You may also recall that when Bunny was here last time, she was not the ideal houseguest.  Things, I am sad to say, have not dramatically improved.  Tobias does his best to be a gracious host, but Bunny makes it difficult.  She is quite a pretty girl, and may therefore be a sort of cat diva, taking advantage of her beauty to heap scorn on lesser mortals, and to demand the attention she feels she deserves.  Margaret and Tobias have adopted a policy of passive resistance, and are largely ignoring her - or keeping a wary eye on her from a distance.  As soon as she arrived, she perched herself on my kitchen table, a coign of vantage with a view of three rooms.  Tobias, assessing the situation, leapt into her carrying case at the other end of the house, to sniff it over.  He must have liked what he smelled, because he settled in.  It was situated at the farthest point from her spot on the table, but still visible to her, and the two sat and stared at one another for nearly an hour. 

Saintly Tobias

 For the first day of her visit, Bunny emitted a continuous low growl which escalated if anyone approached her.  Or, if, as was more likely, she approached them.  At one point, Margaret was snoozing in my lap as I was reading, and Bunny leapt up to the arm of the chair, and bopped Margaret on the head.  I had to speak sternly to her.  She has given Tobias the same treatment a time or two.  Margaret and Tobias just stare at her, astonished.  But things actually seem to be looking up.  The growl is now only occasional, and she came and sat on my lap as I was typing this.  So in another day, she may be settled in.  But will she settle enough to love Margaret and Tobias?  I will keep you posted. 

Contemplative Bunny

A Hospitable Day

Margaret and Tobias had company the other day. Ana and Ken stopped by to introduce their new puppy, a very cute, very stout Chihuahua.  She is from a shelter, and you can see how her new parents were captivated when she pleaded with them to take her home.  Who could resist those sweet little eyes and that knowing doggy smile?  She is on a diet and an exercise regimen - even including swimming lessons -  with her personal trainer Ken.  She is doing well and has already made progress in her quest for fitness.  

Margaret was, as to be expected, a gracious hostess.  Tobias, not so much.  Margaret was, in fact, thrilled!  She frisked, frolicked, and delightedly welcomed her little guest.  Tobias sniffed disdainfully, and hopped up onto a bookshelf where he could observe from a slight distance, but still remain involved in the action.  He puffed himself up, and gave the occasional obligatory whispered hiss, but nonetheless remained nearby, and allowed himself to be petted, showing that he was not terribly upset.  But he felt the need to express his disapproval – at least a little. 

A Jet-lagged Day

Early morning surprise!

Aaaaargh!  How I hate daylight savings time!  I have to worry all day the day before about remembering to reset the clocks.  One year, I had no idea that the dreaded day had arrived until I read the Sunday morning funny papers and saw that Dagwood was running about trying to get all his clocks changed.  At least that year, I didn’t have to waste time worrying about the tribulation in advance. The next ordeal is getting up a hour earlier for choir practice on Sunday morning.  After working till midnight the evening before, I have trouble dragging myself to church in the best of times. Buoyed up by the prospect of beautiful music, I stumble around looking for a cup of tea and some clothes – trying to put them on in the right order – with shoes matching, and nothing that shouldn’t show showing.  But take away another hour, and I am a stupefied wreck.  Once there however, Jim, our choir director, and the wonderful music perk me right up, but that is a short lived fix, and lasts only till the end of Mass.  By the time I get home from church, I once again feel like a logy automaton. By the time I get home from work that evening, I feel absolutely non-functional.  Then a night of fretting about getting up the next morning for a dental appointment, and by Monday morning, I am battle-scarred, and in no shape to do anything. The previous evening, I had to worry about getting up and forgetting about the dental appointment completely, and in fact, to worry about getting up at all, so of course I had yucky dreams all night about the murder mystery I was reading before dropping off, and waking up every few minutes – or so it seemed – to reassure myself that it was not yet morning, nor was I really accompanying Inspector Wexford down into that disgusting pit.  I woke up way too early – semi-woke up, I should say, and staggered to the dental office to relax in the dental chair, my worries over.  Major task accomplished! I had gotten there in time, and afterward could go home and take a nice nap. Which I did.  Today, life looks a lot rosier.  The jet lag period is by, and now all I have to fret about is the possibility of snow.

My hygienist has a new gizmo – a light to detect signs of mouth cancer.  Ick!  

A Stressful Day for Tobias

A staring match!

The Winner!

A Generous Day

The generous person in the above mentioned day, is my friend Jill, the mistress of the Cathedral Kitchen.  A few years ago, she gave me several wonderful artifacts from her ancient auntie’s archives.  You can read about them here.  Last week, she gave me another amazing treasure, again handed down from her auntie.  It’s a delightful little appliance clock, which probably came as part of a stove.  It looks like a miniature icebox, and actually is quite heavy, given its size.  We speculate that it came off of a stove, as on its underneath side, there is a slot to plug it into something else. 

Long ago, Jill also gave me this fabulous Borden’s Malted Milk jar.  Does anyone drink malted mild anymore?  Not that I know of. I drink Ovaltine, which is similar, but not quite the same, and its jar is way less pretty.  Also among the Jill gifts was this little doll, which I keep on a cupboard shelf in my kitchen by the Quaker Oats tins.  It makes me happy every time I get some tea out of my tea cupboard, or prepare myself some oatmeal. Just now, I am reading The Mighty Miss Malone by the hyper-wonderful Christopher Paul Curtis.    The heroine is Deza - an African American school girl living in the 1930's, and whose family is struggling to survive during the Depression.  At one point, she is looking at the man on the Quaker Oats box, and speculating as to what he is smiling about.  This doll is of a sort that Deza might have had herself.

Note the bite marks on the oatmeal can.  Those are from my little dog Leslie, as he tried to open the container with his teeth.  He succeeded, I might add, and made a terrible mess. 

A Busy Day

I sometimes used to wonder how it could take my mother so long to do seemingly simple tasks.  “I worked all day making that salad,” she once moaned.  I had given her the recipe and knew that it should take about twenty minutes – max! 

This morning, the first item on my agenda (after drinking lots of tea, reading the newspaper, and looking at my friends’ blogs, of course,) was vacuuming my downstairs.  I got out the vacuum cleaner and started it up.  Its whine was higher than usual, so I checked to see if it needed a new bag.  Sure enough, it did.  I had been keeping them in the basement, but then had decided to keep them in a bin of cleaning things in my panty.  Getting at this bin requires being down on hands and knees in order to move several other bins.  Maybe there are still a few in the basement, I thought.  It would be smarter to check there first.  Getting to the basement requires stepping over the cat box and treading in all the kitty litter that Tobias has spread around in his enthusiastic toilet flushing.  I had better clean the cat box, I thought.  And so I did.  I had better sweep up all this kitty litter from the floor and the basement stairs, I thought.  And so I did.  As long as I have the broom in my hands, I might as well sweep my other stairs, I thought.  And so I did.  Then I made my way down to the basement, and noticed my mother’s rooster.  The rooster was not really my sort of thing, but my mother liked him a lot, and I liked him  because she did.  Since I didn't want him in my kitchen, I had put him where I could enjoy him, but not too much.  Unfortunately, one of his little legs was broken, but with careful arrangement, he could still stand and his injury was not too noticeable.  I really should fix that rooster, I thought.  Of course, I had been thinking this every time I saw him for about five years. But today would be the day.  I brought him upstairs, and then had to find the glue.  This meant groveling around under my sink.  There is so much useless stuff here, I thought.  I had better get rid of some of it.  And so I did.  I eventually found the glue and fixed the rooster.  I felt that I had really accomplished something – something that I had put off for so many years.  To celebrate my accomplishment, I made myself a cup of tea, went to sit and sip it in the living room, and thought, “What is that vacuum cleaner doing here?”

I guess my mother’s problem was genetic!