Cat Lady

We've all read stories about a "crazy cat lady" - and maybe we even know one. My image is of a single woman, who is just a little bit eccentric (that's the nice way of saying odd), and has a house full of felines. Usually the newspaper story reads something like: "Woman fined - 60 cats living in one bedroom apartment". And if it's not a newspaper headline, it's the neighbors complaining to the city about the lovely aroma wafting from the abode on the corner and their gardens being used as litter boxes.

This evening I experienced a glimpse of that life.

Doc. B. had a yoga workshop tonight. Since I had a Friday night to myself, I decided to run an errand so that I wouldn't have to do it over the weekend. I went over to one of our new shopping centers - the kind that has a huge selection of stores and restaurants that all share the same parking lot. It was a pretty busy night so I had to park the truck a good walk from the pet store - my one and only destination. When I go to the pet store, I like to stock up on everything all at once: cat food, litter, you name it. So I loaded up my cart and made my way to the cashier. As I was unloading the cart, Ms. Clerk said "oh, honey, don't worry about taking it out of the cart - you have so much litter in there, I don't want you to have to lift it any more than you have to". Then she asked me how many cats I had. When I replied "just two", she looked at me and smiled but her facial expression was saying "yeah, right - sure you only have two cats. That's what everyone says no matter how many more they actually have."

And her face was partly right. An old co-worker of mine used to say she had "three and three cats". It was her way of not saying she had six cats.

So I swiped my credit card, scanned my frequent shopper key fob, and pushed my cart back out into the parking lot. I guess the weight of the cart must have been obvious because as I made my way to the truck, I got lots of sympathetic stares. All the cool people who had been spending their evening in Target, Barnes and Noble, or Five Guys Burgers and Fries, seemed to be either amused by my efforts or were feeling sorry for me. And it got even worse as I made trips back and forth from the cart to unload it into the truck. I could just hear their thoughts...

That poor lady has nothing better to do on her Friday night than to stock up for the cats running around in her litter-strewn, urine-stained, un-swiffed, hairball-covered, clawed up house.

Mirror, Mirror on the wall, don't show me this life in your crystal ball!

Neglected Fish

I'm always talking about the cats: Maddie, Rumi and Doc B. But I just realized I've never told you about "Dwight". Doc. B.'s boss' daughter breeds and raises a variety of finned friends. A few years ago, she gave us a Beta fish, Betty, but she swam into the porcelain light after about two years. When the boss' daughter recently had a population explosion in her fish tank, we did our second adoption. With the unfortunate demise of Betty, I'm surprised she let us have another one.

Dwight seems a bit smarter than Betty (rest her soul). Dwight actually gets visibly excited when he sees me nearing his little plastic home on the kitchen counter - he flits all over the place and almost jumps out of the water in hopes that I'll drop in a couple of food pebbles. I'm pretty good about remembering to feed him twice a day - but I've heard that if I'm not around, he does quite well in getting fed every few days or so. Resilient little guy.

Since we've had Dwight, I've noticed that I've been having to wipe down the kitchen counters more often - they've been mysteriously covered with cat hair. Rumi is not allowed up on things other than chairs, so I wasn't exactly sure how the fur was getting up there. I thought maybe my swiffing wasn't happening enough and that the kitty hair was somehow settling there. That was until recently when Doc B. got up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water and found Rumi sleeping on the kitchen counter next to Dwight's fish bowl. As soon as Rumi saw Doc B., he jumped down. I guess that's the curious "thud" we hear occasionally as we come down the stairs and walk toward the kitchen. And clearly the reason for the furry granite.

At least Rumi was sleeping next to Dwight rather than trying to eat him for dinner. I'm sure if that happened, there would be no more adoptions permitted.

Secret Service

Doc. B. and I were house/pet sitting over the labor day weekend. Don't feel sorry for us, this was no chore. The house is owned by friends who have a heated swimming pool and every single movie channel. They even left us a bunch of videos that weren't due back to Blockbuster just yet. So after we lounged by the pool and ate take-out from "Moe's", we sat in the matching recliner chairs to decide what movie to watch. We settled on "The Secret". I had heard the hype so figured that even if I didn't enjoy the movie, I could at least contribute to water cooler discussions.

I won't give away the secret, but the idea is that you attract what you think. So if your mind is focused on negative things, negative things are going to come your way and visa versa. The bottom line is that you attract what you think about.

Since viewing the movie, I've been trying to pay attention to what I'm thinking about and then watching what happens. So far I'd say it's humorous at best. I'll keep you posted (whether you like it or not) but here are the two things that I've noticed thus far.

While I was in Baltimore, Doc. B. had my favorite sous chef knives sharpened. When one is a slicer and dicer such as myself, a sharp tool will make one's day. I set out to prepare one of our favorite stir fry dishes and noticed several times that I was thinking: "I better be careful, I'm going to cut myself with this sharp blade". Sure enough, as I was making my last few chopping motions, my left thumb got in the way. No tourniquet was needed but it did take a bit of pressure and elevation to get the blood flow to stop. So now that I've gotten that "I'm going to cut myself" thought and subsequent action out of the way, I can move on to simply loving the knives.

Then last night we went to the Agnes Scott College campus for a free outdoor showing of "Schreck III". We found ourselves a spot on the impeccably manicured lawn and unfolded our blanket. Doc. B. got us popcorn and we settled in to await the start of the show with about 100 other viewers. While we were waiting, I kept noticing how green and lush the grass was and how the brick lined sidewalks between the grassy knolls made aisles for people as they found their way to claim spots for the evening. I said to Doc. B., "I wonder when those lawn sprinklers are set to go off?"

You can picture the rest of the story. About 15 minutes into the movie, everyone on the other side of the brick aisle was drenched as sprinklers erupted around them like a bunch of perfectly timed Old Faithfuls. It was already getting late so we decided to call it a night. All I can say is that I'm glad my thought was related to "those" sprinklers rather than "these" sprinklers. I'm sure that's why ours didn't turn on and "those", over there, did.