Trying Out the Box of the Month

Have I mentioned how perfect the boxes from our monthly beer shipments are?

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Detective Oliver and the Case of the Missing Mama

A blog by Oliver, dictated to…someone (we can’t tell you who, it would ruin the ending).

I was sleeping in my chair last night after dinner. It had been a long day of supervising The Girl as she worked on the couch. Plus, there was snow to watch on OutTV. So, understandably, I was exhausted.

The Girl had gone downstairs to work out and I’d assigned supervision duties to Obi. The Boy was on the couch watching television. I blinked for a moment and noticed Obi was on the couch with The Boy. I blinked again and The Girl was standing by me, kissing my head. She said something about going upstairs to read. I blinked again and she was gone. I blinked again and The Boy was also gone. I was alone. It was dark.

But where did my people go? If only I had some clues.

“PEOPLE!” I yelled. I heard some giggles from the second floor and a voice called “Oliver.” That’s me. I’m Oliver. But I couldn’t talk to the voice upstairs, I was looking for my Girl.

I checked the food bowl in the breakfast nook. She was not there.

“PEEEEEEEOOOOPLE!” I called again. From the second floor, another voice called “we’re up here, pudding head.” I could not be distracted by the voices. I had to find The Girl and The Boy. Funny, that second voice sounded a lot like The Boy’s, now that I think about it.

I continued to look for clues.

I looked down into the basement. It was dark. You might be surprised, but I deduced she wasn’t down there anymore. The Girl usually turns on lights when she goes down there. Eliminating the basement, there were only two options: The Girl was invisible on the main floor, or she was upstairs. With the voices.

I went to the stairs and climbed as far as the creaky step. I stopped to reconsider the invisibility possibility. I mean, this seems very likely and I hardly looked for her at all. “Girl?” I called. “GIRL?”

“Oliver Pi,” the first voice called from upstairs. “Come to bed.” It sounded a lot like her, but people all sound the same to me. Since The Girl didn’t respond to my calls on the first floor, I continued up to the bedroom to search some more.

Obi was laying on the foot of the bed, giving me a look. Obviously, he was looking to me for guidance on how we would find our people. He’s rather attached to The Boy.

Then, I heard it! Kissy noises! The tell tale sound of The Girl. I was so close to discovering her whereabouts. With one final turn, I rounded the foot of the bed. And there she was.

I jumped up onto the bed and crawled under the covers to comfort my Girl. I bumped her chin with my head a couple times and licked her cheek. I purred as hard as I could to let her know I will always find her, no matter how many times she gets lost in the house.

“You’re such a dork,” she said and hugged me to her chest. Dork, in case you don’t know, means “excellent detective.”

Battle: Fortress

I was cleaning the house today and ruthlessly tossing out parts of kitty playland; I removed several shopping bags, some tissue paper, and flattened boxes. Then I rebuilt the fortress in our entry way that consists of one large piece of paper and two boxes. I crumpled some tissue paper and tossed it in the box.

Oliver promptly climbed into the box and shoved the tissue out.

Obi arrived and pushed the paper ceiling down. Oliver ran from the fortress and there was a flurry of furry. A furry flurry.

Obi returned to stomp the paper down some more.

He tried out the inside of the fortress as Oliver returned.

But if it wasn’t going to cause a thunder, Obi didn’t really want to be in the box.

Oli reclaimed the box as Obi came to see what I was doing, laying flat on the floor in the living room.

Oliver made himself comfortable on the inside of the fortress. Obi found his spot on the outside.

I was inspired, after seeing the floor at this angle, to sweep.

And all was right with the world.

Oh Brudder

I’ve mentioned that we have a new morning routine. That includes Oliver leaving our post-breakfast snuggle to take a bath in the recliner. Then The Boy comes by and covers him with the blanket. At first he was tucking the grey kitten in. Lately, though, he’s been carefully draping the blanket over both arms of the recliner, making a nice big cave.

 

Oliver can stay in this cave for hours. Unless his brother wants to thunder.

This morning, Obi came tearing across the living room and jumped onto the “flat surface” of the blanket. He didn’t know Oli was under there, he swears. The blanket started to move and Oliver’s head popped up between the blanket and the back of the recliner. He climbed out of his cave.

Obi jumped down and ran a couple feet. He looked back.

Oliver resettled himself on top of the blanket and went back to sleep. Somehow, the blanket remained held up, slightly, by the arms so the grey kitten enjoyed a hammock. For a while. Then the brown kitten returned. Obi climbed into the cave and poked his brother from below.

Then he jumped down and ran a couple feet. He looked back.

Oliver was not chasing him.

Obi came and sat with me, sighing. After he’d maxed out mom time – about five minutes later – he went back to the recliner and tried again. Climb. Poke. Jump. Run. Look. It didn’t work so he went to get a snack. And tried again. Climb. Poke. Jump. Run. Look.

Nope.

The brown kitten tried all day to get his brother to thunder. As far as I know, it never happened. Eventually all the effort wore him out. He stretched out on the loveseat for a nap and I draped the big quilt over the whole seat, kitten and all, to make a nice big cave.

And Oliver has hopped up on top for a nap.

 

Bad Kitties

While I was gone, Kitten Thunder hatched a plan. They always want under the sink in our upstairs bathroom but we’ve put baby locks on the doors to keep them out since the time we went on vacation and they spent some quality time in our walls. Accessed, initially, from the hole in the wall under the sink. Then they knocked a utility panel down and that made it easier.

There was also that time that Obi locked Oliver inside the cupboard.

So…baby locks. The kittehs “help” me clean the bathrooms, thinking I don’t know they are waiting for me to open that door to get the sponge. But I do know and I’m prepared to block them.

The Boy did not know.

One of the kittens exploded in the master bedroom on Sunday. I got a text from The Boy: “the boys are being naughty.”

That would be Oliver’s butt as he disappears into the wall.

And Obi, not interested in coming out when his brother had been grabbed and locked out of the bathroom.

He’s also not interested in having his picture taken.

 

Nobody Cares If You’re Naked

This weekend, I went to my hometown to attend a winter festival and take pictures of the ice sculpture contest. In addition to that contest, there was also an ice cube hunt – like an Easter egg hunt but with prizes frozen into blocks of ice and thrown out into the field of snow. It was a really cute event. It would have been even cuter if there had been SNOW in the field but the winter festival was subject to an unseasonable 50 degree day. Oh well. It was cute on grass, too.

The festival also had the best thing ever: a s’mores making station. While some may question the wisdom of small children walking across the parking lot with molten marshmallow on a stick so adults at the station could assemble the s’mores…well, you should question it. But no one lost an eye this year. And if they had? Immediate, sticky, cauterization. It’s a tasty win win, folks.

But photographing the s’mores station left me feeling smokey and smelling like I’d been camping for a week. When I got back to my parents’ house I went upstairs almost immediately, intent on taking a shower. Cousin Spade wanted to help.

I didn’t let him help.

The black kitten met me a the bathroom door afterward and followed me to my room. I shut the door so I could get dressed. Then I realized I was exhausted and plunked down on the bed. Spade stomped around for a second and let me scritch his back. Then he was done.

He wanted out.

He wanted out NOW.

I pulled myself up and started putting on clothes. OUT. NOW. OUTOUTOUT, Spade cried. “Hold on a sec,” I said, “I’m putting on clothes.”

LET ME OUT! NOBODY CARES THAT YOU’RE NAKED! Spade said, pawing the door.

Clothed, I opened the door. “Nobody cares that YOU’re naked,” I said. And I replunked onto the bed.

Free, Spade came back and sat down next to me for more pets.

***

Side note: As I left to drive back across Wyoming this afternoon, the wind picked up and rain started to fall. By the halfway point, there was a lot of snow. I drove the last two hours with ten feet of visibility and brought a blizzard into Cheyenne with me. Irony, I haz it.

 

Whovian Naps

Oliver has started laying on the recliner a lot. The Boy has started tucking him in under the TARDIS blanket. Naps are bigger on the inside.

 

But sometimes a kitten gets a little peckish and has to leave the TARDIS for a snack. If The Girl doesn’t notice and make a TARDIS cave by pulling the blanket tight over both arms of the chair, the kitten has to make do by sleeping on top of the blanket.

 

It’s big enough on the outside.

Winner Winner

I made chicken noodle soup for dinner tonight. This involves Kitten Thunder and I torturing ourselves all day as the chicken cooks in the crock pot, filling the house with the scent of yum. Then, an hour before dinner, I pull the chicken off the bones and stir it back in with the noodles.

Oliver and Obi are always available to help.

Oliver sat at my feet as I worked on the chicken. He told me his woes. He told me about how long it had been since he’d eaten. I mean, yes, he had just finished eating kitty crunchies four feet from where I was standing, but that’s not really food. It is merely subsistence. So much woe for one grey kitten.

I finished the chicken and started working on the noodles.

Obi came into the kitchen and collapsed at my feet. So hungry.  He had NOT just finished eating kitty crunchies so he was really very famished. And too weak, he was, to walk to the breakfast nook for subsistence crunchies. So much woe for the brown kitten.

Once everything was back in the crock pot – because I was hungry and no way was I eating subsistence kitty crunchies – I started to pick a pile of chicken for the kittens off the bones that were on the cutting board. It was a healthy pile.

I split the pile in two and placed the piles onto Kitten Thunder’s plates. Oliver, of course, inhaled his and the speed of smell. He then went after his brother’s share.

I stepped in.

“You had yours,” I said with my hand on the grey kitten’s chest. “Your brother should get to eat his, don’t you think?”

No. No he did not think. But Oliver relented and stomped off to the living room to tell The Boy how I had ruined his life. After that, he plunked down in the dining room condo to glare at me while I did dishes.

After a while, I looked down and saw that Obi had some chicken left on his plate. Oliver was in the kitchen again and I told him he could have the extra. He perked up, life un-ruined. For now.

But then a brown kitten came tearing into the kitchen to reclaim his chicken. He hadn’t realized that my defense of his share wasn’t permanent! He wolfed down his portion and gave a pointed stare. First to Oliver. Then to me.

It’s a sad, sad world where you can’t leave freshly cooked chicken unattended on a plate on the floor and not worry about it disappearing.

Sheesh.

MeOwlympics

I got to kitteh-sit Gabe and Jenni this weekend. After watching some of the Olympics on television, Jenni was inspired to do some sporting of her own. First she tried team laying – her partner wasn’t very good, though, so she decided to try another event.

Gabe did an excellent job in individual laying.

 

Being a more active kitten, Jenni decided that ribbon dancing was a better event for her.

This is one of those events where artistry is judged as heavily as the skills required in each round. Note Jenni’s emoting. So much emoting. Obviously, this girl took home the gold.

When I got home, after a quick trip to the grocery store, Oliver was ready to show his own prowess in tandem laying. Note how he maintains his focus while I use him as a table to put gamepieces in my Albertsons’ Monopoly passport. Masterful. It’s a good thing Jenni moved on to other events.

 

We’re all winners here.

Bath Brothers

Oliver and Obi love each other. Several times a day, Oliver – he who loves to bathe – will allow Obi to help him. Obi likes to wash Oli’s ears for him.

This morning, both kittens were on my chest. Oliver leaned forward and started washing Obi’s head. Obi leaned back and started trying to lick Oliver’s chin. The grey kitten put out a paw in a kind of “no, it is your turn,” manner. And the cuteness ensued.

Really close to my face.