What’s Wrong With This Sentence?

I wear many hats with my company, one of which is greeter at registration desks for conferences that come to town. This is a fantastic job. I get to talk to people and tell them about Cheyenne. There’s also food. And goody bags. Sales people, after sitting at a conference for two days, have no interest in carting their giveaways back to their office – they’ll insist that you need two or three of everything they are handing out.

The downside of this job can be the hours. Like yesterday, when I had to get up before Oliver even wanted breakfast so I could be at the conference center at 6 a.m. BLEH. I helped for a couple hours, came home to work for a couple hours, then returned to the conference for the afternoon. When we had a funnel cloud and the sirens went off for about 15 minutes.

Kitten Thunder was NOT happy with me for not being home when something loud and scary was going on. My poor, stressed out grey kitten was already in a state over the huge hail storm we’d had the night before. He and I had been upstairs when it started. It was LOUD. SO LOUD. Oliver declared that we needed to go back downstairs. I joined The Boy, looking out the door at the storm, while Oli loudly demanded that we come back to the hallway – the interior space away from windows as the guy on the radio is always saying.

This morning I had the luxury of only having to be at the conference at 7 a.m. So at least I got up at my normal time. 

I had my clothes on, hair and makeup done, and breakfast eaten before I needed to leave so I turned to the grey kitten. “Oliver, let’s go have a quick snuggle before I have to leave.”

Oli sat down and gave me a hard stare. Quick? Leave?

In a way that made it clear that he found NOTHING he liked in that sentence, Oliver stood and walked slowly up the stairs. He flicked his tail with attitude as he turned the corner and left my sight.

No snuggle for The Girl.

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Edge of Your Seat

This morning, Obi completely missed the jump from the mantle to the couch. It looked like a fine jump until he just dropped out of sight. He landed on the cave so he was fine. I mentioned it to The Boy when he came in for the morning belly rub (Obi’s, not mine). He said Obi was having a dorky day; The Boy said the brown kitten had also missed the jump to the window sill in his office.

I didn’t think about it any more until just now when I figured out the truth: Obi didn’t miss the jump to the window sill, he fell out because the new OutTV programming is just that good.

Ladies and gentlemen, you haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen Finches on the Sill.

He really was getting so excited that he’d just fall off the window sill. The finches sat there, casual, as the kitten lunged at them and made all sorts of noise. When I laughed they turned to consider me, then turned back to each other to continue their conversation.

They were so close, Obi could smell them. He’s NEVER been that close to a bird.

Oliver just wants to know what the heck we’re looking at.

Stomp

The other day, Obi had a morning miller. I don’t know where he found it but he brought it to the living room rug to play with it. He’s pretty good at holding them by their legs so they won’t get too soggy and not be able to fly.

After about ten minutes of moth flying and kitten bouncing around the living room, the miller was grounded. It scurried under the heel of my boot to hide. Obi reached under with his paw, lifting the boot off the floor. Then he removed his paw and the boot fell back.

Paw in. Boot up.

Paw out. Boot down.

In. Up.

Out. Down.

Squashed miller. No fun.

***

Obi and Oli, inspecting the squirrel bait.

Lettuce Not Forget…

So. No one thought it was weird that I posted Thunder Thursday on a Tuesday?

This spring, I bought many things to plant in our vegetable garden. I also bought a salad bowl – a bowl of live lettuces that you can pick off as needed for salad. I was skeptical about the whole thing, but I brought it home and put it in the breakfast nook.

It hasn’t done well.

I don’t know how long it was supposed to take to grow back, but shortly after I’d tear some off, the base would disappear. And anything that wilted even slightly would also disappear. I thought The Boy was pruning it.

Then I walked by and saw Obi sitting in his parsley, looking at the salad bowl. I’m not stupid; I knew he would chew on the lettuce. But what actually happened did kind of shock me. Obi is hoarding lettuce.

He picked a leaf of lettuce, clear to the roots, and hopped out of his parsley pot (we have given up on eating this parsley and just let the brown kitten sit in it) and started moving plastic grocery bags around where they were piled on on of the chairs. He dropped the lettuce into the hole he’d made and covered it with a bag.

At this point, Oliver saw me in the kitchen and wanted to know what I was looking at. He walked past me and went to investigate the goings on of the breakfast nook. As Oli stood up tall to look at the bags Obi was moving, the brown kitten became territorial.

MINE! He declared with a punch to the grey kitten’s face. He grabbed his lettuce and jumped to the floor to wolf it down.

Unfortunately, a whole leaf of lettuce will not stay in a small kitten for very long.

Unfortunately, the grocery bags have been moved to a less accessible location.

Unfortunately, Obi’s instinct to hoard the lettuce wasn’t wrong because there is no more. Except he brought this on himself.

Thunder Thursday: A Day in the Office

My friend, Angie, teaches geology at a couple colleges in New Mexico. I like this job because she works weird hours, like I do, so we IM each other a lot during the day. It’s nice to have someone to talk to. I mean, yes, I’m talking to other people – through my keyboard – all day. But she’s the one I can be privately snarky with.

But that all changes in the summer. She takes her kids – sometimes her husband if he doesn’t have to work – and they wander around the country. We still IM and text all day. But sometimes not. I hate summer.

BUT! They have taken a break from gallivanting for a little bit. So today, Angie was saying how typical it was that when her desk is spotless, Maggie the Cat wants nothing to do with her. When it is “overrun,” that’s where the cat wants to be. I nodded and was about to type in that I totally get it. Though with Kitten Thunder there really is no point where they don’t want to be on the desk.

Then I got the pictures. And I have two points to make:

1. This, by my standards, is hardly overrun. Look at all that surface that you can see!

2. It never occurred to me that geologist would have different work stuff than the rest of us on their desk.

Weights with no paper.

***

In other desk related news, Oliver and Obi’s birthday is July 27. Their wish list has been submitted to The Boy.

The Thunder Channel

Jim and Mary live across the street from us. We don’t talk a lot about them because Kitten Thunder doesn’t seem terribly interested in what goes on past our sidewalk. But, if they are looking at their OutTV, this is what they would see this week on The Thunder Channel:

The light goes on on the porch at dusk and the front door, if it wasn’t already, is open so you can see light through the front screen. The Girl, holding the brown kitten, look out the windows of the screen. Sometimes they step out on the porch and look at the walls of the outside entry. Then they go inside.

A while later, the entry way light goes on and the porch light goes off. The Girl and the brown kitten look outside again. The Girl shakes her head and says something to the brown kitten.

Later, the porch light goes back on and The Girl examines the walls and ceiling of the outside entry through the window. She steps outside. Sometimes she holds the door open and waves her hands in the air. Sometimes she brings the brown kitten out and holds him above her head and HE waves his hands in the air.

They go back inside.

A while later, The Girl comes back to the screen door. She is in her pajamas; she wears pants and a t-shirt. She looks all around the outside entry through the screen door. Then she grabs a broom and goes out onto the porch. With one foot, she holds the door open as she sweeps at the ceiling of the outside entry. If a cat gets near the door, she jabs him with the broom as well. The Boy arrives to pick up the cat and turn off the porch light so the only illumination is the inside entryway.

The Boy and The Girl cheer. The lights are turned off and the door is closed.

The Thunder Channel’s evening program, Girl Gets Millers In The House, is over for the night.

***

I’m still dressed and I’ve already caught the first miller of the night. I nudged him off the wall and, as he flew into the air, I swatted him right into the house. Wa HA! I am master miller catcher! He landed on the wall at kitten eye level and Obi promptly knocked him down into the cold air return. The brown kitten wants a new miller. I told him he’d just have to wait for that miller to come back up.

***

Happy Father’s Day to all The Boys out there – whether your children are furry ones or people, you are appreciated. Especially my dad, who taught me the most important skill in the world: the claw.

Can’t Talk

We’re waiting for millers.

We may be waiting for a long time…

What’s Ridiculous

Oliver was stomping on me after work last night. Since he was never going to make a decision on where to lay, I made it for him. You might think he would object to being knocked over and pulled to my side.

You’d be wrong. He stretched out like this for ten minutes while I rubbed his belly and scritched his armpits. But then I got the camera out.

And he stretched.

And ended with his legs together. Like a gentleman.

Obi thought this was ridiculous. You know what else is ridiculous? The complete lack of millers in this house. We worked at it for an hour and only attracted one to the porch – which I did manage to get inside – and he only lasted for ten minutes.

Ridiculous.

 

 

Plumb Crazy

There’s a frost advisory for southeast Wyoming tonight.  That pushed us over the edge from “let’s just turn off the furnace and tough it out” to “let’s close all the windows.”

Kitten Thunder does not approve. Even if we did leave one window on the cat shelf slightly cracked for the afternoon.

 

You call this Smell-o-vision?

I was upstairs because The Boy is working on the leaks in our house and had to run to Home Depot. He called to send me upstairs for a part number. And Kitten Thunder thought they should get me up to date on the project.

It started with just Obi, who explained the project thoroughly.  Then, when Oliver came in, the brown kitten got up on the supervision shelf to see what the grey kitten would add.

Oliver thinks gaskets and O rings look like pretty good toys. When I wouldn’t let him have them, he decided to contemplate that. From his contemplating spot.

As I took this picture, I was contemplating the incredible rust stain that is forming in The Boy’s shower. Hopefully the new whatevers that are needed to stop the dripping will slow down this stain – I just scoured the stains from this shower a couple weeks ago.

Fully caught up on the project, I turned to leave. Oliver had a suggestion:

Let’s go take a nap.

National Hug Your Cat Day

WordPress didn’t want me to post yesterday. Possibly because it knew today was National Hug Your Cat Day and I wouldn’t want to miss that. Obi was okay with being hugged. Oliver, in the big twist, was not. He would have none of my hugging. Which, as he was pushing away from me, put him in the perfect position to get a hug from The Boy.

***

The box fort was getting out of control – ten boxes and a bunch of packing paper will do that when you have 25 pounds of kitten playing in it all day every day. When I mentioned this and went toward the fortress, I think The Boy thought I was going to throw something away. Silly Boy. I rearranged the boxes, now all back in the entry way, and contained the paper within the walls of the fort.

General Obi found my work satisfactory.

The Boy thinks the box fort is still out of control.

***

In case you didn’t realize cat ownership prepares you for parenthood:

THUNderTHUNderTHUNDERthunderTHunDER…
THUNderTHUNderTHUNDERthunderTHunDER…
THUNderTHUNderTHUNDERthunderTHunDER…

BAM!

Silence.

Me: “Is everyone okay?”

Silence.

Me: “Is everyone okay??”

Two kittens come and sit, sedately, in the office. They didn’t do anything. No need to go upstairs. Everything is fine.

***

Oliver DOES TOO fit in this shoe box.

***

It is miller moth season. I know this because everyone is complaining about it on Facebook. But the Thunder house is suffering. We aren’t even guaranteed one miller a night for Obi to play with. We look and look. We turn on the light in the entryway to attract them. We look and hope some more. And, when millers failed to appear last night, Obi’s people wouldn’t even let the scary bug they did manage to attract into the house.

Mean.

***

Obi led The Boy up from the basement just now, straight to the belly rubbing rug. The brown kitten had to go fetch The Boy to discuss his neglect. His need. His unrubbed belly. The Boy went along. But, while the kitten was getting a good pet, The Boy suggested that Obi is silly.

Silly is the same as neglected, right?

The Boy also suggested that maybe, just MAYBE, some people might think Obi is spoiled.

Spoiled is the same as neglected, right?