No Mo Snow

Ah, Wyoming. Where it snows at least once every September. Always. In spite of this being a fact and required by the laws of nature, it always catches us by surprise when the severe weather announcements start.

And we try to deny that is happening.

Which is why it was 40 degrees and raining a fat drizzle on Thursday afternoon when I started the desperate process of bringing plants in from the cold. My pepper plant and eggplant have just started making fruit (remember the hail storm in late June?) so I’m glad they are in pots.

Obi is glad, too.

He’s been asked not to sit in the parsley this year. Nobody said anything about the oregano.

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Neglective

A note from Obi:

Our purrsons did the following things this weekend:

– refinished a dresser
– dry walled the laundry room
– trimmed the plum tree
– started framing a door
– manned the registration desk at a conference
– went to train club
– layout for the weekly edition of Tidbits

You’ll notice, if you are a good purrson, that there are two things missing from this list:

– adequately snuggle with Oliver
– adequately entertain Obi

Seriously, this is a problem. I mean, yes, The Girl did snuggle with Oliver last night during the movie and for a couple hours after The Boy got up this morning. And an hour after she got up. And yes, The Boy did rub my belly ten times or so during the weekend and play with me on the rubbing rug. And sure, The Girl found Funky Chicken for me. And I laid on her lap a couple times.

But it was all just an afterthought between all that stuff they did. The called it “productive.”

I call it neglective.

I’m out,
Obi Wan Kittenobi

***

Here’s a picture of Obi giving us a hard, disapproving stare from the laundry room window as we worked in the garage.

By late afternoon, Kitten Thunder was supervising from the cat shelf.

Weathering the Storm

If you’ve been following the laundry room saga, you know that things didn’t turn out as simple as just popping a door in the wall so we could have a hallway directly from the bottom of the stairs to the spare room. The Boy is an engineer and he can not close his eyes to things done poorly.

So walls came out.

Plumbing has been changed out.

Electricity has been rerun.

This past week, The Boy put in insulation and framed in a new wall. We’re going to gain about six inches in that room by doing things right. BUT. Kitten Thunder does not like all the noise. They are completely over this bit of renovation.

Since they weren’t going to help The Boy, the kittehs were helping me take a nap this afternoon. I’d drifted off on the couch with a grey kitten in my arms and a brown kitten enjoying his own nap on the loveseat. And then…ALARMS!!! I woke up to my phone, The Boy’s work phone, and his personal phone screaming from less than three feet from my head. I managed to read “tornado warning,” grabbed Obi off the loveseat and told Oli to follow me. Which he did. To the top of the stairs.

The Boy was working in the laundry room and they wanted NO part of that.

Their refusal to go downstairs with me gave me enough time to realize that the alarm is not a siren. No need to go to the basement anyway. So I set Obi down and went upstairs to put in my contacts and brush my teeth. And then, SIREN.

Kitten Thunder was in The Boy’s office. I grabbed Oliver and told Obi to follow me. Nope. The Boy was walking up the stairs and I told him that the brown kitten had run into the living room. I heard them arguing about whether everyone had to go into the basement. The Boy won and appeared at the top of the stairs with a mad kitten in his arms.

The cats are both Cheyenne natives. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before – Cheyennites are weather fanatics. After the 2011 storm that wrecked my car, Facebook was full of pictures of cuts and bruises from people that were out looking at the sky when the hail started. And so…

TornadoTV. Obi watched the lower Jeff Channel.

Oliver watched from the lower Lilac Bush Channel, where they generally watch Doves Eating Seeds.

After there was no tornado to be seen, Oliver decided to inspect The Boy’s building abilities by using this water tower as a chin scratcher.

The sirens stopped and the warning expired just as The Boy ran out of things to keep his interest and went back to the laundry room. I set Kitten Thunder free and went to check out the damage.

There was some high powered, horizontal precipitation. The puddle in our bathroom  came all the way to the hall.

We got several inches of marble-sized hail at our house. The tomatoes were on the right side of the house for once. I’m giving up on ever growing zucchini.

As I was taking this picture, a big pit bull came running up the walk toward me. She was very excited about being free. I talked to her for a couple minutes until her frantic owner, whose fence blew over, came down the alley.

Oh! And then this happened.

Because whenever our tornado siren goes off, we immediately also get a flash flood warning…thunderstorms, you know. A local posted this picture of EMT Brian Mills pulling a raccoon out of the flood water. After this, he wrapped it up in a towel and held it for a while – which is a step past what even I would do for a wild critter. What a guy.

Oliver just walked in to my office. Weren’t we taking a nap?

OutTV Expansion

You know how your cable provider is always adding new channels of quality programming without increasing the cost? Yeah, me neither. But The Boy is better than the cable company. Last week, Obi was eager to show me what he and The Boy had done in the laundry room.

He started low, to build suspense. He really likes the climbing wall that The Boy exposed.

But look! A NEW channel of OutTV! We’re not exactly sure why they covered this window with a wall. Obi very much enjoys sitting on that piece of wood, where he can rest while watching the new channel.

He was certain The Boy would leave it there.

Because why would you mess with such an awesome climbing wall?

While Obi was showing me this, The Boy brought down some insulation. And Oliver watched from a safe distance.

 

Right after this, The Boy got the thumbs up from me and took out the climbing wall. Obi is mad. But he’ll be happy in the long run – a new window and a very deep sill are in the works.

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.

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.

A Very Special OutTV Crossover Episode

As you know, I put our leftover bread on the window sills to attract OutTV programming for Kitten Thunder. The one bad thing about bread during the spring, though, is that squirrels tend to take their meals and run. I’ve always assumed they were taking it home to their kittens.

This week, at least, I was wrong.

Obi and I were in the breakfast nook, watching a squirrel hang upside down from a branch to eat seeds out of the bird feeder. The birds were landing, looking ticked off, then noticing the copious amount of seed on the ground then would shrug and chow down. Since I had bread to give…I gave.

“Would you like some bread?” I asked the squirrel. He was hanging upside down still, looking worried that he was going to have to get away. But I tore up some bread and left it on the porch for him.

Inside, Obi and I watched. The squirrel approached the bread. He grabbed two pieces, jammed them into his mouth, and climbed up the side of the house onto the roof out of sight. Obi and I made eye contact. We did not approve.

A while later, I was straightening the cat shelf blankets up in the reading nook and talking to Oliver. I heard the pitter patter of feet on the roof. They pittered up one side and pattered down the other. Outside, the squirrel came into view with a mouth full of bread. He ran to the end of the garage and hopped into a tree. And there…he ate the bread.

Then he went back to the porch.

Then he came back to the tree.

And I heard the pitter patter of bigger feet. Obi was on to this special OutTV program. He came running up the stairs and flew up to the cat shelf. When the squirrel returned to the porch, the brown kitten tore down to the dining room to watch.

Oliver and I approved.

***

In actual television news this week, The Boy and I decided to get rid of cable and start streaming our screen entertainment. I hear there are special channels for cats.

The screen saver seems to work for now.

The First Smell-O-Vision of Spring

I’m sitting in front of the space heater in my office because it’s the coldest room in the house. Colder than the basement, somehow.

But it is 61 degrees outside so Kitten Thunder is enjoying some smell-o-vision upstairs on the cat shelf.

 

The expected high temperature tomorrow is 33 degrees.  Ah, springtime in the Rockies.

Inroads

It was state hockey weekend again and that meant lots of visitors for Kitten Thunder. My parents, along with Cousin Jigger, stayed at our house. And, since my nephew’s games were at way-too-early a.m., my niece also stayed with us.

The biggest issue Oliver and Obi has is that Lexi didn’t bring Barbi with her. What good is a little girl without a doll? So she bought one on Saturday – both cats helped get her out of the packaging and tried out her hands for chin scritching.

Meanwhile, on the dog front, things went a little more smoothly. No one got punched in the nose. Kitten Thunder spent most of their time in the living room with us…watching. It started out a little tense. But as the weekend went by, everyone calmed down.

Then, everyone discovered they have an interest in common.

Who doesn’t like squirrel watching?

***

An hour after everyone left yesterday, the squirrel came to the window sill and looked in at me on the couch. He wanted to know where his audience was.

***

This morning, I was glad that the audience was gone: spring has arrived an OutTV is a tiny bit pornographic. I’m thinking about piping mood music out to the front porch.

Not that they seem to need music.

 

Squirrels on Rye

The Boy and I don’t eat the same kind of bread. Being the only people in our house, we hardly ever finish a loaf of bread before it gets stale or molds or I just buy another loaf because I forgot to see what we had before I went to the store. This leads to a lot of extra bread.

Squirrel bait.

The same happens with tortillas, though not as often. When it was -20 degrees, I wasn’t putting out food because squirrels aren’t crazy. That is the exact type of weather that they store nuts or whatever for. So we had a surplus.

A giant stacks of the ends of breads and tortilla dregs. I did what anyone would do in this circumstance: I set up a taste test.

The results: Squirrels prefer rye bread over tortillas. But they’ll eat them both.

Next week we’ll be testing to see if they like my wheat bread over rye. Seriously…who wouldn’t?