The Farm Report

It’s been a while since we checked in on the farm and there have been many changes. For one thing, the farmer sold some of his land to the railroad and they built a storage facility.

After they started building, the farmer got to thinking.

He’s a little concerned about the facility. Seems they forgot to take into account the location of his homestead, the original family farmhouse, between the storage building and the tracks. How are they planning to get vehicles up to those bay doors?

As always, though, something else presents itself to distract him from these small worries.

There’s always something bigger.

Much, much bigger.

Advertisement

A Plea From Obi

Dear people of the world,

We’ve had a very disturbing day. The Boy continues his efforts to ruin the laundry room. I even hid up in the ceiling to show him how valuable the space was in case there were ever intruders. But, after he closed up the ceiling with me in it, he seemed more irritated by my hiding than impressed. He took the piece of ceiling out and took me up to The Girl. I was held captive until he finished closing up all my hidey holes.

Rude.

Then The Girl started cleaning. And not normal cleaning. It’s Company is Coming cleaning. But even worse than usual. She went crazy and started throwing out things we need.

Oliver and I tried to talk some sense into her. Yes, we have not used the giant bag of tissue paper for several months. Yes, someone peed in it. But we got this bag as part of the celebration when we officially adopted The Boy. We got his last name and this awesome bag. Why would you ever throw this out? I mean, have you seen our last name? That was NOT the best part of the deal – it takes The Girl three minutes to scold us by our full names now.

She also downgraded our fortress to two boxes and one piece of packing paper. Then she took the two shopping bags out of my fort and folded the sheet so it only takes up half as much room.

Ultra rude.

She posted the evidence of her wrongdoing, the above picture, on Facebook. Our Aunt Staci tried to make light of our plight by assuring us that they would be doing lots of shopping while they are here next weekend. They will bring us new bags.

This is stupid. Why would we settle for new bags when we could have MORE bags? It’s not like we’re running out of room.

But then it hit me. Aunt Staci actually believes this was a reasonable statement on her part. My poor cousins! While I have never met Cousins Puck and Bo, they deserve better than a family that limits their access to boxes and bags.

It really makes you think. No matter how bad your life is, things can always be worse.

Back to the plea. As soon as The Girl sat down, I jumped into her lap as a delaying tactic.

I can’t hold out forever. Bring tuna.

Fuzzy Butt

I had a lot in my plate Friday. After a busy morning, I decided I needed to run home and eat something. And that’s when the productivity ended.

You see, as I was blending my smoothie I looked down and noticed Oliver licking his backside. And I noticed the bright magenta patch of glowing ouchiness at the base of his tail. And the world came to a screeching halt.

If you’ve ever had a male cat you’ve been warned about the dangers of urinary tract infections. How they can become serious very quickly. How they can be deadly if complications arise.

This is why I was on the floor, wrestling with my 14 pound cat so I could look at his butt.

Oddly, he was less than cooperative.

Since it was Friday afternoon, I decided to call Doctor Tiffany and have her check him out just in case. If nothing else he could get a shot for his allergies. And I could avoid a possible emergency visit over the weekend.

And it turned out fine. He got a shot for his allergies which is a probable cause for his itchy bottom (not anything near his boy bits). He got a shot for the infection he’d licked his way into. And he got his annual exam that was coming due anyway – two more shots. All of that he tolerated while sitting in my lap, doing his best imitation of a mean cat.

But, just to make sure there was no hidden issue, Doctor T wanted to probe his anal glands. She told me that even though this was all going to happen in the outside – unlike in dogs – Oliver was not going to be happy.

Indeed, unhappy is what Oli was.

I held him close and ignored the toe nails digging into my side – I guess he felt he needed traction. Oliver yelled out his objections. And Obi came to lick his brother’s face in comfort.

Then it was done.

Doctor Tiffany got out treats to reward Obi for being such a good brother. She tossed one to Oliver where he was bathing himself angrily. He ate it.

“That’s the closest you’ll ever get to him on his free will,” I said.

“Challenge accepted,” she said.

It took five treats to lure the grey kitten back into the living room and close enough that she could pet him while he ate. Glad I didn’t lose any money on that bet.

After Tiffany left, I got some work done and Kitten Thunder took a nap. By Saturday morning there was no sign of any infection, except that I can’t really call Oli Fuzzy Butt – one of his nicknames – until the five inch bald spot he created starts to grow back in.

We watched Reign and didn’t talk about how long MY wounds (five or six long scratches in my side) will take to heal.

Oliver loves Reign.

Conundrum

When I last posted, we were wondering what poor Obi would do about belly rubs now that the quilt is off the floor. At lunch time he had tried to talk The Boy into going into the fort with him.

That didn’t happen.

So what did the brown kitten do for his after work belly rub? Did he…

A) Do a belly flop onto the fort to collapse the whole thing?

B) Decide to get his belly rub on the quilt, now wadded up in a pile on the couch?

C) Decide that a piece of brown packing paper on the other side of the room was the proper place for belly rubbing.

D) Try really hard to find belly rubs on the basement carpet satisfying.

The answer is…E) all of the above.

Tuesday was a horrible night for Obi as he tried desperately to get a decent belly rub. None of these options worked for him. Two days later there is still no solution.

To make matters worse, he REALLY likes the fort. He plays in it all day.

Life is so hard for an abused brown kitten.

I suggested, while The Boy and Obi were trying to complete a morning belly rub today, that maybe he should just get his belly rubbed right there on the rug where it used to happen. Obi glared at me and walked away.

The Boy pointed out that Obi has never liked this rug. It was the old rug that was the belly rubbing rug.

Oh.

Poor abused brown kitten. The Boy giveth and The Girl taketh away.

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.

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.

 

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.

La-Z Boys…or…The Boycliner

I was going to write a post mocking Kitten Thunder’s pain. They are so tortured, having to put up with pictures when they sleep in the box on the desk. Seriously, it is bad enough that I’ve taken to working at my desk instead of on the the couch.

But then I walked out into the living room to ask The Boy if he was hungry. Because I was full of the empty. And there, on the recliner, I saw Oliver laying on the armrest next to his Boy. He looked bored. And put down upon.

After a while, The Boy said he was in fact hungry. We discussed plans for dinner. “Food,” I suggested. Then The Boy asked for specifics. I reminded him that the plan, when we made a plan on Saturday, was spaghetti. Spaghetti, he said, still seemed like a goo plan.

But he didn’t get up.

And he didn’t get up.

Finally, The Boy pointed out that he would disturb Kitten Thunder if he got up to cook.

Since all my boys were on the recliner, I got up and mumbled something about boiling water and using the white box. I went into the kitchen.

That did the trick.

Obi and The Boy were suddenly inspired to help me. Oliver was more than happy to take over the warm spot in the recliner.

 

Super Bowl

You may have heard…there was a big game today. And, since Denver is just 90 minutes downhill from Cheyenne, we have a larger than average number of Broncos fans here. So, this year, I actually watched the game AND the commercials. We did stay home to watch it because the commercials and the conversations about those commercials on Twitter are important to me.

Plus. Sad Broncos fans.

But there were important things learned today.

First, Oliver loves the Kitten Bowl. We watched it while we were waiting for the pregame commentary to finish up. Oli, personally, could have watched it all night. By the end of the game, The Boy was thinking HE would rather watch the Kitten Bowl. Okay, not really.

Second, The Boy has never heard of the Puppy Bowl. I switched over at half time to try to watch feline half time. It wasn’t on. But there was a big puppy picking on a chihuahua and I started yelling “unnecessary roughness! Where’s the ref?” The Boy had just enough time to give me a weird look before the ref stepped in and made the call, telling the big puppy to play with dogs his own size.

Third, If Tail is giving you attitude and you grab him to keep him from slapping the grey kitten in the face? You can wag a brown kitten. Obi joined Oliver on my lap. When I held his tail down, he wagged himself right off the couch. This, evidently, was my fault.

Fourth, Twitter is the best thing ever for nights like this. Not only did I get to enjoy snarky comments – about Chrysler’s ad agency not realizing they’re owned by Italians, and Jaguar forgetting they are owned by an Indian company, plus thousands of Americans losing their minds over Coca-Cola recognizing that our country is multicultural (some clever tweets, some just really sad) – I also got to follow the Puppy Bowl, the Kitten Bowl, AND the Super Bowl at the same time. Plus, did you know there was also a FISH BOWL!?! I didn’t find out about that until the end.

Fifth, The Boy and I can spend five minutes trying to combine the words Twitter and snarky. It is not possible to say “twnarky.”

Sixth, did you just try to say “twnarky?” You did. I know you did.

Seventh, Oliver snuggles for approximately 22 minutes at a time. Then he has to get up to eat something. Then he comes back. Then he gets up to grab a sip of water. Then he comes back to snort the water he inhaled onto me. Then he gets up for a snack. Then he comes back. Then he needs to pee…

Eighth, if you laugh at commercials you will disturb the kittens.

It’s rude to disturb the kittens.

So, in summary. Twitter? Good. Commercials? Good. Game? We weren’t bowled over.

 

Drawing the Line

A couple months ago, I bought some organizers for our kitchen cabinet to help with the leaning towers of pots. The organizers went, promptly, into my office. There they sat until last week…when I put the bag in front of the cabinet to inspire action. The Boy was inspired to sweep the kitchen and moved the bag into the breakfast nook. Where it stayed.

But, for some reason, I am inspired to get more done on a Sunday afternoon than the rest of the week combined. I work out. I go to the grocery store. I do dishes. And today I put the organizers in the cupboard. Honestly, I don’t think it helped at all.

But I did learn some things:

1. The Boy will keep anything that is well made, even if we never use it or we’re missing a piece. Turns out, we have a pressure cooker. That doesn’t work.

2. I don’t care enough to throw things away just because I think it is silly that The Boy keeps them*. We still have a nonfunctional pressure cooker.

3. I also noticed that we have the toaster oven, for which I have bought two replacements, stored in a cabinet. It is true that I replaced it mostly because it was ugly. But that one, and the little red one that proved to be more style than function, could really go. Unless someone wants to come over for a toast party. TOAST FOR 15!

3. We also have a strainer that nests into the big pot we make spaghetti with so that all you have to do is lift it out and voila! Strained pasta.

4. Obi will help organize a cupboard.

5. Obi is not particularly helpful when he helps organize a cupboard.

6. The fastest way to get Obi out of the cupboard he is helping to organize is to ask The Boy to hand you your camera.

Kitten gone. Cabinet organized…ish.

Nothing toasted, pressurized or strained in the process.

 

* It is worth noting that I also don’t throw things away. I am working on paring my wardrobe down to one closet (plus the sweater closet, of course). Much of my wardrobe doesn’t fit or is no longer appropriate for my age. Those items conceal items that DO fit and that I SHOULD be wearing. Such as, for example, the jeans I am wearing right now. I found them on Thursday and a) am amazed by how perfectly they fit and b) have no recollection of buying them or owning them in the past.