No Matter Weather You Like It

So… It is cold in Alaska. And snowing in the northeast. At least this is what they are saying on the Book of Face. I wouldn’t know because I don’t watch the weather.

And because in Cheyenne – that’s Wyoming – it is in the 60s. In January.

This is bad news for hockey players with outdoor rinks. But it is great news for kittens.

Smell-o-vision is ON.

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Muted

Obi here.

The Girl is still sick and Oliver is giving her purr therapy. Let me tell you what I think is wrong with her.

Aunt Staci turned off OutTV. She slept on the couch and didn’t want it distracting her or something. I thought it would be turned back on but then it got really cold outside.

Really cold.

So cold that it is cold inside, too. The people turned off ALL the OutTV in the house to protect us.

That can’t be healthy.

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.

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.

Fleet-o-vision

For dinner tonight, we had dark cherry pork loin that I made in the crock pot. We also made the last of our Japanese yams. I sliced them thin so I could saute them quickly. And, as happens when I am near the white cooking box, there was smoke.

Obi did not approve.

The Boy proactively pulled the smoke alarm off the wall.

Yeah.

So, as The Boy was finishing up the salad, I opened a window in the breakfast nook and the window in the powder room to clear out some of the smoke. Then we went to the living room to eat.

Obi and Oli were very consciously NOT coveting The Boy’s meal. Obi was on the back of the chair. Oli was on the arm of the chair.

I ate in peace.

When dinner was over, I closed the windows. “No!” Obi cried. He was watching that! But, while it is warmer in Wyoming than the rest of the country for some reason, it was still only 40 degrees and smell-o-vision was indeed turned off.

There was nothing for Kitten Thunder to do but retire to the condo and glare at girl-o-vision.

The Fruitless Covet

On Sundays, The Boy and I have salmon for dinner. And Kitten Thunder gets to lick the plates. It’s a nice tradition. Today, though, the shelves at Albertsons were bare due to shipments not arriving. I’m thinking the weather, not so bad here, was bad enough to close roads elsewhere.

So we have no milk.

And we got no salmon.

Instead, we had some tasty cow. The Boy used the grill – it was a balmy -8 degrees at the time – to cook the cow and romaine halves while I sauteed some yams inside. The kittehs were excited.

Obi kept getting up on the coffee table, at eye level with our plates on the TV trays. He is not allowed on the table during dinner. He knows this. But this knowledge did not keep him on the floor.

Oliver had a different plan. He waited patiently at our feet. He was actively NOT coveting the food, never looking up at us. On any other night, we’d have been pleased by this behavior and rewarded him.

But there was no reward for the grey kitten.

Steak juice makes Oliver explode.

And there was no reward for the brown kitten. Because he was bad…and because it would be wrong to give him steak juice in front of his brother.

We rinsed the plates the old fashioned way – in the sink – and put them in the dishwasher.

And Oliver settled for a snuggle.

***

Obi, inspired by the book he read last week, has written a kittaiku about the event:

Grey kitten eats beef
His stomach then rejects it
So brown kitten suffers

There’s Nothing on TV

Right this moment in Cheyenne it is eight degrees below zero. Even by Wyoming standards, that’s a wee bit chilly. In fact, a bunch of people have looked it up and we’re colder than many places in Alaska this week.

Aside from the five hours I had to walk around the downtown area in a blizzard (on Tuesday) and in below zero temperatures (Wednesday), I’ve been blissfully enjoying a career that involves my house, the couch, a blanket and a cat. And a computer, of course.

This morning, though, I realized that the furnace had been running for a while. Like, since I got up. And before that. And, more importantly, I was still shivering under my blanket.

Looking around at my bright, sunny house I realized that drastic measures had to be taken in light of the frigid temperatures. Everyone was going to have to make some sacrifices for the good of the house. Unfortunately…

We were going to have to turn off OutTV.

I went from room to room, dropping our blinds all the way to the bottom sill of each window. At first Obi was interested in what i was doing. Then he realized my intentions and was horrified.

He raced me from one window to the next. “I’m watching this channel!” But I turned it off. To the next window. “This is my favorite program!” Off.

All the programming isn’t off. I didn’t have the heart to turn the OutTV all the way off by the kitty condo. I pulled the drapes nearly closed and dropped the blinds down except for about four inches at the bottom. On, but turned way down. Also, the blinds are broken in the front window so I couldn’t turn OutTV off.

Though without dogs walking, runners running, squirrels scampering or birds hopping…there’s nothing good on OutTV anyway.

More Man’s Work

I was sitting on the couch yesterday when Oliver came down to lay on my lap. The Boy was knocking a hole in the side of the house, upstairs, and it had disturbed his nap. The grey kitten did not approve.

Obi was all over it.

While The Boy was on a run to Home Depot, the brown kitten showed me his project.

Then The Boy returned.

Oliver came up to see what we were doing. He looked at me with “let’s go take a nap” eyes. I did return to the couch because I had some work to do on my laptop. But The Boy’s work bothered the grey kitten even there – a ladder right next to him on OutTV was not a restful thing.

While The Boy was outside on the ladder, Obi was still upstairs…hanging head and shoulders out of the hole in the wall where a window had been. The Boy did not approve.

This would be a good place to say that The Boy primed a new window sill and put it in. And it was too big, so the window didn’t fit. BUT! When he trimmed it down it was perfectly level so the window went in with no shimming needed. TA DAAA!

This is also a good place to say that I did not sit on the couch, napping and eating bon-bons, while my husband worked. I did my regularly scheduled work on the computer. Then I cleared leaves from around the foundation so it could dry out – today I was supposed to be recaulking in the driveway and pulling out the section of wall that is water damaged. But, because of this plan, it is raining and snowing.

Nothing is drying out.

This morning, The Boy came up and started trimming away excess spray foam from the window. Oliver and I were still in bed. I lifted my head to see what was happening. “Stay,” said the grey kitten, putting a paw on my shoulder.

Obi was supervising the work from the counter. When he noticed the Oli and I were awake, he started to walk toward us. But he walked over the decal that had been on the new window and his feet stuck to it. It was disturbing. It inspired a bath.

Hours later, the window is close to being done. The Boy had to go to a train meeting, but when he comes back he will put up the last bit of trim and seal things like crazy. It looks great. And it will be so nice to have light in the room – the old wood-framed window was covered by an icky piece of plastic so we kept the shower curtain closed to hide it.

During a run to Home Depot, Obi took a nap on my lap. He told me to be sure to let you know that he never would have been able to do this project without The Boy.

The Boy is an excellent helper.

Snow Go

Obi is waiting for someone to be unsuspecting. Oddly, no one is falling into his clever trap.

I didn’t blog last night because The Boy and I have a party to go to in Jackson tonight and I needed to get all my work for today done last night. Then this happened.

Technically, we could still get to Jackson for the party. But an eight hour drive through slushy pick – which hit the entire state – for a four hour party with total strangers? It just didn’t seem worth it at 6 a.m. Especially with the Grand Teton and Yellowstone being closed; the original plan was to stay two nights and visit our parks.

So instead, this happened.

Oliver thinks we should declare a snow day. I told him we will absolutely work from the couch all day but we will, in fact, do some work. He has left me, alone on the couch, in protest.

***

Not cat related, but worth telling:

Since I crawled back into bed after feeding the cats and checking road conditions, I had time for a bonus dream. I often have dreams about stepping in to help local newsman Bob Geha anchor the news. I’m usually excellent at this. Not today.

First, we didn’t have chairs or a desk so we were sitting on the floor.

Second, instead of doing a short summary and tossing it to the meteorologist, I gave the entire weather report. Poorly.

Then, at the first commercial break I realized I’d just gotten out of the shower and had a towel on my head. I took that off, tousled my hair and started looking for clothes. I found a Christmas sweater. This turned out to be appropriated because – before I could find pants – they introduced me to a small dog in Christmas clothes that was my next segment. I had time to meet Jerry the dog and learned how to make her smile at the camera before we went back on air.

Then the segment started…and I realized I didn’t know why we were talking about Jerry? Was this for an event? A charity? So I started describing this tiny dog. As a mix of a toy poodle and…a malamute.

This, luckily, is where I woke up. Right before a segment with a large Indian family (I’m reading a book about Bengal). I’m hoping that no one in my dreams recorded this episode; it will totally ruin my chances for dream substituting for future newscasts.

Man’s Work

It is still raining. You’ve probably seen on the news about Colorado, this is one of those times that I’m happy that “the other square state” isn’t getting national attention. We’re getting all the rain and much less flooding. So we’re free to send our focus, our support and our troops and firemen to our friends to the south.

But we’re sick of the rain.

While we are expecting warmer weather to return, nine days without sun has gotten us thinking about winter. A second blanket has come out so we can keep the window open at night. Kitten Thunder is back to sleeping with us all night – Obi sleeps elsewhere all summer.

And The Boy decided to take some measures to see if my office can be slightly warmer than the North Pole this winter. Kitten Thunder had been catching up on television shows we missed this week, but then they heard noises in the basement.

Man stuff.

Both kittens went down to supervise The Boy. He came up briefly for something or another and verified that is where they were. He told me he was taking the humidifier off our furnace. This could be leaking a lot of warm air that should be going upstairs.

There was clunking and banging and the sound of sawing.

Man noises.

Then I heard The Boy’s voice from directly below the couch – traveling through the ductwork. “Obi!”

I grabbed the camera in case there was something that needed to be blogged going on. Oliver met me at the bottom of the stairs to tattle. He had a big story to tell. As I turned the corner from the stairs, The Boy turned the corner from the train room.

“Obi,” he said. “Is in the furnace ducts.” The Boy was gesturing at the ceiling. “I don’t know if he can’t get out or if he just doesn’t want to.”

I strolled into the utility room. Camera forgotten. There was my brown kitten, staring at me from the furnace. “How did you get up there?” I asked Obi, he was well above eye level.

Climbed. Obviously.

I reached for him and couldn’t find anything to grab before he backed away. He came back to the opening and I reached again. He backed away. I stuck my head in, looking straight down into the dark cavern of furnace. He came back to the opening to look with me.

Maybe he did need help. He let me grab him.

The Boy needed things from Home Depot and headed off on his second trip to the store. He closed the utility door behind us as I carried the brown kitten upstairs.

Obi decided to help me with my afternoon project – knitting a scarf with pockets at the end, just in case the temperatures are still polar in my office.

Mom stuff.