Don’t you love it when you set out to do a “job” and end up having to accomplish twelve other tasks before you get around to it?
Maybe it’s just me.
Or maybe it’s living with twelve cats.
The day started out with hanging another string of prayer flags in a window, in the hope it will prevent more bird strikes.
There was another thud the other day as a bluejay hit the glass and yesterday Grant found a dead jay nearby.
The bird had flown off, but I remember reading that usually birds do not survive long if they hit a window.
At my last house I invested in special screens to prevent bird casualties and I think they helped, but they were expensive and they darkened the house.
And they got messy.
Twelve cats is enough mess.
How I got from hanging a prayer flag in a window to fighting with the washing machine, I’m not quite sure.
It being an unseasonably cool day, I was feeling chilly, but a spot of house cleaning soon warmed me up.
There was a vomit mark on a rug which, by the time I got back to I couldn’t find, but never mind there was another.
Never a shortage of those.
The house is awash with boxes. Cats love them, as I think everyone knows, and just about every box that enters this house gets appropriated by one of them.
How did I get to boxes…
Oh, yes. I went to get another string of prayer flags and my nose wrinkled up….uh oh…something not good around here…
..and there was a telltale conglomeration of blankets in one of the favoured boxes. Yup. Pee.
Poor Sophia (that’s her up there) is very timid and her wretched little pals chase her, just because….they’re CATS.
Sophia gets so terrified, she loses control.
Not her fault. If only she would turn around and smack the perpetrators, they would stop.
Butter wouldn’t melt….right?
To my dismay, I have to admit, my child, my sweet, beloved, my dear little Willow is one of Sophia’s terrorists.
Of course, Sophia’s box contains not just a couple of blankets, but a proper bed with a cover, with an under cover…all now needing to be washed.
Enter Grant.
For days, I’ve been saying we should get rid of some of these boxes. It’s getting so we can’t move in here.
But today it was his idea, so he seized Sophia’s old box, now abandoned, and he yanked a blanket out of that.
“Phew”, he said and then shook the thing all over the room. Men don’t have the sense they are born with.
Having been rid of all the loose bits of food and poo and dust, this blanket was ejected into the down-pouring rain.
So, by the time I got finished vacuuming and stuffing the reluctant washing machine and cleaning old vomit stains and the pile of litter Blackie had shoveled out of a box, I was nicely warmed up.
However, I then went to retrieve the ejected blanket and it was so disgusting, I had to stand there in the rain pulling months of fluff off it. I didn’t want that indoors.
“This is no way to run a household”, I thought. “These boxes need checking every day, um, every week, um…”
You really don’t want 14 boxes distributed around the house, with their assorted beds and blankets, because they represent an awful lot of cleaning.
Another of my favourite words, cleaning.
It’s such a waste of time. The minute you clean something, it gets dirty again. I don’t know how. It just does. So why bother?
But I guess that sort of thinking is how some people live in squalor and I really don’t fancy being squalid.
But the pussies love their boxes and beds and blankets and….how many things is Toby actually lying on there?
In order to de-fluff or, God-forbid, wash any of these things, you have first to get the cat off it.
And that’s why fluff accumulates.
Eventually I did get the prayer flags up.
We don’t want any more corpses.
Life with cats….never a dll moment, and never nothing left to accomplish for them! I love this piece, it resonates even though I have only two cats presently, tasks to keep them happy keep me plenty occupied! Your photos are, as always charming and heartwarming! Thank you!
I had 2 cats for about 18 years. No special boxes, beds, pillows etc. They just slept where ever they felt like. But, I suppose that if your cats are used to them it would be a real chore to wean them off them.
They enjoy having a box that is “theirs”. Anything to keep the peace!