Beads, Buddha and prayer flags adorn my mantel. Also two Thai temple rubbings, the one of the right done by my mother. On the left a Garuda…done by me, so long ago!
Sophia never leaves the safety of the living room and soon I imagine she will move back from the sofa box to her box in front of the fire.
There used to be a whole pile of cats by the fire, in various boxes (to keep the peace), but somehow we seem to have acquired almost as many individual heaters as we have cats and they all have a favourite.
Just how this happened, I’m not sure. I think it’s Grant’s master plan for optimum temperature control. Whatever that is.
We spent a lot of time, two years ago, waiting for people to deliver a new fireplace unit when the old one expired just as the weather was getting cold.
Then the thing sat waiting for an installer who had to come twice because the first unit was defective. He was nice, but not pleased. He could hardly keep up with himself.
We decided the man was OK because Sasha, the tart, befriended him. As in she got right in his face, literally. Fortunately he was a cat person.
What we’d not been told was that another person needed to be found to finish off the job, the molding, encasing, basic beautification as it were.
The first of those people who came to look was a gruff individual who barely spoke, did a U turn and marched back out again. I then received a call to say he didn’t want the job.
Convenient because we didn’t want him either.
The next artiste who arrived gawped at our humble fireplace and eventually quoted us a stratospheric fee for what he proposed he might do. If he had time on his busy schedule.
No doubt he was happy as well when we rejected it.
By then I was fed-up with the whole thing.”Hole” being the appropriate word. My only concern was that some nosy cat would decide to investigate behind the fire unit and Sasha probably would have if she could have squeezed her fat butt through the empty space on either side.
Some friends came to visit unexpectedly, but the state of my fireplace was no surprise. Chris has known me a long time and he understands the way things work in my household.
Grant declared that as long as the fire was in use, there was bugger all he could do about titivating the thing. Or MacGyvering it, as he called it. Which I had to admit was reasonable.
There followed, of course, a long cold winter, but we had heat, the cats were happy. Did I care that there was a big gap around the fire unit?
No. I did not.
Some time in May it stopped snowing and with a little “encouragement” Grant finally got the fireplace sorted out before the weather turned cold again!
Where would you be without cardboard boxes?
Where indeed. If I had a pound for every box I ever used…for cats or moving…I would be a wealthy woman!
haha.. world of a traveller. You have an adorable fireplace Yeti, run by the cats !!
Narayan x
Some things you would recognize. I was so privileged to go there. 1986.
Wow. please do not laugh or see me as punk because that is my birth year Yeti, O my! Bowing and Namaste dearest Yeti.
Narayan x
I would never laugh at you, Nara or think you “punk”. It was also the year I was given a 5 week old kitten, a Himalayan…that’s her picture by the way. I had just returned from Tibet (we went overland from Kathmandu). I had dreamed so long of going and I think it was physically quite demanding, but I never noticed any of the discomfort. It was so amazing, at the Friendship Bridge…we had to walk because of landslides and I will never forget placing one foot, then another on Tibetan soil. I was “high” on the experience for months and as you see I keep the images displayed (along with dome Burmese and some Thai temples). The little cat, of course was named Yeti and I have used Yetismith ever since.. My name is really Carolyn. Blessings to you Nara dear XX
Your ‘situation’ with your fireplace sounded a lot like ours … stood next to the wall for almost two years before we could finally get someone to install it (Covid being the excuse). Berto later cut out a picture of a burning fire from a magazine and pasted it on the door of the fire … but I’m also happy to report we (eventually) had use of our fireplace for the last month of winter this year 🔥.