The Things You'll do for Your Kids

I was raised around animals...outdoor animals. They required feeding, but little picking up after or other attention. I am not a fan of pets.

But for my kids, we got a dog.

"We'll walk him, Mom. Play with him, Mom. Pick up after him, Mom. Remember to feed him, Mom."

Oh yeah, all the promises.

Did that happen? Of course not. Mom walked the dog. Mom picked up poo. Mom fed and watered the dog. Mom found the dog a new home with people who loved him.

"A smaller pet, Mom. Something we can keep in a cage in our rooms."

And so, for my kids, we got guinea pigs.

This was somewhat better. Mom nagged the kids to feed the gp's. Mom nagged the kids to water the gp's. Mom nagged the kids to clean the gp's cage and give them a bath. Mom said, "keep that away from the gp."

Did that happen? No. Someone forgot. The gp's, who like to gnaw on everything, gnawed on the wrong thing and passed away.

"Can we get a cat, Mom?  Oh, please, oh please?"

And so, for my kids, we got a cat.

And, this time Mom got a feeder that held a half-gallon of water and a self-feeder to hold enough cat food for a weekend away. (Mom refills both.) Mom got a litter box. (Mom empties the litter box.) Mom got cat toys. Mom got a comfy bed for the cat to sleep in. Mom got a scratching post.

The kids love the cat and play with it. Happy kids. Yay!

The cat is driving mom insane. It scatters litter on her bathroom floor. Then it pushes its half-gallon water container all over the floor, sloshing water as it goes until the litter and water has mixed to create a fabulous concrete paste.  Mom has never cleaned her bathroom floor so often in her life.

Oh, and Mom's furniture has scratches.

And so, for Mom, there will be no more pets after the cat.

Shadow Update

Thought I'd give you an update on the cat we got a couple months ago. She's quite spoiled and is enjoying being a house cat. She's totally torn up my curtains and scratched my couch.

Watching her chase her toy mouse or a bouncing ball across our wood floors is hysterical. She can't get any traction and slides all over the place.

I'm not a fan of her wandering the house at night. When I let her do this when she first came to live with us she jumped up on my bed all night long...well, until I was sick of it and put her in the bathroom.  This has become our nightly ritual. When it's bed time, the girls give the cat loves and she gets put in the bathroom with her food, water and litter box.

Due to some half-assed handy work my bathroom door doesn't have a latch. So I can pull it shut and it's pretty tight, but it doesn't actually latch closed. 

When the cat is totally annoyed with being shut in the bathroom she claws under the door at the carpet and such. It's quite funny to see her little paw dart out from under the door.  At least, it was funny until she figured out she could claw at the door...and pull it open.

I didn't believe it until I saw with my own eyes. Strong cat...a bit ingenious too.  If she's that smart why can't she figure out I don't want her in my bed?

The Car Mystery

I’d like to say I was one of those people whose car always smelled fresh off the lot and looks pristine, but I’m not. Probably I won’t be one of those people for several more years. Regardless, I do my best. A couple months back I did a thorough cleaning, vacuumed, washed the windows, the whole nine yards.

A couple days after doing this, I opened the glove box to find a horrible sticky mess. When I cleaned there were a couple ketchup packets and a sweet and sour sauce packet in the car and I had thrown them in the glove box to be used later. At first I thought they’d just leaked and I was annoyed at the mess, but when I picked up the sweet and sour sauce it looked like it had been opened with a can opener.  What in the world!? I asked my son if he’d been playing with it and he said no. My next thought was what freaky bug was in my car! I cleaned up the mess but didn’t find the perpetrator.

About a week later we had grabbed fast food and unbeknownst to me one of the girls left the remains of their burger in the car.  The next day I found crumbs scattered about and once again, wondered what in the world was in my car? I cleaned up the mess but found no more evidence of what was causing the issue. I was beginning to suspect a mouse. An investigation revealed nothing.

Finally, the next day a piece of paper that was in the car had been completely shredded and I knew it must be a mouse. A mouse? In my car?! WTH?!

I went to the store and grabbed a mouse trap. It had a plastic piece designed to look like an orange piece of cheese.  I don’t know who the designers were, but I really think a mouse is going to know that just because it looks like cheese, doesn’t mean it IS cheese. Regardless, I smeared it with peanut butter, set it, and left it in my car.

The next day the trap remained perfectly intact except for one thing. It had been completely licked clean! There wasn’t any evidence it had previously been covered in peanut butter.  Damn that smart mouse!

Frustrated, horrified, and worried it was going to start chewing on my wires, I went back to the store for a real mouse trap. All metal! I was about to leave for a business trip and I didn’t want the mouse traveling with me.

This time I baited not one, not two, but three mouse traps.  Two of the old fashioned metal mouse traps were baited with some “stinky” cheese, a delicious herbed Swiss I’d picked up on a wine tour. Just for the heck of it, I also rebaited the plastic trap with the peanut butter.

When I left the house at 3 AM to drive to the airport, I crossed my fingers that the stupid thing had been caught.  To my simultaneous pleasure and disgust, I caught it! If you’ve never seen a mouse caught in a trap before, let me tell you, its gross.  At least this was because the bar came right down on its skull and its eyes were bugging out.  Ew! However, let me tell you that mouse was smart.  It had once again licked off half the peanut butter.  My guess was it was midlick when it got a whiff of the cheese and decided to check it out.

Yay the mouse was dead!  I’ve lived here for nearly a decade and never seen a mouse before.  I hope to never see one again.  Just in case, however, I decided to get a cat. She’s about four months old. She’s an indoor/outdoor cat, litter box trained and an already experienced mouser.  Right now, she’s pouncing on my keyboard. Maybe she’s a writer in disguise?