Buddy The Escape Artist

Ever since Keith started letting the cats explore the backyard for a few hours each day Buddy has been a big pain in the you know what when he can't go outside. We watched Life of Pi last night and I think I'll be changing his name to Richard Parker because he reminds me so much of that hungry wild tiger. Buddy roams around the house growling (which of course sounds more like a meow), pacing and rubbing on things and if he were bigger I'm sure he would think seriously about eating us.

Early this morning Keith was awakened just in time to see Buddy's tail going out the window after he discovered that he could pull on the rubber stuff that holds the screen in and make a nice opening in the bottom of the screen, an opening just big enough for a cat to jump to freedom through. Keith grabbed his tail and hauled him back in and I'm really surprised that Buddy didn't bite and scratch him, but in the process of pulling him back in the window, the screen was totally ruined.

Please disregard the sad state of our backyard and the shed door wide open in these pictures.

Anyway, Life of Pi was pretty good, Keith was getting bored up until the shipwreck, though. I had read the book recently, which of course was better than the movie because books can go into more detail and there were parts of the book that were left out of the movie, like the fact that there were bloody dead animal parts in the bottom of the boat, not to mention cat vomit and pee. I got to thinking about how messy a tiger would be, it's bad enough cleaning up little cat vomit, hairballs, and poop. Tiger hairballs must be huge.

We are having a very very hot weekend, so it is a good thing that we decided to postpone (indefinitely) the barbecue that we were going to have since everyone would have been totally miserable sitting outside in the almost 100 degrees that we had yesterday. Not to mention the drive up and back where you have to turn off your air conditioners when you are going up the sides of mountains.

I decided to clean out my kitchen cupboards this past week and got some new contact paper shelf liner stuff but it was a waste of time because the contact paper doesn't want to stick too well and is already curling up. It's this new kind that is supposed to be easily removed later and I guess that later is 2 days after you stick the stuff down. So, back to the drawing board on that and maybe I'll just lay down some butcher paper or something. I had some of that shelf liner in there that is kind of rubbery but every time you try to put something in the cupboard, like baking dishes, the rubbery stuff kind of sticks to the bottom of whatever you are putting in the cupboard and moves around. Annoying.

I'm also trying to cook more of a variety of meals and once again went to the Goodwill bookstore and got a bunch of those little cookbooks for 29c each, plus a stack of paperback novels for 99c each. Yesterday I had a whole box full of books and a bag for what didn't fit in the box for a grand total of $19.99. About the price of 1 1/2 new paperbacks. Score!

Bad Lucy!

Does this innocent face look like a bad kitty to you? Well, yesterday she was the baddest I've ever seen her be.

I was in the workroom all morning pouring resin on my new line of wood coasters. Wood coasters instead of ceramic tile because the ceramic tile ones seem to get ruined by resin seeping under the edges of the paper too easily, wood tiles because the paper can go all the way to the edge which seems to keep that resin from seeping so much. Plus they are unbreakable and much lighter weight making them much cheaper to ship. Anyway. I had resined tiles all laid out on cookie sheets, all covered up in a big stack, and I went into the kitchen for a minute and hear big crashing and banging sounds coming from the workroom and I'm thinking somebody has knocked over all the cookie sheets and there will be resin all over the place and a huge huge mess in there.

The cookie sheets were untouched but as I'm heading back to the workroom here comes Harri streaking out of the room with Lucy right behind her. They raced around the living room, Harri hissing and Lucy growling and back into the workroom, around the workroom, into the bedroom where Harri takes refuge under the bed. Lucy's hackles are raised and every other cat is freaked out and running around the house. WHAT'S HAPPENING!?! OHMYGOD!

I yelled at Lucy and she stopped, looking up at me all innocent with that 'who me?' look on her face. Pepper was all upset and she starts growling at everyone. Bear is terrified and looks kind of guilty, too. Harri is still hiding under the bed. Where she stayed for the next four hours.

I don't know why the three little cats take such delight in chasing Harri around, but I'm thinking I may need to get a holster and carry around the squirt bottle of water so that I can squirt them every time they even look like they might be thinking of chasing her. She's so timid as it is, now she's really going to be looking over her shoulder all the time.

Poor Harri!