Many hands make light work

Wendy and I went Dumpster diving today, the annual hunt for garden cardboard. I love to cardboard my garden. Weeds are executed by being buried alive (aren’t I a sinister person!), moisture is preserved and the soil enriched when the cardboard decays. We burn any cardboard remnants in our outdoor fireplace. And I get to feel virtuous because I’ve kept trash out of the landfill. A good deal all the way around. After coming up nearly empty on Main Street, we hit paydirt at the farm and home store. Dumpster was full of very good large pieces of cardboard. We filled up Marilyn’s truck bed.

Here’s Wendy unloading the boxes. Last year, I ended up paving garden with cardboard all by myself. That is out of the question this year. My shoulder is still far from healed.

It’s a rather strenuous process, lots of bending and twisting. All I did was to pull staples and peel off tape. They did all the hard work, for which I am very grateful. Looking at those weeds was driving me mad!

Boo says sitting on cardboard is nicer than sitting on bare ground. Enjoy it now, kitty, because cardboard will be covered with grass soon!

"No cat is sleeping with me!"

No, I am not the Bearded Lady. I took Boo’s picture with my new webcam on the day after Christmas 2007.

I could not have my cat with me in the months before Hubby and I got married. My parents kept Midnight. When we returned from our honeymoon, we brought Midnight home.

Hubby said that he did not want to sleep with a cat. He thought he was allergic to kitties and didn’t want one in bed with him. I said nothing. Midnight had slept with me ever since the day I got her as a tiny kitten. She wouldn’t agree with Hubby’s idea of the way things ought to be. And I knew very well that she was not going to be kept away from her mistress without stating her opinion.

When we crawled into bed the night we returned from our honeymoon, Hubby shut the bedroom door in Midnight’s face. She was not amused. She started the most pathetic, piercing howl I’d ever heard her emit. And it went on and on and on. I buried my face in my pillow and bit it to keep from laughing.

Hubby mumbled and grumbled about the awful wailing that came from the other side of our bedroom door. Finally, after about 20 minutes of this ghastly noise, he jumped out of bed and said, “That’s it! She can sleep with us; I can’t stand this noise for one more second!”

He threw open the door.

Midnight immediately ceased her horrendous caterwauling and strutted into the bedroom. Her body was stiff as if she were in a full-dress parade. Her tail was straight up in the air and every step was precise and deliberate. ”I showed you!” She jumped onto my side of the bed and made her bed in my pillow. She looked at Hubby with what can only be described as a triumphant glare, as if to say, “I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing in my bed, but you WILL NOT separate me from my mistress!”

Sadly, we lost our Midnight 10 years ago and Boo came to us.

Hubby again announced that we would have a catless bed. Boo had never slept with me, so he thought he could keep out the new kitty.

Boo also had a different opinion. He sat outside the door making a horrible racket. This time, Hubby didn’t last 20 minutes. After about five minutes, he sighed and opened the door. Boo didn’t act as if he were on parade; he just jumped into bed and curled up between us. He looked positively smug. “I knew no human soft-hearted enough to adopt a stray kitty could resist my caterwauling!”

Does the howling cat always get the bed?

Midnight the middle hitter

I looked through Marilyn’s previous book Bits of Splashes of Rainbows and Feathers to see if she had stories that should also be told in the one we’re working on, Splashes of Rainbows and Feathers.

In previous book, she said that her son’s kitty Scooter liked to chase images on the TV screen.

Our previous cat Midnight was a very sedate, rather prim cat. Her main source of exercise was to flee to the top of the refrigerator any time I touched the vacuum. I had caught her tail in it once when she was hiding underneath the couch. She wanted to be well clear of that wicked, cat-sucking machine. I lived in a tiny house at this time and the vacuum was stored in the bathroom. Nearly every time I went into the bathroom, I touched the vacuum’s handle. Midnight instantly ran for the fridge top.

My TV was perched on an old two-drawer file cabinet on one end of my battered couch. I propped up my head on the couch arm on the other end to watch my little $35 black-and-white TV.

I was hardly ever home, so the TV was rarely on. When I did watch the tube, Midnight usually sat right on my chest, just below my chin. That night, I was very tired and had only enough energy to flop onto the couch to watch the tube. Nebraska volleyball came on. As we watched the action, Midnight’s tail started twitching. She crept toward the TV. I realized that she was stalking it. She inched her way down toward my feet and the TV screen until she was right in front of it. Every time the ball was set, Midnight swatted at the ball. She had a near-perfect hitting percentage. I couldn’t see the game, but I didn’t care. What was happening live was much funnier than what was on screen.

I wanted to roll off the couch with laughter, but I didn’t dare. If I laughed, I feared I’d break the spell. After a hard day, I needed all the entertainment I could find. I was choking on laughter. When I did expel a laugh, I had suppressed it so hard that it sounded more like a sob. Midnight kept turning to see what was wrong with Mistress. Was Mistress distressed? I smiled at her and she turned back to stalking volleyballs.

Finally, I could suppress the guffaws no longer. I started howling with laughter, rolling onto my side and doubling up. Midnight looked back at me reproachfully. I had disturbed her stalking pattern! At this, I laughed so hard I fell off the couch and started rolling on the floor.

Midnight walked over to me, stuck her nose in my face and mewed loudly, as if to say, “Mistress, how am I supposed to catch anything when you make such a commotion!” I howled even louder and she stalked away in disgust. I could just hear her thoughts: “Humans are SO WEIRD!”

Boo and the Christmas trees

Mr. Boo Kitty loves Christmas. Or maybe he just loves the Christmas trees!

As soon as we put up the trees and cover the base with a tree skirt, Boo has to curl up underneath them. He seems to favor the little tree during the day and the big tree at night. He doesn’t climb the tree or swat the ornaments as he did when he was a kitten. I do tie the little tree onto the sideboard so he can’t knock it off and we hang fragile ornaments out of the kitty’s reach, just in case.

When we began putting the Christmas village under the big tree last year, I thought Boo would no longer be able to curl up underneath that tree.

I thought wrong.

He daintily between the houses and curls up around the tree pole. I think of Azrael chasing the Smurfs. “Papa Smurf! Papa Smurf! Azrael is looking in the window! What are we going to do?”

Azrael/Boo Kitty doesn’t seem to notice any village dwellers. He just snoozes amid the buildings.

Unfortunately, Boo’s black fur shows up rather too well on our little tree’s white skirt. The big tree’s skirt is red and green, so the fur isn’t as obvious.

The white skirt is the first tree skirt I remember. It was originally just a piece of white felt cut to size. My brother and I received the stockings as Christmas gifts a couple years apart. (Mine is visible at far left.) For several years, our mother hung them from the door between our living and dining rooms.

I remember her standing in the doorway examining them. I wondered why. A few days later, she bought red and green felt. She cut out red felt bells, felt holly leaves and berries. She top-stitched the stockings, bells and holly to the skirt, then added Christmas ribbon around the skirt edges.

Several years later, she decided to make quilted tree skirts for herself, my brother and me. She stitched red and green Christmas fabric triangles for the top, then added a red ruffle around the edges. Bottom is the red fabric. Skirt ties in back. Since she would no longer be using the original tree skirt, I asked for and received it.

Boo Kitty loves them. And so do I.

Living with a carnivore

Mr. Boo Kitty caught and killed a field mouse Saturday. I was amazed, but I shouldn’t have been. Boo has been declawed, but he doesn’t let that stop him. He still keeps his “claws” sharpened but has learned to defend his property from vermin without them. He pounces on the verminous creature and holds it down until his teeth can finish it off.

Of course, he never eats the creatures he kills. He just leaves them on the lawn for me to throw into the garden with my shovel. He’d rather eat cat food. Go figure. Mice are supposed to be the perfect kitty food, except for the icky diseases mice carry. Maybe that’s why he won’t eat them?

He definitely considers our house and yard as “his” property and he defends it. We had a stray appear occasionally for awhile. Stray earned the nickname “Beta Kitty” when Boo proved that he was Alpha Kitty. Boo would run at Beta, hissing and spitting, and Beta would run away. Soon, Beta would flee at the sight of Boo, whether Boo paid him any attention or not.

One day I came outside to find Boo preparing to fight off a German shepherd. This was not a battle I wanted my cat to fight. I got the hose and sprayed the dog until he fled. When dog departed, Boo strutted around, certain that he had defeated that dog all by himself.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe the purring creature sitting on my lap is such a lean, mean killing machine.