Tales from the Shark Tank

My chosen family seems to be in the midst of a time-storm, but most of it’s to the good. My eldest daughter just got notice that she passed the last licensing exam she had, and will graduate from residency as a psychiatrist in June. Another pair of friends have been working gradually on splitting up for a long time (about 8 months). They’ve been living in the same house through this process, a situation that has put a horrible strain on both of them. Tonight that changes; the House Entropy and Friends moving crew is showing up this evening to help E. move into an apartment. Another of my fledglings broke up with her S.O. before they managed to move in together, which is over all a good thing, if a bit traumatic. My Louisville friend has had his plans pretty badly disrupted; he can’t sit for the Bar Exam in July as planned, and he’s already registered for it. So the last few hoops will be somewhat more stretched out than he’d hoped. I have to give him credit, though. With each new complication, he’s generally gone from wigging out to problem-solving mode in the space of a few hours. He’s also moving up the Indy this week, renting a room from another person in the Household that has the space. That will be an adjustment for both of them, but they’re both very reasonable people, and dedicated to communicating clearly (and very good at it), so I think it will work out just fine. And a former house-mate of mine who’d explored Wicca for a time has now joined the Orthodox Jewish community (she is Jewish originally, but not Orthodox) in Indianapolis and is dating a rabbi whom she describes as amazingly sweet, and whom she wants me to meet. She’s very serious indeed about him, enough to modify her housing plans for the next year on ten days notice.

My place in all of this has been to listen, rejoicing where appropriate and brainstorming where necessary. It’s quite the mad swirl, but I think, when the dust settles, it will prove to have been mostly good. With time-storms, that’s the best you can ask for.

What’s that you say? Diapers are readily available, on the shelf of any grocery, drugstore or convenience store? Ah, but I am in need of a very specialized sort of diaper.

I need a diaper for a cat.

Sophia will be going to the vet this afternoon. She’s a mess. The bathroom (the only room with a door that closes and a hard-surface floor) is a mess. She got a dose of kid’s immodium last night (well, ok, she got three doses of 3 drops each), and it worked. I’d put her in the bathroom while I waited for it to work, and she all but tore it apart trying to get out. So once I knew she wasn’t going to befoul any surface she stood on, I was going to let her out. But first I looked at her tail and back legs and gave her a bath. I have heard horror stories about the bathing of cats. I have read tales even more horrid about the bathing of cats.

Not this cat. Oh, she squirmed and attempted to escape, but not too hard. She made no attempt to bite or claw me, merely expressing her distress vocally. And once she was washed and rinsed and rolled into a dry towel, she cuddled into my arms and purred. She was still wet, mind you, with her fur in spikes – and she purred. I say again, I have a strange cat.

Unfortunately, the trouble had reared it’s ugly head tail again this morning. So now she and the kittens together are in the bathroom, until we leave for the vet’s office. And I keep thinking that life would be ever so much simpler if I could just figure out how to put a diaper on a cat.

I have the world’s strangest cat.  Ok, I know, me being me what other sort of cat would adopt me.  It does make it tricky to manage behavior modification, though.

As is natural for an even partly outdoor kitty, Miss Sophia still has all her natural armaments.  Per the vet’s advice, I don’t even trim her claws to blunt them a little.  Given that some of our interior walls are rough shingled (I also have a strange house), she could very easily climb the walls literally if she wanted to.

Now, being a cat possessed of all her claws, she needs to scratch.  She’d clearly been taking care of that comfort measure outside, but she has barely set paw over doorsill in two weeks.  So now, abruptly, she has begun to scratch.  Our upholstered furniture was of course first on her list.  I could and did muster a Spray Bottle of Doom (i.e. cold water), but yesterday I went and obtained repellant, catmint spray, a scratching post, and catmint strong enough that I could smell it.  I’ve put the repellant (essentially wide double-sided tape) where I do not want her paws to go, and put up the post, well rubbed with catnip and sprayed with essence of same in addition.  I showed it to her.  She sort of sniffed politely and formally at the edges, then wandered off. She isn’t interested in catnip.  Whoever heard of a cat who didn’t care for catnip?
Meanwhile, she promptly began to attend to her claws against the sofa.  She got sprayed with water and led back to the scratching post, and the sofa got taped.   She knows I’m disapproving of something, and she’s asking desperately for reassurance (at 3:00 a.m.) that I still love her.  So I took her back to the scratching post, and when she sniffed at it politely petted and praised her to the skies.  Right now she’s glued to my ankles, mewing quietly and very apologetically, though I’m pretty sure she’s apologizing for getting caught.  And I’m mystified.  If catmint doesn’t make something at least slightly attractive to her, what will?

I knew, living where we do, that there would be deer.  The neighbors insisted that they wouldn’t come too close to the house, so that if I put my herb garden near the door it should be safe.  Well, I just watched half a dozen deer browse their way past my side door, nibbling away at the grass cut down by the mower.  Our son is thrilled, because the creatures were close enough for him to see very clearly in the twilight.  But I am thinking the neighbors were overly optimistic.  Where they were nibbling, the edge of the lawn isn’t more than four feet from the door with a small boy behind it bouncing his excitement.  If they’ll get that close on this side of the house, I see no reason they wouldn’t come up to the back of the house to nibble on fresh, tender plants in a garden.

I knew I was going to have to fence my flower-and-vegetable bed.  But I think I’d better fence the herb bed as well.  Otherwise all I’ll be raising is well fed, healthy wildlife.

The repair tech has come, dismembered my laptop all over my dining room table, removed and replaced the motherboard, and left.  Everything is integrated into the motherboard of this little beastie – modem and ethernet ports, power port, USB ports, you name it – so it was necessary to replace the whole thing instead of just the connection that failed.  That’s what warranties are for, though, and Dea Ex Machina can once again receive power from an electrical outlet.  It’s amazing how adrift it left me to be without it, even though I could borrow my friend’s desktop while at her house, and had my own desktop available once I got home.  Part of that, of course, is that I pretty much have my life – all my writing, all my legal work, all my correspondence – stored on the laptop, but part of it is simply habit.  Not that I’m trying to break it, but it’s interesting to realize how deeply it runs.

What is a far greater comfort, though, is that I’m home.  I’ve been gone a week, and while I will acknowledge that I sometimes want – or need – a small break for myself, a week was too long.  I missed my husband, my son, and my cat.  I missed my garden, assuming (correctly) that in the burgeoning of spring it was becoming overrun by weeds in my absence.  I did a lot of things in the course of the week that were fun, like going to see Harvey put on by the Carmel Community Players, and going out for some serious pampering followed by a lovely lunch with Li and Kevona, but the simple fact is that the week was incredibly stressful and I am beyond glad that it is over.

So today I dealt with inside business, like getting the computer fixed and tearing into kitchen clean-up with a ferocity I usually reserve for my writing.  Tomorrow I’ll mow the lawn, then take that same determination to the weeds that are taking over the day-lily and iris beds.  Wednesday I’ll fence the vegetable bed, then put up trellis and plant my peas, only a little late.  Beyond that, I’m not planning.  And I’m incredibly glad I don’t have to.