Friday, September 6, 2013

That darn cat!

I know I don't talk about her much, but we have a cat that was a stray and adopted us about 2 years ago.  I'm not much of a pet person, let alone a cat person, but she stays outside most of the time, and we (barely) tolerate each other.  She loves Bill the best.  The girls generally are too loud for her and she spends most of the time they're home and awake outside.  Her name is Serial Killer, Killer for short.  She scared me half to death one night, making all sorts of noise in the carport.  I thought someone had come to kill me.  So I named her Killer, but usually she's just "the (expletive) cat."

This is the story of why she should love me best, though.

It started this afternoon.  I heard some dogs fighting... our neighbors have somewhere around 8 or 9 dogs, no joke, so I assumed it was some of their mutts.  But it was really loud, so loud that the girls were concerned.  I opened the door to the carport and there were three large dogs barking and snarling and trying like crazy to get to something under the van.... Killer.  I started yelling at them, then banging on the door, trying to figure out the best way to get the dogs away without getting mauled myself.  I distracted the big black dog and Killer took that opportunity to jump out at it and dash off into the back yard.  They chased her, I'm still yelling.... eventually the dogs took off down the road.

Worried that Killer had been hurt, I went looking for her.  I couldn't find her anywhere in the back yard.  I went back out a few minutes later, still couldn't find her.  Until I looked up...

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She looked OK, no visible blood or anything.  I wondered if she could get down, but figured I would just leave her be for a while.  We got ready to go out for a bit and I looked out there and didn't see her, so I figured she had climbed down.

When we got back home, I looked out the kitchen window, and.... Killer was still in the tree.  And she looked visibly upset and was meowing her head off.  

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That is her tongue... she doesn't have a bloody nose...

Now, the lowest branch on the tree is abut 12 feet off of the ground.  I grabbed a 2 step ladder (the only ladder we have) and even with that on the deck, I was too short to reach her.  About that time, the girls came out and freaked out over the cat being in the tree.  I texted Bill, who told me to call my brother-in-law.  I texted my sister, but before she could get back with me, I had an idea.  

I grabbed the long laundry basket and put an old pillow in it.  Why the pillow?  To make it a little more enticing?  To make the basket more shallow?  I don't know.  I climbed up on the ladder and stretched out the basket as far as I could and it was right underneath Killer.  Now, mind you, I'm terrified of heights.  2 steps or no, I was shaking and fairly certain that if I could coax the cat into the basket that I would topple one way or the other off of the ladder.  Or drop the basket with the cat in it and probably injure her.  She looked at me, looked in the basket, looked at me, moved around a bit on the branch, and then carefully stepped into the basket, which I managed to NOT drop as I managed to NOT fall over.  I got her down and the poor thing was just shaking. 

She's filthy from being under the van, but looks unharmed.  She refuses to go outside, though.  Which is about to be an issue because she needs to go outside before I go to bed.  She wakes me up in the middle of the night to go out and that just ticks me off.

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She looks so pitiful and comfy that I kind of feel bad about it.

In other news...

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This is a picture that Bill sent me this morning.  That's my short-legged Zoe.  She got to wear jeans to school, and her jeans are way too long for her.  Bill couldn't get them to roll up and stay, so this was his solution.

Duct tape.

Ha ha ha!  Surely he wouldn't send his child to school with duct tape on her pants, right?

Wrong.  He totally sent her to school like that.

And this is what she brought home....

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She's "Character Kid" for next week.  Very appropriate.  To say she has "character" is an understatement.  She wore duct tape to school, for Pete's sake!

She said no one said anything at all to her about her pants.  Which I was relieved about.  I mean, she's kinda got enough going on that kids would be prone to pick on her about... she's a little chubby, wears glasses... do we really need to stick duct tape to her pants?  Next time he should just tape a "Kick Me" sign to her back.  Poor baby.

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