No, bad kitty, no!

I got some doggy biscuits for my mother-in-law's dog for Christmas and wrapped them up and put them under the tree. Here's what the package looked like this morning:

And I know who the culprit is. I told him that even though he's the size of a small dog, he isn't actually a dog and can't have them. He doesn't seem to care.

Home again or bad, bad kitties

We are back after a really good visit to Tulsa, where most of Kent's family now lives. We had Christmas with them on Saturday--as we told Kent's mother, traveling from Boston in the winter can be a real gamble. By having our visit in October, we had a lot better chance of actually having our flights be mostly on time. And they were--mostly.

However the cats were not on their best behavior for our cat nanny. In no particular order, they did the following:

1. Wally took the Velcro off all the cabinets. He didn't eat the strips, he just took them off.

2. Naturally once they were off, he also got in all the cabinets and pulled things out.

3. Plus he got into the bathroom cabinet where he ate the plastic grocery sack lining the trash can AND slithered over into the drawer where we keep our toilet paper "safe" from him. I think the only reason he couldn't destroy all the rolls is because the drawer was full.

4. Eddie did his binge/purge routine and puked in several spots.

5. And on a positive note, Chloe decided that she loves the cat nanny and loved on her every chance she got.

Bad kitty

Kent and I were abruptly awakened last night by the sound of glass shattering, and we knew immediately it was a lot of glass. We keep a dehumidifier in our smelly closet which has really helped control the moisture and smell in that closet. But it's an irresistible place for Wally to contemplate jumping onto higher shelves in that closet.

That's exactly what he did last night, only he jumped onto an unstable perch--the box he landed on stuck out from the shelf by close to half its length. And on the box were nine glass votives, a wall clock with a glass cover and a round glass tea light holder that was about six or seven inches in diameter. Our closet floor is tiled, so nothing that fell survived except the cat.

Here's what's left of all those items.

Partial solutions or patience is a virtue

First, I thought you’d like to know that Wally remains enamored with tissue. We’d been turning the box over at night but he figured out pretty quickly that if he knocked the box onto the floor, he’d have a lot of fun.

Saturday was mostly successful. We found a little cabinet to sit next to the sewing cabinet that’s coming, and it was very easy to install. Although we got our bookcase, we could only find the wood doors and not the glass doors. We wanted wood doors on the bottom of the bookshelf and glass doors on the top so we can display some fragile dishes I have from my mother, and to keep certain yellow cats from jumping to the higher shelves. So we decided we’d get the wood doors and just make another trip back when the glass doors were in stock.

Once home, we realized one of the door boxes was completely mislabeled and contained a glass door. That left us with a wood door and a glass door, and to add to our frustration, the Ikea website indicated they had plenty of glass doors. So Kent made the 40 minute trek back to Ikea the next day and got one more of each kind of door—only to find out that the bookcase wasn’t really made to hold two sets of doors. But he’s a clever man, so he drilled an extra hole on each side to hold the hinges and voila! We have our bookcase the way we wanted it.

The find of the day on Saturday has to be the floor lamp you see next to the bookcase. It cost all of $6.99. I love Ikea.

Supposedly my sewing cabinet gets delivered today but I’ll be surprised if that happens since the FedEx site doesn’t show that it’s in Boston yet. This is yet another chance for me to learn patience . . .

Heartsick

When Kent and I first got together we began collecting Harlequin dishes to complete the set his mother had passed on from the early days of her marriage. Harlequin dishes are similar to Fiesta in that they are brightly colored and have a distinctive shape, but the Harlequin ones are not collected as much so finding some of the pieces was pretty hard. You can read about the differences here, and see pictures of some pieces here. Our first or second Christmas together, Kent managed to find a butter dish and gave it to me. I wish I could show you a picture of what the dish looked like—it could hold a full pound of butter and ours was the really cool turquoise color.

Last night we were awakened by something breaking. Wally moved the butter dish from its spot against the wall on our pass through and far from any edges all the way to the edge where he pushed it off. To be honest with you, I cried. The dish was beyond salvaging in any way and was not only in pieces but parts were nothing but slivers. We know it was Wally because Eddie was under the covers with us and Chloe never gets on the counter, ever.

We almost certainly will not be able to replace that dish—in my brief search online this morning; I didn’t find a single one for sale. As I said, they are pretty rare and those who have Harlequin tend to keep them. It’s one thing when Wally destroys a roll of paper towel. This is different and I’m really struggling with not being angry with him.