Cat's in the Can!

I am convinced that there is such thing as a cat sin nature. I think this because I live with two cats who have their favorite "pet" sins.

Mel loooooves to sharpen his claws... on our nice couch. No other item, not even the entire cushy $5 Goodwill chair that we designated as the Scratching Post, will do. But I can live with that, because it's really easy to catch Mel in the act and bring him to The Chair.

Meatloaf, however, has discovered the bathroom garbage can. Or, to be precise, he has discovered how much fun it is to knock the trash can over and spread the contents out all over the floor! It's hard to catch him in the act because when I finally get to the scene of the crime, Meatloaf is sitting in the bedroom, innocently licking himself.

Ooooooooooooooh!!

Spraying him with a water bottle when I do catch him doesn't seem to be too effective, and the internet is strangely silent about this sort of menace, so I'm going to try the one piece of advice I did find on the web: putting a wet paper towel sprinkled with cayenne pepper in the trash.

Hope this works!

Houseguests: the Final Installment

Well, as of yesterday, our houseguests are finally gone. And it wasn't the best of partings. :-(

Adam beat me back home by five days, since I went to Pennsylvania to be a bridesmaid for one of my best college friends (and it was a beautiful wedding! Pictures to follow!). When I talked to Adam on the phone throughout the week, he informed me that our guests were treating him particularly coldly. They were barely talking to him or even acknowledging that he was there. I thought maybe they felt awkward because I wasn't there (they were more my friends, music department and all), so I decided to wait till I got home to worry about it.

And then I got home.

And then I REALLY worried about it.

In my absence, and in the name of "cleaning", they had: rearranged furniture and cabinets, broken dishes, taken steering wheel covers and decorative features off our car, torn a hole in our nice new couch, filled the linen closet with dirty towels, locked our kitties in the bathroom repeatedly for no good reason, and gave us a record electric bill, among other things. And and AND! They had taken anything they perceived as "junk" from the living areas and just chucked it into our bedroom, so I got to walk into a DISASTER room with a bed when I got home.

In spite of all this, I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they had merely been trying to clean our house as a favor, albeit in a foolhardy way, so I let it be.

But.

They were extremely cold to me, as well. Adam and I would walk in the house after work, and they wouldn't even say "hi" to us. They avoided conversation with us, and would huddle somewhere and whisper amongst themselves.

So, seeing that our friendship was rapidly disintegrating and that they were grossly overstepping houseguest boundaries, I finally broke the news to them that they needed to go. They left yesterday with a terse, "Thanks for letting us stay." No hugs. No smiles. No indication that we had a friendship of several years under our belts.

I'm really sad and perplexed. Sad because in saving them from the gutter, I destroyed our friendship. Perplexed, because there is no reason why that should have happened. But, I also feel a calm. I did the right thing by helping out friends in need, and I know that God is watching.

But losing my friends for no reason? That just sucks.

Greetings from New York!

I know that I have been extremely slack lately in my blogging. Aside from all the houseguest craziness at home, I have been preparing an unplanned trip to the East Coast to visit the in-laws! So here I am in New York, hogging their computer. I'm sure they love me even more for that. :-P

(On a side note, I found out that they actually read this blog all the time. Time to start watching my language, LOL).

Yesterday, they sent me to Blockbuster to bring home a couple videos. When I go to a video store to choose movies for a whole group of people, I experience a mind-clouding bout of Movie Choice Anxiety. Is it too girly for the guys? Is it raunchy? Is it stupid? Is it something they've already seen ten billion times??

I came home with Unbreakable and the old The Day the Earth Stood Still, which are both pretty depressing movies. Dang it! Why didn't I just get Pollyanna or something?

Well, I'm going to get off now and talk with the family, eat their food, and maybe watch a depressing movie tonight. Cheers!