December 12, 1996
Dear Everyone:
Last week, “Jeannie”
decided to have her carpets professionally cleaned.
Evidently, “Alice” had suggested that waiting until
after 2-½-year-old “Park” had come and gone would be better, but
“Jeannie” decided that it couldn’t wait that long.
So she had the Carpet Cleaner in on Friday.
Her first indication
that things might not go too smoothly was when the Carpet Cleaner, who
was supposed to come at 11:00, called at 7:00 to say, “I’ll be right
over.” Upon arrival, his first
words were, “Oh, you have cats,” even though no cats were in sight.
“Jeannie” had
hastily pushed as much stuff as possible into the bathrooms, those being
rooms without carpets. The
Carpet Cleaner promptly announced that he would need access to one of
the bathtubs in order to fill his carpet cleaner machine with water.
He also made it clear that his job was cleaning carpets, not
moving furniture. So there
was “Jeannie” working ahead of the Carpet Cleaner, moving furniture as
he sort of herded her along until she realized that she was being
“painted” into a corner or, more specifically, the kitchen.
At this point, the
Carpet Cleaner announced that she would have to stay
off the carpets for at least 48 hours, unless she wanted to pay him
an additional $75 for an “additive” that would somehow cause the carpets
to dry faster. This would be
about the time that “Jeannie” left a message on my office Voice Mail
informing me that I would be having guests for the weekend.
So I played hostess
last weekend to “Jeannie” (“do you have a shirt I can borrow?”) and her
cat, Monroe. “Jeannie’s”
other cat, the big white kitty whose nickname is “Big White Kitty” was
deemed hardy enough to stay out on the patio for a couple of days, as
long as someone stopped by to check on him from time to time.
Things went fairly
well until about 2:13 Saturday morning when Monroe decided that, since
she was nocturnal, I should be, too.
Kitty pads over the comforter and pushes her head under your arm.
You rub her head for a few seconds, then roll over, hoping she’ll
take the hint. Instead, she
walks up over you (Kitty,
Scaling the Mountain) to repeat the process.
If you relent and rub her ears for a few minutes, she rewards you
by purring loudly and poking holes in your duvet cover.
Finally, it occurred
to me that she might be hungry.
So I went out to the kitchen and gave her a small plate of
“Safeway Select Turkey and Giblets”.
This afforded me just enough time to fall back asleep before she
came in to play The Game again.
Only this time, she smelled like cat food.
On Saturday night, I
ruthlessly shut my bedroom door so Kitty could sleep with her rightful
mother. This worked until
about 4:30 when I was roused by the sounds of pathetic scratching on the
door. “Please, please,
please let me in! Or, at
least get up and feed me.”
All and all,
“Jeannie” is a remarkably sound sleeper.
Speaking of which,
because the power keeps going out at her place, I’d gotten “Jeannie” a
battery-powered alarm clock to use as a backup.
Sure enough, she needed to use it this past Tuesday night, as she
has not yet mastered the art of resetting the alarm settings on her
clock radio once the power comes back on again.
The little battery alarm worked like a charm, with one slight
problem. It seems I never
showed her how to shut the alarm off.
The darned thing just started chirping and wouldn’t shut up.
Revenge comes in
many forms.
Love, as always,
Pete
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