Grabbed the camera before I ran to the store to snap this photo, because who can resist such kitty cuteness!

It's like a little cat totem pole!

Myu won’t take no for an answer when begging to be in my lap, even when I don’t have a lap available. I was squatted down in the kitchen a few minutes ago cleaning up a spill, and she hops right up on my non-existent lap and settled in for a nap, which didn’t work out so well for her, seeing as I wasn’t planning on squatting in the kitchen for longer than two minutes.

Truly, she is being a huge pest today.

I’m trying to get some writing done today. You know, on that book I am working on and not here on the blog or in some forum flame war. Gloomy, cold days are great for getting some writing done, because there really isn’t much else to do. But … Myu has decided to be a HUGE pest. She won’t leave me alone, no matter how much corporal cuddling I use! She seems to enjoy it too much!

This morning I woke up late and got on with my day as quickly as I could. Hit the snooze button one too many times. Oops. What can I say? The bed was warm and comfy!

Having to get out of the comfy bed left me a little grumpy, and then the whole “running late” thing didn’t help. I hate feeling like I am already running late two seconds after I open my eyes.^†

But once Lin was off to work, the cats were fed, the local news was watched, and the first cup of coffee was had, I set about making myself look human. I pulled off the socks I had slept in last night and was reminded I had painted my toenails after my shower yesterday. I haven’t painted my toenails in ages. My bright and shiny silver toenails made me smile and giggle and got my day back onto a happy track.

Ronin doesn’t look too happy to be used as a prop to show off my silly silver toes does he? Well, he doesn’t like having his photo taken anyway, especially during the cats’ post-breakfast morning nap period.

I think once I get my hands into something resembling a healthy state –they are shredded right now from working outside in the cold recently– I will paint my fingernails silver too. Me painting my fingernails is even more rare of an event, but I love this new nail polish!

1. † I also hate being responsible for making sure the other adult human in the household wakes up and gets moving when he should, but that’s a rant for another day … or maybe not at all. [↩]

She’s so precious when she’s sleeping …
and not knocking things off closet shelves or digging in my potted plants.

Tora has been a very bad kitty this afternoon! She knocked a bunch of stuff off the top shelf of the bedroom closet … again. It’s beginning to feel like a losing battle, and at some point I fear I may just have to arrange that shelf for the usage of Tora and Myu who won’t leave it alone.

It’s a beautiful sunny winter’s day! Beautiful, if you’re a polar bear, that is. Oh yes, it’s cold. It only got over freezing a little while ago, but the windchill is still below freezing. It’s going to be getting even colder tonight and tomorrow. Yuck. Bills be damned, I have achieved a state of near warmth in the house.

I’ve discovered a new way to annoy the cats. I put my large tomato plant on “their” stool in front of the kitchen window. Now they are annoyed because a) they can’t sit in the window and stare out at the cold back yard and b) they can’t mess with the tomato plant. The reason I put it there was because the brats were messing with the tomato plant. They managed to not mess with it at all until I woke up (late) today. I checked on it before I went to the bathroom to do the morning routine, and when I came out and checked again, someone had been digging in the pot. Dirt everywhere in the den!

No damage done to cats or the plant, but they need to leave it alone. I need that plant to survive, and they need to not eat a poisonous (to cats) plant. Putting it on the stool solves both those problems. Wish I would have thought about that last night, so I wouldn’t had have to cover it with plastic in the house. There just isn’t anywhere else to put it. It’s far too cold outside, which means it’s also far too cold in the laundry room and the storage room, and that leaves the rest of the house which is all thoroughly owned by the cats.

Though they don’t seem at all interested in the plant itself. No, they are in love with the dirt it’s planted in. Still, I am nervous about having a cat poisonous plant in the house … and nervous about anything happening to my precious tomato plant! Even if the tomatoes currently on it never become edible, that plant will be the source of my earliest ever spring tomatoes. It must survive!

I’ve been giggling at Tora for the last thirty minutes though, because she is the most irate about not being able to get to that potted plant, which leads me to believe she was the one responsible for digging in its dirt. She keeps walking around the base of the stool squeaking, and then she launches herself up my drafting table to get on top of the fridge to glare down at my precious plant from above.^† I’m sure she’ll eventually lose interest and go join the other monsters who are huddled under the heating vent over the bed and having a nap.

After assessing the food situation in the kitchen earlier, I really should have bought more stuff at the grocery store. We aren’t out of food, but I will have to be creative with what we have. Tonight I’ll be making what I call Stone Soup. You know that story, don’t you? I’ll be taking a bunch of odds and ends and tossing them together to make a big pot of something edible. I’ve got a bit of chicken, a bit of sausage, a bit of leftover chili, and a bit of leftover pasta. Add some canned tomatoes and maybe some potatoes and more onion and garlic, and it sounds like dinner to me! As an excuse to have the oven going, I’ll probably make some cheese cornbread as well. Yum!

Once all the odds and ends are cleared out of the freezer and fridge, I can determine how creative I will have to get with what’s left. We won’t starve. The cats, on the other hand, are starting to run low on food, and I’ve decided if they run out of food before the weather warms up a little on Monday, they will just have to eat each other. OK, maybe not, but I’m not going to the feed store this weekend. No way. I am not leaving the house unless it’s a real emergency. I’ll be cutting their food rations down just a little to stretch it out a bit. A little less food won’t hurt them. All three are tubby kitties. Let them burn some fat reserves while running around the house like crazy things. It’ll do them some good.

I’m sure there’s something I should be doing right now, like housework, but I ache all over and have a bit of a fever today. It feels like I might have some kind of flu. I hope not, but I’ve definitely caught something. So I’m going to take it easy today and sit and read or play video games and drug myself … right after I bundle up and go check the mail and see what the soil temperature is in the garden. I don’t want to go outside, but I can’t ignore the mail for more than a day, and I am curious about the soil temps right now. Besides, going outside will make it feel even warmer in the house when I get back indoors, right?

1. † Yes, my darling Tora who is now over a year old and should be just about full-sized can still run up my fully angled drafting table to get on the fridge. I’m quite surprised with her continuing agility, and the other two cats are excessively jealous. [↩]

I should have saved my complaints about the cold from yesterday morning for this morning. It is really freaking cold this morning. 25ºF! I know, I know it gets colder and IS colder elsewhere this morning, but a long overnight and low freeze is not an everyday event in Austin. Having more than one so close together –I swear it’s been non-stop since winter began– well that’s just plain weird. They’ve been saying this winter is the coldest winter we’ve had here in a long time, and I agree. It’s just not right or normal!

The only thing in the garden that is covered with plastic at the moment is the lettuce, which has already been showing signs of frost burn and has been covered for weeks now day and night, and one bed of carrots and radishes, which has also been covered since before Xmas. I probably should have gone out there and covered everything, but I am sort of at the point with the garden now that anything still alive out there is doing so poorly that if it survives the weather and being ignored by me and STILL manages to produce anything, I’ll be saving it for seed … because that’s one hardy plant. In other words, I’ve given up on the garden. Nature can take its course. Either the stuff grows and produces or it dies. I’m not going outside in cold weather like this to tend to whatever might be out there. Brrrr.

But that’s not what I sat down to post about! There’s been an unusual event in the kitchen this morning. While I was standing at the espresso machine mindlessly making Lin’s morning coffee, I felt a cat rubbing against my legs. Nothing entirely unusual about that, as Tora does occasionally rub against my legs when she feels she must have some attention, but this wasn’t Tora. The cat rubbing against me was a large cat. A very large cat. RONIN! He has never –not once– rubbed up against a human for any reason whatsoever. He’s just not that kind of cat. Or at least he used to not be that kind of cat. I think Tora’s sweet, adorable, and totally manipulative ways are rubbing off on him. We may end up with three loving and adorable (and totally manipulative) cat masters after all. I don’t mind being a cat slave, so long as the beasts at least act the part of adoring cats. Hope this trend continues!

Oh, and I knew it was going to be really cold in the house before I pulled even one bit of my person out of the nice warm bed too. How? Lin and I had all three cats lined up down the center of the bed between us when the alarms started going off. This almost never happens. In fact, I think it’s the first time all three of them have been on the bed at the same time when there are also two humans in bed. Hey, it’s a smallish bed (queen size), and there really isn’t all that much room for a collective of cats and two adult humans! They were none too happy when their living hot water bottles decided to start getting out of bed either. I don’t blame them. I’d have rather stayed in bed too, and I don’t doubt Lin would have minded either. Unfortunately, staying in the nice warm and cat covered bed was not an option.

And now I need to go make myself some coffee and put on some warmer clothing. Even with the furnace blasting, my pajamas are just not sufficient this morning. I had though about just crawling back into the still warm bed, but I really do need to get some things done today, though unless it warms up a lot later in the day, one of those things will not be going to the grocery store. I do not feel like puttering around outside in really cold weather. We have enough food to survive, and I am capable of living without Dr Pepper for at least a couple of days. I think. I haven’t tried to survive without it for a couple of days for a long time, but it’s too cold to be drinking cold soda anyway. Brrrr, and double brrrr.

Bread production is back in business! I think, with my current kitchen setup (no counters) and equipment (two large glass bowls and a variety of loaf pans), the most bread I could make in a day (when better rested than I am) is about 16 or so. If I had proper kitchen counters, more or larger bowls, and places to let bread cool that were cat free, I could probably make more than that. It’s going pretty quickly, once I get into the rhythm of it.

The initial 6 loaves are in the Box Room cooling, because they were still too warm and moist to wrap in plastic … and that’s the only cat-free place 6 loaves are guaranteed to go unmolested. It’s also the coldest room in the house. Almost as cold as it is outside right now. Should cool quickly in there! I need to get those cooled and packaged, because there are about to be 6 more loaves to do the same with! Even the Box Room doesn’t have enough flat space for 12 loaves of bread.

The kitchen will be a wreck once I am done, but I’m not going to even think about it until Saturday afternoon when I crawl out of bed. Though there aren’t going to be many dishes to wash, seeing as I am tossing the foil pans when done with them and I only have the two large glass bowls and a couple of utensils. Maybe I can at least deal with those before bed tonight. The flour coating everything will have to wait. I do not feel like wiping down everything and doing the floors on Xmas Eve.

The cats have been out of their minds all afternoon. They worked themselves into a total frenzy earlier and started fighting, and then … the puking began. Yes, that is just what I need while trying to bake bread. Cats puking all over the house! They seem to be settling down now and heading to the bedroom for their usual afternoon nap. Thank goodness, because all three of them have been unbearable today. The outdoor wild cats aren’t being much better either, as they are at the front door whining to be let in, which can’t happen. I have enough mayhem on my plate today. I do feel sorry for them being out in the cold wind, but they know how to get under the house, and it’s plenty warm under there, especially in the kitchen and laundry room areas. Just ask the resident possum!

Time to go poke the loaves rising in the pans and start on the next batch! Then the dip bowl and dip!

I think I could bake bread like this every day and never get grumpy about it. I love baking bread. So relaxing. The perfect thing to do before a stressful family Xmas trip!

A few days ago, since it was warmish in the house, I left the bathroom door open while I took a shower. I guess it was the first time Tora had seen me get into the “water box”, and she sat in the doorway staring at me with a look of horror and squeaking in dismay.

Today it was not so warm in the house, so I pushed the door closed, but left it so any cat that wanted to could come in to use the facilities or hover in front of the shower while I bathed (as Myu likes to do). No cat came in, but I did hear the occasional squeak from the hallway indicating that Tora was sitting just outside the door.

After I dried off a bit, I opened the door, and you’d have thought Tora’s little world was ending! She was following me around –squeaking loudly– and rubbing against me and wanting in my lap. I guess she thought I’d just been tortured and needed consoling. Now she isn’t letting me out of her sight, and when I do go outside –as I just did to take out the trash– she is in a total state of panic when I come back in a few minutes later. Serious separation anxiety!

Tora continues to be the sweetest and most wonderful of the three cats, though I think her sweetness must be rubbing off on the other two. Myu is becoming something of a lap cat, and even grumpy Ronin is begging for love and attention from time to time. Eventually we may have three sweet and wonderful cats. I can only hope!

And since I haven’t been posting enough kitty photos lately –the cats generally being opposed to cameras these days– here’s a quick web cam snap of precious Tora.

I have to tell you though, while being followed around by an adorable cat is great, the nonstop squeaking is beginning to grate of my nerves. I wish she’d squeak when I am taking video of her, but no … then she doesn’t make a sound. Someday, you simply have to hear how squeaky and cute her vocalizations are!

Meet Grumpy. He’s a new outdoor cat we seem to have acquired. He’s even wilder than Sasha! I had to use the zoom to get this photo and was surprised he sat there long enough for me to click the shutter. He usually flies away at top speed to parts unknown as soon as someone opens the door and steps out on the porch.

My intention this morning was to sleep in. Not a lot, just a couple hours beyond sunrise. Getting to sleep in beyond sunrise in this household is a wonderful and blessed event. So I toddled off to bed well before midnight, pleased to be looking forward to an actual full night’s sleep. Alas, whatever my intentions had been, the cats had other ideas.

At 7 am, I was awakened by the shrieks of Myu being attacked by Ronin a mere couple of feet from my head. Unlike my alarm clock, fighting cats do not have a snooze button. After such an adrenalin-pumping arousal, there was no going back to sleep either, so I stumbled into the kitchen and made coffee, and then stomped into the living room to gripe to Lin about Ronin being an ass. One by one, each cat came up and licked my hand, and then put on their “Aren’t We Adorable” faces. Grrrr. They know being cute gets them out of trouble. I’m such a sucker for The Cute.

Naturally, I fed them, which is what all the ruckus this morning was about anyway. I wasn’t awake and tending to their every early morning need. They were dying of starvation! Wasting away! Daddy wasn’t feeding them, and I was their only hope! Uh huh. All three of these monsters could live off their fat reserves for at least a week without harm. As per usual, they each ate two bites of food –oh yes, they were SO hungry– and then they tore around the house for about an hour.

Now they are all passed out and sleeping contentedly on the bed. I do believe I will go pester the living daylights out of them as soon as I finish this cup of coffee. If I don’t get to sleep in … no one does!