A recent event

[pameladean]

PAMELA: *despite having had the same desk setup since approximately 2004, knocks full glass of water onto the floor, where it drenches her jeans and sweater and the carpet, and spatters the power strip into which are plugged All the Things.

POWER STRIP: *flickers its light in the usual way and goes on powering All the Things*

PAMELA: *curses uninventively, turns off power strip, unplugs it from the wall, unplugs All the Things from it, dries plugs, cords, the front of the filing cabinet that holds up her desk on that side, blots the carpet, removes phone from wet side of jeans and puts it in a different pocket*

PAMELA TO RAPHAEL: Do you have a spare power strip?

RAPHAEL: No... what happened?

PAMELA: I upset a water glass into mine. Never mind, I'll go ask David.

PAMELA: *goes to door to stairway, opens it*

NINJA: *darts into the upstairs at the speed of light, hides under the armchair*

PAMELA: NINJA! This is not the time! I can't supervise you right now!

NINJA: Roooorrrorrawwwrrrrooo.

PAMELA: *gets new water and a book, turns on lamp in cat sitting room, sits down, starts waving a packing strap alluringly*

CASSIE: *pounces on packing strap*

NINJA: *rushes out from under armchair, pounces on packing strap, and slithers under  the sofa*

NINJA: Roooraaaaaarrrhow

NINJA: *sneaks out from under sofa, rubs face on container of cat food*

RAPHAEL: Does Ninja have a spare power strip?

PAMELA: Ninja IS a spare power strip.

RAPHAEL: Plug all the things into him!

PAMELA: I don't think I have the right adapter.

Eventually I shut the doors to all the bedrooms and the bathroom, and then when Ninja wandered into the kitchen, I shut the door between the front and back parts of the house, and I was able to pick him up once he had seen that there was nowhere to hide. I put him on the landing with plenty of pettings, got a bag of dirty laundry to fend him off with, and went downstairs. David wasn't in his room.

While I was putting the laundry into the washer, Naomi came in and began making strident and insistent demands. I went upstairs and fixed her some food, and then tracked David down in the media room. He showed me his FaceBook gallery of photos of our friend Rob, who just died. They are lovely photos, but I hate the occasion. He didn't have a power strip but he had a power squid, so I went down to his room as instructed and got that. Naomi had finished her food but demanded seconds. This  is not usual -- she has chronic kidney failure and is fussy about eating. Seconds involved thawing some of the chicken broth Lydy makes for her, which made her impatient. She ate about half of this helping, so I put the rest in the fridge.

Then I escaped upstairs and plugged the printer and my laptop back in. I had dried all the cords thoroughly and they got aired while Ninja was in residence; but I think I'll just let the rest of them air a bit more. The other Things include the charger for my toothbrush, the weather radio, and some kind of box that enables me to listen to stuff on our music server.

I think this event exemplifies why I never seem to get anything done.

Pamela

P.S. Saffron is attempting to steal the last of the Ninja Easter Vermin, a plastic pale lavender crab that lives on my desk but went over the edge with the falling water glass. Ninja Easter Vermin have nothing to do with our Ninja, but are in a vague way Geri Sullivan's fault.

Comments

[graydon]

"Efficiency" and "several cats" is not a plausible combination.

[pameladean]

I cannot deny that.

P.

[graydon]

Plus you've got cats with a plentitude of character and diverse opinions! (Groups of cats who have Common Purpose aren't better, precisely, but it's certainly different.)

I'm glad there were no exciting bright lights, lack of lights, or the expensive smell of magic smoke.

The power here is sufficiently twitchy that it murdered a couple of printers over several years, and since I can't get that (strongly-prefered) ilk of printer anymore, I have another which has a much smaller startup power draw. Which means I can get the little line isolator box that guarantees neat square power waves, and though this produces heat (technically, heat; I can tell it's warm if and only if I put my hand on it and think about it) in very small quantity, Aoife sees it as Sacred Feline Responsibility to sit above it. There really isn't room there, but, well, this is why Bast made cats fluids. I get an eloquent explanation of this every time I try to explain the lack of room.

[carbonel]

I used to have a DVR that was warm pretty much all over the top, and was large enough in area for a cat to sprawl all over. Morwen of course adopted it as her territory. I had to rig up a bit of gadgetry so she couldn't drape her head, foot, or tail over the IR sensor, but other than that there seemed to be no problem with cat fur interfering with the function, so I didn't try to shoo her off.

Some years later, DirecTV replaced that DVR with a smaller and more efficient model that didn't use IR for the remote. There's only one small spot a few inches square that's warm, and the entire area is small enough that one small cat tends to ooze over the edges. Morwen doesn't care. The DVR is her territory to sleep on, and she will make do.

(I used to have a printer whose output tray was apparently warm enough and comfortable enough to make Morwen quite happy, but in the course of time that one was replace with a color printer with an entirely different setup and no cat-suitable spaces. I don't think she's quite reconciled to that yet.)

[guppiecat]

I assume you know the story about the decoy router ?

[carbonel]

I hadn't seen that one; thanks for the link. Now that's customer service!

[graydon]

Oh, goodness, I am so glad Aoife does not much like output trays.

Sleeping in the shower, yes, and I get the most disapproving looks when I open the curtain, but keeping the fluff out of the printer is quite challenging enough as things now are.

Though here, I think the steam pipe overcomes the possible attractions of any of the other potential warm spots, and the accessible top of the dish cabinet's less than a metre away.

[pameladean]

I've known people who had groups of cats with a common purpose -- most of the cats were Siamese or Siamese-adjacent -- and I am grateful not to have that set of problems.

I too am grateful for the absence of magic smoke. I think the amount of water that actually got onto the power strip was small, but of course you don't fool around with things like that. ALL THE DRYING!

I'm glad Aoife takes her feline responsibilities seriously, and the phrase "eloquent explanation" cracked me up, because I know what that's like.

My Sukey used to sleep on the cable box when it was large and clunky and gave off quite a lot of heat. Now Ninja, Naomi, and Nuit vie for the top of the DVR.

P.

[graydon]

Many years ago, I saw someone carrying a pair of Siamese in their arms down the street. The cats were just huge; they had to be twenty pounds each at least. (Siamese toms do sometimes get that large, and I've known one tolerably well, but these two were just stonking.) They were perfectly marked for the breed and clearly entirely happy with their lot, being somehow indolent about being entirely swivel-necked and moderately commentatious at all these interesting things they were being carried past.

It left me with the feeling that I sometimes get from birds in a particular light; bluebirds on a day with a half-clouded sky, shining as though they had burned through from some adjacent more vivid reality; fresh-plumaged male black-throated green warblers on goldenrod in the fall, as though a wandering Noldor jewel-smith felt themselves to have an excess of malachite and a dearth of birds; and these cats, who had clearly decided that this slightly narrow reality would do, so long as there were no doubts about breakfast.

I cannot image there were ever any doubts about breakfast.

[sovay]

RAPHAEL: Plug all the things into him!
PAMELA: I don't think I have the right adapter.

You'd never be able to turn all the cat-powered things off.

I am sorry to hear about your friend. His memory for a blessing.

[pameladean]

I thought maybe when the cat was asleep would work for powering off, but you're probably right. Cat dreams probably provide sufficient power.

And thank you. Our friend had been sick for a while, but he had beaten so many odds we remained cautiously hopeful. We'll miss him; he was a good 'un.

P.

[vass]

Ninja seems very well-named.

[pameladean]

Lydy said she knew she'd regret calling him that, but she did it anyway.

P.

[wild_irises]

It is just barely possible that you have Too Many Cats.

I'm sad about Rob, too, though I didn't know him well.

[pameladean]

We do have a lot of cats, but really the problem is their sense of timing. I go downstairs regularly to see if Naomi would like to eat anything, and as long as that's my purpose I can wander around for fifteen minutes and not see a cat at all.

You did know Rob for a very long time, though, and that can have somewhat the same effect as knowing a person well. It's a sad thing all around.

P.

[sraun]

Hmmmmm.

Should we try to revive Ninja Easter Vermin for Minicon this year? Easter is on April 1st...

[pameladean]

I have a very vague recollection that they became difficult or impossible to find. That is, you can get plastic vermin all right, but the pastel Easter-related colors were not always available.

P.

[sartorias]

I love these glimpses of Life With Cats.

[pameladean]

It's not boring, I'll say that for it.

P.

[lydy]

I would apologize for my encroaching cat, but I'm too busy laughing.

[pameladean]

He is the best cat.

P.

[mrissa]

This is a good story because the Nomers got something nice in it.