pameladean

When I tried to get the photos off my phone, the laptop told me that my old device didn't work with USB 3.0, try a USB 2 port. David, applied to for a sanity check, said that was nonsense. When he tried to get the photos off my phone, they came right off meekly. The phone used to be his; perhaps it has some attachment issues.

It's the time of year when one wants to visit the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden as often as possible. Photos below the cut.

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Saffron has been feeling her oats lately. She has escaped down the front stairs to the cat-free zone several times, though she is very good at letting me pick her up and take her back upstairs, only turning her head upside down to look at me quizzically. She is a large and somewhat unwieldy cat, so she could make a lot more trouble if she liked.

Well, she does like, but struggling to make me put her down isn't one of her methods.

On the Eve of International Bad Cat Day, this iteration, I heard a clatter from the kitchen that did not belong there in the absence of humans. I went in to find Casssie and Saffron both sniffing at the sink drainer, which was on the floor. Very obsessive readers may recall that when I was making pies for Thanksgiving, Raphael and I found the sink drainer stranded in the middle of the kitchen floor. Cassie seldom jumps that high, so I assume that Saffron fished the drainer out and dropped it on the floor for reasons of her own.

This evening, as we often do on a Friday, Raphael and I ordered Chinese food. The restaurant had packed the dishes in the reverse of the usual order; the appetizers were on the bottom. We usually get shrimp in garlic sauce, the sauce of which is very viscous, clingy, and insinuating. It had already, from its position at the top of the stack of takeout dishes, leaked all over the inside of the bag and onto the other dishes and the packets of extra soy sauce and the fortune cookies in their wrappers. I ended up tearing the bag down one side to get at things without making quite such a mess. Then I rinsed some lids and Raphael wiped up some leaks, and we served ourselves. I then put the actual leftover food and rice into the refrigerator, but failed to realize that a torn bag with a lot of garlic sauce in it would be attractive to cats. When we came out of Raphael's office (where we retreat when we don't want cats marauding our food) with our empty plates, Raphael found the empty, torn wrapper of a fortune cookie on the floor of my bedroom, with the fortune lying nearby.

Having ascertained that none of the plastic seemed to have been eaten, Raphael picked up the fortune and burst out laughing. I took it and read, "Tomorrow you will find the item you have been searching for."

This struck us both as irresistibly funny. When we had stopped laughing, Raphael said, "I wonder which of them ate it."

"I would bet on Cassie," I said, "but I wouldn't bet much."

There was no question of who had taken the cookie out of the bag. That would be Saffron.

Pamela

I spent the last two hours of my night dreaming that I couldn't go back to sleep after feeding the cats, and that I was repeating the word "redwood" over and over and over again and counting trees rather than sheep. When I woke up I realized I'd been asleep, but one somehow doesn't feel one got the benefit if one thought one was not asleep the whole time.

Around two p.m. I finally got it together to start the pies. I got out the battered, greasy paperback copy of the Betty Crocker pie book, and made the crust for an 8- or 9-inch two-crust pie. During this time Ninja hopped up on the open door of the dishwasher, trotted around the kitchen after a catnip mouse, and chased Naomi downstairs. This was a benign interaction; she invited him, though whether she thought I'd like the kitchen free of Ninjas, I do not know.

I mixed the flour and salt together and went to get the pastry blender out of the drawer it lives in with the rolling pins and English muffin forms, in apparent harmony. It wasn't there. David was having his lunch in the dining room, so I opened the swinging door and said, "I can't find the pastry blender." David obligingly got up, saying, "I know where I think it's supposed to be." He then checked the dish drainer, which I had looked in, and the most miscellaneous of the utensil drawers, which I had looked in; and then he checked the rolling-pin drawer, and it was there. On top. In plain sight. "I don't say," said David, "that it was there when you looked, but it's there now." I had been so astonished that I failed to shut the door to the dining room, which is part of the cat-free zone. Ninja zipped past me and went to ground under the sofa. The major breakable items are still put away from when we had visiting cats, so I just shut him in and went back to the pie.

I made the pie dough and rolled out the bottom crust for the mince pie, which cracked all around the edges but did consent to peel neatly off the waxed paper and go into the pie plate with a minimum of resistance. I opened the jar of mincemeat, with some effort, and was scraping it into the bottom crust when Ninja uttered the most piteous sound known to catkind. I have heard it before, but it was still concerning. I opened the door to the dining room and called Ninja. He marked David's chair and the leg of the table and the sofa with his face, and ran under the sofa again.

I rolled out the top crust for the mince pie, which cracked around the edges and refused to be circular, even though I know how to roll pie dough in a circle and was doing just as I had with the other crust. Ninja made the most piteous sound known to catkind. I opened the door and called him, and he ran under the sofa. When I came back into the kitchen, there was a tremendous rattling and crunching from the hallway, right outside Lydy's bedroom, where she was sleeping after having worked all night. I looked around the corner. Arwen was lounging sulkily on a paper grocery bag. She wanted to flatten it, but the bottom was quite stiff and stuck up in her face, so she was leaning her head on it and looking sulky. I calculated that removing her from the bag and taking the bag into another room would result in more noise than letting her crunch and rustle the bag. She has a Siamese voice and often sounds like an outraged goat.

I arranged the irregular crust on top of the mincemeat, pinched up the edges as best I could, poked holes in it with a large fork, and put it into the oven. Ninja made the sound. I opened the door, and he ran under the sofa. I came back into the kitchen and set the oven timer. The paper bag crunched and rattled. I looked around the corner. Nuit was trying to get into the bag, but the top part with the opening was very flat and would not oblige her. Since Nuit's voice, while notable, is not usually used to object to everything one does, I moved the bag into the media room and tried to open it up for Nuit, but it was stuck somehow, and she was affronted and had gone into Lydy's room; at least she did that quietly.

I washed the flour and shortening off my hands, went into the cat-free zone, and captured Ninja in the solarium, where he was standing on the radiator. It was too cluttered in there for him to jump down easily, so I was able to grab him while he was deciding what to do. Or, possibly, he was bored but didn't want to admit that he wanted to come back to the populated areas of the house. I returned him to the kitchen, a defeat that he took quite cheerfully. I set the timer app on my phone, which crows like a rooster until you tell it not to, and went upstairs and had some lunch.

When the roosters crowed I went downstairs and took the mince pie out of the oven and put it to cool on a rack on the dining-room table. Then I made a second batch of dough for an 8- or 9-inch two-crust pie. The paper bag crunched and rattled. I looked around the corner. Naomi, or somebody, had returned it to the preferred spot outside of Lydy's room, and now Naomi was also trying to sleep on it. I reflected that at least Lydy didn't have to work on Christmas Eve, so if the cats did wake her up, she could just sleep later.

I rolled out the bottom crusts for the pumpkin pies. This batch of dough, made from the same recipe and the same ingredients in the same kitchen, and by the same person, and with all the same utensils and in the same bowl, behaved very well in the rolling-out. One crust let itself be pinched up fairly uniformly. The other one balked and dropped bits of crust all over the counter for that fashionable somebody's-been-chewing-on-my-pie look. I put both crusts in the dining room and went upstairs, where I washed the blender, dumped two boxes of silken tofu, a cup and a half of sugar, a teaspoon of salt, two heaping teaspoons of cinnamon, one heaping teaspoon of ginger, half a heaping teaspoon of nutmeg, and two teaspoons of vanilla into it, put the lid on firmly, and turned it on.

When it was all blended, I took the blender jar downstairs, stopping to collect two cans of pumpkin from the steps, where I am trying to learn not to keep random groceries. I mixed the pumpkin and the tofu blend together in a bowl and divided the results between the two waiting bottom crusts. I had forgotten to preheat the oven, but this doesn't take very long with the smaller of our two ovens in the nice new stove downstairs. I decided, however, that two pies on a cookie sheet were too difficult to get out of the little oven, so I preheated the big one. When I opened the door to put the pies in, I saw that the top rack was in the wrong position for these pies, in addition to having been put in crookedly. I pulled the rack out, and Ninja came to try to see into the oven. I got the rack in properly, but since I was in a hurry and trying to elbow the cat out of the oven, the potholder slipped and I burned my finger. I put the pies in, muttering, set the oven timer, and ran cold water over my finger. Ninja got into the sink to assist in this process. I removed him, absently petting him as I did so, put him down, and went upstairs to sit down and not think about pies. I recovered in about half an hour and went back downstairs, where I wrapped most of my presents for everyone. I got through almost all of them because the pies were clearly not done after the requisite 45 minutes, nor after 55, nor after 65. I took them out anyway lest I be scorching them in some invisible way. The edges of the crusts were at least brown by then, and there were a few cracks in the top of the filling.

I put the pies to cool in the dining room with the mince pie and went upstairs. Raphael was just heating up a bowl of soup, so we discussed when we would order Chinese food this week and decided on Saturday. The strainer from the sink was lying on the floor next to the dishwasher. "Why is the strainer on the floor?" I asked, once we had settled the question of takeout. "I was going to ask you that," said Raphael. "When it was in the sink," I said, looking at it more closely, "it had some bits of tofu in it from when I rinsed out the boxes." The strainer looked very clean. "Well, somebody with four feet," said Rapahel. "And probably orange ones," I said. Cass has white paws, and she can't jump very high. Saffron's adoption page, somewhat grimly, remarked that she could jump high. She can, too. "But who ate it," said Raphael, "once it was on the floor?" We don't know.

I looked up vegan whole-wheat crusts on the internet and found a recipe that didn't make me shake my head or laugh incredulously. Did you know that one recipe, quite ordinary in most ways, wants you to put the ingredients in a plastic container with a tight-fitting lid, or a large zippable plastic bag, and shake it for three minutes? And then add the water and do it again? I don't think so. I found a more conventional recipe and made it. At this point Ninja stood up on his hind legs and put his front paws on my hipbone, and I looked at the clock and decided that Lydy wasn't going to wake up soon, and fed the downstairs cats. When I rolled out the whole-wheat pie crust, it behaved pretty much as the bottom crust for the mincemeat pie had, but since this one was made from whole wheat, I knew ahead of time that it would do this. I crammed it into the pie plate, pinched up the edges, patched up the cracks, and put it into the oven. While it was baking I wrapped more presents. When it was done I put it to cool in the dining room.

While I was cleaning up the mess from making a lot of pie crust and David was wrapping his presents in the dining room, Eric came over to borrow Lydy's car, and remarked that I did not look too harried. I did not feel too harried, so that was all right. Eric gave me a hug and went on his way. While I was still cleaning up the mess, Lydy came home from what she called a fool's errand to buy yarn on Christmas Eve, having gotten up and gone out in David's car when I was upstairs, and we had a nice conversation. She said the paper bag had not woken her up.

I rinsed out the blender jar, took it back upstairs to its base, and put another box of silken tofu and a teaspoon of vanilla into it. When this was blended, I took it downstairs, and then irritably went back upstairs and got the chocolate chips out of the refrigerator. I melted these in the double boiler and then ran cold water over the outside of the bowl to cool the chocolate off. I should have done the chocolate and let it cool while blending the tofu, but cooking on two levels at once tends to confuse the order of events.

I eventually got the tofu and chocolate mixed together and into the baked pie crust. Then I put the chocolate pie and one of the pumpkin pies in the downstairs refrigerator, covered the mincemeat pie and left it where it was (it is actually vegan, and so contains no meat at all and does not need refrigeration), and took the second pumpkin pie upstairs and put it into the upstairs refrigerator. Cassie and Saffron met me at the top of the stairs and escorted me and the pie into the kitchen, and when I looked the clock I saw that they were somewhat overdue for their dinner. And that it had somehow taken me seven hours to make four pies.

I still have four presents to wrap.

If you celebrate Christmas, I hope you enjoy yours this year. If you are having troubles, I hope they may resolve soon. If you don't celebrate Christmas, I hope people who do are not driving you crazy.

Pamela

So the pilot light in the upstairs oven has been out for a while. I kept meaning to relight it, but I am stupidly afraid of natural gas; and more to the point, I couldn't find the location of the pilot hole. It was in a readily evident place on our previous stove and on the old downstairs stove, but I couldn't find it on the upstairs stove, despite repeated usage of a flashlight and of various strange postures. I finally believed that I had found it, but it was way in the back of the oven. Lydy and I had each set our hair on fire shortly after we moved into this house, lighting pilot on the old downstairs stove, which was right in the front of its oven; so I just kept putting it off, and when I needed an oven I would carry a pan of lasagna or roasting vegetables or macaroni and goat cheese or cornbread down the stairs, which wasn't hard, and then up the stairs when it came out of the oven, which was harder, especially as Ninja frequently accompanied me to see if I would let him upstairs to play with Cassie.

This evening I came upstairs after feeding and playing with the visiting cats, and smelled gas as soon as I came into the library. It might have been an overripe litterbox, but I didn't think so. I went grimly into the kitchen, with the smell of gas getting stronger, and opened the oven. Yep. I had never smelled gas at all in all the time the pilot had been out, so I felt something must have gone wrong somewhere.

I told Raphael, and looked up what to do on the Centerpoint Energy website. They said to get out of the house and call them and call 911. I felt that this was excessive. I called them; while I was on hold, Raphael asked if it was time to box up cats, and I said it was. Raphael got Saffron boxed. A woman answered the phone at Centerpoint. She asked me a bunch of questions, which I answered, said a technician would be along as soon as possible, told us not to use the phone again or turn on or off any light switches or other appliances; and strongly recommended that we get out of the house. I encountered Cassie fleeing from the open carrier, shook the food bag to lure her, scooped her up and handed her to Raphael.

Then I went down to the basement and woke David up. He asked if all the knobs on the stove were turned off firmly. Yes, they were. He got up, understandably annoyed. I started hunting for cat carriers. We have two medium-large ones upstairs, which Raphael had put Saffron and Cassie into. We have three small ones downstairs. Arwen is too large for those but they are fine for the other three residents. We also have two very very large carriers that Raphael got to move Jordan and Minou of beloved memory from Arizona to Minneapolis. Lydy often uses one of these to take both younger kittens to the vet. I couldn't find that one. I found a small one in Lydy's office and gave it to Raphael, who caught Ninja or Nuit and put him/her in and took it out. I found another small one in the basement. David pointed Nuit out to me, and I captured her with much hissing on her part and put her into the other small one and gave her to the returning Raphael. I unearthed the generally-unused gigantic carrier from under a stack of laundry baskets and put Naomi into it. I texted Lydy demanding to know where the other carriers were. She was at work, so I didn't feel I could call her. Arwen had vanished. David began to look for her. As I went through the living room, all the visiting cats came out. I retrieved the single cat carrier belonging to them, and they all vanished, too.

I hunted for the goddamn remaining small and gigantic cat carriers and could not find them. Not being able to turn on lights was unhelpful. David went upstairs and reappeared to say that he could not smell gas. I said I really, truly had, and went on looking for cat carriers. I almost caught Grout as I went by, but she eluded me. On another pass through the living room I almost got Mora. I went out to check in with Raphael, who was keeping the cats company on the front sidewalk. The technician arrived and went upstairs. I called out the location of the kitchen to him, but perhaps he didn't hear me over the beeping of his meter. He came back down and asked someone to show him the kitchen. He seemed much more blase than the woman on the phone. I went up with him, showed him the kitchen, and at his request moved all the pots and dishes and stuff from the stove-top. He checked whether the burner pilots were on, as I had; then he opened the broiler and checked inside it with a flashlight.

Then, while removing a long thin telescoping device and a box of matches from his pocket, he told me that Centerpoint had put too much odor in the gas today, and asked if the person on the telephone had told me that. No, actually, she hadn't. He re-lit the oven pilot, which was way way way in the back of the broiler. He said it certainly was stinky in the upstairs, but his meter didn't show gas accumulation. It only smelled strongly of gas because they had over-odorized the gas and there was a tiny amount from the unlit pilot. He recommended leaving a couple of windows open, apologized for any inconvenience, and went his way.

I went back outside, and took Ninja and Nuit in their little carriers into the media room, where I discovered David holding onto a very annoyed and wriggly Arwen. He said he couldn't hold her much longer and had been wondering where I was and where the other cats were being put. I said outside on the sidewalk, which information he received with the kind of disbelief only possible to people who have been awakened from a sound sleep and couldn't actually smell the gas. He let Arwen go. I explained what the technician had said. I let the little kittens out of their carriers. Nuit's had apparently not been used for some time: she was covered in cobwebs. Raphael took the upstairs cats back upstairs. I brought Naomi in in her gigantic carrier and let her out. She was not covered in cobwebs. David opined that Nuit was a good cat to dust the carrier, but that Nomi would have done a better job. This was in fact the case, given that Naomi is larger and furrier. Either the disused gigantic carrier was not full of cobwebs or it was so large that she could not dust it in the time provided.

I apologized for not letting David know what was going on for so long. He went back to bed. I came upstairs.

I am going to get more cat carriers.

Pamela

It is seldom in this house that anything at all is done without feline assistance.  This has been particularly true since we have had temporary cats in the formerly cat-free zone; these guys, who are wonderful cats, belong to friends who got divorced and lost their house.  Grout, one of the temporaries, helped me sort my mail yesterday, and Spackle would very, very much like to be hired to keep the tablecloth from coming off the dining-room table.  She has been persuaded to guard David's duffle bag of lighting equipment instead.  Mora has not yet seen a task worthy of her, but I am sure the time will come.  Ninja and Nuit downstairs and Saffron upstairs help make beds.  Cassie watches everybody eat and wants to clean plates.  She also helps pack suitcases, and she helps me cook by trying to clean up anything that I drop on the floor and watching the whole process narrowly.  Naomi takes on a purely supervisory role and makes a lot of suggestions.  Arwen, like Mora, has not really found many tasks that are worthy of her talents, but she will often help hold a book or magazine open or make a person rest by holding said person firmly in place.  She's also a good masseuse, having large paws and a dedicated stomping routine.

This afternoon I was sorting laundry on top of the dryer.  There were upstairs towels and downstairs towels.  Nuit leapt upon the dryer and flung herself onto the first towel that I put in the downstairs pile.  I accordingly put the other downstairs stuff on the open door of the dryer.  For some time she showed no interest in the upstairs pile, and I became careless, piling the washcloths high.  Suddenly she tried to head-butt the washcloths.  I put my hand out to stop her, and she banged her head into it with considerable force.  The towel she was sitting on slid off the dryer; it vanished between dryer and wastebasket, and Nuit landed plumb in the wastebasket, compressing several weeks' worth of dryer lint.  She levitated out again before I could even draw breath to laugh, and vanished into the back of the basement.  I put the towel back into the laundry monster, removed the rest of the towels to their destined storage places, and went to find Nuit.  She was washing her face on the edge of the uninstalled Jacuzzi.  Fortunately she didn't bear me any ill will.  I suspect that she thought she had offended the washcloths and they had shoved her off the dryer.

Ninja, who witnessed the entire thing, was more upset about it than she was and insisted on helping to wash her.

Pamela

I'm sorry it's been so long since I posted.

Recent Feline Depredations:

1. A few weeks ago I made a tortilla casserole.  It was pretty good, but I thought it would benefit both from some kind of vegetarian meat substitute and from about double the number of corn tortillas, since they are so nice when they have soaked up a lot of enchilada sauce.  I accordingly bought some Gimme Lean mock sausage at the Linden Hills Co-op, and a couple of packages of corn tortillas from Coborns Delivers.  I ended up keeping the corn tortillas on the unheated front staircase; in the weather we were having, it was more than cold enough there.  The sausage I put into the freezer.

On Tuesday evening, I decided to make the casserole.  I accordingly removed the sausage from the freezer and put it into the refrigerator; and I took the brown paper bag holding the corn tortillas from the staircase and left it on an armchair in the cat-sitting room.  This is actually the upstairs dining room in the view of the people who designed our duplex, but we have it full of cat furniture, regular furniture that cats have clawed, and cat toys; and we sit there with cats.

When I was going through the crisper finding the vegetables I needed for the casserole, I realized that the vegetables I'd gotten for the stir-fry were looking a little limp, and decided that it would be better to make the stir-fry that evening and the casserole the next.  I put the sausage back in the freezer, but I forgot about the corn tortillas.  I made the stir-fry, which was very good.  After we had eaten it I remarked that it was odd that cats had not been plaguing us, especially Cassie.  I went to look for her.  She was meatloafed next to the radiator in the library, a favorite place of hers in cold weather.  Before her in pride of place was a somewhat mutilated package of corn tortillas; around her, as Raphael discovered with a more careful examination, was a scattering of gnawed tortilla bits.  I had removed the tattered package to the trash when I first noticed the situation. Raphael decided it would be best to clean up the crumbs, and told me that Cassie was killing them -- picking them up in her mouth and shaking them vigorously to break their little corny necks -- but did not seem inclined to actually eat them.

The second package of corn tortillas was unmolested, and I put it into the refrigerator.

2.  On  Wednesday evening, I actually made the casserole, though obviously I had to do without extra corn tortillas.  While I was assembling it, Saffron came tearing into the kitchen with her neck fully extended, chirruping and sniffing and chittering.  She considered jumping up onto the stove, decided that the stove was too cluttered, and leapt instead onto the wooden cart we keep the microwave on, and thence to the top of the microwave, talking a mile a minute and sniffing madly.  "There is no meat in this food," I told her, which is a remark I frequently make to both cats.  "Please get down off that cart."  She jumped down and ran around the kitchen, sniffing and commenting; finally she shot off into the library on one of her regular tears.

We ate the casserole and I put the leftovers away without further feline interference.  But when I went into my office before bed to check email once more and put the computer to sleep, the wrapper from off the mock sausage was lying on the floor in there, licked extremely clean.  Since Cassie's method for getting things out of the trash involves tipping the can over, I assume this was Saffron's doing.

3.  When I was placing the online order that included the corn tortillas, Coborns had a big banner up on the website saying that they strongly recommended that people be at home to receive their groceries if the groceries were being delivered on Monday, and that groceries should absolutely be removed from the outside within thirty minutes of delivery, at the worst.  I dutifully went down when the doorbell rang, and took the groceries from the driver and brought them into the warmth.

The bananas were extremely green and are now turning black while still being rock-hard, so I wonder if they froze despite their little foam blanket.  I haven't really investigated them yet.  The soy milk was partially frozen.  Everything else seemed all right.  This afternoon Saffron showed a strong interest in some of the canned and packaged goods that we keep on the built-in the dining room, since there is not enough storage space in the kitchen.  She seemed most intrigued by a bag of co-op cereal, so I removed it from under her nose, and she was affronted and went off casually to show that she really didn't care about the cereal at all.  Or so I thought at the time.  However, later this afternoon when I came upstairs from moving laundry along, on the floor of the cat-sitting room I descried a tattered plastic produce bag and two baking potatoes.   The bag, though it had not been actually closed, was well chewed.  The potatoes looked quite damp.  This was not, fortunately, because they had been licked by cats, but because they were starting to get rotten.  They must have partially frozen too.  I could smell the typical rotten-potato smell when I picked them up. Saffron could obviously smell it much earlier and thought it was less awful than I do, though not actually good enough to cause her to eat the potatoes when she got a good sniff of them.

I will try to follow this with something more actually resembling content, but I thought it would be good to break the ice.  Or do I mean freeze the potato?

Pamela

Minicon looms, and I wanted to put down, however hastily, some matters that I will probably never commit to this medium if I wait until after the convention.

( New Cat )

( Some Anniversaries )

( A multifarious weekend, part 1, including Pericles )

Here's the link:

http://daedala.dreamwidth.org/123141.html

Soleil needs to be the only cat in a household. Just about everybody who wants a cat seems to already have one or several, but if you are in the general area of the Twin Cities, Minnesota, are catless, and want a really beautiful sweet cat, check out the photographs and the situation.

Pamela

I suppose things could still go pear-shaped, but at the moment Aristophanes seems much better. I was in tears last night because he wouldn't eat; it wasn't just that, but he did that whisker-curling, turn-the-head-away thing of a nauseated cat, and I had a terrible flashback to lying on the hallway floor in our old house at five in the morning, offering a saucer of salmon Fancy Feast diluted with warm water to my beautiful white Sukey Tawdry, and having her make that exact same face. She did not get better.

Ari, however, was apparently just tired of salmon. He snarfed some chicken cat food in a very natural way, and Raphael reported that he spent the night rocketing in and out of the upstairs and finishing up the plate of food. He is moving much faster and more naturally than he was, and demanded to go outside on his leash. I didn't even put on sunscreen. At least he missed the monarch butterfly that was darting around laying eggs on the milkweed. He might have missed anyway; it was pretty fast.

I had better go work on my book. Thanks again for all the kind words, and for the advice on feeding sick cats. I know I will need it in time.

Pamela