King of the Cats

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Opie and I have been remodeling the bathroom and the pets have been less than enthusiastic.

By “remodeling” I, of course, mean completely gutting and starting from scratch:

And by “less than enthusiastic” I mean “ridiculous to the point of insanity.”

Take, for instance, Princeton P Kitty’s attempt to help me paint:

Not helpful, not helpful at all.

And to be fair, since I am the one who decided to decorate without him, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that he wasn't pleased with the outcome.

See, I decided would be cute to decorate with bird cages and Hummingbird art. Then, I thought it would be a cute and kitschy contrast to add this ceramic cat toilet brush holder:

However, I forgot to run my plan past Princeton P Kitty. And he wasn’t one bit interested in adding another cat household – real or stone.

He spent the first few days sniffing it out, trying to determine what kind of cat had invaded our home then yesterday he went ahead and kicked things up a notch.

Which I realized when I walked upstairs and glanced into the bathroom and saw a rather rat-like tail disappearing behind the shower curtain. I couldn't figure out what the heck the ridiculous cat was doing this time…

Until, clearly convinced this new intruder was incredibly dangerous, he flung himself out of the shower and onto the cat.

The other cat,  being ceramic, was relatively unimpressed and didn’t fight back at all.

Thus, emboldened by his obvious success, Prince jumped back in his new exciting bathroom curtain tunnel and smacked the ceramic cat from another angle.

And, in case you are wondering, yes, I did yell at him to stop even as I took pictures. But this is not the face of a repentant kitty:

On the bright side, the bathroom has been converted from this:

to this:

And I'm in love with the new bathroom...but I can't help but wonder if the shower curtain or the ceramic cat will be destroyed first.

Decorating and Drama

So, it's early in the Christmas season & Opie has been wondering if the decorations are ever actually going to make it out of the boxes in the living room and into the house.

Would you believe I already
 have half the boxes put away?

Which is, obviously, the wrong question.

The right question question would be "Are we still going to have all three pets by the time the decorations finally make it up or will I be forced to murder them to death?"

And, to be honest, it doesn't look good for the ridiculous animals.

See, The Bub is staging some sort of protest...He has spent a shocking amount of time walking in circles around the boxes in the living room, crying to be let outside, standing on the porch for all of 30 or 40 seconds then barking to be let back inside. I haven't had a chance to really explore his list of demands but knowing his long history as a political activist, I'm sure it has something to do with the plight of dogs in third world countries.

I tried to be kind as I explained to him that his protest, while admirable, is incredibly annoying but he didn't take it well. To put it mildly, we are no longer speaking.

I am also no longer speaking to Princeton P Kitty.  Largely because he's trying to kill me.

Here's what's happening: Opie has always said we can't have a real Christmas tree because we have a cat. The thing he forgets is that we don't have a normal cat. A normal cat would probably try to climb the tree and/or bat the ornaments down with his paws.

Our cat likes to hide behind the fake tree and then fling himself out at whomsoever is passing by.

Considering that I am the one who is usually passing by--with things in my hands and distracted  by a politically protesting dog--I'm pretty sure his plan is to give me a heart attack or send me tumbling to the ground in a flurry of tinsel, trinkets and tree debris.

Sassy, clearly, is the only one who  feels any sense of loyalty to me. Unfortunately, that loyalty has manifested itself in protecting me AGAIN from all the Kleenex we have in the house...to the extent that she pulled my jacket off the back of the chair, stuck her nose in the pocket to dig a couple out, then proceeded to try dragging the entire jacket up the stairs...distracted only by the awful attack of the mailman--who chose that moment to announce his intent to murder all of us by delivering a package.

Which seems a strange way to share a death threat but what do I know about the ways of assassins?

Sassy, though, wasn't fooled. She immediately dropped my jacket, ran across the room to the baby gate that keeps the animals out of the front room and actually broke through it like some sort of crazed mutant hulk of a dog.

Yes, you read that correctly. She broke the gate.Now the only thing we have keeping visitors, door-to-door evangelists, delivery persons, etc. from our dogs is their steadfast obedience to my authority.

We're doomed.

On the bright side, after days of decorating, although I haven't gotten as far as I'd like, I managed to create a cool way to display the Christmas cards...and by "create" I mean "shamelessly steal a cool idea from a friend."

But it's Christmas, why get caught up in semantics?

Anyway, I got some ribbon and a bow, wrapped it around the top of the fireplace, and now I can attach our cards to the ribbon and display them all season...

In fact, I liked the idea so much, I also wrapped one of our doors like a present, put a ribbon and bow on it too and have 2 places to display Christmas cards.

So, in short, bring on the Christmas cards!  But bring them on carefully since our protective gate is broken, our dogs are crazy and our cat is plotting murder!

Costumes, Canines and Culture

Well it's almost Halloween and here at the Yates Estates, that means one thing: Time to Horrify Opie with Costumes for the Animals.

It is interesting to note that Opie isn't the only one horrified by animal attire. My own mother has been known to label these outfits as "cruelty" and "abuse" but I'm pretty sure she's kidding.  I mean, if you take one look at Princeton P Kitty, you know this cat is having the time of his life:

And  Sassy, ever a team player, cheerfully prances about in a variety of outfits and helps me decide on an appropriate theme.

In fact, she was having so much fun that I almost decided the three fur babies should be the three witches from Macbeth...which would not only have been incredibly cute but also given me a chance to randomly scream quotes from the play, which is entertaining and educational for everyone involved.

Double, double toil and trouble
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

By the pricking of my thumbs
Something wicked this way comes!

But even though Bubba looked adorable in his witch's hat

He flat out refused to keep it on long enough for a group picture.  Even when I tried to assure him that Halloween was nothing more than a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, he flung himself around like the over-dramatic dog he is, throwing the hat halfway across the room.

To be fair, Bubba has always claimed that Shakespeare is too bombastic and inaccessible for the average dog.

Opie thought this meant Bubba would spend this Halloween sans costume...until we had the following text exchange:

Me:  Bubba wants to be a tiger for Halloween.

Opie: You're not dressing him up anymore, he hates it..

Me:  I don't know what you're talking about. It's all fun and  games here at home today.

And I added the following picture:

Opie's response was immediate and oddly unenthusiastic: NOOOOOOO!!!!!!

But the thing is, I feel like it's my responsibility to help these animals reach their full artistic potential. So, I quickly sent back I'm not going to squelch Bubba's creativity just because you have some obscure anti-tiger prejudice. Especially when he's really been working on his snarl.

Besides, I continued when he didn't answer for a few minutes, Sassy can't wear the tiger ears.  They look ridiculous on her.

Why does ANYONE have to wear the tiger ears?  Opie demanded.

At which point I knew some stranger had stolen his phone and was just messing with me,  Because anyone who knows me knows that SOMEONE has to wear the tiger ears.

So, in summary, Birnam Wood has come to Dunsinane (man, I miss teaching Shakespeare!), I have the Halloween costumes under control,  and I'm already plotting bigger and better things for family Christmas outfits...stay tuned!

Christmas Cards and other Catastrophes

I don’t know how everyone else greets the holiday season but around here we like to do a little thing I call “prepping for the Christmas card.”

Well, to be perfectly fair, one of us really likes to prep for the Christmas card, one of us likes to drink heavily in preparation of prepping for the Christmas card, two of us like to gobble up dog treats in anticipation of being forced into outfits for the Christmas card, and one of us spends a lot of the evening meowing angrily and trying to disrupt the preparation of the Christmas card.

I’ll let the pictures help you all figure which is which.

This year’s card idea actually came about last Christmas when my brother's family got Opie a “make your own ugly Christmas sweater kit.” I put it away until this year then got myself one because, honestly, perfect theme for a Christmas card.

In any case, the creative process started off calmly:  just a couple of crazy kids cutting felt and gluing puffballs.

Then, as the alcohol and dog treats flowed, our conversations went a little something like this:

“Is that my green puff?  You can’t have my green puff!  I need the puff! Wait, where did we get pipe cleaner snowflakes?”

“I can’t work like this, I can’t work with a cat in my face!”

“How come we only have one string of horrible gold beads?”

“How cute is that?  Prince is helping…"

"Wait! Stop him! Get him off the table right now!” followed by “Instead of taking pictures and yelling at me to get the cat off the table why don’t you just get him of the table?!” (Which just goes to show you that Opie has no clue about the importance of photographic documentation of big life events).

“Are we seriously out of beer?” followed by “Oh crap, I think I put some in the freezer for you so they'd be really cold…like 3 hours ago.” followed by “Well, that’s a disgusting mess…yes, we’re out of beer.” soon followed by “Don’t be ridiculous, we’re never out of vodka.”

“You did NOT get Bubba another sweater….stop saying he loves it, look at him, he clearly doesn’t love it!”  (Which just goes to show you that Opie doesn’t understand that Bubba limping around, pretending to have a sore paw is just his canine way of saying “clothes are so awesome!”)

“How many treats have you given those animals…oh my gosh, that cat wants to kill you right now.”

  

“A Cyclops snowman? What the hell is a Cyclops snowman? Did you do that on purpose or did you aim for one side and miss?”

“I can’t believe they call this sweater a medium—in what universe is this thing a medium?  I look enormous.  Don’t you think I look enormous?” followed by “I look FINE?  Is that what you just said?  For future reference, when I say ‘don’t you think I look enormous?’ the correct answer is ‘no, you’re as skinny as a supermodel—did you just LAUGH?"

In any case, we finished the sweaters without killing each other, the Christmas cards are created and ordered, and if you think Prince hated his sweater, check out his reaction to his new hat:

Brace yourselves, folks, I have the feeling it's going to be a loooonnnnggg holiday season!