Anatomy of a break-in

Last Saturday I was lucky enough to have my mum, sister, and bridesmaids host a wedding shower for me at my parent's place. After all the renovations they've done to their house I barely recognized it (they put balloons out front just in case I didn't). Before the shower Dad and I hit the farmer's market to find someone we could buy gladiolas from for the wedding.

I had friends rent cars to drive from Ottawa, friends who left in the wee hours of the morning to catch the train from Toronto and friends and future family who drove up from Windsor (4 1/2 hours away!), Burlington, and parts in between.

When the invites went out I was kinda uncomfortable with the whole "here! show up and buy me stuff" thing that goes along with showers, so I asked people to consider making donations to their favourite charities, which some people did, and I think it really added to the shower. (Plus, I got cool stuff too!)

After the shower I went out with friends in TO (who I don't see often enough) where we had a great Thai dinner (man was I hungry) and came home exhausted. I was asleep shortly after we got the highway (luckily Dave was driving)

I already knew something was up for Sunday. There were only so many times my mum and sister could tell me about a possible "mother of the bride" dress from my mum and sister before I decided to call their bluff and they finally fessed up. Turns out my parents' families were hosting another shower for us, and I had to be there shortly.

I'll admit to being weirded out being made the centre of attention, but it was so cute to see my cousins' kids running from the laneway to the house to alert everyone that my sister and I were there. Wasn't it just last year I was the one running out the laneway to say "they're here!"? They were all so cute in their little sundresses. When I was a kid I hated it when grown-ups said "oh my you're growing" or "I can't believe how big you are" so I won't say that about my little cousins, but man, the years fly by. My great aunt even made a corsage for me to wear!

We got lots of fantastic stuff for the house that we desperately needed. It'll be so nice to be drinking out of things other than our 3 plastic ikea cups, drink wine out of non-acrylic wine glasses*, do laundry with baskets that don't cut our hands, make toast in a toaster that won't burn it, and play with our new salad spinner (what a great toy!). I'm still working on thank you cards.

After the shower we went to visit my grandfather who's been ill and in hospital lately, and my mum and sister drove me back to my place. When we got there I realized I forgot my purse at my grandparents' place, more than an hour away.

I could have survived wallet-less, but in my purse were the keys to the house. I also knew Dave was out with friends, more than an hour away. A car full of shower gifts, my mum and my sister needing to go home, and no way into the house.

Luckily, our kitchen window at the back of the house was open, so I borrowed a neighbour's ladder to break in. The kitchen window is the very top corner of this picture. Notice how non-close to the ground it is.

The ladder barely reached. So, I ditched my flipflops and asked my mum and sister not to make fun of my undies which were plainly visible up my skirt as I climbed the ladder. I managed to pry the screen off, and gingerly reached one leg through the window.

Ah but the other twist here is that the kitchen floor is a good jump down from the window, which is about 4 1/2 feet off the ground. So, while straddling the window sill, I was figuring out how to get my ample butt through it, and do so without falling and knocking myself unconscious by hitting my head on the stove. Fun times.



All the while Rhett the cat was in the kitchen meowing at me like "Hey! I'm hungry! Hey! You're home! Hey! I'm hungry! Hey! You're home! Hey! I'm hungry!"

The ridges on the window sill left giant purple zebra stripe bruises on my leg, I think 6 in all. I scraped my elbow, but all was well, and my sister and mum were free to go, no longer stuck waiting around and holding the ladder while I apologized for my stupidity.

I don't talk about my job much on my blog. There are TONS of hilarious stories that happen in court, but the whole solicitor-client privilege thing gets in the way of me telling them. (Stupid ethics.) In any event, I now have new-found respect for people who are charged with break & enter into a dwelling house to commit an indictable offense and charges like that, because, man, that's hard work!

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*I know this is indefensible. I am a wine snob. But, when most of my wine glasses fell victim to "moving" last year and we hadn't bought new ones.

If you ever want proof that I'm an incurable sucker

...all you need to do is look at Rhett.

While living in Windsor I went with Sara one day to help her rescue a kitten who was sick and going to be put down. I was absolutely NOT going to go home with another animal. I was merely tagging along for the ride.

I came home an hour later having adopted Rhett.

He had been in a tiny 2x2x2 crate at the humane society for a few weeks already and was an older cat. When I walked past his crate he reached out with his paw (and claws). I was hooked literally and figuratively. I opened the door and he purred and meowed with all his might. He wriggled around in my arms like he was trying to make sure as many square inches of his body as was possible were touching me and being petted. He nearly fell out of my arms a few times. I don't think I've ever seen a creature who was more happy just to be held.

With fresh tooth marks on my hands and arms from his zealous love bites I gladly whipped out my debit card and decided I couldn't leave without him.*

I named him Rhett, but the name doesn't suit him at all. He's a Gilligan. He loves everyone and everything but isn't among the brainiacs of the animal world. He often sees a nail in the wall and thinks it's a spider and will pounce on it. Repeatedly. He bites things (and people) when he's hungry. If someone came into our house right now and paid attention to him he'd leave in a second to go live with them, and forget he ever lived here. Not maliciously or anything, he'd just be so excited he'd forget about us.

The twist, of course on this new plan was that Miss Scarlett (aka Miss. Hissy, Miss. Pissy, or Miss. Crankypants) already ruled the roost** at home. Thankfully I knew bringing Rhett home wouldn't be smooth so no great expectations.

His first few days Rhett lived in the TINY bathroom of my Windsor apartment. He was un-tutored which meant he was fond of spraying, as adult males do. It also meant the pink monster (or red rocket) would occasionally pop up when I was petting him. This led to me running from the bathroom a couple of times.

Scarlett spent the first two weeks on a stakeout outside the bathroom door, hissing and growling to welcome him. When he was finally released from the confines of the bathroom after a trip to the vet's, she spent the next months chasing him to beat him up for intruding on HER space.

Nearly two years later I catch him coming to see her when she's sleeping, hoping for a quick few licks on the head or someone to snuggle up to. She's still fond of biting his ear, but it's more of an affectionate bite now than an "I'm going to tear you to shreds, dummy" bite.

He was a skinny little cat with wiry, coarse hair when I got him. He's now a plump sausage shaped cat who still loves nothing more than to curl up on you, purring loudly, flailing wildly. He's a master at both breaking into bags of expensive diet cat food, and none-too-stealthily-but-very-persistently eating from the dogs' bowls. He goes after cat toys with such focus it's as though he's possessed. He loves sleeping like Big Bird, with his paws stretched over his head.

The moment I come home Rhett comes racing for the door, belly jiggling and meowing the whole way as though he's telling me about his day. When he gets within a few feet he usually flops on the floor and rolls around on his belly meowing. It's like he's doing an impression of bacon frying. He couldn't be happier. It's as though his brain has some wires mixed up which make him permanently happy, for no reason. There isn't a mean bone in his body or a mean thought in his head (Dave would correct me and say there are no thoughts in his head).

I'm so glad I ignored all common sense and didn't leave him at the shelter that day, almost two years ago now.

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*well, actually the shelter had a policy where you had to wait 24 hours before picking up an animal, and it was a Saturday so I actually did leave that day but came back on Monday to get him.

**if she could talk she'd point out it was her house.

***This fact also meant that the pink monster (aka red rocket) would show up if you pet him too much and made for some awkward moments with me running from the bathroom yelling EW!

Cardboard Heaven

In order to organize the basement we bought a couple of assemble-it yourself basic pine shelves. They aren't fancy, and, assembling them made the air pretty blue in our experience. What should be four posts for height are actually eight, which are held together by tiny little dowels which aren't worth a hill of beans. Not only are they not long enough to really secure the top to the bottom of the shelf, the screw holes don't remotely match up. It was, to say the least, a frustrating experience. At least I now have a place to store my law school books other than the trunk of my car.

The shelves came in big cardboard boxes, and anyone who has had cats knows that these are code for cat heaven - they're almost as good as big paper bags.

It's only every other week that we have recycling pick up in the 'shwa, so getting all the recycling together every 2nd week is necessary, cause anything we miss will have to wait another 2 weeks hanging around the house. That being said, seeing how much the cats enjoyed the boxes and this being recycling week, they're still here. They just loved having them to sleep in too much. This is Scarlett modeling the new digs.

Even once assembled, they were a great hangout for the cats to sit and slap at each other.

Truce is better than Friction

Of late, it seems that Scarlett has made peace with the dogs. While she's still fully in control (and swats at will when they irritate her), it's like she's decided that since we have yet to get rid of the dogs, they're probably staying so she decided to get used to it. Just after this picture was taken Scarlett went up to Daedalus and licked his forehead.

I still think she was saying "what a filthy thing you are, [sigh] here let me clean you up" but it certainly seemed to be out of affection. I doth anthropomorphize too much.

Animal roundup

SCARLETT:
Can you find the cat in this picture?

She wasn't impressed when I lifted the blanket... she got totally miffed I had found her. It's like when little kids cover their eyes with their hands to 'hide' so you don't know where they are.

RHETT:
Doesn't like to pass up any opportunity he can to nap and be near food, cat toys and sunshine. This morning he manages to get all four within a span of a couple of feet.

I think the orchid in the terrarium is the only plant in the house he hasn't figured out how to munch on.


PROMETHEUS:
When it comes to intellect, he's definitely the omega dog. The dogs, when left to their own devices long enough seem to always find a way over to the neighbours' yard through the cedar hedges, no matter how many of them we've tried to block off. We're off to Home Depot in a bit to get some mesh to put along the length of the fence, and hopefully that will put an end to their adventures.

This morning they wandered over there again. Daedalus was smart enough to come back over, but, since the trip back over required Prometheus to do more than come straight through at one point, it became an intellectual challenge of olympic proportions for Prometheus. He couldn't figure out "enter bushes at point A, exit bushes on the other side at point B".

Eventually we gave up trying to coax him and Dave went through the bushes himself, to show him how it was done. This is the same dog who dove into a river after seeing a chocolate lab do it and stood, neck deep in rushing, freezing water, completely clueless and terrified as to what he should do to get out of a "neck deep in rushing water" situation. It took some coaxing to get him out of that mess as well.

He's since found some laundry to lie on.


DAEDALUS:
Made it through the bushes the first time he was called. We think he's just smart enough to get himself in trouble (but not much more).

If we let him, he'd definitely choose the life of a lap dog. As it is, given how heavy, big, and bony he is, the hardwood floor seemed like a pretty good place for him to pass out this morning.

Rhett is the kinkiest number that we've ever seen... (sung to "One is the loneliest number")

So it turns out Rhett the cat is the kinkiest member of our household. I found this out yesterday, during his usual "wake up I'm hungry!" stomp on top of us in the bed where he meows, purrs loudly, flops, kneads his paws, etc on us. As per usual, I let him sleep on me for a while, and when he wouldn't stop giving me a breast self exam I politely shoed him away.

After the wake-up call I gave him, he decided to lie on Dave's side of the bed, purring loudly enough of course that we could still hear him if we were 50 feet away. We were both in the stage of "barely waking up" since Rhett starts this routine about a half hour before our alarm goes off.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Rhett rubbing against Dave's hand, being all cute. Dave quickly draws the line when Rhett pulls out the teeth (he bites random things when he's hungry, the list of which has included us, phone books, toothbrushes, eye drop bottles, TV remotes, pretty much anything he can find). Now, our programmable thermostat hadn't kicked in (since it starts the furnace at the same time our alarm goes off) so it was cooler in the house. What does Rhett do? When he lost the option of going for Dave's hand, he saw a nipple and went straight for it! All I heard was the sound of Dave yelping and Rhett hitting the ground with a thud. I don't think either of them knew what hit them.

My friend Murphy and his laws

When you meticulously measure out the cat food to save one cat from obesity, he will invariably turn to eating large quantities of dog food to spite you.

How much does Rhett love cat grass?

THIS much! My mum dropped some off last weekend and the cats are really enjoying it, Rhett especially. He does, however, get frustrated with cat grass (and plants in general) when he tries to rub his scent on them. It doesn't work that well since they're not hard surfaces so he just ends up biting them. Keep your fingers crossed for my amaryllis, which fell victim to his teeth Friday night. I hope it will still bloom even with a few bite marks!

Anatomy of a break-in

Rhett has a weight problem. He started off a skinny rescue from a shelter but quickly betrayed that heritage. The last time we took him to the vet I was told "he has GOT to go on a diet!" At 15.2 lbs, I saw no reason to disagree.

We have quickly gone through that initial bag of "expensive, buy it only at the vet's" food and it wasn't until yesterday that I spent an additional $70 on the high end diet stuff. This is what Rhett thinks of diets:

Step 1: Approach bag nonchalantly, sniff edges to confirm it's worth breaking into.

Step 2: Test bag with teeth.
Step 3: Wait until no one is looking and really bite into it. Make so much noise as to attract other cat.
Step 4: Devour contents you have mischievously uncovered. Pout when caught.
Step 5: Find bag where owner thinks she's cleverly hid it out of sight and repeat above steps.

fridge poetry

I'm a big fan of those little fridge poetry magnets, and my fantastic friends Scott and Sara brought us a whole new package of them - this one is cat themed. So, while putting them on the fridge late the other night I decided to play around. Rhett is my inspiration for this one: