Baby Cakes: The Movie

New Grandbaby!

She's here, I've seen her, I've held her....and the picture above is by her big sister, Baby Cakes.

Miss Sweet Pea is here! And she's adorable, as all grandbabies are of course........ :)

A Bafflement to Me.....

Here's a question that's been in my head for a while, now, and I've posed it to a number of people over the years.

Nobody's ever had a usable answer to it; I throw it out here in case someone reading this has one.

Why do companies send you bills for a specific amount, for which their known policy is "we do not accept partial payments, payment is due in full only".....

.....and then put a box on the payment slip for you to fill in that says "Here' s how much I'm sending."

"Hey! Ya owe us $128.37! We demand that you send us $128.37! No more! No less!"



"So! How much ya sending us, huh?"

Only company I know of that doesn't do that is American Express. They presume their customers are bright enough to understand the rules......

A Quotation that Struck Me.....

Kin-folks! They are such homey sounding words and strong, too, and sweet. Folks who are akin---why they need not even be relatives or “blood kin!” What a vista that opens up! They are scattered all over the world, these kin-folks of ours and we will find them wherever we go, folks who are akin to us in thought and belief, in aspirations and ideas, tho our relatives may be far away.

--Laura Ingalls Wilder, Missouri Ruralist, 5 August 1916

More Tails of the Cat Door......

[Post edited 8/21/08 to add mug shot of The Culprit....]

Wednesday night, sound asleep.

The cat door is right next to my bed. The only cat who uses it is Sarah. It's now permanently set to "can enter, cannot exit" courtesy of Astra's adventure.

(Astra, as we know, would love to, but she's not permitted. Morgan's too afraid of ending up homeless again to go out unless I'm less than a foot away, and Tondra won't use the cat door, although she loves to go out.)

I wake up enough to hear the thwack-thwack of the cat door being used, think "Sarah's in", go back to sleep.

I hear a crash, half open one eye, see shadowy form of cat in dark having knocked down the extended platform at the window. Think "Way to go, Sarah", go back to sleep.

I hear the sounds of a major cat fight in the hallway. There are still signs of less than perfect harmony in the household, with half the cats being resident less than two months, but it has always been hissy fits up until now. I think "Okay, somebody's having a major disagreement about the pecking order" and get up to go make sure nobody's taking unfair advantage of the kitten.

And realize that it was NOT Sarah who came in. It was a grey and white cat who lives somewhere in the neighborhood.

He/She had stuck his head in the cat door before, seen me reading, and vamoosed. Silly me, I thought that had taken care of its curiosity. In retrospect, knocking down the platform was probably related to "what do you mean, this door doesn't work to get back OUT? I gotta get OUT right now!"

Middle of the night, I'm chasing a cat who doesn't belong there all over the house. I have Astra behind closed doors, and the front door propped open, but this cat keeps going past it to try to insist on going out the living room window. Eventually, he figures it out and scoots out the door. I then spend the next hour cleaning up the disaster he's left in his path.

Hopefully, that's his last adventure with the cat door. We'll see.

Catspiracy Theory.....

Astra's been exploring every inch of the house, including the indoor side platform of the window-mounted cat door. She's shown some fascination with looking out the small clear window bit of the cat door, and so I suppose today was inevitable.

I came home from work and did my standard routine of finding and saying hello to all the (now four) cats as I took my clothes off in preparation for a shower. (Working in non-air-conditioned splendor in summer means that first thing on the agenda when getting home is a cool shower....) About the time I was grabbing a towel and heading into the bathroom I realized that only three cats---three relatively LARGE cats---had checked in.

I did a bit of a fast pass at the house calling Astra, but had to wait until after my shower and getting dressed for a serious kitten-hunt. Of course, since she hadn't responded inside, the odds were pretty good she'd finally explored the cat door, which I hadn't thought she'd try this young. And as soon as I opened the sliding glass door to the back yard, I was greeted by a kitten bounding out from under some of the flowers, yowling her head off, telling mommy about her day.

Now I know she was out there because she got a bit too adventurous. But I still can't help picturing Sarah, Tondra and Morgan banding together:

"Look, you're a kitten. You need to learn things. You have to go to school. Mommy told us to tell you, really. Just go thru that door and wait a couple of minutes, and the school bus will be right by. I promise. Really." (Shove.)

They just didn't look innocent *enough* when I came in, I guess. One of those moments when you wish for a webcam.

Year Two....

...been a year now in Indianapolis. And that whole year has been mostly about finding my feet, trying to land on my feet after what felt like falling out of a mid-air jet crash without a parachute.

As starts go, it's been okay. So what is year two going to be about?

Don't know yet. Fine tuning, certainly; maybe less treading water just trying to stay afloat and more choosing where and how to swim.

By the way, Astra seems to have her Whole Name now: Astra V. Khat.

Astrakhat as in Astrakhan. V. as in Velcro. :)