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August 5, 1998
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Apparently the people who applied to adopt Jaguar hadn't been told that he sprays and when they were they changed their minds. Poor Jaguar. He has such a hard time warming up to people initially and here were people who really liked him and he liked them. I petted him extra and let him sit on the sink while I washed the dishes. Not that I anthropomorphize and think he's feeling rejected. Nope :-) Many cat fights broke out today. There was a definite feline tension in the air. The sick room is now the ring worm only room. The socialization room is now the sick room. The office is now the FIP only room. At least the rabies quarantine room is still the rabies quarantine room. But this leaves no place to exercise the keep-ins (new cats who haven't' been vaccinated yet, or who can't be let out with other cats for some other reason) and socialize the under socialized, so the regulars had to go back in their cages early so keep-ins could get some exercise. Goldie got heavily into blanket-sucking today. This would have been OK if it wasn't a blanket that was already in the dirty laundry basket. Goldie was going to town sucking away like there wouldn't be any milk left in Mama real soon. I'd never seen Goldie do that before. I'm familiar with the behavior. I used to have a blanket-sucking cat when I was a kid. But you've gotta wonder what they get out of it. How long before the cat realizes no milk is going to come out of that filthy blanket? We had too many volunteers again today. The kid who brought a friend last week brought one today too: just some girlfriend who slept over at her house last night. They kept getting in the way. It actually took me more time to get the dishes done and Roberta and Bob more time to clean the cages. I don't know what the kids were doing but when I came in, not a single litter box or dish had been washed even though they were out of clean ones. There were four bags of dirty stuff from the various sick rooms waiting under the sink from yesterday. The kids couldn't have washed those when they needed clean ones? I quick-like-a-bunny washed about 12 litter boxes for them but they left and nobody noticed they hadn't put clean litter in the cages they did until it was time to put the cats back in their cages. We managed to get everything done by noon but it felt disorganized and rushed. Dawna had brought some yogurt covered raisins in for her snack. She made the mistake of leaving them next to the clipboard while she went into the office for something. Roberta and Nora ate them. They were going to tell her the cats ate them but even Casanova, who will eat anything, wouldn't touch the yogurt raisins. And Dawna doesn't miss a thing. No way was she going to believe the cats ate them. I stole Roberta's apple-raspberry juice out of the fridge. I didn't know it was hers. There were a whole bunch of juices that someone donated and they looked just like Roberta's. How was I to know? I even told her I was taking a can of juice and she didn't say anything about the apple-raspberry being hers. Gee, are we turning into little kids or what? It must be the babysitting duties for Ms. In-the-Way and her Sleepover Guest. Having had such a productive and effective day at the cat shelter, I bought a sandwich and carried it to Starbucks where I ate it with my coffee and Looking for the Lost, which I am still reading. I read several pages and then noticed I had read the same paragraph 7 times. Time for a break of some kind or other. This might be a good time to prune the bushes. I went home and procrastinated, pretending to get ready to prune. Then I really did get out the loppers and start cutting. I cut down most of the ailanthus tree that is growing next to my back porch and blocking my back door. It seems like I just cut it down to the ground about a month ago, but it's back and really annoying. So I cut it down as far as I could reach. There is not very much space between the back steps and the fence. I don't know how a tree can even grow there. Ailanthus trees apparently grow really fast and have huge unkillable root systems. I read on my Rhode Island Tree Council calendar that Ailanthus is nicknamed "Tree of Heaven" because it grows so fast and grows well in urban areas. Well it certainly grows well in the tiny space between my steps and the fence. I don't think there's anyway to get rid of it without demolishing the concrete steps to get at the roots. Darn. Guess I'll have to spend the rest of my life cutting it back to keep the doorway clear. At least until it destroys the steps for me! Buoyed by my success cutting back the ailanthus, I started in on pruning the raspberries now that the fruit is past. The problem is that bittersweet vines have tangled themselves in with the raspberry bushes and climbed all over the fence and the electric pole and everything else. I found myself panicking. I'll never be able to prune all this! And where did they come from? I plead guilty to planting the raspberries (in my foolish youth) but I never planted bittersweet, I swear! It's taking over my yard. The newly formed garden committee of the condo association has taken to glaring at me whenever they happen to see me on their rounds of perfecting the mulch in the common areas. They are not happy with my yard maintenance skills. I can tell. I'm not paranoid. They are out to get me. Well, maybe not "get me", but they definitely do not approve. I didn't plant the bittersweet. Really I didn't. They can take me before the grand jury and I'll still deny it. They can call my mother before the grand jury and I'll still deny. I DID NOT PLANT BITTERSWEET. I pruned and cut and chopped and lopped until my nose was running copiously, my eyes were watering and my skin was itching. I couldn't take it anymore and I'd barely made a dent in the bittersweet. At least the branches that extended beyond my own yard are chopped off. What I do behind the privacy of my gate is my business. For those unfamiliar with bittersweet, it's a vine with beautiful orange and red berries in fall. It fairly shrieks autumn in New England. It is also a pestiferous, spreading, ecosystem-choking weed on the order of such botanical villains as purple loosestrife or kudzu. It's a bad guy. Bad bad bad. Bad to the bone. Planting it would not be regarded as a good deed by the garden committee. On the upside, crafters make great autumn wreaths from the vines. Maybe I can sell it. |
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