Status Reports & Other Ramblings / cat shaming
look what the cat dragged in
I've been finding bags of beads outside my bedroom door or in the hallway on a regular basis lately. At first I thought it was probably Claire carrying things upstairs and dropping them, like she does with Legos (ow) but upon closer inspection, the bags all have fang marks in them. And this morning when I got up Lailah was sitting outside the door next to the beads and proceeded to spend several minutes mewing smugly while twining around my ankles.
So apparently she thinks I'm not capable of hunting and catching my own beads?
(She's obviously never seen me in action. This weekend I went to a trade show and stopped at the bank to take out $80 in cash with the intention of sticking to a very modest budget since I have four boxes of beads that haven't been put away from my last NYC buying trip and I didn't actually NEED more beads, but when your friend texts you going "BEAD SHOW DOWNTOWN TODAY" you toss all the kids in your possession into the car and go to the bead show and then you spend a bunch of time saying things like "don't kiss the beads" to the 3-year-old you're babysitting, but I digress. I spent that $80 in about 10 minutes flat and then I found the booth with the labradorite and moonstone and went "well, the business debit card is still in my pocket, sooooo...")
...wow that was a lot of going off on tangents. BRB, need to go find where I left my tea this time.
ANYWAY. So the cat has been very thoughtfully providing me with beads, and since she has interesting taste, I decided I'm going to start a new series called "What The Cat Dragged In" and make a piece of jewelry with whatever she brings me. The first four days worth are going up now (along with some shinies made from the beads I bought this weekend) and more will be added whenever I wake up to beads outside my door. Which means I CAN'T put away those four boxes of beads, I guess?
(And yes, I know all of the woodwork in my house desperately needs to be refinished or repainted. It's on my list of things to do in my copious spare time, which means I'll probably get around to it in, oh, 2032 or thereabouts.)
overflow sale and also some cats
(Preemptive TL;dr: coupon code APRIL takes 30% off everything, go buy some shinies, linear thinking is hard, sudafed is one of the great miracles of the universe, cats are jerks.)
You know how some companies will say "our inventory is overflowing" and you're pretty sure it's just hyperbole?
Around here, things are literally overflowing. One of the cats has slight kleptomaniac tendencies and keeps trying to steal things out of this basket, and I keep telling him DUDE YOUR EARS AREN'T EVEN PIERCED AND ALSO YOU'RE A CAT YOU DON'T NEED EARRINGS but he doesn't seem convinced.
Or maybe he's just a very fuzzy dragon with no wings? I don't know.
ANYWAY. The problem is that we have a few too many shinies, and you know what that means, right?
(No, it doesn't mean that I should probably stop buying beads. HUSH.)
IT MEANS WE'RE HAVING A SALE, which is a fancy way of saying I'm delegating this problem to you. Once the earrings or whatever are in your house, it becomes YOUR problem to figure out how to keep cats from stealing them. I'm guessing that will be easiest if you don't have any cats. Or small children. Or roommates. Or birds. Or friends.
...sorry, I've been reading Seanan McGuire novels again which tends to be contagious HA I'M HILARIOUS and also possibly I'm operating entirely on sudafed and caffeine and shouldn't be allowed to have words or the internet.
What was I saying? Right, sale. Coupon code. Cheapness. THINGS! [vague handwaving]
Through the end of April, everything is 30% off with coupon code APRIL. Which I think means you can afford to buy 30% more jewelry? I don't know, I'm bad at math, which probably also explains why I ran out of inventory bags last week.
Here, have a bonus cat photo since I can't figure out a graceful way to wrap up this post. This cat doesn't usually steal earrings but the other day a roommate walked into the dining room right as I was yelling "WHY DID YOU BITE THE ROLL OF INVENTORY LABELS?" at the table and he wasn't even concerned, which tells you a lot about what it's like to live here.
(Black cats are really hard to photograph, especially if they're under a table and you're brandishing a roll of chewed-up thermal labels in your other hand.)
In Which Mittens Has An Anger, part 739 in a series
This is a typical small cheap baker's rack. About waist-high, kinda wobbly. Until earlier today, it was in one corner of my studio with a fairly large and rarely used inkjet printer/scanner/fax multifunction machine on the middle shelf, packing supplies on the bottom shelf, and assorted clutter (including my old Nikon D40) on the top shelf.
As you can see, it is now empty and in the bathtub.
This is Mittens. Mittens has anger management issues. When he gets mad, he pees. Very creatively. And when I say "very creatively" I mean "he once balanced on top of a small wastepaper bin so he could pee on a houseguest's sock." He has quite literally peed in my shoes. He has peed on the sump pump in the basement. We think he probably peed on the baby at least once. Mittens no longer has the cozy basket you see in this photo, because he peed on it. His peeing skills are truly impressive, but I didn't really think he could outdo the wastepaper bin incident.
I was wrong.
When I went into the studio this morning, I immediately caught a whiff of Angry Pee. I tracked it to one corner of the room easily enough, but the floor was completely dry. Mystified, I then pulled everything out of the nearby closet (many dust bunnies, but no pee) and checked the recycling bin (nope) and my filing crates and to-be-filed basket (I need an assistant). I stood up to reevaluate the rest of the floor.
And then I realized the automatic sheet feeder on the top of the printer was... damp.
Very damp.
The packing supplies on the bottom shelf were completely unscathed. So was the camera and all the other items on the top shelf. Mittens had clearly carefully aimed his butt into the sheet feeder. I'm not sure how, since if you had asked me yesterday I would have told you there wasn't enough room for a cat to fit between the top of the printer and the shelf above.
I... rapidly came to the conclusion that I don't actually need a scanner anymore.
(And no, there is absolutely nothing medically wrong with him, and while he only has about two functioning brain cells - both of which get used for peeing - he's also not senile. He has been to many vets who have performed extensive and expensive testing only to ultimately diagnose him with a bad case of Your Cat Hates Everybody. And yes, we've tried that. And that. And that too.)