thisendoftheswamp

We haven’t had any pets since October of 2021, when we had to have Eddie, our ancient cat, put down. I’d mentioned this lack several times, to put it mildly, and two weeks ago a gal in our knitting group brought me a tiny coal black male.

We named him Boris, because The Squire figured that was a “Godunov” name for a cat. We were talking about the kitten at Coffee Hour and after a very confusing conversation with Mac (Nothing unusual there. Most conversations with Mac are confusing.) when he kept calling the kitten by the wrong name, The Squire figured it out. It is typical of my life that I knew all about a Russia Tsar who reigned in the early 17th century but had never heard of Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Boris is a very clever cat, who managed to figure out the flap to the back room and the litter box with one shove in and out. Eddie claimed never to have mastered this trick; he would come out of the back room by himself but would sit in front of the door and wail piteously until one of us either opened the door for him or shoved his fat fanny through it. Oddly enough, he managed during the night just fine. Boris has also discovered he can push open the kitchen door rather than stay locked in the kitchen all night.

He has picky eater down to an art form. When I got him, I swung into the grocery store and picked up both Kitten Chow and some canned food, neither of which he will touch. The Squire gives him scrambled eggs with cheese, but the other day I found a can of tuna in oil, which we don’t eat. I opened that and put it down for him, and he ate about 3/4 of it! Great! Later in the day, I poured a little extra olive oil on it, and he made burying motions all around the can. OK. You don’t need to be so dramatic. We’re back to scrambled eggs.

The kitten’s favorite place to sleep is on my shoulder. If he wants to see what I am doing, he will crawl all the way around, so his head is on my left and his tail hangs down on my right.

Most evenings I go out around dusk and feed the snapping turtles in our pond. have three, which about four more than I’d like, but my mamma didn’t raise me to be an alligator wrestler.

One of them doesn’t want to take bread that is thrown into the water. He expects to be handfed and will climb out of the water for it. Usually, I put a chunk of ‘Store Bought White Bread” on the end of a small stick or one of the many chopsticks we have around the house. This particular “alligator” decided I wasn’t getting the bread to him quickly enough and decided to take a chunk out of my shoe. I’m fairly sure he figured he was biting my foot, and I am eternally grateful he was mistaken. Cn you image the damage he could have done to mere flesh and blood?

. . . but stupid instructions are another matter, entirely.

The Squire and I have been taking showers for so long that we no longer have a stopper for the bathtub. About three weeks ago, I was exposed to poison ivy, and as usual it got into my lymph system and proceeded to get all over. It moved from my index finger, up my arm, to my hip, the middle of my back – places I couldn’t even reach! I went to the local Doc-in-a-Box and was given two prescriptions and a suggestion that I take oatmeal baths to help soothe the itching.

I had to go several places to find a plug – apparently so many new-fangled faucets have the put hard-wired into the spigot that every few stores bother to sell them anymore. I did finally find one at the obvious place – Home Depot.

What threw me into absolute gales of laughter was that not only does the general public need to be told not to use the hair dryer in the shower or don’t pick up a chain saw by the round end, but they now need instructions on how to use a stopper! If you can’t read it, it says,

1: To insert, push stopper into drain opening.

2: To remove, pull stopper out by ring.

I weep for our young people.