If You Can't Laugh At Yourself...

Welcome to our new home on the internet! Glad you could make it. (^_^)/

Mandi thinks that Mimsy should be in our profile picture and I fully agree... are any of you capable photographers who specialize in children and pets?

That full family picture may be a while in the making, but here's a little Mimsy story for you in the meantime, in the category of "If you can't laugh at yourself...":

Mimsy came to us just having weaned her kitten, which meant that she was not yet spayed and we would have to watch her for signs that her body was ready for that. Guess what? We missed the signs. Guess what else? Cats in heat are loud. And weird. And sometimes annoying.

In the very middle of one very hot night, Mimsy had been howling at the windows for far too long. It was like having an infant in the house again, waking us up every hour or so. Finally, at 4:30, we thought it would be a good idea to block off our window and close her into our bedroom with us. (Something about not waking the kids and getting her away from the windows, I think.)

She did not appreciate this. Up on the bed, down on the floor, up on the bed, down on the floor, scratching at the door, up on the bed, down on the floor, yowling at the top of her lungs the whole time, mad as all get out. I covered my head with my pillow, hoping she would settle down. Nope... she jumped up onto the pillow on my head, turned herself around, and peed on me.

I think the first words out of my mouth were, "That BRAT!"

"What?"

"She PEED on me!"

Mitch, helpful guy that he is, popped up out of bed and opened the door for her, figuring that the only reason she could possibly have done such a thing was because she urgently required the toilet. Mimsy was quite happy to run out the door and resume her calls at the window.

I may have lost the battle, but I would not lose the war. In the kind of logic that only makes sense when you've been bullied by a cat at 4:30 in the morning, I decided that blocking Mimsy from the second floor would send her the message that IT'S NOT OK TO PEE ON PEOPLE TO GET YOUR WAY.

There is no door to block access from the first floor to the second, so we had to improvise. The first few barricades were clearly not tall enough, since she cleared them easily and darted straight to our room. (The particular meow she shot over her shoulder is probably most faithfully translated as "Suckas!") Time to pull out the big guns: the spare mattress from Maren's bottom bunk.

My dear husband shook his head and went back to bed, but I -- fueled by rage and adrenaline -- had a job to do and would not be outwitted by a cat. As the sun was rising and the birds were cheerfully greeting the dawn, I was busy erecting a barricade to rival the Berlin Wall, replete with chairs, a stools, several pillows and blankets, a 24-roll package of toilet paper, a toy basket, and a twin-size mattress.

Satisfied with the impenetrable defense I had built, I declared,"That should do it!" and called Mitch to come inspect my work. (He shook his head again, but I know he was secretly impressed with how my madness had produced genius.) As I turned to head back to bed, we both heard the soft thud of Mimsy's graceful landing before she shot past me into the bedroom.

I finally called a truce, although we did lock her out of our bedroom. I lay in bed, not at all sleepy, which left me enough time to wonder: why didn't we just lock her in the sun porch?