Wednesday, January 28, 2009, 06:36
A Very Close Call
I hope my "Gabriel deterrent" works. For most of the winter, our gray kitty cat, Gabriel, has spent much of his time when he's outside watching the birds in the bird feeders. Only twice have I found feathers around -- but that's not from lack of trying on Gabriel's part. And considering that he spends hours outside each day watching the bird feeders, two is not very many. And also considering that the cat can jump eight feet straight in the air to get up in the bird feeders, two is not very many either.
Tuesday morning, once again, Gabriel was outside watching the bird feeders. I happened to be outside, too, when I saw him jump straight up -- and grab a Slate Colored Junco right out of the feeder. Gabriel slithered to the ground with the bird in his mouth and, with his belly skimming the snow, scampered over toward the house.
Great. Now what was I going to do?
Was the bird still alive? How could I rescue it? What could I do to get Gabriel to drop the bird?
I thought for a second and decided to use a "Randy tactic" of scaring the cat. My husband has done this several times to get a cat to let go of a chipmunk or a bird.
I loudly stomped my feet on the porch.
Gabriel paused for one second, looked at me, dropped the bird and ran off a few steps.
The junco seized the opportunity and flew off into a tree.
Seconds later, Gabriel realized he had dropped his prey and came back to look for it, but to no avail. The junco was already safely out of reach.
I looked at the bird feeder and the pole for a few minutes, trying to figure out something that might keep Gabriel from jumping up from the ground to grab the birds. While two of them over the course of the whole winter was not really all that many, THREE was getting to be too much. I suspect that the more success Gabriel has, the more he will want to try to get at the birds.
I couldn't really think of anything to put around the feeder on the ground, but what about something on the pole? What about. . .
. . .Crinkly plastic? Crinkly plastic bags that will flutter in the breeze? Crinkly plastic bags that will make noise? Gabriel is related to Snowflake and Henry and Katerina and Dora. None of them are particularly fond of loud noise or funny noises. In fact, they are quite skittish, as cats go, when it comes to strange noises.
I went into the house, grabbed some plastic bags out of my handy-dandy bag lady that my niece made for me several years ago for Christmas, cut them apart so they had more flutter capabilities and then went outside to tie them around the bird feeder pole.
Gabriel sat by the house watching. When I finished, he slowly walked toward the bird feeder, weasel-necked and cautious. A breeze caught the plastic and set them to fluttering. That was enough for Gabriel. He backed away and took off in the opposite direction.
So, for now, the plastic might work to keep Gabriel away from the bird feeder. Only time will tell if it will help in the long run.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Tuesday, January 27, 2009, 06:34
How to Get a Cat Out of the Cold Air Return
Finally we are back online again! We had temperamental Internet service Friday night, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Randy called tech support Monday night when he got home from work and was informed there had been problem with the satellite signal. I think it is fixed now. I hope so. . .
How to Get a Cat Out of the Cold Air Return
It all started when the vacuum cleaner switch decided to go haywire just before we had everyone over for Christmas on January 11. At that point, Randy and I decided that instead of buying another vacuum cleaner, we would instead tear out the carpeting and put down linoleum tiles.
In the long run, linoleum is cheaper than buying a new vacuum cleaner every two years. Plus, then I won't have that 34 year old carpeting gathering dust and throwing dust up into the air every time someone walks on it.
Another thing about it, too, is that no one can accuse me of being frivolous and not keeping the carpeting long enough.
Anyway, last weekend Randy and I went shopping and bought the tiles. We narrowed it down to two patterns -- one kind of a gray "stonework" pattern and the other a very similar pattern that has some browns and grays in it. As it turned out, the store did not have enough of either one to do the living room, so I struck upon the idea of alternating the two patterns.
We brought the tile home, stacked it in the living room, and Friday night, Randy started tearing out the carpeting. It was a gold half shag that, as it turned out, was jute backed. Yellow was my mother's favorite color, so that's why she chose the carpeting in a shade of deep gold. At the time, it must have been a pretty good quality of carpeting because it actually held up quite well over all the years it's been down. It's just that carpeting is so dirty. No matter how many times you go over it with the carpet cleaner and no matter how many times you vacuum it, it is never really clean. I can tell you one thing for the certain: the person who invented carpeting did NOT have allergies of any kind.
Of course, once Randy started on the floor, I needed to empty everything out of the china cabinet so we could move it. Taking everything out and putting it in boxes wasn't so bad. It was putting it all back that was time consuming.
The kitties were having a good time, too. After all, the living room was torn apart with furniture every which way and things piled all over. It was "new" place as far as they were concerned. Dora had an awful lot of fun exploring the top of the china cabinet. Under normal circumstances, she is not allowed up there with the vases and candle holders and pictures. Not after her brother, Henry, jumped up there once, knocked a bunch of things down and broke many of them. I call him "Henry the 8th." I think Henry sometimes wonders what happened to "one through seven." Randy tells him that if he keeps breaking antique bowls and vases and pictures, we are going to have to look for a "Henry the 9th."
Anyway, we started on that side of the room and also had to take all of the books out of a book case in the corner that Randy's mother built for him when he was a little boy.
Once we got that section of floor finished on Saturday, we moved everything back and put the books back. I suppose I shouldn't really say "we" because it has been Randy tearing out the carpeting, scraping off whatever needs to be scraped off, putting down a primer and then laying the self-adhesive tiles.
We continued with the floor on Sunday, and I worked most of Sunday afternoon getting the china cabinet back in order.
Everything went smoothly up until that point, though. Then we had to move that beast of a piano. I was surprised, when the piano was out from the wall, to find the snowman's hat. The little snowman generally resides in the china cabinet. He was a gift from Randy's sister because their mother had one when they were little kids (she still has it, I think). The snowman had been on top of the piano for a while as I was cleaning out the china cabinet, and I guess his hat got knocked off somewhere along the line.
Moving the piano was not a bad job at all -- just push it out from the wall far enough so Randy could get behind it to tear out the carpeting, clean the plywood and prime it.
The problem, however, had nothing to do with the piano. It was the cold air return behind the piano.
For years, I have had visions of cats getting into the furnace ductwork when I've had the cover off the cold air return to clean it. After living here for almost 14 years, it had never happened, but still, I worried about it. When we took the cold air return cover off on Sunday afternoon, I put an afghan in the hole. After all, if the kitties couldn't see the spot, they wouldn't be tempted to crawl down into it. Right?
Right. . .
After we had removed the cold air return grate and I had stuffed the afghan into the hole, I took the cover to the bathtub so I could wash it off. It is amazing how much dust accumulates on the cold air return cover in just a couple of weeks.
You can imagine my horror when I came back just in time to see a striped tail disappear into the ductwork.
"Quick," I yelled over my shoulder to Randy. "Get over here. There's a cat in the ductwork."
"A cat?" my husband replied.
"Yes! A cat!"
"Which one?"
I was tempted to heave a deep sigh but didn't want to waste time.
"I don't know! I just saw the striped tail! Get the red bug!"
The "red bug" is our code word for a laser toy that Randy uses to play with the kitties. They love chasing the red light around the house.
In the meantime, I could hear thumps and bumps coming from the ductwork.
"All right, all right. I'm coming. Don't panic," my husband said.
Panic? PANIC? Why should I panic?. Just because -- I looked around at the other cats and realized who was down in the ductwork -- just because SOPHIE was in the heating system?
After what seemed like an hour but was really probably only 15 seconds, Randy arrived with the laser toy.
"Kitty-kitty," I called. "Here Sophie."
From the time she was a tiny kitten, Sophie has responded to her name.
Except on Sunday afternoon, of course.
"Here, Sophie," Randy said.
He shined the laser toy into the ductwork.
"I see her! I see her!" I said. Actually, I could only see her head as I slowly reached out with my hand. When the opportunity presented itself, I was going to grab Sophie by the scruff of the neck.
"No! Don't do that! You'll probably scare her!" Randy said. "Let her follow the red bug."
I withdrew my hand.
Sophie, however, wanted nothing to do with following the red bug out of the ductwork.
"Wait! I'll get a rabbit fur mouse!" I said.
I dashed out the kitchen. I couldn't find the one with a long string tied on it and settled for just an ordinary rabbit fur mouse.
I scurried back into the living room.
"Do you see her?" I asked.
"No," Randy said.
I dangled the mouse down into the cold air return.
Still no Sophie.
Which was quite strange. Sophie will go into the cupboard in the kitchen and HELP HERSELF to a rabbit fur mouse because she loves them so much.
I dangled the mouse down farther -- and then, of course, I dropped the darn thing.
"Shoot. I dropped it!" I said.
Randy continued to play the laser light back and forth -- but no Sophie.
I galloped out to the kitchen for the kitty toy Randy had made out of an old hanger. He tied shoestrings to the hanger, and the kitties are wild to chase it.
I galloped back to the living room and started twitching the strings right by the cold air return hole. The other kitties were interested in the shoestring toy, too, of course, and we had to keep pushing them back away from the cold air return.
"Do you see Sophie?" I asked.
"Nope. No -- wait! There she is!" Randy said.
This time it was my husband who grabbed for the scruff of her neck. And got it. And held on for dear life. Sophie was not taking kindly to being grabbed by the scruff, let me tell you.
Then again, Sophie doesn't take very kindly to much of anything.
"Hang on!" I said.
"I'm not letting go," my husband replied grimly.
I reached into the cold air return to grab Sophie, too.
"Come -- on --- out -- of -- there!" Randy gasped as he tried to pull Sophie out of the cold air return.
Sophie clearly did not WANT to come out of the cold air return.
I took a firmer grip on the hair along her back.
Sophie protested some more.
"Come out of there!" Randy said.
After a few seconds of fierce struggle, Randy was able to haul Sophie out of the cold air return.
She was not a happy cat.
I stuffed the afghan down the cold air return and while I guarded the small, still-open hole, Randy got some dishtowels. I stuffed those down the cold air return opening, too, just for good measure.
"I suppose we'll laugh about this someday," Randy said.
"I suppose," I said.
"I can just see it," Randy said. "Me down in the basement with the cutting torch, cutting open the ductwork, trying to find the cat."
Actually, it's a scenario I would much rather not think about, to tell you the truth.
Randy was able to finish laying the tile by the cold air return, and when he finished, we pushed the piano back along the wall.
"Well," Randy said. "One thing about it -- if Sophie can move the piano to get to the cold air return. . ."
"More power to her," I said.
I am reasonably certain Sophie will not be able to move the piano.
After all, Randy and I can barely move it.
By the time Sunday evening arrived, Randy had finished the north side of the living room -- all together, about half the square footage in the room. We didn't do anything more with the floor Monday night. Randy came home from work with a headache.
You don't suppose the headache had anything to do with all of the dust and the commotion and the pounding and scraping and getting Sophie out of the ductwork the day before, do you?
Naaaa. . .couldn't be. . .
LeAnn R. Ralph