This is when I hate the Internet. There’s no way to reach out and hug them, to give them a baby kitten or sit in their kitchen making a cup of tea while we cry together, to comfort them with anything besides electronic words.

Chuck and Sylvia: you are in our prayers. Someday we’ll meet– if not in this world, then in the next one to come. We’ll hug and laugh and our two kitties will run around at our feet together at last.

Maybe you’d go visit Chuck’s blog, Secondary Roads, and give Chuck and Sylvia a virtual hug. We love you guys.

If it wasn’t for my good pal Karen, I would have gone through this ENTIRE day not realizing what an important holiday it is! Hey, to us smooth-skinned homo sapiens, it’s not much to toot about, but to our furry friends, National “Hairball Awareness” Day is right up there with National “Change the Litter Box” Month and “Take Your Cat to Work Day”!

Because I am too lazy to write a new post To celebrate this momentous day, I thought I’d present a little blast from the past. I wrote this on my home improvement blog a few years ago. It was SO memorable that I thought I’d include it here for posterity!

Have a GREAT HAIRBALL AWARENESS Day, peeps! I hope you become aware of many a hairball on this grand day!

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You know it’s going to be “one of those days” when you’re on the phone, making a VERY IMPORTANT phone call looking for employment, and the cat decides to choose THIS moment and THIS room to hack up her hairball. Yep.

So I’m on the phone, exchanging pleasantries with the secretary, and Livvy saunters in. Suddenly and without warning, she starts that HORRID retching sound. I’m trying to remain cool on the phone, but am frantically signalling for my son to GET THAT CAT OUTTA THE ROOM. His eyes grow big as he realizes what’s going on, then starts calling loudly, “Livvy! LIVVY! You got a hairball? Come here!! Come on!”

The kitty leaves the room, WHEW. I finish the call and hang up the phone…. and all is quiet. Preoccupied, I call the next telephone number in my list. Lo and behold, the cat walks back into the room and STARTS UP again! GAH!

And I don’t know if it is the bizarreness (is that a word?) of the moment, but my cockatiel then starts a huge commotion, squeaking and clacking in his cage…. ????

I’m doomed to be unemployed… the animals are against me….

1. You grind your coffee beans in your mouth.

2. You lick your coffeepot clean.

3. You’re the employee of the month at the local coffee house and you don’t even work there!

4. You can jump-start your car without cables.

5. You’ve built a miniature city out of little plastic stirrers.

6. When you find a penny, you say, “Find a penny, pick it up! Sixty-three more, I’ll have a cup.”

7. Instant coffee takes too long.

8. You name your cats “Cream” and “Sugar.”

9. Your lips are permanently stuck in a sipping position.

10. You don’t even wait for the water to boil anymore.

There are four seasons to a year. You’d think that every season should last 3 months, right? I can’t think of any place on this earth where that happens. Here in Upstate New York, we have 5-6 months of winter, 1 month of spring, 4 months of summer, and 1 month of fall. That’s going by temperatures and weather patterns, not the position of the sun and the equinox thingy and all of that. I like fall best, so 1 month is just not enough. If in heaven I am given my choice of preferred seasons, I’m going for 7-8 months of fall, 2 months of winter, 1 month of spring and 1 month of summer. Oh, and NO flies and mosquitoes, please.

I think I could tolerate this kind of weather for most of the year. :D

I’ve noticed that lots of bloggers have been experiencing “blogger burnout” or have been going through the “end of summer exhaustion.” I don’t have burnout or exhaustion right now, but I have suffered through it before. Blogging is tough. When you first start out, you always have SO MUCH to write— it’s sheer joy to have a place to share your experiences or stories. The blog may even build up into a small community of friends, who “meet” once a day and chit chat about things. After a while, you may need a break…. life happens, ya know? And stories and things to share get fewer and fewer (especially if you lead a mundane life like yours truly). I greatly dislike the pressure of blogging. Blogging should be somewhat spontaneous, should still be a joy to do. Me, I sometimes have sponsored posts and links and all…. so sometimes there is a great deal of pressure because blogging is also something I do professionally. I don’t want to make my blogs into billboards, so I have to work hard at making the posts extra creative, to offset the other stuff. Not easy. But it’s WAY better than working at McDonald’s….

My kitty likes to crawl all over my desk, nuzzling my face and trying to get my attention. It’s so sweet when she does that. She looks at me with her cute eyes and meows and rubs my face. Sometimes she does it because she’s hungry. She’s so cute that I can’t resist, so I get up to go to the kitchen, to give her a spoonful of canned food in her dish.

Who can resist that adorable face?!

I look around, and she is not in the kitchen. When I return to my desk, she’s stolen my chair!!! She’s good, I tell ya. :-?

HEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Have you been plagued with mold and mildew this year? It’s been impossible to keep up with it– destroying it, that is. It’s everywhere. The stuff exploded from a very soggy spring compounded with a hot and humid summer. I hate mildew, it’s my enemy. I’m sensitive to the smell of it and I just hate it. It seems to know that I hate it so much, and reproduces profligately just to irk me. I was beginning to wonder if it was “just me,” but when we visited an historic site in Hudson, NY, the tour guide there mentioned that they’ve had a terrible time battling the mildew this year.

Today, I sent the kids on an investigative mission– the house smells like mildew when you first walk in the back door. Very putrid. I told two kids to check under the washing machine, the dryer, the shoes– everything– to find the source of it. The stench was so pungent that I thought perhaps my washer had sprung a leak. They spent quite a bit of time looking in the small corners and crevices, to no avail. They returned to me, saying they could not find any leak. I sent them back, telling them to sniff around for the mildew smell. Almost immediately they returned, holding a pair of work gloves. My son said he’d gotten them wet and *forgot* to wash them, and just left them on the dryer (where they got wedged behind a basket). WHOA those things smelled awful. My throat still burns from smelling them. It’s hard to believe something so small smelled up the entire laundry room and back kitchen area, but I guess they did. *sigh* Mildew and kids…

10. Cats don’t bite and slobber all over you.
I tell my kids that “any provoked animal will bite,” but cats don’t bite as a first means of defense. Yeah, they scratch but dogs scratch AND bite. And dogs drool and slobber. Yuk!

I have never had a “slobbery” dog (I think it’s the big dogs that do that, mostly) but I’ve handled enough slimy tennis balls and squeaky toys from the neighbor dogs to be scarred for the rest of my life.

9. Cats don’t yelp, bark, howl, or growl.
Cats make the cutest little meows. They purr. Sometimes they may growl when threatened, but cats are almost always quiet.

We once adopted a cute little beagle, Daisy, and she was so cute. But beagles bark. A LOT. Poor Daisy couldn’t bark, although she tried like no tomorrow. The previous owner had her voice box removed! It was weird to see Daisy try to bark and bark and nothing would come out. The UPS man, who liked her a lot and would toss her a biscuit every time he delivered a package to the door, once said of Daisy, “I know she’s trying to tell me something, but I can’t figure out what it is!” As sad as Daisy’s predicament was, deep down I was glad she didn’t bark loudly. My neighbors would have had fits.

8. Cats use a litter box. Dogs dump it anywhere.
Cats can even be toilet trained. For all the training a dog must go through, someone please tell me why no one has even been able to train a dog to use the toilet. Or to AT LEAST not go all over the carpet. Yeah, yeah, a dog can roll over or get a stick, big whoop. How about controlling that bladder, huh?

I once had a dog who I brought indoors, thinking I could train her to be a polite and clean little indoor dog. She promptly puked all over my carpet and sat down to scrape her butt across the floor. She was outside the next day.

We went to PetSmart the other day, and in the parking lot my poor son stepped into a mound of dog doo. It was a honking big mound, and I scolded him for not watching his step. But then I gazed around the parking lot and saw a vast minefield of the stuff everywhere. How could we NOT miss it? Disgusting. Cats don’t do that!

7. Cats cost less than dogs.
Vet bills are lower (and visits are easier). Cat food is less expensive and cats eat less than dogs. Dogs need licenses and shots– and why? Because dogs are more dangerous that cats, since they are more easily provoked and more aggressive.

6. Cats don’t assault your house guests.
We all know what dogs do with new people.

5. Cats don’t stink. And they WASH.
Cats have the cutest little pink tongues. Who doesn’t like to have a cat come up and give them an affectionate little kiss on the hand or face? But do you want a St. Bernard or German Shepherd to come up and lick your face?

I’ve heard that the reason dogs smell is because of their oil glands. Well, just like toilet training, WHY the heck hasn’t this been resolved? If some knucklehead can remove my beagle’s voice box, why can’t we remove– or at least BREED out— the stinkiness of oil glands? What’s the purpose of, for example, sending a man to the moon while leaving us earthlings to suffer untold olfactory agony by dog stink? Something’s wrong here….

4. Cats are low maintenance.
It tickles me that men, in general, like their women “low” maintenance and yet get dogs that are “high” maintenance. Dogs need to be walked, they need frequent baths (see #5), they need collars and muzzles and leashes and carriers and brushings and good heavens I’m exhausted already!

Additionally, if you go away for the weekend, you can leave your cat and expect the house to be in one piece when you return. But would you leave a dog alone?

3. Cats are funnier.
When was the last time you rolled on the floor laughing over a “LOLDog” caption? Wait– what? You don’t know about LOLDogs? Gee, I wonder why!

This is funny??? And why are most LOLdog jokes about defecation or urination? Not funny.

I Can Haz Cheeseburger ROCKS. “LOLCats” has become a part of our vernacular. LOLCats are hilarious! LOLDogs are… not.

2. Cats get rid of vermin.
Mice, chipmunks, and house flies quake in fear when a cat resides in a home.

When we bought our house, the place had been vacant and in disrepair for a while. The wild critters had begun to invade. My husband and I would be sipping coffee in the evenings, talking, when we’d see mice boldly scamper across the floor. As soon as I got a cat, the mice problem was resolved. Our orange tabby, Milo, would sometimes let us know that he’d had a successful night by bestowing gifts to the man of the house. (Quick question: now how do cats know which human is the man of the house??? Anyway…). One morning, the husband rolled over in bed and discovered a slightly bloody little mouse lying on the mattress next to him. Purring with pride by the bedside was Milo. While the situation was disgusting, he actually single-pawedly got rid of the mouse problem. Good kitty.

1. Cats don’t eat poop.
‘Nuff said.

And there, my dear reader, are merely ten reasons why cats rule. I can think of many, many more. Can you?

Disclaimer: For you tender-hearted, dog-loving, misguided people out there– this was a post IN JEST. I mean no offense to folks who love dogs more than cats, despite my bewilderment about your dire predicament. I hope my post offers you some good reasons and will, in some humble way, contribute to your recovery.

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Cats are amazing. What other mammals come in orange stripes?! I can’t think of any besides the tiger, their distant cousin. I think it’s so cool that a kitty can look like a creamsicle or a fudgsicle. :shades:

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Why do weathermen call rainstorms “showers”? I’ve always been fascinated by the weather, even as a kid. I don’t ever remember anyone calling precipitation “showers.” It was always “rain” or “snow” not “rain showers” or “snow showers.” Maybe I’m being cantankerous, but when rain is falling by the bucketfuls at 2 inches per hour, I don’t think that qualifies as “showers.” :-?

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There have been a tremendous number of violent crimes in my area this summer. Most of them are boyfriend-beats-girlfriend or boyfriend-beats-or-molests-girlfriend’s-kids. My local news has a new story about some “domestic crime” just about every day, and on some days there are multiple crimes. Being a stepchild with multiple parents gave me a lot of perspective about the family unit. It is unfortunate that marriage is scoffed like it is in our society. Marriage does something to a couple that “cohabitation” can never accomplish- it makes both parties accountable to each other and the family; it’s a serious connection that shouldn’t be discarded for anything but serious things. Sure, marriage has its own difficulties, but God set it up for a good reason. I just hate to hear about the little kids getting entangled in their mom’s “multiple boyfriend” syndrome. I grew up amongst that kind of mess and it’s awfully tough on kids.

***

The song “Lord of Lords” by Hillsong has been running through my head for days now. Thank God it’s a terrific song. I’d go bananas if it was, for example, the theme song from Gilligan’s Island or the Flintstones running through my head. :-p

Here’s “Lord of Lords,” if you want to hear it.

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Well, I’m off to write some articles (having taken a mini-vacation since Friday), do the laundry, go grocery shopping, and bamboozle the kids to clean the house! Have a good week. :bop:

This may just constitute cruelty to animals…

Cats are good for more than just testing shoes. Here’s a true story, told to my husband by one of his co-workers.

This co-worker, Sal, has a cat. Every morning, the cat would bound into Sal’s bedroom to wake him up. Like a good cat, this cat would wake Sal up EARLY. Like, 4am! It’s a good thing that Sal needed to get up that early, to go to work; otherwise Sal wouldn’t have been so tolerant of this cat.

Anyway, one morning, Sal woke up later than usual. The cat had not bounded in on him that morning. Instead, Sal turned in bed to see the cat in his bed, peering down over his headboard, and staring at the wall behind. The cat was absolutely entranced with something behind the headboard. Sal sat up to see what the cat was staring at, but saw nothing.

The next morning, the exact same thing happened! Sal again peered down behind his headboard– maybe a mouse or a spider? He saw nothing.

The next morning– the same thing again! The cat was silent every time, but he was on the bed, paws on the headboard, peering down the wall behind. Sal was perplexed. He determined that when he returned from work later that day, he’d pull the bed away from the wall and see what the cat was staring at.

That evening, Sal moved the bed away from the wall and saw his electrical outlet receptacle. He got down on all fours to look closely. All around the receptacle slots were black scorch marks. Apparently, the outlet had shorted and was arcing. The cat had noticed the arcs! Sal said that his cat probably saved his life!

So, if you have a cat, count your blessings! They can test your shoes and watch your electrical system!