Tag Archives: cats

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Miscellaneous pumpkin and pickle missives.

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It’s fall… and in New England that means cooler temperatures, turning leaves and pumpkins.

And no town takes pumpkins more seriously than Damariscotta, a coastal village that devotes an entire week of events to the glorious orange gourd. There are parades, size contests, art contests, races, recipe challenges and even a regatta of giant floaters.

They like their pumpkins.

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Every year we say we’re going to visit, and every year we don’t for some reason or another.

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Which is a shame because this year my favorite bar in town has the best decorated pumpkin I’ve seen in a long time.

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Imagine having a few too many and stumbling outside to come face to face with this guy.

😊

And speaking of bars…

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A seasonal margarita that sounds damn near perfect for this time of year.

Moving on, I have a bone to pick with a few of my readers. You were joking about emotional support pickles for cats on my post the other day and while I tried to discourage the topic in fear of pickle retribution from my squirrelly algorithms… the concept has become reality.

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Damn you.

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Lord Dudley Mountcatten has his mice.

No kitty support pickles will ever be entering this house.

🥴

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A mantis mystery.

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On a walk with Lord Dudley Mountcatten the other day I noticed he found something in front of the garage.

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Batting it this way and that, I stepped in to rescue the poor praying mantis he was harassing and carried it to my flower garden.

Our yard used to be full of these delightful insects (Females bite the males heads off after mating. What’s not to love?) but in the past few years we’ve seen their number drastically decline.

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And while I’m used to the green version, this mantis was completely brown.

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So I’m not sure if it was a different species…

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Or just going through some sort of molt.

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Either way, I was pleased with the rescue.

His Lordship on the other hand, was not.

P.S…. did a little research on the mating ritual of the mantis and have to share.

Males of some mantid species mate more effectively when decapitated. Why? A nerve center in the male’s head inhibits mating until a female is clasped. If this nerve is removed, such as when the female bites off the male’s head, all control is lost and the result is repeated copulation.

So there is a reason….

🤣

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I know I’m going to pay for this…

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Our farming neighbors went away for a few nights recently and asked us to watch their wonderful dog Peaches.

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She’s the quintessential lovable mixed breed and we’ve loved her since she was a hurricane rescue 13 years ago.

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Unfortunately, Lord Dudley Mountcatten did not share our enthusiasm for a house guest.

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Peaches is extremely mellow and very used to cats. She doesn’t chase or pay the least bit of attention to them.. but His Lordship still couldn’t figure out why this creature was in his house.

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Bad timing there. Lord Dudley was so close… and then someone knocked on the door.

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It’s a credit to Peaches temperament that our cat would even be in the same room.

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Of course the fact that she spent a good deal of her time with us sleeping might have had something to do with that.

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But I still think I’m going to pay a price for disturbing His Royal Highness’s routine.

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😉

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How odd.

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I’m constantly getting suggestions on my FB feed to buy things from Etsy. And while I’ve purchased a few odds and ends there in the past… these new items didn’t make me want to break out my credit card anytime soon.

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Unless it’s Halloween and I’m dressing to attract a male polar bear? I see absolutely no need for these boots.

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Good grief. I don’t want fully operational and functioning gnomes, why would I ever want defective ones?

Along with Etsy, Amazon is flooding my feed with crazy cat items it thinks I need to purchase for His Lordship.

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Yeah. That’s not happening.

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And look at the face on that cat. I don’t think fur is the only thing that’s going to be terminated.

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Okay, they’ve got me here. Lord Dudley Mountcatten might actually like a pool table of his very own.

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When you really love your mouse.

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Lord Dudley Mountcatten has been spending a lot of time in our bedroom since our contractor has been working in the living room. And if he’s in there?

So is his favorite mouse.

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How much does he love this particular rodent?

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Enough to pick it up and carry it to bed with him.

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And don’t even think about removing said mouse.

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Unless you want to lose a finger.

😉

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At least someone is enjoying the nightmare.

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This beam and ceiling repair project has been disruptive to say the least. We’ve lost our living room, our dining room, egress to the back deck and most importantly… the large television my husband is utterly devoted to watching. Sawdust, wood chips and dry wall fragments have been flying and I can’t even imagine the mess I’ll have to clean up when it’s finished.

I hate to say it…. but moving probably would have been easier.

Though while the husband and I have been inconvenienced, there’s one member of our family who seems to be having fun.

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You can see his ghostly reflection on the floor in the middle of that photo.

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Lord Dudley Mountcatten, who is not supposed to be walking around in the plastic room… is constantly found doing just that.

And even when I don’t physically catch him in there?

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I find evidence of his presence.

Unless our contractor has a thing for catnip mice, which is another blog topic entirely.

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His Lordship seems to think the plastic walls have been erected exclusively for his playing pleasure and has a habit of pulling the sheets from their corners and making entrance holes.

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Look at him.

The very picture of innocence…

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But not for long.

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Cats.

They will not be denied…

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Apparently down is harder than up.

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Lord Dudley Mountcatten is still fascinated with the temporary plastic room.

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But the other day he stepped it up a notch.

Literally…

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I walked by and saw he had climbed the ladder the contractor left behind and apparently found himself the perfect bird watching perch.

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Perfect until he tried to get down that is.

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After laughing and filming his blog worthy attempt… I rescued his silly butt and lowered him to the floor.

Unharmed, but definitely embarrassed.

🤣

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Beam/ceiling repair project day 5… no more hole.

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Work continued on day 5, with the focus on prepping the surface for drywall.

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We have one of those stupid popcorn ceilings and I’m not lying when I say it makes a mess.

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But by the end of the day it was sufficiently scraped… and drywall covered the giant hole.

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By removing all those stupid little pieces of useless plywood the contractor found up there, he was able to give the beam a much lower and less defined profile than it had before .

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It’s still there, but no where near as deep, which is nice.

Next step will be mudding. (Which spellcheck just changed to muffins. You can never go wrong with muffins, but I don’t think they’d give us nearly the smooth finish we’re hoping for.)

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The end should be in sight now…

Though I know His Lordship is going to miss the plastic room.

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Beam/ceiling repair project, day 4… where a little snag was hit.

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Things started out well early that morning with Lord Dudley Mountcatten innocently gazing at the plastic room.

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Yes, I’m talking about you.

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He knows he’s not supposed to go in there, so of course it’s the only place he wants to be…

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And before long our smiling, happy contractor was busy replacing the insulation and installing strapping for the sheet rock.

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By mid afternoon he had both sides of the beam done…

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And the ceiling was ready for the next phase.

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Which is when he hit a snag.

Thankfully it wasn’t with the project per se, but when it started drizzling outside and he set up his saw in the garage to stay dry… things went a little haywire.

We love Tom. He’s a very clean and conscientious worker. So when he started cutting things in the garage, he turned on his shop vac to suck up the sawdust and splinters at the same time… but in doing so he also overloaded our sometimes squirrelly electrical system and knocked out power to the entire garage and part of my laundry room.

This resulted in a solid hour of trying to figure out why.

Thankfully Tom knows his way around electricity and after removing a few outlets, testing various circuits and doing a whole lot of other things I can’t explain…. he had it up and running again and would be able to resume work.

Until my husband came home a few minutes later and decided it was time to call it quits and consume adult beverages in the man cave.

No sheet rock was installed that day.

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But at least we had garage lights to illuminate our way home.

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Beam/ceiling repair project, day 3 …. blissfully uneventful.

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Day three was noisy but relative smooth sailing.

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Excess wood… that served no purpose other than to act as useless shims… was removed, and everything was repositioned, leveled and put back where it should be.

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Extra heavy duty hangers were installed on both sides…

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And all the rafters were secured to the beam as they should have been 30 years ago.

When the contractor left for the day?

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His Lordship was on the move.

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He thinks we put up the plastic room just for him.

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