Bandwagons, Family matters

On Monday I spent a lot of time thinking about the cat

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In 2011 we went hiking and played some board games. Last year I had a cold and we went to Dollywood. This year? It’s been an eventful week thus far.

This is the third year I’ve participated in Adventuroo’s Week in My Life linkup. It works like this: I do some meticulous record-keeping and take lots of pictures, and the next day I tell you all about what we did the previous day. Except that some days (most days) my record-keeping is somewhat less meticulous and I only take pictures for about half the day.

Which is, coincidentally, exactly what happened yesterday.

Pete drew this dude on the car before we went to co-op.
Yesterday was the first really chilly morning we’ve had, and it was about 66 degrees in the house when I woke up at 8 o’clock. I’d set my alarm for 7:20, but Poppy came in for a snuggle right about that time, and we both fell back asleep. Pete, who was already cozied up against me, kept snoozing, too.

Anyway, it was cold when I woke up. So I turned on the heat and went to shower, get dressed, etc.

The heat had been on for about half an hour when I went into Pete’s room to help him get his clothes for the day. And that was when my olfactory perception made a terrible discovery: JJ T. Cat had sprayed the wall in Pete’s room. The wall with the heating vent.

That was not a pretty smell.

I opened the windows, and then I mixed up a concoction that was purported to get rid of just such a stench. I called the vet to make an appointment — this is not the first time he’s done this, and I wanted to make sure it isn’t a medical issue before he becomes an outdoor cat — and then I spent a good chunk of my morning wiping down the wall and the vent and blotting the carpet, over and over again, before it was time to leave for our homeschool co-op.

Pete has an art class for the first hour of co-op, and Poppy is in the baking class that I’m co-teaching. I’m not sure what Pete did in art class today, but Poppy and I (and the rest of the young bakers) made Peanut Butter Chocolate Kiss cookies. I was impressed that all of the chocolate kisses actually made it onto the cookies.

The kids have an hour for lunch and playing, and as usual they spent about 10 minutes of that eating and 50 minutes running around. I spent part of the time asking other parents to volunteer at our co-op Halloween party because I’m one of the people in charge of that sort of thing.

Pete is in “PacMan class” for the last hour of co-op. Last week he came home with a very neat little pinball machine he’d made out of a cereal box and some straws, and this week he’d made a decorative banner for Halloween. Poppy is with me again in the afternoon, in My Little Pony class. We spend the first part of class watching an episode of MLP, then my co-teacher discusses the episode’s moral implications with the kids. After that we do a craft, and usually we revisit that craft the following week because we generally don’t finish before the hour’s end. Today’s craft was probably my favorite so far, but I’m not going to tell you about it just yet because I’m going to write a whole post about the MLP class later.

And then we came home, where I dashed in and grabbed a brick of soup out of the freezer to deliver to an ailing friend. We drove over to her house, but she wasn’t home. So we went home again to collect JJ and take him to the vet.

This can of Pringles was on clearance at the Dollar Store. I can’t imagine why. (Stop it, Pringles. That’s gross.)
And Rockford was there to: (a) help me put JJ in the cat carrier, and (b) hang out with the kids so they didn’t have to go to the vet! I’m so glad he was able to do that, because I was at the vet for about 700 hours. To make a long and boring story short, JJ looks to be perfectly healthy and they’re going to call with the lab results tomorrow. If it’s behavioral, JJ will become an outdoor cat. And also I learned that there are four ways to get a urine sample from a cat.

This is getting really long. Let’s put the rest of the day in a list.

  • Poppy had “Nutcracker” rehearsal.
  • I updated JJ’s microchip info.
  • Rockford, Pete and I went to the pet store to get something to combat the stink, because my homemade stuff didn’t work.
  • We successfully delivered the soup brick.
  • We went to a sandwich place for dinner.
  • We went to a friend’s house for birthday cake.
  • The kids went to bed. (Pete in our room, because his room needed work.)
  • I used the pet-store stuff in Pete’s room, and it seems to be working.
  • I risked life and limb to put JJ’s new collar on him.
  • We watched some TV.
  • I spent an inordinate amount of time writing this.

    Here’s hoping today has fewer smells!

    • 7 thoughts on “On Monday I spent a lot of time thinking about the cat”

    1. Ha! I used to have indoor cats. USED to 😉 So I totally understand how it’s possible to spend way too much time thinking about the cat. I found you from the Week in My Life linkup – it looks like you had a pretty busy Monday!

    3. JJ sounds like quite a character! I love the photo of Pete’s drawing on the car window. The kind of everyday lovely thing that we don’t often think of photograph 🙂

    5. You keep bricks of soup in your freezer? Right there I’m so impressed. What a full day for you!

    6. Oh that cat smell– yuck!

      The Pac-Man is cute and sounds like the cookies were yum! Here’s to a less smelly day for Tuesday!

    7. Did the cat get accidentally locked in Pete’s room? That might explain the peeing.

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