A Taste Of Freedom (or, "The Stupid Cat Wants Back Under The House")

Now that she has tasted the glory of uninhibited freedom (read: going someplace where I can't reach her), Olivia can't wait to go back for more.  From 10:30 - 11 PM last night she was pawing, scratching, and meowing at the latched bathroom door, trying to dig her way in so she could--one assumes--disappear back into the play area under the house.

"Not a chance," I informed the small furry creature at my feet and then stuffed pillows under the crack in the door so she wouldn't have anything to dig at.  I've also stuffed towels in the bathroom shower holes, just in case she manages to get in there, but I'm still nervous.  Regardless of her lack of opposable thumbs, I can still picture her moving the towels (nudging?  pushing?) and disappearing back into the cold, dark netherworld that is our crawlspace.

On the bright side, I met with a new character in the Decorating Diaries yesterday, "Heated Floor Man," and just love him.  Very nice, professional, seems to know his stuff.  When he started describing how the floor may heat to 90 degrees but the heat rising will create a body temperature heat of about 72 degrees that will rise to the center of the room, I almost started crying.  It's Mecca!  Our bathroom is usually--and I am not exaggerating this one bit--usually at least 10 degrees colder than the rest of the house.  At least.  I think in part it's because our crawlspace is almost non-existent under there, and the heating tube is literally squished under the floor, not allowing full heat to get to the vent.  Add in to that an old house and drafts, and there's your 10 degree difference.  So the thought of walking onto a warm floor in a warm bathroom is enough to make me giddy.

The only question is whether there is enough room in the crawlspace for someone to get in there and run the wires we need.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed for that one.

In other decorating news, we finally installed a lamppost outside so we will no longer have to feel our way up the steps to our home.  And we had new gutters installed yesterday.  We go in phases like this where we do nothing for years, and then it's like a day can't go by without at least 3 contractors at my door.

And we're still not done scraping the bathroom walls.  That may or may not have something to do with the fact that we've completely ignored them for two weeks, apparently hoping the glue remnants would freeze and fall off on their own.  Doesn't seem to be happening, so guess what special treat I've got planned for us this weekend?  That's right, glue scraping fiesta 2005.  My motto is, everything is more fun wearing a sombrero.  Ole to you and yours.

Dena

Olivia's Big Adventure

Alternate titles for today's post could be: "The House Ate My Cat," or "A Blow-by-Blow Analysis of My Near Heart-Attack." 

As any casual reader of this blog knows, we're redoing our master bath. Everything has been gutted.  There is nothing left but plywood floor and the remnants of stubborn glue still sticking to the wall.  Being the room is such a mess, we are making sure to keep the cats out of it.  And since we are making sure to keep the cats out of it, they are making it their life's goal to enter and explore the room.

Lucy made it in the other night.  I have no idea how--I never saw her.  But as I lay in bed, I heard a scratching on the door, opened it, and out trotted Ms. Thing, looking pleased with herself for outwitting me.

Yesterday, as I was getting dressed in the bedroom, I thought I heard a small "meow" come from the bathroom.  The door was open because I have to go through the bath to get to my closet, but I looked inside and didn't see anyone, so I shut the door and then left the house for 5 hours, telling myself not to imagine things.  Blair was at work.

I got home around 6 and dumped food into the cat's bowls.  Piggy-girl of course came running, but no sign of Olivia.  "Have you seen her since you've been home?" I asked Blair.  He shook his head.  And I knew right then and there, my baby was somewhere under the house.  I opened a can of Fancy Feast, which always brings both cats on the run, just to be sure.  Lucy started meowing but there was no sign of Olivia.

"She's under the house," I told Blair.  "She may just be hiding," he countered.  "You know how she is."  I shook my head.  A mother knows. 

We peered down the shower hole where she would have entered.  "Olivia, here baby," I called.  "Here kitty, kitty, kitty."  We shone a flashlight into the dark hole.  A cold breeze wafted up, but no sign of our cat.

Blair dressed in old jeans, gloves, a cap, grabbed a flashlight and a can of cat food and headed under the house.  Our crawlspace is just that - a crawlspace.  While Blair pushed himself around on his belly, I went back up to the bathroom and stuck my hand through the hole, calling for Olivia.

If you've ever seen the early 80's movie Poltergeist, you'll have an idea of what I was going through.  Remember when the little girl has disappeared into the closet, and the mom is calling to her through the TV?  The mom is saying, "Carol Ann, can you see Mommy?  We love you so much...so much.  Can you find your way back to Mommy?"

I had my Poltergeist moment on the hard plywood floor in the bathroom, desperately calling for my cat.  "Olivia, can you see Mommy? (I fluttered my hand through the opening).  Mommy loves you so much and wants you to come home.  Can you find your way home to Mommy?"

Nothing.  So we did what we could do, setting out food under the house at the front, back, and through the bathroom hole.  We also filled a box with towels so she would have somewhere warm to sleep. 

I made it through all this and then did one last outside search of the house with the flashlight, just in case she'd found a way out and was shivering in bushes somewhere.  As I shone the light around the perimeter of the house, calling her name, I started crying.  What if she'd hurt herself on a piece of metal when she jumped into the hole?  Cats hide themselves when they're hurt.  The whole underside of our house was dirt the same color as Olivia--we'd never find her.  Plus, the place where she disappeared under the bathroom floor was the one place we couldn't get to in our crawlspace--the dirt was packed too high to the ceiling.  What if she'd wedged herself somewhere and couldn't get out?  If we couldn't find her tonight, what would be different tomorrow?

One thing that would be different was that the tile people were coming at 10 to look at the bathroom floor and I had every intention of having them rip up the plywood while there so I could get to my cat. 

I went inside and had a minor meltdown, sobbing and shaking.  "She's fine," soothed Blair.  "You know her.  She'll come out when she's good and ready to."

"But what if she can't?" I hiccupped. "What if she's hurt?"

I sat on the sofa in a stupor.  I'd already been making mental deals with God all night and I upped the ante.  If you bring my cat back safely, I will never have to sell another book.  Okay.  I will never have to be hired to write for another magazine again.  Fine with me.  I will never be a famous author.  Whatever.  Just please watch over my baby.

About 10pm Blair heard a scratching at the bathroom door.  He opened it and out darted Olivia.  I can't even begin to express my relief.  I gave her a big rubdown during which she purred, purred, purred.  "Never, EVER, do that to Mommy again," I instructed her, shaking my finger in front her little round face.  "You stay here, safe and warm, with Mommy and Daddy from now on."  She put a paw on my nose, as if to say, "Calm down.  I'm fine."

I think the whole thing was a message from the Universe, reminding me to refocus on what's important to me.  I'm getting so caught up in this "sell the book," mentality, I'm blocking out most everything else.  Last week a friend was telling me about the troubles of a friend of hers.  I won't go into details, but this woman's problems were gargantuan--the stuff of TV movies where you say, "That could never happen."  And yet, she's living this horrible nightmare.  My friend and I were saying hearing something like that really puts your own "troubles" in perspective. 

I think that conversation and this episode with Olivia was the Universe's was of smacking me and saying, "Hey, pay attention!  You live a wonderful, blessed life and it's time to start showing more appreciation for it."

I'm a realist.  I know within a week I'll be blogging about the "woes" of the floor people who are messing up my house, or being all excited because I sold my book to another store.  And all of that is okay.  As long as underneath it all, there IS an appreciation for what I have.  And an understanding that while my troubles are just that--my troubles--I am getting off very light indeed.  I am going to work on focusing more on conscious gratitude.

And I'm going  to spend a long, LONG time this morning, petting my cats.

Don't Let Me Near Anything Sharp

Do you ever have those days where everything you touch goes "Ker-plooey?"  I have to wonder if my body is giving off some unusual electromagnetic charge this morning that is causing everything within my vicinity to stop working.

It started with the computer.  Trouble printing led to trouble with my storage device which led to trouble with back-up files.  Add in slow load time for the Internet and the warning message "Low storage space on Drive C" and it makes me think I better not chance trying to use the phone or driving anywhere today.  I wouldn't want to endanger the lives of others.

Right now I'm waiting for the "lamp-post people" to show up.  This is a quick "Decorating Diaries" fix.  We're finally--after ten years--installing a light post at the end of our walkway.  I say finally because we've been flirting with the possibility of broken limbs and lawsuits for years.  We have a walkway that leads from our house to some stairs that lead to the sidewalk.  This is a pitch black area. We manage to maneuver up and down the stairs at night simply by rote memorization.  Every Halloween we put out massive amounts of candles and lights on the stairs so we don't have a pile-up of kids and parents who fell over trying to find their way up the stairs.

Of course, the lamp-post people were supposed to be here at 10 and it's now 10:03.  But after all these years, I understand contractor time.  10 am means "I'll try to be there before two, but no promises."

My only concern is the light be installed before Trick-or-Treat.  Ooh!  We can put orange or red lights in it for "super-scary" effect.  Cool!

What Else Can I Say About Me?

In my never-ending quest for book promotion I've sent queries and press releases to newspapers and magazines, asking if they might be interested in doing a story on me as the "cat lady" with the Lessons In Stalking & Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul books coming out at the same time.

Interesting bit of journalism trivia: Several of the places I contacted about running an author profile said, "Sure, great, we'd love to spotlight you.  How about you write the article?"

This has resulted in way too many hours spent of me writing about, well, me.  Sounds fun, but it's harder than you might think. 

As I informed Blair over dinner last night, I have reached an early saturation level and I don't want to write about me, I don't to hear about me, and I don't want to cobble together any more funny but hopefully moving personal stories about me (as relates to cats).  In a phrase, I am sick of me.

Tongue in cheek, of course.  I'm extremely grateful for the chance at book promotion and writing a Q&A article for a cat magazine was actually quite fun.  Makes me wonder though, how many of the "author profiles" we read in other (small) magazines are written by the authors as well?

I do feel like I'm regurgitating the same bits of information over and over though.  I looked at Lucy lazing in the sun today and told her she better get on the ball and do something cute sometime soon because I needed some new material.  (Naturally, she completely ignored me).

And good things continue to happen.  I've got a growing list of places my book is now available (take THAT Barnes & Nobles who won't look at me without a distributor) and am starting to line up things up for my book launch on December 1st at The Green Bean in downtown GSO.  More details on that to follow.

One other bright note.  My sister is working it for me.  She works at a small college outside Chicago and their bookstore is going to carry my book.  THANKS sis!