Busy Friday

I didn’t sleep well last night so I turned off my 5:30 alarm, didn’t get up to do my exercises and slept in until almost 7:15.

The first thing I did was to look outside to see if I caught anything in the live animal trap. I’ll leave you in suspense for the moment while I explain why the trap was set.

We have had a nasty grey cat terrorizing the backyard. It’s made the cats so wary that they stay on the roof most of the time. Last night the raccoon was back and when I stepped out and chased him away I noticed the grey cat was also lurking in the shadows waiting for one of the cats to come down off the roof. I haven’t tried to catch the raccoon yet because he has been polite. He eats, doesn’t bother the cats and leaves food for the cats. If he starts getting greedy or bringing friends I’ll try to catch him. The question is what to do about the grey cat? About a month ago I found a working live animal trap on the side of the road. I couldn’t believe someone would throw that out but there it was. So last night I set it up with a full can of wet cat food in it. I put it in an area where our cats don’t usually go. I figured I might get the grey or the raccoon and if one of our cats got caught at least I could release it and it might stay out of it the next time.

So this morning I looked out the window and could see the trap was sprung but couldn’t see what was in there. I went outside and looked. There was a grey cat in the trap. At first I thought it was Meredith but it soon became clear that I had caught the nasty grey! We were going to Target so I moved the cat inside the cage to the deck outside the shop. I knew it would be shady there and I could handle him later. My plan was to let him know he was not welcome here so letting him stew a while in the cage was a good way to start.

We did Target and then stopped by Lenscrafters and picked up our new glasses. We shopped at Publix and headed home.

It was now time for nasty cat indoctrination. I didn’t want to bring the cat to the pound unless I had no other choice. I don’t know cat psychology but I figured if I annoyed and scarred him sufficiently he might not come back. If he were coming around for breeding purposes I’m pretty sure no amount of indoctrination would keep him away but this was a territorial thing and I tried to show him whose yard this was. I did not waterboard him but I did use water. Penny said they hate water so I got her water spray bottle and proceeded to squirt him every time he made a sound. He didn’t like that but I had to make the message stronger. I got out the leaf blower and dried him off a little. He really didn’t like that. I went through 3 cycles of wetting and drying, growling at him in between. After the “humane” indoctrination I opened the cage and let him fly. He didn’t look back. Now we will see if he comes back.

The next Friday task was to get the mattress for Sophie’s bed. The mattress place is across the street from Chick-fil-et so we also did lunch. Now I can say the bed is completely finished. Penny then needed to go to Joanne’s and get some stuff.

I didn’t get to work on the nightstand until about 3 o’clock and got a couple hours in. I cut the legs to size and also all the trim. I glued some trim on the front. Tomorrow the legs and trim go on and then I need to make the drawer and the top.

It’s probably a good thing that I didn’t do a lot on the project today. My thumbs are quite sore from the full day yesterday.

I relaxed for the rest of the evening—soaked my thumbs and blogged.