About to Go Home

It is silly. I love to travel. I enjoy staying in hotels. I love the city of Boston. Why then did spending three nights in a hotel in Boston start to bum me out? It was nice. It was fun. It was a goofy little excursion away from the norm.

Why then, with all the things that I enjoyed about the entire situation, does the idea of being able to go home after work tonight fill me up with happiness? My wife and I will be home together. We’ll eat dinner together at home. We’ll sack out on the couch after dinner and watch TV in our living room at home. We’ll sleep in our own bed tonight. We’ll wake up at home tomorrow and be back on our regular, normal daily routine.

I love to travel. I love staying in hotels. I love being in the city of Boston. I guess I just love being at home with Jen more. When you look at it that way, it’s not even a little bit surprising.

Also, there are cats at home when there were no cats in the hotel. That’s gotta count for something too, right?

The Mouse Hunt is On

Both cats just freaked out. They chased the mouse behind a chair and cornered it. They both tried to grab it but it zigged and zagged and dodged, dived, dipped, ducked, and dodged and got away.

The chase is on! Good luck getting any sleep tonight with all the mouse hunting racket going on.

Go get ’em, mouse hunting kitties!

Mouser Fail

Okay, before you get all judgmental I am going to say that we live in the woods, it’s winter, it’s freezing cold out, and we got a metric tonne of snow last night. All of that combined leads to one unfortunate truth: Little tiny furry critters are going to find their way into our house. It is inevitable. It doesn’t mean we’re leaving food out or any shit like that, it just means our house is warm. That’s all. Get over your shit and just enjoy the stupid little story, m’kay?

I was sitting on the couch in the living room working on some music on my laptop. My wife was at her desk in her office working. The two cats were laying together on top of one of the cat trees. They were asleep, as far as I could tell.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement in the hallway between the living room and my wife’s office. It was a mouse. It was casually strolling around the corner into the living room. It stayed close to the wall and went behind a chair and I lost sight of it. A few seconds later it popped out again and walked calmly right up to the base of the cat tree! Neither cat noticed. They didn’t move a muscle. Way to sleep on the job, felines!

The mouse changed direction and ran into the next room. I followed it but quickly lost sight of it. I made some noise and shifted some furniture around but the little sucker was nowhere to be found. I went back to the couch and got back to work.

About half an hour later or so I saw it in the hallway again. This time it did not come into the living room with me. Instead it changed direction and ran into Jen’s office. I watched as it went right under her desk, literally inches away from her feet! We can’t have that now can we? I went into the room after it and pulled Jen away from her desk. We had the little home invading bastard cornered against the wall but with the desk in the way neither one of us could really reach it.

Eventually it made a dash for the door and left the two slow moving humans in the dust. Straight out the door, across the hallway, through the living room door and straight into Robin the Cat! It was like something out of a Tom and Jerry cartoon. The mouse skidded to a stop, squeaked, “Holy shit!” clearly at the same instant that Robin yelled, “Holy Shit!” back at it, then it turned around and ran back into the office.

We had it cornered again, this time on the other side of the room. We also had two cats taking a keen interest, but again the little shit managed to make a break for the door and leave us all behind. The four of us gave chase, but it lost us all again and eventually we gave up looking for it. Robin is still stalking around the house determined to catch the furry little asshole. Jen and I are both back to what we were doing before. Lily is doing what she does best… sleeping.

If the cats don’t catch it tonight I am probably going to have to put traps out tomorrow. Sorry, mouse.

Random Wednesday Evening Thoughts

Here are a few of the random things going through my pea brain on this Wednesday evening.

I haven’t shaved in nine days. If I don’t shave tomorrow you will hear me screaming from hundreds if not thousands of miles away as I tear the flesh from my face because I can’t stand the itch anymore.
What is it about that cats that makes them go from sitting calmly on the chair with each other one second to savagely trying to maul each other the next second? Is it me? Did I do something to cause the armageddon? The cat-mageddon if you will?
I really hope that Washington, DC gets hit with a massive, catastrophic blizzard on Monday (January 20th). Not the whole city, just the national mall. Really, just one end of the national mall. The end with the capital building. Like, a strategically placed blizzard. Yeah, that would be nice.
March 14th is going to be a big musical day for me. There’s a new album by Envy of None coming out that day. There’s only one member of Rush releasing music these days, Alex Lifeson, and Envy of None is his new band. Rush, of course, being one of two bands that, musically speaking, drastically turned my musical world upside down. The other band that, musically speaking, drastically turned my musical world upside down? Throwing Muses. Guess what? Throwing Muses is also releasing a new album on March 14th. Holy Shit Snacks!

He’ll be Proud

My step son, Harry, will be proud of me. I just finished watching Better Call Saul. He really wanted me to watch it. He was raving about it all the time. Now I’ve watched the whole series and he can finally talk to me about it without worrying about spoilers.

FYI, it’s as good as everyone says it is. Go watch it.

Subject change. I mentioned that I bought a few new guitar pedals over the last week. I haven’t had a chance to try them out yet. I’m debating whether I want to integrate them into the board I use at home, or should I make a brand new pedal board instead. I’m leaning toward a new board. Just for a while at least. Just for schnitzengiggles.

Subject change. We have a couch delivery scheduled for this morning. The delivery window they gave me is pretty long. It extends into my work day and it overlaps two scheduled meetings. Here’s hoping we get lucky and the truck gets here early enough to not mess anything up.

Subject change. Our mouse hunting cats had a target last night. We woke up in the middle of the night to see them chasing a gross little teeny tiny rodent around. At the time, the little bastard got away. We don’t see any signs of the prick this morning, but the cats are clearly still on high alert. We live in the woods. One of the biggest rivers in New England runs smack through our town. Mice are a part of life. Still… go get the little home invading asshole, cats. Do your job. Protect your house.

Okay. Time to go start the day. That delivery truck is going to be here… eventually.

Mouse Hunt

We are proud of our two cats. They have protected their house from an invader. A little, tiny, furry, squeaky invader.

They caught a mouse.

We saw them hunting when we got up this morning. There was something in a closet that they really wanted to get at. I saw it for a second. A little brown mouse. It was adorable. It was also a bastard of a home invader who needed to be removed. The mouse got away this morning. It did not get away for long.

Jen walked into a room and found it laying in the middle of the floor, seemingly dead. She turned away to get something to cover the body and when she turned back it was gone. A few minutes later she found it seemingly dead on the floor not far away. Was it actually dead this time or was it just playing dead? I scooped it up and took it outside. Pretty sure it was dead. Poor little sucker.

Good job, cats! Lily and Robin protected their home and their family. They are good mouse hunters. We gave them some treats in thanks. Good job, my little furry friends. We’re proud of you.

Mouse

Jen sent me this mouse hunting video a few hours ago. The mouse got away. It is still in the house somewhere but it is currently avoiding the kaiju-esque cats.

Now… do videos from Flickr work on WordPress.com? Let’s find out. (note: the embedded video player from Flickr for some reason includes about 10 miles of white space in the actual post. Scroll down… WAY down to see the clip)

Mickey

I am in the office today. That’s a shame because Jen is sending me play by play updates of the cats playing with a (terrified beyond measure) mouse in the kitchen.

The poor thing doesn’t realize that the cats are trying to play with it. I don’t think the cats are smart enough to know they are supposed to be mouse hunters who eliminate the home invaders. They just see it as a super fun toy.

Jen sent video. I might have to share it. The cats are adorable. The mouse is also adorable, though scared out of its wits by the two gigantic, furry, monsters that are chasing it around.

The last time the cats had a mouse cornered and I wasn’t home Jen was able to drop a bowl over the mouse and the cats lost interest quickly. When I got home I took it outside and set it free. Here’s hoping we can do the same today.

Artillary

One of our neighbors is shooting off so many fireworks that I can’t tell if it’s the 4th of July or the artillery barrage the Federal troops fired at General Pickett’s division during Pickett’s charge (which was 161 years ago, yesterday).

So much noise. The cats are handling it well, but we had to close the windows out of fear that the booms would freak them out.

Good/Bad Pets

Daily writing prompt

What animals make the best/worst pets?

View all responses

I don’t think any pet is a bad pet if you love it. Some would be more… challenging than others, but in the interest of discussion let’s start with the good pet while I think of an answer for a bad pet.

You don’t have to scroll far into the history of this blog to figure out my answer. Cats. Cats are the best because they take work. There’s none of that unconditional love shit with cats. You have to earn their love and respect. You have to convince them that you’re their humans. It’s possible that they might think that we are their pets rather than the other way around, but that’s okay with me.

Okay… what animals make bad pets… besides none, of course. I was going to say something prone to serious violence like an alligator with anger management issues, or a rabid tiger. Instead I am going to borrow my answer from an early South Park episode.

An elephant would suck as a pet. As Kyle said on South Park, its poop would be bigger than your couch. If it tried to cuddle up against you it would squash you to jelly. That doesn’t sound like a terribly pleasant pet/human interaction at all! Yeah, an elephant as a pet would kind of suck.