I guess since this blog is supposed to be about "life on a cat ranch," it's about time I mentioned something about the cats and the ranch again. As soon as I decided that was the case, the cats obliged by reminding me that life with them is never boring.
So here's a typical summer morning on my cat ranch:
The alarm goes off at six in the morning even though the sun isn't even peeking over the horizon yet. This is the way I see the alarm: it's my warning that it's almost time to get up, so I'd better start seeking consciousness ASAP or maybe nine minutes after I hit the snooze button. I think I can sleep for those nine minutes, but I have to pee. (Have you ever noticed that people in romance novels never have to pee in the morning? They never have morning breath, either. My life is not a romance novel.) So, instead of suffering, I will semi-sleepwalk to the bathroom and then crawl back into bed for the rest of that snooze.
When Moon, my border collie, is sleeping in the room, she has other ideas. She stands over me on the bed and licks my cheek. So I will either argue uselessly with her, "Come on, Moon, just let me have nine minutes," or I will get up and let her out. Some mornings, I'm awake enough to pee AND let the dog out before I go back to bed.
By the time I crawl back into bed, I have earned another snooze. After all, I didn't get my nine minutes. And the sun still isn't up.
But the Booman is.
"Merowff," he whispers into my ear, purring and kneading my pillow as he positions himself to lick my nose. Believe it or not, I can ignore the Booman, even knowing what is coming. Nose kisses escalate to total facial exfoliation. If I pull the sheets over my head, he pulls them back with those handy claws. "Merowff," he repeats.
Penny the Actual Queen of the Universe will be curled on her royal bed of pillows above my head on the bed (sometimes in the winter, she still sleeps curled in the crook of my arm like she did as a kitten) sleeping through all this. She won't stir until she's sure I'm up to stay. She never tries to wake me up. She waits for her entourage to accomplish that task.
If I ignore the Booman long enough, he will sniff my shoulder in preparation to bite. (This is a Boo bite: he opens his mouth, puts his teeth against my skin and lightly scrapes--it's more an annoyance than a bite. After ten years of being squirted for it, he has finally managed to train me to move before he bites so I don't have to get upset with him.) By now, the kittens are racing around the room and over the bed. There is really no reason to expect those nine minutes to happen, so I will get up and feed the cats, thanking God for all of my blessings as I go.
The other morning, I found that I had forgotten to take the cats' breakfast out of the freezer the night before, so I plugged the sink, tossed the baggy of raw food in and started the water. Boo was still pestering me. He likes cereal for breakfast, yummy carbs, the kitty equivalent of Cap'n Crunch, no health food for him like the kittens and show kitties get. He wants to go out in the morning as I feed the porch cats their scoop of Hill Country Fare kibble. Penny will follow, usually not because she wants to eat that crap, but because she just wants a little free time outside.
Boo was extra insistent to get outside right now on this morning, threatening to bite my ankles as I stood waiting for the sink to fill. So, I left the water running and went to the laundry room/ kitty lock door. Penny and Boo beat me there, stretching up to the doorknob and meowing in kitty equivalence of "Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, hurry Mom!"
I got a scoop of kibble and carried it outside to the breakfast table (on the morning shade side of the house). I used to just poke myself out the door and pour the food into the bowl on the porch floor, but since Baba Wawa has come to live with us, I have had to put the bowl in the middle of the table because the lamb loves cat food. So I toddled around the house in my jammies (the nearest house/road/neighbor is a quarter mile away). I could toddle around naked if I wanted to. (Don't worry--I never want to; jammies are my favorite clothes, and I like to stay in them as long as possible.)
Baba came out from under the porch and bleated at me to let me know she was hungry, too. So I filled my blue feeding bucket with two scoops of regular alfalfa pellets, one scoop of sweet feed and a sprinkling of cat kibble and carried it to her by the southern porch steps. Ten horses saw me and came running. They had been in the pasture around my house for two days and had discovered the lamb's food the night before. So I carried Baba's black rubber feed bowl up on the porch and called her to come up the ramp on the other side of the house.
The horses were watching me from the east side of the house. I do not want them to learn about the porch ramp, so I went back to the laundry room to get the half full bag of alfalfa pellets and carried it down to them, spreading it out in a line in the grass long enough to prevent too much bickering.
Finally, I made it back into the house from my quick dash outside. I was greeted by a spreading pool and the joyful music of trickling water.
Oops.
Running water in a kitchen sink is no big deal: there are two basins; the overflow goes down the other sink. Unless the other sink is also plugged and full of dishes. The plan had been to dart outside quickly. Instead, I dilly-dallied long enough to turn my house into a water park.
Did I say "trickling?" Two rivers flowed in opposite directions from the sink to the ends of the counters where waterfalls cascaded over the edges. A trio of Bengal kittens sat the base of one waterfall, eyes wide in wonder, batting the falling water, their tails swishing through the water on the floor like windshield wipers in a flood. This river flowed into Lake Livingroom where the tide had swept cat toys to the shore. Chou Chou sat on the fireplace hearth, a sweet limestone cliff rising over the lake to give her an ideal vantage point from which to hook sodden catnip toys with one claw so that she could toss them to the other two kittens who waded in shallow edges of the lake, playing kitty water polo. When the waterfalls ceased flowing, the kittens begain their morning 70 foot sprints with the added bonus of Slip 'N' Slide.
The water park was not in business for long, but its debut was memorable. I have seen the kittens at the sink several times since then, plotting a way to recreate it.
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