We've had some unexpected events recently. On October 29 as I was waiting for Lucy's and Emily's buses at the bus stop, I was enjoying the company of a very friendly stray cat. This cat decided Emily was a fun person to follow home. Of course I wouldn't let it in the house but I did do one thing. I broke one important rule.
I fed it.
The poor thing was starving! I've never seen a cat inhale food like that. Miles and Emily were not about to leave the cat outside alone and my rule of not letting it in the house was standing so the two of them did their homework outside. The cat would curl up on their laps and purr. After an hour Emily came in to use the bathroom and the cat cried and cried for her. Then Matt came home. He worried that a coyote would get the cat during the night if we just left it outside. Besides that cat's meow rivals a siren. Like any of us would get any sleep with it on the front porch.
The next day I started thinking about all the things I love about our cat Zoe that we've had for 7 years. She doesn't play in toilet water. She doesn't meow incessantly. Here's an important one...she leaves the gerbils alone.
Halloween morning I woke up to Emily in a panic. I could barely understand what the problem was. Well, during the night the new cat pushed the gerbil cage onto the floor and the gerbils were missing. Gerbils are speedy. They can hide in small places, right? I was sure we'd find them...or evidence of them. Nothing.
Matt looked up some things online about how to catch gerbils. Peanut butter. We made a trap. Peanut butter spread on a plate placed inside a bucket with books to make a stairway to the top. That should do it...as long as we get to it before the cat does.
Meanwhile the kids were trying to come up with a name for this stray cat. After my ad
vice on refraining from such an idea, Miles
mimicked me with the line from Monsters Inc. when Mike says, "Once you name it, you start getting attached to it!" Between that and the fact that it was Halloween the name had to be none other than Boo.
Sunday morning Lucy woke up with big puffy bags under her eyes. It took hours to go away. I wondered if she had had a reaction to something in the clown face paint from Halloween the night before. Weird. Oh well, it went away. Days later she had a terrible asthma attack that I worried was going to land her in the hospital again. Wednesday (don't ask why it took us so long to put this together) it hit me. The peanut butter! Lucy is allergic to peanut butter. Not terribly. She can be around it, she just can't eat it...or be exposed to the smell of it in a gerbil trap left in her room for 10 hours. All of this because of that cat!
In a side story, less than a month ago I went to feed the fish and discovered he was gone! There's a lid on the bowl so no cat got to it. It was just gone. Ironically the fish's name was Mystery. Then I remembered that Lucy's friend who is very good at catching fish with his bare hands had been here. Yup...he'd caught it...and fed it to the gerbils. Sweet Emily looked at the bright side of things saying it was a blessing since that was the same weekend we ran out of gerbil food. Now the gerbils are gone hence the title of this post.
So we now have a new cat. We've posted about her on the community website and called animal shelters. At this point we love her so much it would be heartbreaking if someone claimed her. Keep your fingers crossed for us! And no, we are not buying more gerbils.
p toasted pine nuts. I always buy them at Safeway but I decided to get them at Costco last time to save a little money. Well that back fired. Anyone want four cups of pine nuts?
