Eveiversary*
Thank you, kind readers, for your suggestions! This morning I sat Eve on a stool, crouched down so we were eye-level, looked her straight in the fur face, and told her firmly but lovingly that there will henceforth be no more scratching on the furniture. "Yes, mama," she said, and then she ripped another chunk of batting out of the armchair.
The chair was free off the street, so it's not a big deal, but HELLO, HOBO FURNITURE.
In addition to being unresponsive to a good talking-to, she also doesn't think much of scratching posts, various aversion devices, spray bottles (loves them, in fact), or threats of dismemberment. The three faces of Eve are laughing at your simpleton ways, silly humans.
Surprisingly, though, she doesn't mind having her nails clipped, and if I could be sure that would eliminate any possibility of her doing to Simon's furniture what she has done to mine, I'd let that be our solution. But even short, blunt nails snag. And short, blunt nails quickly become long, stabby nails when you have a cat that apparently sharpens her WMDs nightly with her contraband file/shiv. I swear, two days after I clip her claws, she's all "Look what I can do!"--jump-latching onto my leg and then dangling there two feet off the ground like she's Sylvester doing Sylvester.
Maybe it's my fault for not training her well. Maybe it's my fault for furnishing her palace with delicious nubbly upholstery. Maybe she's an operative for a terrorist cell. Damn if I don't still love the hell out of her, though. Happy fifth Eveiversary, squirt. [Warning: Big picture, too lazy to resize. But not to lazy to write about being too lazy to resize.]
(Official word: Soft Paws it is. I'm thinking purple, since that's her favorite color, and also the only one her optical kitty cones can distinguish. Pictures: there will be many.)
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In other news:
One of the items on my To Do Before I Say Goodbye to My Apartment Forever List is buy a car. And because I already have a car, that means I also have to get rid of one.
Whereas when talking about Stan, "get rid of" means "find a loving and caring family with whom Mr. Snugglebucks can live out the rest of his pea-brained existence," when talking about my car, "get rid of" means "find a way to disappear it that will not get me arrested for polluting the waters of San Francisco Bay."
My car is a 1989 Toyota Corolla SR5, and I've had it for eleven (ELEVEN!) years. The summer I turned sixteen, I came home from a weekend at the Utah Shakespearean Festival to find my father in the garage, his feet peeping from underneath an unfamiliar shiny red car. Without rolling out from under the chassis, he said something unceremonious like, "So, yeah, this is for you," and that's how I came to have the vehicle that got me back and forth from high school, back and forth from college, back and forth between California and Utah, and back and forth between my apartment and Simon's until sometime last fall, when the catalytic converter rotted loose yet again and I stopped driving it for fear that its rusty metal guts would dump out on the freeway. For about the past year, it's sat in the driveway growing a dozen strains of mold on the upholstery.
Zeke, as the car was sometimes called because of the letters on its original Utah plates, has been a great car. He's enjoyed a long and productive existence, and even though his time is clearly up, I will (surprise, surprise) cry and cry and cry when I have to let him go. (Okay, I can't call it "him" anymore because it's completely unnatural.) Although I haven't taken the best care of him it (I've washed my car maybe twice in the last five years, no lie; and oil change? what oil change?), I still love it for the part it's played in my life. I mean, Simon and I had our first kiss in that car; isn't that worth something?
Apparently, if we're talking "worth" as in "monetary value," no, no it's not. Up until yesterday, I was all set to schedule a pick-up from the local public television affiliate's Donate a Car program. They would come to my house and tow my wheels to a better life serving the community; everybody wins! What, exactly, they would do with it I didn't know, nor did I particularly want to. Just as parents tell their children that the old dog "went to live at the farm," I preferred to think my car would be lovingly restored by an enthusiast and not simply hauldd off to a scrapyard to be stripped and cubed.
A little looksee at the donation website, however, put a bit of a wrench in my plans. Apparently, donated cars are put up for auction, with the proceeds benefitting the station, and although the cars don't have to run of their own power, the guidelines do note that "cars in poor condition may be declined, as the cost to tow them may be more than the value of the vehicle." So unless tow companies are working in small change these days, I was pretty thoroughly screwed in the donation department.
But wouldn't you know it, today Simon and George the Jockey got to talking--ASIDE: it's nice Simon is talking to my housemates, because I have decided that I love them enough to completely avoid them until the end of the month out of fear that if I see them I will sob uncontrollably and maybe touch them--and apparently George the Jockey knows of a young horse-racing type who is living at the track while trying to put himself through college, and he would LOVE to have a free car, even if it's currently violating fifty-two health and safety codes. And of course George also knows a guy who can repair anything and everything related to exhaust systems, so it looks like my car is not going to public television or the junkyard but to someone who really wants and needs it. Yay! Maybe we can throw in Shotgun Stan as part of the package.
*Eveiversary = the anniversary of the day I brought her home from the animal shelter pet fair, all belly-shaved and squeaky.
Orange Soft Paws would be nice for a Halloween cat!
I remember getting a lump in my throat watching my first car get driven away, never to be mine again. Never mind that it had a pointy metal stick for an accelerator, that at one stage someone had to sit behind the drivers seat to hold the seat in place because it came loose, that it was not uncommon for the car to keep running without a key in the ignition and that we propped the hood up with a block of wood to increase the air flow into the engine to stop it overheating. Twas my Grandma's car and she died just after I was born, then it was my parents car, then it was mine...pretty good stint I thought :) Photo of you and Eve is gorgeous!
My first car was a dark blue Berett(a) named Priscilla. She became a Berett when my high school boyfriend picked the "a" off of the dashboard. I still miss that car. She saw me through MANY many experiences. She was sold a few years ago to a family that bought her for their grandson. It made me happy that it was going to a 16-year-old who would also always remember Priscilla as his first car, too....although I did cry like a baby when they drove off with it.
On a side note, my 2nd car (a hand-me-down from grandpa) was a Mystique, but it became a "Tique" when the garage door got caught on the emblem and tore the "Mys" off.
I kinda hope this "renaming the car due to bizarre circumstances" trend continues. :) I'm anxious to find out my Ford Escape becomes. I'm crossing my fingers for "ape".