life with cat

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Wordy Wednesday Wandering

June was a whirlwind, wasn’t it? I am still trying to wrap my mind around how it can possibly be July already. The past few days alone included: picking up my child from sleepaway camp, observing a belated Father’s Day with my husband, buying a new car, getting a new air conditioner installed, and celebrating my daughter’s birthday. For those of you who have been around since I was on the fence about having kids: THE KID IS NOW THIRTEEN.

I could only find the “birthday” portion of the “happy birthday” banner, which I think it more of an indication of my current level of discombobulation than lack of delight at my kiddo becoming a teenager.

I have been doing SO MUCH laundry, and there is stuff (camp stuff, gift detritus, air conditioner replacement debris) everywhere, and I cannot stay on top of the mess.

This looks much neater and tidier than it FEELS. It FEELS like being slowly suffocated on all sides by Stuff.

(Alert, alert: Lisa and Nicole, you may want to skip the next two paragraphs and the photo between them.)

The air conditioner replacement was a fun surprise. I scheduled a simple clean-and-check with my HVAC company, and the technician discovered that all the wiring had been devastated by mice. In fact, the only thing that was preventing the wires from being exposed completely was a giant mouse nest. I think you know how I feel about this, which is burn it all down.

How can something so small and kind of cute be so destructive?!?!

We’d already spent a pretty penny to deal with previous mouse-related air conditioning carnage, back in April of 2024, and it was one of those deals where we could shell out a bunch of money to repair the old unit, which could of course die at any moment and has already proved much too welcoming to rodents… or shell out more money for a new, slightly-more-mouse-resistant unit. Considering this week is in the 90s (30s C), we went with the latter option.

The air conditioner is not doing a whole lot for the top floor yet. Carla slept with her camp fan clipped to her bedframe last night. It really does a great job of cooling. (We got it for camp because it is one of the few options that requires only batteries, and not some sort of USB charger to keep it powered on.) Several of the stores we’ve been to recently have been selling fans, which makes me feel like I need more fans. But Carla and I plan to spend as much time in or near the pool as possible, as a heat-beating measure. She has a new turtle pool float and I have pool hammocks to lounge in and copious amounts of sunscreen.

REAL FEEL ONE-OH-FIVE. No thank you.

I have been exploring all the delicious options for hot-weather meals that involve no cooking whatsoever; we had chickpea salad sandwiches last night, on homemade sourdough bread that my husband’s colleague sent home with him. I am planning on making a cold noodle salad later this week, or a Mediterranean platter, or possibly another round of sandwiches, this time with this version of chickpea salad.

Interrupting my husband’s day seeing patients with really crucial discussions.

Carla and I spent the afternoon of her birthday shopping, which was delightful and exhausting. She wanted to go into every tchotchke / novelty items boutique within a ten mile radius. Our adventure included Five Below, Home Goods, Michaels, Hobby Lobby, Target, and the Dollar Store. We also went to Pet Smart, to look at the kitties.

During our expedition, we passed a new international foods store and had to check it out. They had a variety of snacks and treats from different countries. I snagged a bag of coriander flavored Doritos which are my new favorite thing. They taste just like cilantro and are SO GOOD.

Yummmmmm.

Carla was more interested to learn that this store sold squishies and fidgets that are currently all the rage. She persuaded her father to buy her a NeeDoh Fuzz Ball, but then when we got home, she noticed that it doesn’t have the NeeDoh logo on it. We got squishy scammed, y’all. My thought is that this store had no idea they were selling counterfeit NeeDohs, and so I am hoping we can go back and inform them about the problem, maybe get our money back, and definitely get some more coriander chips.  

If you live in the U.S., are you celebrating Independence Day? I dislike this holiday because of the fireworks. They are loud and dangerous and it seems like a lot of people take the expansive view that the entire month of July is for setting off firecrackers in their yards at all hours of the day and night. I get very Grumpy Old Lady about the whole thing, and my husband and I typically prefer to spend the holiday holed up in our basement, grumbling about our neighbors (him) and fretting that a rogue firework will set our home ablaze (me). (Last year, we woke up on July 5 to find our driveway littered with spent firework shells.)

Art by Sina Simburger, @sin.xline

My in laws sent my whole family holiday apparel. This was a very kind gesture, and 250 years is a momentous anniversary. For all its flaws, I love my country. We have freedoms and opportunities here that I try not to take for granted. It is exciting and remarkable that we have reached this semiquincentennial milestone. And… I kind of feel that expressing any kind of patriotism gives an inaccurate impression of my beliefs and politics. I’ve driven past a lot of houses over the past month or so that have cheerful American flag bunting on their fences, or little American flags planted in their yards, or patriotic signs trumpeting their enthusiasm for the anniversary, and part of me feels a little lift of festive joy… and another part of me feels like I have an immediate – and quite possibly biased and wrong! – insight into what kind of people they might be and what kind of beliefs they may hold. UGH. By the way: I am not saying that people more conservative than I am are “bad;” I know many people across the political spectrum who are good, kind, loving people… who simply have different views on some topics than I do. I don’t know. It’s kind of unfair, is what I’m saying, that a symbol of unity should instead carry with it the weight of judgment. As usual, I am not the first or the most articulate person to note this; but it’s particularly noteworthy to me as we inch closer to the Fourth of July.

Let’s turn to a less controversial topic, which is my cat. Poor Lenny was shut away in my room for SIX HOURS while the new air conditioner was being installed, because the HVAC people kept going in and out of the house. He bore the injustice of his imprisonment with dignity. But he did develop a winky eye, which of course made me worry that he had something seriously wrong with him. Carla and I took multiple videos and photos of him, and examined his winky eye in various lights from various angles. I envisioned eye drop prescriptions and Rachel Green-style interactions and surgical intervention and loss of the eye. I called the vet and asked their opinion; their opinion is always “bring him in.” I scheduled the first available appointment, forgetting that there were five (5) strangers meandering in and out of my house for the foreseeable future. I called the vet back and got a later appointment. I fretted as the appointment approached because the HVAC people were STILL THERE. Finally, with about forty minutes to spare, the HVAC people left. I released the cat from my room so he could use the litter box. When he reappeared, his winky eye had resolved completely.

I had texted my husband earlier in the day to alert him to the cat’s almost certain blindness. His response was “Maybe an eggshell.” This requires some backstory, which is that my husband’s colleague sent him home with some fresh eggs the other day, from her chickens. She’d packaged the eggs in a little clear egg carton and had included some instructions with them that said they should be stored on the counter. Well. Lenny was obsessed with the eggs. He must have been able to smell chicken on them? He didn’t bother them until there were only two left. At which point, I came home from Carla’s birthday shopping extravaganza to find the carton overturned on the floor, one egg completely unharmed, and the other broken. I cleaned everything up, returned the surviving egg to the carton, and put a package of insect repellent refills on top of it to make it more difficult to bat off the counter. Not difficult enough, it turns out. The next morning, we came into the kitchen to find the eggshell I’d rinsed and left on the counter to dry once again on the floor, the makeshift carton weight on the counter, and the egg carton on the floor. The remaining egg was still intact. Hence my husband’s assumption that eggshell was the source of Lenny’s winky eye.

Screenshot

I made crème brûlée for Carla’s birthday dessert, per her request. The recipe called for five egg yolks, and I saved the shells because I read that they can deter slugs. Which I think are destroying both my coleus plants and one of my hydrangea trees. I love how pretty the eggshells are, or were before I baked them and crushed them. I hope they help my coleus plants! This is the third year I’ve planted coleus in the same location, and the first time that I’ve had an issue.

What’s up with you this Wednesday? How hot is it where you are? What are you making to eat when you don’t want to turn on the oven?

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Cat Questions

Did you know that my tiny baby kitten is now an enormous ADULT CAT?


Because he is a fancy hypoallergenic purebred cat, we know the exact date of his birthday, and it was this past week.

We got him a hat and a bandana, neither of which he enjoyed. But he seems to feel quite dapper in the bowtie.

We got him a present. He LOVES it.

In his honor, I thought I would devote a post to some pressing cat questions. Questions that you have asked about this particular cat, and questions I have about cat parenting.

Is this cat’s name Lenny or Leo?

The answer to this question is yes. Okay, that’s not helpful. The real answer is, his name is Leo in my household and at the vet, but his name is Lenny in my heart. I lobbied so hard to call him Lenny, but I was overruled by my husband and child. Thus, he goes by Leo at home (Or Leo-cat. Or Mr. Fluffy Pants.). But I feel so much glee that so many blog readers continue to refer to him as Lenny.  It is a delight that my much-longed-for name persists here in the digital world. Julie, in particular, reminds me that she thinks of Lenny Kravitz, and that brings me a lot of joy because I am pretty my cat thinks that his human form would bear strong resemblance to this:

In my opinion, he often shares more similarities with this other beloved if fictional Lenny:

Do you really bathe your cat?

I have mentioned several times that I bathe my cat, and this is often met with perplexity. Cats are, after all, self-cleaning. My cat demonstrates his own personal grooming activities multiple times per day, sometimes in a slightly insulting manner right after one of us has pet him.

Nonetheless, I bathe him approximately once a month, using water and original Dawn. I do this for three reasons, in no particular priority: 1. To get/keep him accustomed to being bathed, so that it isn’t traumatic to either of us. 2. To address occasional hygienic issues that affect the pantaloons area. 3. To manage the tendency of his fur to become, over time, slightly greasy – a result of his diet or, more likely, the incessant petting by hands that may or may not have food residue on them.

I used to bathe him in the bathtub, but it hurts my back. So I have begun to give him a shower. He doesn’t seem to mind the water. I hold him and the only time he seems slightly perturbed is when I lather him. He lets me know he is perturbed by gently increasing his grip on my shoulders and mewing plaintively a few times.

He is obsessed with the shower. Loves to get in it, loves to catch drips from the shower head, loves to lie outside of it on the bath math, loves to chase water droplets on the shower doors.


I blow dry him with a hair dryer that I prop up on books and point at where I am holding him on my lap and combing him. He seems to enjoy that part of the process. This system works, but it’s not ideal. Sometimes I daydream about getting a fancy pet blow dryer, like this one. There’s also this drying box that is WAY too expensive but that doesn’t stop me from looking at it. This one is more in my price range, and it’s also a brush.

Now I have some questions for you.

Where does all the FUR come from?

Lenny is a Siberian, and he has luxurious medium-length fur. I brush him at least once daily. AT LEAST ONCE. I vacuum at least once daily as well. And yet, every time I turn around, or every time the cat moves from one location to another, a tumbleweed of fur trundles lackadaisically across the floor. HOW? And also WHY?

The cat breeder warned me that Lenny would have two shedding seasons each year: spring and then fall. So far, neither season has ended. Shedding season appears to take place all year long. I do not like it.

Is there a special brush I should be using? I have two combs and this brush (which Leo does not like) and there are too many options for me to choose from; I find it overwhelming.

How much should I be feeding the cat?

As a reader of this blog, you are well aware of how much I fret about feeding my human child, right? Well, I worry about the cat’s food intake EVEN MORE. I find the entire feeding situation completely impossible. Everything I read (and also the cat breeder) said that we should give our cat both wet and dry food. Wet because his breed and/or sex has a propensity for developing crystals in the urinary tract, which can be dangerous and potentially fatal; the extra moisture in the wet food helps ensure he stays hydrated, which is one way to prevent the crystals from forming. Dry because it can help his teeth stay strong, and also because you can leave dry food out longer than you can the wet food.

Severely malnourished and also STARVING.


All the food containers say how much you should be giving your cat. There are tons of websites that offer guidance about how many calories a cat should consume, based on age and weight and indoor/outdoor status. And yet I still feel like I have NO IDEA. Sometimes he will scarf down a whole can of food. Other times he will barely nibble at it. Some days I go to refill his dry food and it’s all gone, other days he has hardly touched it. Sometimes he shows a clear preference for one flavor of cat food over another. Other days, he will turn up his nose at his favorite flavor or gobble up the entire plate of his least preferred flavor. He seems to have regular bathroom habits. He seems to be active and happy. He seems to be a fine weight and shape. Is he getting enough calories or not? Is he malnourished? Is he overweight? Does he need more flavor variety? Does he need less flavor variety? Am I leaving out too much dry food?

What do cat owners REALLY DO about the litter box?

The litter we use says 1) fill clean, dry litter box with 3” to 4” of litter; 2) scoop waste twice daily and refill box as necessary; and 3) replace entire box once a month. The litter website also says that we should replace the entire litter box every six to twelve months.

Is this what we’re doing, cat owners? Are we cleaning out and replacing all the litter every month? Are we replacing the entire litter box every six to twelve months, and, if so, is that only plastic litter boxes (which is what we have) or does that apply to stainless steel ones as well? I “scooped waste twice daily” for the first couple of months, but the cat tends to fulfill the majority of his litter box needs at night, so it seemed pointless and now I do it once a day.

WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?

My particular cat has not been very vocal. His mews have been few and far between. The most regular vocalization he has is when he welcomes us home. He sits on the kitchen side of the closed laundry room door and when we open it, he stretches and greets us with a little “mrmrmr!” Although… he does seem to be exercising his voice more frequently now that he’s getting older. It’s still rare enough, though, that any time he mews, his humans will react with extreme sympathy: “What buddy? What is it? Are you okay?” Sometimes it seems like he’s asking where we are. Sometimes it seems like he’s expressing a complaint. But most of the time, I have no idea what he’s trying to tell me.

What I am trying to tell you is of UTMOST IMPORTANCE.

Is this like having a human child, who starts out with grunts and then moves on to babbling and then to words or word-stand-ins? Will I eventually understand exactly what he wants, or are we always destined to stare uncomprehendingly into one another’s eyes?

Why are your pants so fluffy?!?!

A question for the ages.

I really hope you have some answers, Internet. But please share any cat questions – about my specific cat or cats in general – as well. I certainly won’t be able to answer an of them, but I would of course fret easily about any and all things that haven’t yet caught my attention.

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Friday Randomosity: December Backslide and Some Festive Stuff As Well

December, for all its holiday magic, has been less ideal in other ways. I feel like I’ve lost any and all (admittedly questionable) momentum I’ve built at any point in the year. Maybe it’s been channeled into stamping, licking, and addressing a million holiday cards, I don’t know.

On the holiday end of things, I am, of course, doing my Last Minute Panic about gifts. My husband and I bought my kid’s one and only Hanukkah gift on the afternoon of the first night of Hanukkah, and then wrapped it quickly while she was getting the candles set up in the menorah. (And then it was the wrong size, so I added “exchange pajamas” to my holiday to-do list the other day and the same jammies were not available in store or online in Carla’s size, so I ended up getting her some Snoopy Valentine’s Day ones.) (They are SO SOFT but they don’t match the socks we got her, which are no longer available online.) (Oooh, I didn’t see that they have Hanukkah socks!)

The stocking stuffers seemed unbalanced, so I got my dad these engraving pens to go with his spicy peanuts, but I also added a tube of hand cream because I noticed his hands were so dry the last time I saw him, which meant that he had five items for his stocking and everyone else had only three… and then I got my mom these watercolor pens to even it out a little, and then I threw in a pizza server because I have a problem. And then I found myself in an Urban Outfitters and ended up buying these socks for my mom. Of course, NOW I feel like my husband’s stocking is going to be the emptiest but I am out of ideas, and, I think, out of time. And also THIS IS SO DUMB WHY DO I DO THIS EVERY YEAR.

(My husband, who is usually The Voice of Reason, did text me yesterday about another gift for the cat, so at least I’m not the only one who goes a little insane this time of year.)

I am getting distracted. Oh yes, I was about to list my failings as a human this month, above and beyond the regular.

Let’s see. I don’t think I’ve walked outside more than handful of times since Elisabeth stopped holding my hand.

After NaBloPoMo ended, and San and crew stopped holding my hand for that, I have pretty much abandoned my book blog once again. And listen, I know it probably makes zero sense to you why I even have a separate whole blog just for discussing books, but it makes sense to me and I am currently choosing to be stubborn about it. Which means, apparently, neglect.

While moving an armchair to make space for the Christmas tree on December 1, I borked my back and haven’t worked out since. For a few days, I walked slowly on the treadmill to at least get some sort of movement into my days, and then that practice became covered in piles of snow and shipping boxes like everything else.

Yes, I have completed (COMPLETED, hear that, Suzanne????) my gift buying, but I only just got the last couple of gifts for out-of-towners in the mail yesterday. Hopefully they will arrive on time. I STILL have yet to get some of the holiday cards in the mail, AND I under-ordered so some people are getting cards from Trader Joe’s and Aldi – which are, to be fair, very cute. If you send holiday cards, and some of those cards go to other bloggers, do you send out different cards to each set of people? I kind of like the idea of having a special set of cards just for blog friends, but I barely got one holiday card ordered in time this year so perhaps that’s an idea for Future Me.

I do have tiers of recipients, though. No, “tiers” is not the right word; that implies a hierarchy, and this is not a matter of A List, B List, etc. My card recipients diverge along different information branches, maybe??? Like, this year I printed out a mini-Christmas letter that I stuck in the envelopes of people who I thought would actually care about the minutiae of my family’s year. Mainly that consists of my aunts and uncles and a few of the residents of our old neighborhood. I did not think that the handful of my husband’s high school friends with whom we exchange cards would miss such a letter, nor would any of the families of Carla’s classmates or my old coworkers. People in my inner circle already KNOW all the stuff in the letter, so it felt redundant to include it and I didn’t, but I feel sort of bad about that. Am I overthinking this? I am overthinking this.

Sleep continues to be a huge pain in the ass. I am managing to use my CPAP approximately four hours a night, but I have been more aware of it lately and more likely to rip it off my face in the middle of the night. Also, through ALL of November, I woke up at 4:30 every morning. Did I exercise in that “extra” time as I had planned? No, I did not; I wrote blog posts. BUT, I was pretty excited to have adjusted my wake-up time so easily. In December, I slid inexplicably back to waking up at 5:30. And then there have been a few mornings where I’ve slept until close to seven! It feels decadent but a) I’m not getting GOOD sleep during those extra hours and b) I don’t have enough time in the day as it is and c) I STILL manage to be a floppy tired mess by nine pm, regardless of when I wake up.

The cat continues to be Extremely Fluffy. When we brought him home, the cat breeder noted that he will have two “shed” events each year – once in the spring and once in the fall – but I am beginning to believe his whole life is a shed event. He does that adorable / alarming cat thing where he’ll be sitting or resting contentedly and then will suddenly leap into action, and each time he leaves a puff of fur in his wake, Looney-Tunes-style. I brush the beast daily – sometimes multiple times daily – and yet I am constantly picking up little tumbleweeds of fluff that decorate our dark floors like some ephemeral species of flora.

“Meowp, meowp!”

Seriously. There is fur everywhere at all times. I will vacuum the floors and then a little puff of fluff will drift down gently from the sky where apparently even the air is participating in a shed event. Even though I looked at them with great interest, I did not buy myself the laundry pet hair removers or the little purse lint remover. And yet as the days pass, I grow more and more aware of how completely covered in cat hair I am. Maybe there’s still time?

My beloved housecleaner is pregnant, and admitted the other day that she’s been suffering from morning sickness. While she has been my housecleaner for nearly a decade now, and therefore probably knows me better than anyone on the planet, we have a fairly distant relationship. Not cold or anything, but professional, which feels right and fine. But now that she’s pregnant, I feel SO BAD FOR HER. As someone who suffered from intense morning sickness for most of my pregnancy, I cannot imagine, say, CLEANING TOILETS. And yet, I don’t want to infantilize her or pathologize her totally normal condition by saying “no need to clean toilets for the next seven months.” The best I could come up with was say, please let me know if you need any accommodations, and please do only what you can do. I really hope she will speak up if she feels like something is too much for her. (Obviously, I recognize that she might be totally fine and happy to work as she normally does and I don’t want to over-emphasize something in a way that feels demeaning or sexist!)

Do you remember the palm plants I bought earlier this year for our sunroom?

They were glorious when we first got them!

I brought them inside earlier this month, once the cold started to hit, and THEY TRIED TO PERISH. Like, one day they were flourishing and the next day they were all brown and crispy. It was Quite Alarming, especially because they were Quite Expensive. I did some googling, and I took three immediate actions: 1.) I moved them into a slightly sunnier place. 2.) I hacked off all the dead portions, which left a bunch of stalks and a couple of sickly green shoots. 3.) I heaved them into my sink and let them soak in water for 15 minutes, to re-hydrate the root ball. Then I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. Okay, I also bought some fertilizer specific to palms and ferns and fed the plants accordingly. And then I got a teeny little humidifier and have been humidifying the plants for a few hours each day. They look… well, they still look terrible, but they look much better than they did when they first alerted me to their imminent demise.

Green and perky, with some new growth.
I think the tallest stalk, which seemed to be hanging in there, needs to go. It no longer seems to be among the living.

Speaking of plants: my husband occasionally buys me flowers for our anniversary. This year, not wanting to assume either way, I gently reminded him that most flowers are toxic to cats, and our cat has not got that memo and likes to chew on any and all plants in his realm. On our anniversary, my husband came home with this – and then put it together for me. The “putting it together” was a little gift for him, and the permanent non-toxic flowers were a little gift for me.

Leo is Not Allowed On The Table, and yet no matter where I stood or how often I deposited him onto the floor, he was CERTAIN that I was trying to photograph him. (The plants in the tiny pots are teacher gifts and only temporary, lest you are worried for Leo’s safety.)

How is everyone feeling in your household? We keep getting ominous emails from Carla’s school, listing the number of students who have reported influenza diagnoses. First email about one kid on Tuesday. Second email about two more kids on Wednesday. Third email (also on Wednesday) about four other kids. No emails yesterday, but then this morning Carla cheerfully told me that lots of her friends were out with “the barfing sickness.” Well. She only has a class event, a schoolwide talent show, a birthday party, and a sleepover one more day of school to survive and then she’s on break, so I’m sure we’re in the clear!

Okay, that may be the limit of my Non-Holiday content at the moment. I am really just steeped in Holiday Mode, you know? One thing I have not done – or even really thought about – is bake any sort of cookies. Maybe now that I’ve got gifts figured out (YOU ARE DONE SHOPPING, SUZANNE) (except maybe for something else small for my husband’s stocking?????) I can turn my attention to baking. I’m not really in the mood to do a cookie plate this year, but I do have a hankering for some big, soft molasses cookies. I would be making them right now, in fact, except I am out of both ginger and cinnamon.          

Maybe baking cookies will be an item on my Winter Break To-Do List? My kid is going to be off school for fifteen days, and my husband is taking nearly two full weeks off, and I am giddy with the idea of so much time together. However, I know that two weeks could easily go the way of each of us zoning out in front of our separate screens, which would feel wasteful and depressing to me. To head off this potential issue, I am trying to encourage my family to come up with a real list of things that we want to do during the break, fun things and work things, together things and separate things. So far, we have “try special sundae at local ice creamery” and “make ice cream” on the list. (My in-laws got us a Ninja Creami for our anniversary, and we want to break it in.) We should probably have some non-ice-cream to-dos as well, and I would like to exercise and write every day, have at least one family game night, clean my kid’s craft room, and put up a gallery wall. (Yes, I am still trying to get my gallery wall after all these years.) It would be nice to do something outside and to do something with my parents and possibly something with friends or neighbors, but it may be overly ambitious to include other people in our winter break plans. I also have this vague idea that I want to organize some of the drawers and cupboards that have gotten a little out of control, but… that’s not urgent.

I got a delightful surprise in the mail yesterday. It’s an ornament from my childhood best friend, featuring quotes from one of our shared favorite movies. We used to drive around listening to the Clueless soundtrack together and we have watched the movie, together and separately, about a million times. It was SUCH a fun treat to open and then hang on the tree.

Okay, I’ve said all the things. I hope you have a wonderful weekend and that any and all ongoing holiday prep goes smoothly.