A cat by any other name

Raindrops keep falling in my hall

01-23-2000


Back to all Archives

Back to 2000: January - March Archives

Back to Current Entry list


Previous

Next


Meow at me

It rained today. All day, actually. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing - it's been an unseasonably warm and dry winter and there've been dour mutterings of drought, and a horrible hot summer, and high air conditioning bills.

However. I was visiting a friend this weekend. So my nice new car was not parked in its warm, snug garage like it normally is (well, that is assuming I'm not off in another state and it's sitting in the airport parking lot. But I digress). It was parked on the street. Near a storm drain. Which clogged. So when I went to get into my car this morning, I realized that this was going to be a larger challenge than I had thought because it was now sitting in the middle of a small lake.

I ended up standing on one toe of my boot and leaning forward to open the back door and toss in my things, and then I did the same little awkward ballet pose to open the front passenger door and sort of leap into the car. Scootched myself over to the driver's seat and I was all set.

Not that that was the end of my 'fun with rain' for today. It was pouring as I drove home - a situation which always makes driving fun because visibility becomes nil. And when I got home, I was confronted by the lovely sound of dripping from the hall ceiling.

I immediately jumped into action. I grabbed the largest pots and bowls I could lay my hands on and stuffed them under the three leaks. I grabbed all the cats and stuffed them into a bedroom and shut the door. I did a quick scan of the front rooms of the house to make sure that it wasn't a complete and utter mess. And then I finally ran across the street to get my landlord. He came over and wormed around in the crawlspace while his wife and I peered anxiously up at the ceiling listening to him mutter to himself. Then we both got to peer anxiously up at him while he climbed up on the roof to do some sort of water sealant patch work because some of the shingles had blown off in the last wind storm.

It worked out well - the ceiling has stopped dripping and he didn't see any of the cats...um....because I was being a considerate person and getting them out of the way so we wouldn't have to worry about any escapees when he was traipsing thru the house (yeah, right. More that I have more cats than the lease states).

He says he'll need to come back in a few weeks once it's dry to do the final patching, and I'm a bit anxious about that because I'll have to find something to do with a few of the cats on that day. But I can worry about that when the time comes.