Don't touch the table....

..... for the next two weeks. Fourteen days? Are you serious?

Absofreakinlutely serious. So sayeth the master woodworker yesterday as he set up our newly refinished dining room table. It looks beautiful...... as pretty as it must have been on the day it was made, I'm sure. But not to use it? Not to protect it with a tablecloth? No fingerprints, no tablecloths, no kitties... no kidding.

How do you keep the cats (especially AngelBoy, who thinks he's a professional centerpiece) from jumping up on that table to watch the birds perching on the fence across the driveway... and the view from the top of that dining room table gives them the best seat in the house.

Oh well.... let it be a challenge. Actually, the cats haven't bothered with the dining room table since it came back. When you walk into the dining room, you can smell the aroma of the top-coat that B gave it..... and he gave it an extra top-coat because he knows we have cats, and he has cats of his own so he understands the kitty-mentality. We didn't have the table refinished because of cat-damage.... that table belonged to my husband's mom who had it for years and years, and along the way the table had gotten imprints of lace tablecloths left on too long, and spots with very little finish on them because of hot serving plates. Our friendly woodworker told me that lace tablecloths aren't the best thing for fine wood tables unless you have a plain cotton layer underneath the lace. I don't use lace, but my mother-in-law did, and that table had the impression of her very favorite one.

Anyway, so far so good in the dining room.... not a fingerprint nor a paw-print is on that table. Let's see how long this lasts.

Speaking of kitty-mentality.... AngelBoy has become very cling-y lately. He never was a lap-cat, but he always did like to be close. Not to everyone, but to me. The only other person that AngelBoy ever bonded with was my dad, when he was here with us twelve years ago and AngelBoy was just a tiny kitten. Daddy played with AngelBoy for hours on end, and to this day, my blue-eyed cat plays the same games with me that he did with my dad.

AngelBoy is now following me around the house, and he sits on the bookcase next to my desk when I type (which is where he is now), or he'll sit next to me on the sofa in the TV room. He won't sit on my lap (heaven forbid) but he will squeeze up so close to me that half of his body is on my leg and the other half of him is on the sofa, making him a bit lop-sided. The only time that AngelBoy sat on my lap was a few years ago when we had to evacuate for Hurricane Rita. This blue-eyed cat of mine stayed on my lap like a stuffed animal for hours on end because he did not want to be confined in the unfamiliar laundry room of the house of friends where we stayed till it was safe to come back to the Bay area.

I still keep AngelBoy sequestered (what a great word) in the screen-porch at night when it's warm enough, or in the laundry room if it's cold outside. He will wake me up between three and four o'clock in the morning, meowing and banging his paw against the laundry room door because he has used his litter box and won't stay in that room with a soiled box. So up I get, clean out the litter box (in my sleep, practically) and then AngelBoy follows me back to the bedroom and he curls up against my pillow. And that's just where he will be when I wake up in the morning. As soon I get up and put my feet into my slippers, AngelBoy jumps down and uses his litter box again. As if to say See, I really do know what those boxes are for.

AngelBoy is a strange little cat.... friendly and loving when he wants to be, but if I raise my voice to him with impatience, he will scrunch up his whiskers at me and if looks could kill, he would have already buried me in the backyard. But for right now, and for more months than I can count, my blue-eyed ball of lavender-tipped silver fluff has been a sweet cat.