Sweet Pea

"And how many cats do you have?" Too many.

I reminded my husband that in the last eight months, two cats have found us here in the hills. "Sooner or later we're going to have to bring lost cats to the shelter." At that moment, Sweet Pea walked into his office and meowed, in that pitiful way that cats have. "Yeah, right-- I'm going to bring that cat to the shelter," said my husband. Well, not this one, but eventually we'll have to start bringing cats to the shelter.

Sweet Pea slept on our bed last night, inbetween our pillows, all curled up and purring very softly. We don't think she was an outside cat to begin with, and she seems perfectly content to be inside the house. Like Gatsby, she doesn't touch a thing, but looks at everything.

Of course, I broke my own rule about not having litter boxes in any of the upstairs bathrooms. To accommodate Sweet Pea, I put a litter box in the bathroom connected to the dressing room, which is next to our bedroom. Three of the four bedrooms up here have connecting doors, plus doors to the upstairs hallway. By closing off the doors going into the hallway, Sweet Pea can roam from the dressing room to our bedroom, then to my husband's office. She also has access to all three of those bathrooms, but she quickly learned which bathroom has her litter box. With the hallway doors closed, Mickey and Gatsby and ShadowBaby can't get into those rooms with her, but they know she's in there. As a protest today, all three of them are staying in the TV room-- of their own doing. The door is open down there, but they've been in the TV room most of the day. We guy-cats have to stick together.

I have called another neighbor, to make sure this cat doesn't belong to them. I also called one of the local pet clinics, to make an appointment to have Sweet Pea spayed and vaccinated. I'm guessing neither was done to her, which is another reason to keep her away from our cats right now. Our cats are all males, all fixed, but I would guess they know an un-fixed female cat is close by.

Every time we go inside to see Sweet Pea, we're greeted with the tiniest little meow, and she's ready and waiting to either be picked up or jump on our laps. She especially likes my husband, which proves our friend B's point about pets being mostly attracted to their owners of the opposite sex. That theory is proven with our other pets also-- Gracie is definitely my husband's dog, and the male cats are more attracted to me. Actually, I think the cats see me as a huge bag of cat food that walks and talks.

For now, Sweet Pea is here to stay. Of course. I knew that the moment I saw her sitting in the sun by the side of the barn, trying to stay warm in yesterday's cold weather.

Speaking of cold weather.... it has warmed up some today. (There is a god after all.) The master plumber came by as promised, and looked at the frozen and cracked pipes. "No problem. I can fix all of that in a few hours and be out of your hair." But he's only going to fix and replace the set-up that's here, not try and improve on the pipe set-up so it won't happen again. (Which is what the non-master plumber wanted to do when he looked at the pipes the other day and gave us the temporary fix so we'd have running water.)

By tomorrow, we will have estimates from both men. The first guy can start the job mid-week...... the second guy can't start till next week. (Seems like we're not the only ones around with frozen pipes.) Until then, we have running water during the day, but if the temperature goes down below freezing at night, then my husband disconnects the temporary fix so that doesn't freeze up.

Somehow, it's working. Even a stray cat didn't add to the confusion. If anything, it just made me realize that some things are more important than others, and the few minutes of stress melted away. Once again, though, I am thanking my lucky stars that we didn't buy those cute little miniature horses a couple of months back.