Deliver me from contractors and stray cats...

First, the contractor... who was supposed to be here on Thursday morning, but called the day before to tell me that his schedule was delayed because of concrete work. "When you order concrete, you're on their time, not yours," said the Ken doll.

The contractor assured me that he would call me before Friday to let me know when he and his crew would be here to begin the work on the roof of the gazebo. Let me check my calendar.... yes, today is Saturday, just as I thought. I haven't heard from the contractor. I went so far as to call his number this morning to ask just where we were on his schedule.... no answer... I left a message.

I never did like Barbie's choice of Ken in that little doll empire of hers back in the 1960s.  Ken was too good-looking, too un-real, too perfect. And this Ken-doll-lookalike of a contractor is proving my point, I'm sorry to say.

My husband said this morning that maybe he should have chosen the first company that came for the estimate. Both of those guys were definitely not Ken dolls.... their shirts were stained with their lunch, their jeans weren't pressed and creased, their truck had dents on the door and tools scattered in the back, and their hands were rough and calloused. Barbie would have poo-poohed both of them, but they screamed "Real Workers!" to me.


And now.... that cat. That orange and white cat whom I refuse to call my own.... the one that my friend V insists is indeed ours because we've been feeding him, talking to him, and worrying about him when he doesn't show up on the porch. V went so far as to eMail me suggestions for real names for that still-un-named feline......... Amarillo, Butterscotch, Ginger, Persimmon, to mention a few. My favorite was Amarillo, but then just this morning I thought of Maverick, because he's that kind of cat--- very independent and in-charge, and perfectly content to be his own cat.

For the last two days, that orange cat has not wanted to eat the Meow Mix.... he will go to the dish and sniff it, look up at me and honestly, he puts his nose further into the air as if to say "You don't really expect me to eat that, do you?"  It's the same Meow Mix that he's been munching on for the past ten months (Yes, he's been here that long.)

So now I have an orange cat sitting by the back door, clearly hungry, and I absolutely refuse to buy another brand of cat food for that cat. I already know that he doesn't like the cans of Fancy Feast, and he doesn't like the tinned sardines that my neighbor thought would be the perfect way to catch him and get him to the shelter.

If the Meow Mix is good enough for our inside cat Sweet Pea, and good enough for the outside cats Gatsby and Mickey, then it's certainly good enough for a stray cat who never wants to go away and stay away.

I can hear my friend V now.... "He's not a stray cat, he's your cat!"