Hating Cats and a Freaky Dream (not related)

First - what my cats hate. I got the idea from Lynn's blog about her cats, and then I hit Ikea Hacker for more ideas and THEN when I was actually in the store I picked the shelf system that works the best for me...and my cats HATE them. Observe:

Hanging shelves (And yes, the cats CAN make that jump. It's farther to jump from the floor to the cabinet and all I have to do is hint at Tuna and they're on the cabinet.)

(yes, they hate the mouse-shaped scratching pad, too. Except they chew on the tail occasionally.)


Polly, moments before I dropped the camera on the couch and rescued her. Kipper was too pathetic to even try to take a picture of.

Behold the embodiment of the term Fraidy-Cat. I know what you're thinking...Why didn't you put them on the lower shelf, first, Emily? Oh, I did. There was a brief recon of their situation and then immediate jumping to the ground. I might add some more shelves so that it's more like a stair-case, but they like to spread out. I have another shelf...maybe if they're more enthusiastic and I become re-motivated. I'm actually thinking I'll cut the third in half and put it in between the two.



On to the other subject of this blog: my weird-ass dream. I woke up at 4 in the morning PANICKED that I had missed Christmas. Not slept through it, but just didn't manage to get cards out/cookies baked/presents bought. Everyone else was all in the spirit and totally on top of things and I let everyone down because, even though apparently Christmas is next week (It was HOT and I was still recovering), I was unprepared. Something is wrong with me. Who dreams about missing Christmas in May? So I lay there for about half an hour listening to the cats play and my husband snore (love you, baby, but you were snoring) and I planned out how not to miss Christmas. It involves July. It requires October birthdays to be handled by August. It requires us to nail down which week we're in Switzerland...

I'm learning Swiss-German. It's like the most bizzare mash-up of German, Italian, and French. It's a dialect, so there's no written language. But I'm loving the program. I'm all over it. We're going to get there and I'm going to be able to not make a fool out of myself...because even though they all say "oh, they speak English, they love to practice it" they're lying. And we're not going to be in Zurich. We're going to be in a little town outside of Zurich. And there's a day-trip to an even littler town. The little towns aren't as English-savvy. I remember this from the honeymoon. Add to that the fact that the signs are in German, Italian and French and...you see where this is going.

Unrelated: I ordered a book today. It's called: If At All Possible, Involve a Cow. It's out of print. Luckily there were copies on Amazon. I also ordered a replacement for Steve's copy of To Kill A Mockingbird, which was missing key portions of several chapters. And I'm filling the gap with PG Wodehouse. He's very amusing. All of this is going to lend itself to the olliexcore story. FYI - next entry will happen soon. I'm solidifying the outline and then there will be dates that I know posts will go up. It's all got to be timed just right.

So there you go. I'm going to make the cats reconsider the lower shelf. It's even deeper than the windowsills, and they hang off of those all the time!