Thursday, of course, we were at the Wind 'n Oaks farm for dinner. As always, this included much confusion about exactly how many chairs and of which sort should be brought up from the basement and way too much food, rolls included.
Saturday, it was back to the farm for a luau-themed wedding reception at the church, complete with a yummy pig on a spit.
Monday, we took little Bea to the vet for the first time and I was surprised at how good she was about the whole experience, especially considering my previous cat was required to wear a muzzle and be physically restrained by at least one of her owners at all times while in the examining room. But I guess that's the difference between adopting a young, well-socialized kitty from a loving foster home and adopting an adult, part-siamese feral cat that wanders into your half-finished house and refuses to leave. Bea got a clean bill of health despite the constant build-up of various gunks in her eyes, ears and nose. The poor little booger did have to have the last stitch from when she was spayed removed because it didn't dissolve like it was supposed to and the skin had started to grow over it.
Speaking of Bea, on Friday my husband told me that it was really, seriously time to do something about my fantastic and fantastically failed attempt at building a cat tower for the little booger. It was going to be an absolutely wonderful kitty jungle gym with three posts of varied heights and two platforms. As you can guess, it didn't work out, and my abomination of a cat tower has been sitting crookedly and soundly ignored in the sun room for about a month.
This is the pile of leftovers from the original design, minus about ten pounds of nails. Before going on to the new, streamlined design (my husband's idea, by the way), let's review for future woodworking projects why this didn't work out.
*Cardboard mailing tubes do not make good construction materials.
*If you ignore this first failing and do use mailing tubes as a construction material,
nailing them to a small block of wood through the bottom is not enough to stabilize them.
*The plastic caps that come with the mailing tubes do not take well to nails.
*Electrical tape does not stick well to wood (or really to much of anything, for that matter).
*Thus, electrical tape should not be used to make sure the boards of your cat platform are really bound together.
Seriously, mom, what the hell were you thinking?
So here's the new and improved design, which requires absolutely no nails to keep the structure together. (I used both boxes we had in the hardware bag on the first attempt.)
It is much sturdier and more practical than the first design, but little Bea still pretty much ignores it. I think it has something to do with it being sanctioned as a plaything for her. She's the same way about all the little kitty toys I crochet for her. While I'm working on one, it's absolutely the most fascinating object in the entire world, but once it's finished, she couldn't care less about it.
On Sunday, I tried felting some of the gifts I've knit, but I think that's a story for another day.
poka!
