What A Way To Begin The Day

Laboratory mouse
Image via Wikipedia

I was up at 4am which is not unusual. The cat gets antsy at that time of day and wants to go out. I get up, make my coffee and begin checking my e-mail while the cats go in and out.

This morning it is pouring rain but Richie HAS to go out. First I open the slider and he just looks, so I shut the door. A few minutes later he is back at the door and when I open it this time he dashes out into the rain. I know he won’t stay out long, but those hunting instincts are very strong in him and I swear he just has to kill something! This time of year the chipmunks are hibernating and he really misses torturing them, so he has turned his attention to the birds, but they aren’t out this early.  In fact, the cats catch a lot less this time of year.

Richie has a bad habit of throwing himself against the screen door, paws up, to get my attention when he wants to come in and if I don’t see him right away he’ll climb up the screen. He refuses to be ignored.

So, sure enough, after a few minutes he is at the door and I know he is soaking wet, so I let him in and go to get a towel to dry him. That is when I notice that something is not right. I find to my horror, that he is holding a little gray mouse in his mouth. I immediately pick him up and throw him out the door before he can drop the thing, which is probably only half dead, and as soon as his feet hit the outside deck he turns in a flash and runs back inside. This time he won’t let me near him and heads for my bedroom. Sure enough he drops the mouse – I was right, it can still run – and as I close my bedroom door on him, I see the mouse scoot under my bed.

So I waited until he began meowing at the closed door and then went to see what was up. I opened the door and the cat came out. No sign of the mouse. Now I must go search for the half dead thing that is probably hiding some place in my room.

This has not been a good day so far and it’s only 5:15am.

Update:
At 6:00am my son got up and helped me flush the mouse out of the bedroom. That is not what I intended, but while the cat was looking the other way, my son started yelling, “there he goes!” and I saw the little thing waddling off toward the kitchen, so I grabbed the cat and threw him out the door towards it and a chase ensued which ended up with the mouse and cat in the basement. Okay, that’s good.

At 7:05am Richie comes walking through the kitchen with – yup, you guessed it – the mouse in his mouth, and he is heading to my bedroom again! (I leave the basement door open because the litter box is down there.) So, he dropped the mouse and began playing with it. He chased it around under my bed and out into the hall and finally picked it up in his mouth, so I picked him up and ran to the door and threw him out – way out – so he couldn’t quickly pop back in.
At last I can relax and not think about that mouse any more.

Read about my Adopted Shelter Cats here.

Ready To Burn, Stacking Firewood

firewood stacked in basement
Ready To Heat The House

I bought my cord of firewood at the end of summer for $240 and had to figure out where to stack it this season. Last year I put it in the bottom of the “hole” in the backyard of this house I rent and figured I’d just go out the back slider downstairs and bring it in as needed. I took my cue from my landlady who does the same thing, except that she has an overhang and larger flat area in the hole, so her wood is not right against the house like mine is. (See photo below) My son went out and cut some small trees that had fallen (with my landlady’s permission) and I will use those as starters.

stacking firewood
Last Year’s Mistake
high snow piled up looking outside
Snow outside the basement slider last year (2009)

That didn’t work out too well, since the accumulated snow from the roof slid off (it’s a metal roof) and buried my wood under hard-packed icy snow. I did manage to dig most of it out, but still had quite a bit left that I couldn’t get to until Spring. In fact, I couldn’t even use my slider to go in and out because the snow was piled about 4 feet high!
So this year, after the delivered wood dried out, and between rainy days, I dumped it down the hill using my wheelbarrow and then stacked it in my basement. Some of it is also stacked outside, but up near my porch and not in the hole. I only get one cord because I just have no place to store it. I’d like to have lots of wood and never use oil heat and it’s easy to keep the stove going once it’s heated, but it’s not my house and the set up just isn’t very good. One cord, plus the little I had left over won’t heat this place for the whole winter, so I’ll wait for very cold weather and save it up for possible ice storms when we might lose power. That has happened both of the past winters.
On top of that, I have to order seasoned wood because after August, there is no sun in my yard to dry it out. Ideally I would order “green”, not seasoned (or older cut wood), in early Spring and stack it in a nice sunny spot to dry for months to use in winter. And even better than that would be to have a big, strong, heard working man in my life who would go out and cut up dead trees and then split the wood so I wouldn’t even have to buy any! Now I am dreaming, but I have done what I could to supplement my oil heat this year.
Today the chimney lining is being replaced and soon I hope the landlady will have the furnace cleaned. Renting means you are at the mercy of someone else, so I just have to go with the flow.Related Articles

The “New” Wood Stove

wood stove in basement
My new used wood stove

Last year I was lucky to find a good, used wood burning stove to buy and put in my basement. This picture was taken right after it was moved in by a couple of strong guys who did have quite a bit of trouble, since it’s very heavy. That is the hardest thing about buying a stove. It’s not something that you just go and get and bring home, lots of preparation is involved and deciding where to put it is something to consider before bringing one home.

This stove was purchased from a stranger who took out an add in the paper and my landlady is the one who told me about it. The price seemed right, and at the time I didn’t know about the importance of having fire bricks inside. I’d never had a stove with a brick lining. In fact, the previous owner told me it didn’t matter that they were missing. I found out that the bricks are necessary for holding the heat and keeping the sides of the stove from warping when the heat is high and no matter how hard I tried, the fire would occasionally get hotter than it should. I feel that if I hadn’t added the bricks myself, that the structure of the stove would have been affected.

Since buying this stove, I’ve written a page about my experience and all I’ve learned along along the way, including the exact amounts of money I put into the pipe, hook up, and bricks needed to get the stove up and running.  And remember that pellet stoves require electricity to run, and that is why I am not interested in them. I need to have heat when the power is out and so went with the wood-burning type.

Richie Is Trouble

When we adopted our two cats from the Manchester animal shelter almost a year ago, I did not know what to expect. It had been a long time since I’d lived with cats.
There was a time of adjustment and at first I lost some sleep while the cats would roam the house all night and scratch at our closed doors, but once they began to go outside and run and play, they were better. Usually I now get a pretty good night’s sleep, but last night Richie had me up most of the night. I blame it on the moon because I don’t know what else to blame it on.

cat face
Richie aka “Trouble”

Fontana goes into the basement and sleeps quietly all night. I never hear from her until I get up and she hears me in the kitchen.
Richie on the other hand sleeps at the end of my bed until he gets antsy and then walks up to my head and sits staring at me while purring loudly… very loudly.

If I ignore him, he will do various things to get my attention such as knock over my water cup, chew on my eyeglasses, jump up on the bureau and chew on whatever he finds. His big trick is to flip upside down underneath my bed and pull himself along using my mattress!
If I refuse to get up and let him outside, he may dig his claws into my feet through the covers or dig at the side of the mattress.

Lets just say that Richie will not be ignored!

So I get up and throw him out and shut my door. That usually stops him for a few hours, but last night he kept on clawing at my door and meowing. Next, I tried the basement. He still spent much time clawing at the door, but I was able to ignore him.
So I am sitting here this morning not quite awake thanks to his antics. Once I get my wood stove going, which is in the basement, I won’t be able to shut the basement door at night and that will be a new problem.