the bad cat sitter

we are on our last little vacation before it's back to school for our preschoolers --you guys over there on the other side of the coast, don't be jealous that we don't start until september 11th because we are in school well until the 20's of june - not fun when summer should start at the end of may. so our little vacation - we are having it right here in our hometown, at a friend's house who's on a REAL vacation in utah. my friend's house is air-conditioned; our house, a broken air-conditioner, hence, the vacation! we are cat-sitting and house-sitting. amazing how sleep-deprived i've been with this heat (and possibly a 6 month old contributing to that) and how drastically mood changing air conditioning can be. i love my 4 1/2 year olds once again now that they are happy little tots and enjoying the cooler air - give them the heat and sweat and stuffiness, and woah, you'll be convinced that the mood swings start well before the pre-teen ages for girls.
so, we are cat-sitting for two cats who we've seen maybe 3 times in the 4 days that we've been here. the cats - bada and bing, just aren't digging the house guests. one of them welcomed me with a morning pee on the bath rug the first morning we were here. bing, put us on a little cat hunt the 3rd day. stupidly, i sent my daughter to check that the door was unlocked for the housecleaner (a no-show i might add - thanks guys, not the week to not show up when i can be blamed for the mess). when we returned to the house, the door was open and only one cat could be found. i tried not to make a big deal of it but thought oh know, i have a lot of explaining to do - how do you lose the cat when you are here to be the cat-sitter? so my twins began their "find the lost cat" mission.

mia drew a cat on 20 or so pieces of paper, i was instructed to write "lost cat," and the posting began. outside of the house, the girls had hung up all of the signs - on the doorstep, on the fire hydrant, mailbox, car, and even on the garbage cans. they then sat on the front doorstep, waiting for bing, and waiting for neighbors to walk by so that they could ask if they'd seen the cat. if it hadn't been for the baby napping upstairs, these two would have made me go door to door asking for this cat. thank goodness for the air conditioning which allowed izzy to take a 2 hour nap and which prevented me from taking that embarrassing door to door walk : "hi, we are the cat-sitters who lost the cat, can you help us?" meanwhile, i continued to look inside, under each bed, and repeated the mantra over and over "the cat is not lost, the cat is not lost."

the mantra worked, the cat was found under the bed, and the air-conditioned vacation continues! the girls are no longer allowed to open the door without my help and i can be pretty sure that after this post, i will no longer be an invited cat-sitter for anyone, not even my best friend.



this is bada. remember last summer when that huge cat was found, (or was it reported lost?), but it made the news nationwide? well, bada has that cat beat in the weight category. this is one large cat!

...and if there is a weather god, please take away this heat so that i can continue to be sweat-free in my own home. i guess i need to create another mantra.