I’m not bitter, really.

I mean I did get one whole day of actual relaxation during my break from school.

One. Whole. Day.

Otherwise, here is how I spent the entire two weeks:

First I had to take the bus down to London and back (same day, and Greyhound is just getting more gross as I get older) to assess felines.  Then of course there was the usual last-minute shopping and packaging of presents to be done (much simplified by the fact that most of what we gave this year was my own pottery, and by the use of bags rather than wrapping paper).  I worked several days both before and after Xmas weekend at my old job up at the bike shop, sharpening skates and whatnot, which as an occasional activity is more fun than you’d think.  For Xmas weekend itself we packed up our bags (actually I packed them because my poor beleaguered husband worked on Xmas Eve Day - he’s such a trooper) and headed to my folks’ place way up north in Bracebridge.  I always enjoy visiting with them, but my Nana, who was there for the holidays as well, can be simply exhausting.  I love the old bird, but she’s getting to that point where you have the same conversation a dozen times a day, and she needs to be constantly entertained.  Not relaxing!  The really sick thing was that in my final four days of potential relaxation, I ended up gutting the entire apartment and building cat furniture.

I didn’t really intend to do the apartment.  All I meant to do was clean out the front hall closet so we’d have a place for the litter box.  But then I needed a spot for the things I took from that closet, and the bedroom closet looked like this:

…so obviously that had to be taken care of.  I swear I don’t know how it got that way.  By the middle of the first day, our bedroom floor was in this state:

I think I made about six trips to the basement to drop off reusable goods that day.

Of course the next day was more of the same, and the day after, and I ended up not only cleaning every closet and cupboard in the place, but also rearranged all the furniture, with the sole exception of Jonathan’s desk.  On the bright side, when we move in a couple of months it should be relatively little work to get everything packed and organized.

Recall that all of this began with the necessity to fit a litter pan in the front hall closet.  Ah yes, the kittens.

Well after all, we’re not planning on having any human children.

Kittens need things to climb on, like pant legs and sofas and computer desks…oh dear, Jon’s not going to like that.  So a cat tree is required.  One that will be stable, hypoallergenic and asthmatic-friendly (which means no carpet, thank you), cheap and not so horrifyingly ugly that it causes one to vomit immediately upon entering a room.  Well, that precludes pretty much every commercially-available cat tree.  Don’t get me wrong, there are some gorgeous cat trees out there.  Exactly three of them, according to my week-long exhaustive internet search.  They’re all over $500, and none of them are really ideal, to be honest.  $500.  I could get a new sofa with that kind of money.  I could buy a whole new wardrobe.

Since we haven’t got $500 to spend on a cat tree, and I don’t have access to anything like a wood shop, I decided to attempt to build a cat tree using

• two file boxes
• four shipping tubes
• two 50m rolls of 6mm sisal
• one 300m roll of 2mm sisal
• one tube of Weldbond (nontoxic and does a bang-up job of gluing just about anything to just about anything else)
• one pressboard shelf
• one box cutter
• a cat bed I’d made earlier in the week
• 4 large washers
• 4 small washers
• 4 3/4″ wood screws
• a Robertson head screwdriver (that’s square drive for you Americans)

The finished product:

Okay, so it might not win any design awards.  It is, however, as stable as any premade cat tree I’ve ever seen, carpet-free, cheap, and less horrendously ugly (at least in my opinion) than the carpeted monstrosities commonly sold for cats.

Oh, about the bed on the top - I made two of them using fabric taken from the legs of old pants from which the butt had degraded beyond usefulness (denim for one, corduroy for the other) and a couple of nesting woven baskets I had been using for mittens and toques.  Here’s a proper shot of the corduroy one:

I just cut the legs off, ripped them along the inside seam, put two legs together and sewed up a little bag, into which I stuffed quilt batt.

Next project: crocheted cat toys!

I have a motley assortment of photos, mostly from my camera phone unfortunately, but all at least passingly amusing.

My father still hasn’t sent me the promised photos from Hallowe’en, so I guess you’re not going to see them, but I do have a shot of the Happy Hybrid Demon Pet I made for the occasion, and some gruesome photos of The Leavings.  Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you:

The Frogigercorn!

These mutilated remains were left over from the hybridization process:

Over the days following Hallowe’en, a resourceful fellow mad scientist formed this demon spawn from the …remains.

Finally, my partners in crime for Hallowe’en:

I suppose I should also show you this italian-american squirrel

And we’ll wrap up with a picture of Sophie drawing dinosaurs.

Actual Hallowe’en shots will be in a separate post, since I forgot my camera and have to wait on photos to be emailed to me.  Until then, here is a sampling of silly and pretty things from the past week:

First, a happy papadum, courtesy of my sillier half,

who also likes to send me private messages over Twitter.

Some things found in my apartment building,

My bike, sporting a brand-new shiny sticker from Watching The World Wake Up,

(it’s the eyeball with the rays shooting out around it)

A couple of pretty things that would have been prettier if only I’d brought my proper camera

And finally, on the off chance that anyone actually comes here looking for truth and meaning:

Inspired by my previous post, my friend Shai made an excellent Thing in a Jar.

I think it looks a bit like a fetal pig.

Jon says it’s more like an unidentifiable internal organ.

After photoshop crashed the other day, my computer locked up completely, and now it won’t boot at all, so it may be a while before I get to those cottage pictures.  It’s such a pain to try to do image editing on the ploptop.