It's been another hectic week and Thanksgiving isn't even here yet. Strep Throat decided it just needed to pay us a visit since it seems, we are the only family it hasn't paid a visit to in 13 years.
Oh lucky us!
You know how kids get extra bored when they are home from school sick. It's even worse at my house since I enacted a rule that there is no "fun time" on computer games or the TV because when you're sick.... you... need... to... be... in.... BED.
This keeps the fake sickies at bay in our house now since the kids have tried to rise this to a new level of perfection in the past year.
On Nia's last day of being out of school, apparently she was feeling MUCH better because her mischief rose to a new focus: the cat!
Oh, about our new cat real quick; she "found" us instead of it being then other way around. She had been hanging out around the house for a couple of weeks and I thought she belonged to someone in the neighborhood, or either was a stray since I noticed she didn't have a collar.
She stayed so close by because she had become fond of all our squirrels living in the backyard. She's quite the tree climber!
Nadia's friend had recently lost her cat and described it as the one hanging around our house, so we naturally thought it was hers. His name was Paul. So everyday when we saw it, we were calling "Paul" to get it use to us so we could catch it and return it.
Well, on Friday of last week, this cat suddenly begans to meow loudly at the foot of the kitchen window. It was thin and apparently so hungry that it was coming to us now ending the creative lunacy my kids had taken to trying to catch it. Since I was so thoughtless as to not buy cat food during our last run to the store (oh.. bad.. me), I opened a can of back up: tuna fish.
The girls were running around like crazy animals themselves trying to get the cat close enough to feed, when Nadia finally took control (as she usually does in these situations), and managed to get the cat in her arms, the plate of tuna in the other, and that cat ate as if it hadn't seen food in a year!
Nadia eventually got her friend over to pick up "Paul", but I was wondering why such a God-awful name for a little girl cat. It was soon discovered that this was not her friends cat; therefore we had a possible stray on our hands.
She has stayed with us every since that plate of tuna and has showed her appreciation for us in ten-fold. I've been trying to locate her owners because she is such a loving and friendly cat - so loving that she has taken to Nia (a crazy 5 year old?), to such a degree that nothing this child does scares the cat away (miracle happening here folks!).
So Nia decides on Tuesday that the cat needs "protection". She decides to lock the cat up in her bedroom. I remind myself how stupid I was not to change the door knob on their bedroom door to an unlockable one. Of course, ALL the tools needed for this job are in the garage because I get just that one doorknob/lock that you can't use a paperclip on!
1 hour later of poking, proding, and eventually removing the doorknob from the door, the stinking door still won't come unlocked. It doesn't help now either that I managed to push the knob on the other side of the door off the door and it's now laying on the bedroom floor where I can't reach it!
The cat - who we have now named "Alice" - is meowing up a storm from all the commotion. I'm cussing complaining up a storm, and Nia is just running around the house saying "I'm sorry, but pleassssse save the kitty".
I can't get this stupid lock UN-locked!
I finally reside myself to leave the cat in the locked bedroom until the hubs comes home around 3. I've had insomnia for 2 nights now, and I don't have the temperment to deal with a 5 year singing fairy AND a completely panicked cat in my house at the same time.
The hubs gets home and I explain to him the deal with the cat and the lock and how he's going to have to take the door off by the hinges with what-E-ver tools he can find of his that I haven't been able to locate since moving here 3 months ago.
He walks over to the door and I cleverly look over at Toni (who's home from school by now and admiring all the craziness Nia has created), and Nia and say "Watch him get that thing unlocked in 30 seconds!", I say as I roll my head back in a loud, mocking laughter.
Boy was I wrong!
It took him only 20 seconds - with a stinking PAPER CLIP!!
It was really hard not to insert several expletives there.
I felt completely humiliated and *simple tool-use* challenged as well.
Nia summed it all up by walking past me with those hands on her hips, and standing between her daddy and I she proclaimed, while thrusting one of those hands towards her daddy: "See Mom! THAT"S how you rescue a cat! Didn't they EVER teach you that at 'Mommy School?"
Apparently, I had a case of the "fake sickies" that day.
