Building a Better Root-Vegetable-Based Mouse Trap

So about the mouse.

It continues to elude Max's completely uninterested clutches, and Max continues to not give a flying fuck. 

Last night Jason and I heard something crunching on kibble in the kitchen, along with a metallic clang -- like one of the pets pushed the food and water bowls together while eating. 

Except that -- you guessed it -- both of the pets were sitting on the couch, with us. Jason jumped up and cautiously peeked around the doorway, but the intruder was already gone. I proceeded to have a full-body attack of the itching creepy crawlies while Jason checked the humane traps (I KNOW, OKAY) that he'd placed behind the stove at the assumed point of entry.

The good news is that a mouse had gone into the trap. At one point or another. The bad news is that he'd clearly had no trouble CHEWING HIS WAY OUT.

"So, that's that." I said. "We'll get some nice toxic traps that break their backs or fry their brains or something, right?"

He mumbled something while opening cabinets and pulling out casserole dishes or whatever and I went back to the living room. 

Turns out? Jason had a plan.

Behold. This was his plan:

For those of you who have no idea what you're looking at (which I imagine is EVERYBODY), you are looking at the cat food dish, hidden under a mixing bowl that has been propped up with a wine cork and weighted down with a sweet potato.

I'm just...gonna sit here for a minute and let you re-read that last sentence a couple more times.

I swear. I SWEAR TO GOD. This actually fucking happened.  

After laughing my fool head off and taking some pictures, I opted to go to bed. I mean, the evening could ONLY go downhill at this point, right?

At 4:30 in the morning, we heard -- OH YES WE DID -- yet another metallic clang. A more...forceful sounding one.

I poked my husband. "Did you hear that?"

He had. I poked him again. It was a congratulatory, high-five kind of poke. 

At first he said he'd deal with it in the morning, but I worried that perhaps the whole SWEET POTATO thing was maybe not entirely fail-safe, like what if the potato rolled off the bowl and the mouse can like, MOVE the bowl around like a little hamster-wheel and we go down there tomorrow morning and can't find it? 

(4:30 in the morning, you guys. And I'm fretting over the mental image of a POSSESSED MIXING BOWL skittering all over my house.)

Jason got up and went downstairs to check his trap. He returned a few minutes later.

"It wasn't the mouse," he reported. "It was Max. He was just sitting there, staring at the bowl, like, what the hell?" 

"I'm sorry," I said. "That would have been pretty awesome if it worked."

"Yeah."

"But seriously, you've got to let me nuke the bastards next, okay?"

"Okay."

 

(Sweet Potato Helmet Army Man Says Hold Your Ground! Fire When Ready!) 
 

Dear Cat

We need to talk.

 
Oh, don't look at me like that. You know. YOU KNOW EXACTLY.

Look. Cat. You've been a fine cat. For almost...wow...12 years now, you've been a very fine cat. Very affectionate and cozy and face-nuzzly and such. And I can't tell you how happy I am that you remain so healthy and spry and feisty after almost 12 whole years. 

Like the other night? When you were rolling around on the bed being all adorable and I decided to record a little movie of your adorableness but the dog felt all left out and whimper-y on the floor so I picked her up and put her on the bed and you were immediately all OH HELLLLLZ NO BITCH THIS BED AND TUMMY RUBBIN IS MINE and proceeded to lunge at her head like a cheetah in a nature documentary? 

Exhibit A:

Yeah, that. While not the adorable pet video I originally had in mind, I was still pleased to see you can still get all aggressive and feline-like, when you feel like it. 

Which brings me to my point: If you're still obviously so up for a good tussle, why the fuck do we have a MOUSE, a mouse in our KITCHEN, a mouse that comes OUT OF THE CABINET at night and sits NEXT TO YOUR BOWL and EATS YOUR FOOD and OH MY GOD, it's a goddamned RODENT.

(IN OUR HOUSE!)

Look, Cat. This isn't even the first mouse. We had one last year. Something I discovered when I pulled a baking sheet out the drawer under our stove and oh look, MOUSE TURDS. Do you remember that? You were at least vaguely helpful that time, what with all the INTENSE STARING you did that signaled to us that one of the sticky traps we set out had captured the mouse, the mouse that my husband (YOUR FATHER!) then refused to kill and kept trying to get me to LOOK AT IT and then he spent 20 minutes carefully removing the stupid thing from the trap before putting it in MY GOOD TUPPERWARE and being all, "Noah! Look! It's Ratatouille! Let's go get in the car and set him free somewhere so he can go back to his family!" 

And then we got in the car and he asked me to hold the container in my LAP and I yelled at him to put that thing in the TRUNK because NO, I wanted NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY OF THIS. And then we drove to a goddamned field and he set the goddamned thing free and you know, I bet this is the same goddamned mouse, not that I'm going to check its little foot pads for signs of past sticky-trap trauma or anything. 

Look, Cat. I gave you a pass last year because I thought the mouse was staying in non-cat-accessible places in the house. But now it has been brought to my attention that the mouse has been spotted OUT AND ABOUT, AT NIGHT. (Spotted by my husband [YOUR FATHER!], who again, did not respond to the sighting by like, throwing a fucking shoe at the thing or doing anything USEFUL, but instead just came upstairs and woke me up and was all, "HEY. GUESS WHAT I JUST SAW.")

Seriously. The thing comes out and eats your food. From your bowl. A bowl that we have since moved the fuck off the floor, and I can tell that pisses you right off from all the plaintive yowling you do every morning because meoooooooooowwwww I'm too old and lazy to jump up on a chaaaaaaair to get my fooooooood meeeeeeeooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwww halp meeeeee somebodeeeeeeee rooowwwlllll.

You know what, Cat? Tough freaking love. Do your job and get rid of the mouse and you can have your stupid bowl back on the stupid floor. What? I sound angry? I am. Almost 12 years, Cat. That's how long I've been feeding you and paying for shots and letting you sleep in my armpit and I didn't even TELL the Internet what you did to us while we were in Jamaica, going on a three-day hunger strike at the fancy expensive Pet Hotel, causing us and our emergency contact much stress and panic while we tried to find a pet sitter to go get you on goddamned SKYPE because we didn't even have a PHONE down there and then you were FINE and were just being a DIVA and after all of that, you're telling me you won't even TRY to kill ONE LITTLE MOUSE that is, for the record, EATING YOUR FOOD? 

You're kind of a disgrace, Cat. 12 years of face scritches and unlimited catnip have made you soft. I'm guessing there's not much to be done about that at this point. Except maybe this:

 
Love,

Person With Opposable Thumbs Who Knows Where The Treats Are Kept, Bizzitch

Counterpoint: Year of the Tigercat

I mean, Point One: TigerDOG doesn't make a lick of sense ANYWAYS, and Point Two:

ROWRR, I am lushus.

Yeah, I know. I don't many appearances on this blog thing these days. I certainly don't write whole entries anymore. You know why?

 

Because I am a fucking CAT, you stupid sons of bitches.

 

I mean, look! No thumbs.

 

Besides, I lead a very rich and fulfilling life offline.

I enjoy looking pissed off, even when I'm not. So having a Twitter account would just be redundant.

 

I enjoy this, which negates any need for adoring blog comments.

 

And this, which is just like, rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrwlolomg.

I LIKE THIS. THUMBS UP. STICK THAT IN YOUR FACEBOOK.

 

And of course, Puppy.

Sigh. Isn't he adorable?

Hard to believe we're both 11 years old now. Seems like yesterday we were both the same size. And Puppy had a scalp and did not poop stuffing at such an alarming rate.

(First person who makes an Edward jokes has to come over and make the beds. While I fight you.)

(With furious chin rubs.)

I...I DON'T KNOW. I JUST DON'T KNOW.

I just wrote an entire post about a brownie. A brownie that I artfully swiped from Noah's kiddie combo meal lunch, a brownie that he did not even know existed, and that I just ate in three bites within 30 seconds of putting him down for a nap.

And then it occurred to me that really, that one sentence right there? Was STILL more words than one should really write about a brownie, no matter how sad one is that the brownie is now gone and there are no more brownies. So I deleted the first post about the brownie, only to then write this post about the brownie.

I'm really good at this blogging thing, sometimes.

Also, I have now have brownie crumbs in my cleavage, and I appear to have spilled salsa on my belly in three different places.

And...

Um...

My cat is real pretty?

One time this happened?

And then one time Noah and I found a ladybug in the house and Noah really, really loved that ladybug and then I said it was time to send the ladybug home and I opened the window to put the ladybug out on the sill but then accidentally dropped the ladybug out the window and Noah looked at me like this because OMFG YOU KILLED DAT LADYBUG?

Yeah. So that's why a brownie seemed like a pretty interesting topic at the time.

(Dear Noah, I'm so, so sorry about the ladybug. I'm sure it's okay, unless I accidentally broke all its legs when I dropped it upside down first and then flipped it off the windowsill while attempting to help it, but you know I used to pick up caterpillars on our walks and let them climb around on my hands and arms for your amusement? I think that should buy me a little forgiveness here.)

(Also, remember that FInding Nemo taught us that toilets lead to the ocean.)

(Spiders freaking LOVE the ocean! It's true!)

34 Weeks

Yes, yes, I know, I know. I'm getting dangerously close to the point where I simply cannot go a day without at least posting that yes, there is no baby yet and all is well with my womb. I'm sorry. It's just that the baby's sock drawer is not going to repeatedly arrange and rearrange itself, y'all.

I've also been blowing my writerly load via dozens of long emails to my husband, since we've learned that we are only allowed to argue about politics via electronic methods. Otherwise we get a tad...shrill with each other, as during major election years our usually happy existence as independents ends, and we retreat to our separate party corners and hiss and spit and furiously send each other links that SO TOTALLY prove that the other person is a complete fucking idiot.

And while I usually just end up defaulting to the surefire "I am never sleeping with you again unless you pull your head at least PARTWAY out of your ass," I'm thinking that's not going to be particularly effective this time.

I mean, check OUT this slammin' physique. Wouldn't YOU be okay with letting the Bush tax cuts expire as planned in 2010 for a chance at that ass?

That's what I thought, suckahs. (And that IS a maternity tank. Those extra four inches of visible fishbelly are so fierce.)

If current "plans" hold -- and oh, I do so love using the word "plans" in regard to ANYTHING birth-related, since it makes me think of "birth plans" and how all the pregnancy books list that as something one should pack for the hospital ("darling, can you please fetch me my chapstick, Yanni CD and seven-page birth plan from the suitcase? It's in the front pocket. No, that's the back-up copy, I mean the one I had laminated.") --  I'll be having this baby in about five weeks.

And...we feel ready, more or less. Oh sure, we still haven't gotten all the various baby gear down from the attic yet and I'm still only assuming that the car seat is where I think I left it, and a full inventory of Noah's infant hand-me-downs reveals a horrifying shortage of 3-6 month sized feetie jammies but...eh. We're ready. We've been gripped with crazy baby fever over the past few weeks, which is convenient! What timing!

Whenever we see someone out and about with an infant, our conversations go something like this:

NOM, I say. SMUSHY BABY THERE MMMM.

GOOD, Jason says, SQUAWKY NEWBORN CHOMP.

Then we nod and go back to gnawing on bones and bitching about Geico ads. (And short- vs. long-term solutions to the energy crisis and Iraq timetables and OH MY GOD SARAH PALIN.)

I'm not sure when it happened -- the 3D ultrasound, the crazy visible kicks and rolls and undulations of mah belleh, the discovery of baby socks that look like shoes, the temporary threat that things might in fact NOT be as perfect and surefire as we thought? I don't know. But here we are, at 34 weeks, and we are finally able to have a conversation about The Baby that doesn't involve a heaping hot dose of TERROR and WHAT HAVE WE DONE? Undo! Ctrl-Z!

My only frustration is that we don't have a name. (Jason changed his mind. Don't even get me started. He changed his mind but has not offered a single usable alternative and WOW, YOU MIGHT EVEN SAY HE FLIP-FLOPPED, MUCH LIKE A CERTAIN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE.) (Okay, I'll stop now.) Jason wants to name the baby after he's here, in the hospital. Which is fine, except that I secretly continue to use "the name" in my head and I seriously doubt I'll be able to think of him as anything else, but I have decided to exert my energy elsewhere. The aforementioned sock drawer. The search for the perfect coming-home outfit, which is driving Jason crazy because I think I have rejected every pair of blue feetie jammies in the tri-state area as being either 1) Not special enough, 2) Too frou-frou, 3) Not boyish enough, 4) Too boyish, oh my God, my newborn is not coming home clad in MONSTER TRUCKS, and 5) I dunno, I just don't think raccoons are the statement I'd like to make on the birth announcements. Don't you have something in a teddy bear motif?

And...Jesus, I should stop before I make our household sound ANY MORE INSANE.

Quick! Look! Pet photos!

Way to keep it classy there, everybody.

Metadog

My god, this blog. It is astoundingly boring.

So. Very. Very. Boring.

It is not updated often enough for my discriminating tastes, either.

And this kid is much too old to be very interesting.

Not that all this pregnancy puking and hot dog binge talk is all that appetizing.

In sum, I am in ur charming family portrait, expressing mah disdain. Pfft.

Love,
OG Homie aka Ceiba!

Jesus Wants You To Get Out Of My Flipping Sunbeam

Or, Turf Wars Among the Small Ones
Or, Geez, Amy, Maybe You Should Turn Up the Heat?

I SENSES WEAKNESS.

You think I care, dogthing? I HAS A TENT.

SHADOW DOG IS SHADOWY.

YET...OMFG IS THAT KIBBLE?

Mwa ha ha.

Mine. All mine.

There was a brief stand-off...and then...

Blue Steel FTW! aka I Will Fuck You Up And Good, Dogthing.

*sniff*

(Okay, so this was terribly non-dramatic in the retelling, and not nearly as amusing as actually watching the every-changing-custody of the sunbeam, and wow, I'm actually now kind of ashamed that this is the sort of thing that I regularly depend on to kill a good 45 minutes of the day, so I'm just gonna go ahead and post some pictures of my kid.)

Yes, I know he needs a haircut, but obviously we are just WAY TOO BUSY.

Like Tears of a Clown: The Fat Rolls of a Pursedog

Since her last public appearance on this blog, Ceiba has porked up a little. A tad. A few pounds and ounces. A mere 25% of her body weight. Or so.

Where mah spangly bra and hotpants be at, bitches?

The scientific community is baffled, as her kibble -- her healthy, low-fat, high-protein, crazy-expensive for the preshus-shookie-ookie-kums kibble -- remains largely untouched. And yet there's something about the neck rolls and rotund torso that suggest WAFFLES. LOTS AND LOTS OF WAFFLES.

I can has chili cheez fries?

OMFG SMALL ONE HAS COOKIE COOKIE COOKIE

Eh. Fuckkit. zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Max is also overweight, but that's nothing new. He's been overeating to fill a nutsack-shaped void for YEARS now.

I eat kibble while Lard Dog sleep. Is win-win.

 

Paranoid Android

JASON: So. Anything interesting happen today?

AMY: I spent the whole day dealing with shit.

JASON: Ooh, was there some kind of Internet drama?

AMY: No. Like actual, physical shit. I spent the whole day dealing with feces.

JASON. Ooh, Noah?

AMY: Well, yes. Noah kept saying he had to go apoopoo but wouldn't go on the potty and he wanted to watch the Potty Time With Elmo video 14 dozen times and then Max pooped in the office twice and Ceiba crapped on the stairs.

JASON: Uh.

AMY: Yeah. It was an enriching day. I do good work.

***

I've been in a bit of a cranky funk this week and feeling immensely sorry for myself for no reason at all.

Well, okay, unless you count this as a valid reason for funkitude:

Of course, after cursing the coffee maker out for RISING AGAINST ME, FOR MAKING EVERYTHING WORSE, I realized I'd forgotten to put the inner plastic basket thing in before the filter and thus this was all my own fault but COME ON, I was still totally ready to cry about it.

Or, you know, grab a straw and suck that shit up off the countertop.

Same thing with all the pet poop. Max, in a fit of old age and/or belated moving-related rebellion, has decided he will not use his litter box if it is not P-E-R-F-E-C-T-L-Y clean. Which means I must scoop it out after he goes EVERY TIME and sift it and add fresh litter EVERY TIME, or else he relieves himself six inches to the right of the box. As I am extremely lazy and forgetful and also trying to prove a point that he's being ridiculous, just CRAP IN THE BOX ALREADY, he's been having a lot of accidents.

So I clean it all up and always manage to spill litter on the floor, and then I grab the mini-handvac thing and of course, it's never fully charged because I am extremely lazy and never remember to charge it, but at the time I am all, WOE IS ME and *SHAKES FIST AT THE HEAVENS* and that's when I punch myself in the face because dude, it's some kitty litter on the carpet, get a damn grip and call the vet already.

(Seriously. Can you believe this is the most interesting story I've managed to come up with all week?)

(Does your brain itch as it atrophies? Or is it more of a stinging-type sensation?)

Several months ago I blamed a similar funk on the weather. Which is completely gorgeous right now. Except maybe it's a little too hot, plus there are mosquitoes, and I get a sinus headache from all the fucking grass and nature and shit.

Basically, hi. I'm a whiny little bitch who is never happy. Also probably on the rag.

But look! Here's some baby beefcake.

(Hey. Anybody want to join my little ray-of-sunshine ass for a Top Chef open thread tonight at the Mamapop forums? It'll be just like you're sitting in my living room, except you don't have to put up with me asking for foot rubs. Also sometimes I get a little gassy after dinner, so yeah. Forums are totally the way to watch TV with me.)

(Also, of COURSE it was reaction number 3. What kind of mature human being do you people take me for?)

Where iz ur cat be at?

 Several readers have expressed concerns re: Max's whereabouts.

Poor Max. He is fine. And to prove his fineness, we had a little photo session in our bathroom this morning, because that's exactly the sort of classy operation we run here.

He's a liar. Also smooshable and purry.

He's finally at a healthy weight, and it only took eight years of dieting. And a little help from Ceiba, who figured out that Max likes to take two or three bites of food, go poop, then return and eat the rest of his meal. EVERY TIME.

And no matter how many times he returns from the litter box to an empty bowl, he will not alter his poop schedule in the slightest. Then he eats Ceiba's food instead. I vaguely remember a time when I used to give a shit, but at this point it's hard to even care whether it's Noah or Ceiba who actually eats Noah's waffle, and seriously at this point I am ready to throw all of their food into a big trough every morning and let them duke it out.

Puppy made it through the move intact, and I still hear Max singing to it every morning. MRRREOW, REEEOWWW, EEERRROW.

It's not great, cat, but he does his thing and gets points for his beautiful spirit and soul.

Yes. You can has headscritch. But you cannot has cheezburger.

(By the way, does anybody else think that site should be required reading for anybody who is all gung-ho about Web 2.0 and user-generated content, because BEHOLD WHAT THE USERS GENERATE! LOLCAT ARMY! God, I love it.)