Misty's Adventures

I love my little apartment out in the woods. . . mostly.  I love the quiet of the evening, the cool shady surroundings, the drive up the road and even the tiny space that is mine.  When I rented it, I had no idea that I also held a garage sized storage space in the basement.  Of course, the probability of mice down there is pretty high, so I don’t dare to take anything down that’s not in a plastic tub.  I’ve seen my Mom’s yarn where the ‘cute little things’ made a nasty nest.  Hence, I keep most of my craft supplies upstairs.  I guess that I’m going to have to be strong and take some of it down.  Surely, I must. 

Misty by the door

Misty stalking a chipmunk

I love the view out my back door.  It’s a sliding glass door that leads out onto a small wooden deck.  Of course, it’s so surrounded by trees that not a whole lot of light gets in once the leaves come back.  My back porch is littered with beech nut husks too.  They’re a bugger to step on bare footed!  I’ve been collecting them for crafting though.  I think they would make a very nice touch on a pine cone wreath.  I’ll have to make one and show you what I mean.  Of course, the time for making pine cone wreathes is farther along in the year, when ripe cones fall.

Beech nut husks

My cat, Misty loves to go out in the morning to do her thing and then, sit on the deck, watching squirrels.  It’s been rainy quite a bit of late.  I hate to leave her out if it’s going to start raining.  I hate even more (at 6 in the morning) the feeling that I have to wait around for her to decide to come in again!  I hit upon a plan the other day.

When I first moved in, I found a stick that fit really nicely in the unmovable side of the sliding glass door.  It’s about the size of a yard stick but it is very rough and has a lovely rusty nail sticking up out of it.  I left the nail in it because it works very nicely as a handle to pick it up with, should I want to open the door and go out.  With the stick in the door, it opened about two inches so I took a steak knife to my stick and made it so that the door would open about four inches.  It’s wide enough for the cat to come in and out but I don’t think that it’s wide enough to get anything out.  It’s conceivable that you could pull my flat screen tv out, but since I only planned to leave it open if I was home, I didn’t see much problem with that.  All was well in my happy home in the woods.

Misty hunting the chipmunk that is ten feet up the tree

Misty woke me up at the crack of dawn one day last week, so I let her out while I used the facilities.  (This way she wouldn’t know that I was occupying her spot as I think the thought bothers her.)  She wouldn’t come right back in, so I went back to bed, leaving the door open four inches so she could come in when she was ready.  It was probably about two hours later that I was again awakened by the cat.  She was running around the living room like a wild thing.  When I went out to see what was up, she was obviously stalking something.  Now, when your cat is stalking something in the living room, that’s surely not a good sign.  I saw a little brown nose and thought it was a mouse.  It turned out to be a chipmunk!  FUN!  She eventually chased it over by the front door and I let it out.  I don’t think that she was happy with me for letting her toy escape.  Do I care?  Do you think that I’m going to care enough in the morning to leave the door open so she can come back in?  I have my doubts.  She will have to wait until I’m ready to get up.  And no, she will not be allowed to bring her toys in any more.  Poor kitty!