cats in chim­neys, or “is this over yet?”

Yes, I know this looks like a Vic­to­ri­an fire­place, and it is. But look close­ly. See the lit­tle stripey hands and pointy face? That’s Hermione, the world’s small­est tab­by and lat­est inhab­i­tant of my… chim­ney. That’s right, she climbs over the pret­ty con­vinc­ing (but cold) fake coals and shim­mies right up inside. Can I con­vey to you how dirty she is after she’s done this?

Yes, the cats are home. I can­not ade­quate­ly explain to you what it was like to get them into a taxi, all of them mewl­ing and yowl­ing (thank­ful­ly I had a cat-friend­ly taxi dri­ver: believe you me, I ascer­tained this before hir­ing him for the dura­tion), all of them in their incred­i­bly heavy and bulky kit­ty pris­ons. They yowled all the way down the Bayswa­ter Road, all the way through the Shep­herd’s Bush Round­about (it’s sad that I no longer find that name amus­ing), and final­ly home. I dragged them all out to the pave­ment and then had to pay off the taxi ran­som, refus­ing the dri­ver’s half-heart­ed, “You don’t need help, then, miss?” and then dragged them indi­vid­u­al­ly through the door of the house and opened the cages. Free­dom! Crazi­ness! Chim­neys, obscure base­ment cor­ners, try­ing to weasel through tiny win­dow open­ings, all the while meow­ing like they were being skinned. A VERY LONG DAY. Add to that: I spent the morn­ing recon­struct­ing our 90-piece lime­stone brick sculp­ture in which each brick has a spe­cif­ic place, only the codes on the back of each had been worn away in the pack­ing. Grrr! Hours lat­er, ham­string mus­cles com­plete­ly shot… and a Sharpie code on the back of EACH!

Now a new wrench: I can­not divulge the details because the secret is not mine to tell (one of my favorite Vic­to­ri­an dra­mat­ic phras­es), but John is off on a mis­sion to per­haps accept a job. He’s in a sandy land far, far away doing lord knows what for the next two days (I cer­tain­ly have but a sketchy notion of his where­abouts and activ­i­ties). Why dur­ing mov­ing week, you ask? To keep life interesting.

So I am beat. I apol­o­gize for the brief, recipe-less post. Tomor­row is even less promis­ing as far as writ­ing time goes, as I have my class in the ear­ly after­noon, and then no few­er than four girls from three dif­fer­ent fam­i­lies to fer­ry to the rid­ing sta­bles, home for din­ner, and back to their respec­tive homes. OK, OK, one of them is mine, but it makes a bet­ter sto­ry to say three dif­fer­ent fam­i­lies. It will be an insane day among insane days. Wish me luck… And thanks for all the great com­ments! Yes, the din­ing room is very cozy, and invit­ing. I will try to post more house pic­tures soon. And the dishy antiques guy who deliv­ered the part­ner’s desk? Crush­wor­thy? Perhaps…