Herding Cats In Bear Valley Springs And Gravy All Over Me
Last weekend I had the pleasure of staying with my dear old friends, the Osbrink family. They’ve recently completed a year-long construction of their new home in Bear Valley Springs and all I can think of saying about the result is, “Wow!”.
We arrived late (~11pm) but managed to hang out for a few hours catching up on family happenings and practicing our 12oz. curls. Jaime somehow ended up adopting 5 or 7 (or what seemed like 200) kittens. They’re outside kitties but because they’re so young they get stuffed into the barn at night, mostly to prevent them from becoming coyote snacks. At appx. 2am one of the kittens managed to sneak out so we snatched her up and brought her back to the barn for re-insertion. We opened the door slightly to put her back in and one of the other kittens got out. We turned for a second to grab her and the rest of them made a break for it. I should note that their house sits on nearly 30 (thirty!) acres.
I wish we had a video of us two exhausted, slightly “buzzed” and blinded by pure darkness fellows chasing these little fur balls around the property. Anyone who owns a cat knows that they will not be chased down if they have no desire to be caught. After 20 minutes of wasted energy we gave up and got back to talking. One by one the kitties got themselves close enough for us to nab them and put them back in the barn. The trick was to appear completely disinterested.
A few minutes after all the kitties were safely back in the barn and as we were wrapping up for the night the original escapee plopped right up on Jaime’s lap, free again and clearly trying to get us to fall for the same trick. I can only guess that she set us up and sat back eating the kitty equivalent of popcorn while we ran around like idiots. We would not fall for the trick again though and the escapee spent the night out in the cold.
The Osbrink’s had also recently adopted a slightly older cat but it did not get along with the little kitties at all so she was separated from the group. Rather than maintain that situation forever they offered the cat up to us. After spending the weekend with her and seeing how she put up with Ben’s advances I decided to accept. Her name: Gravy.
Last night, all night, she cruised the entire house and every few minutes made an unannounced leap on to my bed. She landed on my pillow, on my chest and on my face. It’s quite jarring when you’ve just fallen asleep to have 8 pounds randomly land on you. Needless to say, that kitty has made me one tired puppy. I’m not sure how I’ll deal with this problem but I know one thing, it can’t continue. As a matter of fact, she’s soundly sleeping now while I have to work and I’m thinking of going into her room every few minutes and poking her with a stick to see how she likes it. If only I didn’t love animals…
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