Before I introduce the fiersome toe biter let me first post a photograph of her handy work.
This was originally a nicely sorted box with all of the different color seed beads in their own little squares. Probably about $60.00 worth or there a bouts of beads, maybe more.....and then Sasha came along and jumped on the box... down it went all over the carpet. I counted to ten.... then I counted to twenty with my eyes closed and attempted to find just for a moment a sense of inner peace.... and by the time I got finished scooping these lovelies off of the carpet and vacuuming about 20 bucks worth of the rest of them, I found her in the cooking pot cupboard laying in the wok. Some of our cupboard doors that are low to ground have broken off either because it's an incredibly old house or because at one point in time one of the children decided it might be fun to climb on them (he was 4). In her defense she probably felt that might be the safest place to be while I was picking up beads off of the carpet because I was not exactly successful in achieving my sense of inner peace but I gave it a good college try.
So here is Sasha... and now I will tell her story.
But first I must digress a bit. A couple of years ago my husband and I were married, and we had a lovely gathering of friends at our house for a post wedding pagan ceremony. My husband is pure Northern European Viking stock and very interested in the Nordic mythologies, (but not the white supremacist kind). So for our wedding ceremony we had an invocation to Freya and Odin. Now ..... once upon a time I had attended a witchcraft workshop with Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone here in Loomis California. Janet was sharing an experience of hers, that having discovered she was in fact a priestess of Freya, one of the obligations that came with that she told us, was that she was now responsible for taking care of every damn stray cat that wandered into her life. Apparently after her consecration to Freya was final, her life became suddenly and unexpectedly filled with cats.
I'm not a priestess of Freya necessarily but after the invocation at our wedding party, our life suddenly and unexpectedly ...yup you guessed it... became filled with cats. We had a feral cat problem on our very rural street but up until now they hadn't really moved in to our house or yard. Most of them had been living at the neighbors and had been breeding uncontrollably for the better part of 7 years. Everyone kept telling her she should really do something about this... and she never did. So right after our party, she left for Montana for a couple of months and then suddenly the refugees started moving in to find our cat food for our own house cats (we have two). They didn't just visit, they moved right on into our basement and had kittens. I looked at my husband and said... "this was your idea so don't look at me... you wanted to invoke Freya and now we have been blessed with her ABUNDANT and COPIOUS bounty". Cats are Freya's totem from what I understand. When they were old enough, 7 wild cats were trapped and promptly taken to the local spay and neuter clinic at the animal shelter.... I worked out a deal with Sammies Friends to keep bringing in the rest from next door as I caught them till we got them ALL because this simply had to stop. So far, I've captured 16 cats... there's more still..... and have put them on the feline planned parenthood and vaccination / worming program. We've adopted the seven as our own that moved into our basement and as for the rest, its kind of like a UFO abduction experience for most of them. They get trapped (which is kind of like having a rattlesnake in a guinea sack), they get taken to a clinic and drugged to their eyeballs with special K, poked prodded and pinched... they come back and recover for two days and then they go back to where they came from next door where they do actually get fed well.
Sasha is one of the cuties from next door. She was actually one of the few friendly ones you could handle and play with. I captured her one day and took her in for a bad ear mite infection treatment, a spay and an eye removal because of a very bad ulcerated injury in her eye they were afraid might get more infected. As a result of her extended veterinary care she stayed the better part of two actual months in our house under supervision and antibiotics until she was all healthy again.
The first thing she did when she moved in temporarily was to TP our bathroom. With I might add the very last roll of toilet paper we had that night. (sigh)... So this is how it is going to be said I to myself.
The next day found her on the candle making potion counter... ooohhhhhhh bad bad bad bad....... I had horrible visions of candle dye everywhere...and essential oils that would no doubt be very toxic to her....so that issue had to be remedied immediately. After that.... climbing the curtains was the next best thing on her list of things fun to do, followed by terrorizing the television cords and the beading corner was just too tempting not to avoid. It's been a never ending battle with the beading corner. I just can't possibly Sasha proof this house enough. So she earned the esteemed honor of .... wait for it.... "THE KITTY CAGE". The other neighbors had a large wire cage that may have once been a rabbit cage which they donated to my cause... I cleaned it up and brought it in the house and decided that she would have supervised house access only.... the rest of the time when we were gone at work and, night time included, was going to be in the crate where I hung her sock toy and where she found endless entertainment playing with the kitty litter, flinging it everywhere and standing in her water dish. My husband found her on my dresser the other night trying to do her hair and had she not been foiled in her attempts, I bet money she'd have eventually found the cotton ball stash. Only last night she snuck into my desk file cabinet drawer... BEHIND the drawer where I promptly tried to shut it and then couldn't figure out what the scuffing noise was under my desk until I pulled out the drawer and found her in there.... (she was going to do some filing for me.) She wasn't even the slightest bit worried about being locked in the drawer because she had found a bit of fuzz in there to play with and was happy as a clam. I opened the drawer and she looked up at me as if to say.... "moi?" Oh so innocent.
We love her dearly but it's time for her to go back home next door and she's got her clean bill of health. But I just had to get a photo for posterity before I handed her back to the neighbor.
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