Life in the big house
OH when the cats came marching in
We moved out
There is nothing quite as romantic as life in the country. This bucolic charm however, comes with a price; the never-ending mowing and trimming and weeding — for those who tend their lawn. There is also the issue of Kevin, the organic alarm clock, cock-a-doodle-doing early every morning… and then there were the RATS —plenty of them.
Jeff is highly allergic to cats and I always found these self-indulgent creatures disgusting, climbing relentlessly up and down countertops and kitchen tables! But we had rats. In the chicken coup I counted twenty of them one night.
Something had to be done and cats, like it or not, was our best choice. So… off we went to a friend of a friend’s neighbour’s house to get them. The boys chose one each and named them on the drive back home. That is how Sunny, Rainbow and Tiger joined in the workforce of Belebat. Little we knew.
To cut a long story short, the plan of raising three barn cats failed, in colosal fashion, within the first hour. They were too cute, too fluffy, too little, too too many things that we couldn’t do anything else other than cuddle them…
But…not a year had passed till three became TEN! Even though I had rapidly earned my “cat lady” title, waking up in a sea of kittens every morning, next to a husband that couldn’t get a decent night sleep over the constant meows, pounces and sneezes—no one in that two-room house, we were living in, was happy.
It was early June and the days were warm enough to leave our windows open. There was bacon on the stove and the smell of toasted bread mingled in the air. Jeff was mumbling about the roofers as he reached over the sizzling frying pan to pour himself a cup of tea. The boys were slowly waking up and I had three little kittens chasing a rather confused chicken around the kitchen table.
Enough! By the end of that day, there were two bedrooms being set in the doorless chateau that, till then, remained empty and half asleep.
Truth be told, we still have no doors, but this big, old house is now far from quiet…
…because we are living in it!
