Extra Cat, 3 AM

The realtor who sold us the house came by last night for coffee, and to see what we had done with the house, and be sure we liked it. I felt obligated to clean up, since it's like when you adopt a baby, and the relatives come by to see how things are going. In my case they would have, at 11 Am, found the baby smoking a cigar on a pile of dirty laundry. Also, me, trying to put eyes into a small devilish idol, with eyeballs all over the floor of the studio. (Luckily the studio has carpet, I turned over the eyebox by accident, and then there were several minutes of undignified crawling under furniture to find rolly eyes.) But by 6:30 PM, I had had a shower, a haircut, the bad shower curtain replaced with a new one, everything vaccumed,the floor scrubbed, the dead plant thrown away, the rest of the rabbit hair brushed up from the carpet, all the dining room chairs retrieved from being under other things, and various inappropriate ornaments and reference books put away.

We had a fun visit--she is very busy as there are now too many people who want too few homes, so there are bidding wars going on. We got in this house just in time. The only awkward moment came when I forgot Selket had been put on top of the boxes on the left side of the closet, and opened that door to show how the boxes were fit in there (I like that closet). Bless her heart, the realtor didn't even bat an eyelash as Selket looked back, scorpion tail, devil horns and all, and I shut the door again. No missed eyeballs were discovered, either. So the realtor eventually left, we had a snack, went to bed, and around 3AM I heard cat swearing, which I haven't heard since Cookie passed away. (Cookie was very large and opinionated, and could swear like a sailor.) So I got up and went down the hall in the dark, and saw something pale like a possum--and regretted I hadn't gotten a broom first--turned on the light, and there was an orange and white cat crouched on the window seat in the studio, with the gray cat arched in front of him, puffed up like a fugu fish with fur. Mr. Orange and White took one look at me and fled, even remembering where the cat door was in the porch, and I turned off the lights and shut the door. Stripey keeps looking nervously at the back door today. Mr. Orange and White looked a lot like Gus up there, making a yin-yang with Tuppy. He was obviously a pet cat, out to do some exploring and possibly steal some Fancy Feast.