Percy and CSN

Cyndi found an ottoman coffee table she has decided she just can't live without.  The one she likes has storage space where we could store a mountain of cat and dog treats and toys.  That would save Jan from having to dole them out, but she's not very agreeable to us taking over our own treat disbursement. She says we'd eat them all at one sitting and get sick.   Buddy and Sam say they'll agree to the ottoman coffee table only if Jan actually buys us a mountain of treats. 

For those of you who haven't heard, now that summer is over, we have a swimming pool.  We know it's here.  Our water consumption says we're filling it; however, we can't locate it.

See, Jan has been tightening our collars.  No, that's not right. She's been tightening her belt - even though we've never seen her wear one.  So when she read our utility bill Friday, she turned kind of red in the face. We use 1000 or less gallons of water per billing cycle but we were billed for 4 thousand. She grabbed a crowbar and a magnifying glass and went outside. We watched from a window as she lifted the heavy cover and wiped the dirt off the meter with her hand.  The bill reading was 072 on 9/20 and unless she was blind it was actually 060 on October 1.

She emailed the city, asking if they would send someone to do a visual reading, but she kept getting the feeling something wasn't right, so she grabbed her reading glasses this time, the crowbar, a magnifying glass and a paper towel to clean the dial better.  The correct reading was 080. She called our landlord.

He came Saturday morning with his dad who is a (retired?) plumber. They checked everywhere for leaks - in the house, under the house, walked the property.  They flushed the toilet, ran water down drains.  Nothing was leaking but the dial was spinning much faster than Friday. And it had gone from 080 to 450 (460 by the time they left). Hopefully, our landlord will be able to get a plumber out here soon to dig up the lawn between the house and the meter because the water bill is climbing. at a rapid rate.  The city manager and the billing department will work with Jan to reduce the bill when the leak is fixed but at this rate it will still be higher than we can pay.  The landlord said he'll help too.  But nothing can be worked out until the leak is fixed and the amount of the damages is known. 

Oh, and our landlord informed Jan he killed two -- yes, 2 black widow spiders in the same hole Jan was sticking her hands yesterday.  She noticed the spider webs but there are so many spider webs around the yard she didn't pay attention. We have concluded she must have a guardian angel. 

Jan locked us dogs in the bedroom so the men could walk in and out without worrying about one of us slipping out the door.  Unfortunately, when the men arrived, Jan went to unlock the back gate and they left the front screen door open behind them.  Jan ran around trying to find all of us cats.  Cotton was sleeping in her new crinkle tunnel and Cameron was on top of the fridge.  Rusty, who likes to run out the back door was missing, but after a good while he showed up at the food bowl and Cyndi was found hiding behind the fridge. Jan called Percy, slipped inside the bedroom to check, crawled around the floor, checked in, on, under ....

Percy was gone.

As soon as they men left, she did another sweep of the house and headed down the street with a jar of cat food.  Not a sign of him anywhere.  She had no idea of which direction he might have gone, so she came home to plan.  She turned on the computer, sat down, turned around and there was Percy strolling across the floor toward her. 

Jan is lying down "resting her eyes" as we type this for Sunday's post.  We don't know why she's so exhausted. She hasn't done any work today.


We did a recent post asking you to vote for Tamar's Cat Hammock in a competition.  Voting was a bit confusing. It ended Friday and winners have been chosen. Tamar's Cat Hammock was not the Readers' Choice Award but she did win the Judges' Choice Award. Congratulations, Tamar! You can read details here.