Lord, Love a Duck, Or Better Yet, Two Kitties

Where there's a chair, there's a cat.

Have you heard that saying? Lord, love a duck.

I've heard it from English speakers (as in England) and from context clues, it means something akin to, "Lord, please give me patience to deal with this insane situation/person/animal/disaster."

My office assistant.

The Urban Dictionary says "1. an exclamation uttered when nothing else will fit...often used when stunned or dismayed." (urbandictionary.com)

I think it is most appropriate to use this phrase when considering the gray kitties. The disastrous yet adorable ones that live in my home. We are beginning to label them with if they can do it, they will do it. And it usually means naughtiness of some sort.

A few excellent examples of how my personal response time is improving due to hourly disaster-avoiding-impulses with the kitties:

1. I was painting pink swirls on paper for a craft project I needed to send in with a manuscript. RAN to get my camera, thinking surely not...But surely yes. Came back in literally less than 10 seconds and Mabel was standing IN the pink paint. For reals.

2. I walked through the kitchen to find the counters and tops of things covered with little muddy kitty prints. Because I always let them walk all over the counters.

Mabel, haunting the sink in the you-can't-see-me mode.

3. Kitty #1, Mabel, is insanely interested in dripping water. Hence, she is found always hiding in or near the sink to watch the drips go down the drain. Or in between the shower curtain and outside curtain when I pull back both after a shower. And then she spends inordinate amounts of time watching each drip run down the tub.

Fishing, anyone?

4. It used to be only kitty #1 brought in wriggling worms. Nope. After the last rain, kitty #2, Monet, also brought us a prize. Double the fun and squiggles. And let's not forget the rat. Concerned for winter birds that love our back yard.

5. Mabel has a food fixation, much worse than sister. She joined a baby shower by leaping on the table and helping herself to the sliced ham.

6. We have the cleanest kitchen on the planet. (Except for kitty footprints.) We clean up and put away food before we even sit down to a meal. Otherwise, trouble #1 (especially) and trouble #2 (not so much) will be on the counter having their own second and third dinners.

See? The kitchen clean-up crew. Who needs a doggy vacuum when you have 2 kitties?

7. The beautiful trees are slowly being undecorated. One in the living room and one in the TV room leaves ample running space for thundering hooves. I mean paws. For kitties that weigh about 6-7 pounds each, they sound amazingly like elephants.

Bag kitties

So, Lord, please love these kitties.

In their defense, they are exceptionally cute and inquisitive. More often than not, they snuggle in our beds through the night. Monet especially is my lovey lap girl. Mabel would rather we keep a hands off approach unless she is feeling up to some attention. And when they wrestle, the fur flies. Tufts and piles of gray.

Kitties. They make a house a (lived in, clawed, toy-scattered, enjoyable, cozy) home.

My snuggly girls, the gray kitties