A Shiver Up My Spine (Not the Good Kind)

Winter is making its second grand entrance in less than a week here along the Lake Erie shore. It's been snowing for at least 24 hours straight, with a nasty wind averaging at least 35 mph. The wind has a good side: it blows the snow off our driveway as fast as it can fall, so I haven't had to do any shoveling. However, the downside is that the wind chill factor is about -11 F. Though our house is fairly new and holds heat well, that wind just seemed to penetrate its icy fingers right through our walls earlier today.

Throughout the morning, as I was reviewing my notes for my Financial Management final, the room seemed to be getting colder and colder. I was already wearing my L. L. Bean fleece pj's, which are usually toasty enough to be more than adequate when I bump the heat up to 66, as I often do when I'm home during the day. But my hands were icy and I couldn't feel my toes even with socks on.

So I put on my heavy robe over the pj's and a second layer of socks before I took the exam. Gotta love those online classes on a day like this! After acing the exam (yes!) and farting around on my favorite websites for a while, I thought, hey, I'll do a cardio workout--that ought to warm me up. I opened the bedroom door to get my workout wear and was practically bowled over by the crypt-like draft blasting out of there. The thermometer said 52 degrees! It's always freezing in there during the winter, especially on windy days, but this was lower than I'd ever seen it.

I went downstairs to check the thermostat: 60 degrees. That's funny, I thought. It seems like the furnace isn't even on. I went down to the utility room, and sure enough, it was eerily quiet. My mind flashed back to a time in the summer when the air conditioning seemed to be malfunctioning, and wouldn't respond no matter what we did. It turned out that Mouchie the cat had bumped the master switch to the "off" position hours before. (I really wonder who thought it was a good idea to install it 2 feet above the floor level.)

Today, the switch was in its usual "up" position, but I thought, maybe turning it off and on will "reboot" the furnace. I did that, and, dramatically, the furnace roared to life, followed by the fan. I had fixed it! That's a little weird, but whatever. And then, exactly 15 minutes later, it stopped. All afternoon, I kept running down there to reboot it, which brought the house to an anemic 61 degrees. I had the gas fireplace on for about 7 hours, which at least kept the family room warm, but I knew something was seriously wrong. The bedroom was now down to a bone-chilling 45 degrees! How on earth were we going to sleep tonight?

When Paul got home, we looked up furnace troubleshooting tips online. We looked up the phone number of the heating and cooling company that does our maintenance in case we had to call them tomorrow. He went outside into the arctic blast with a flashlight to see if the outside vent was coated in ice or something--nope. It just kept getting colder and colder. We started retreating into ourselves like turtles. Well, I did, anyway.

Paul finally started checking the tubes that vented water from the humidifier, after jostling one around, water just started gushing from it, as if it had been pent up in a reservoir. It had been pinched near the bottom, leaving the water nowhere to go. After one false cycle, the furnace has been functioning normally for an hour and a half now. I think (hope) he solved the problem.

Here's what we think happened. Although Mouchie hadn't flipped the master switch this time, the chain of events that led up to this is still his fault. About 3 weeks ago, when I was eating my lunch at home, I heard a huge crashing noise, followed by the pinging of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tiny pebble-like objects. Something was clearly amiss down in the utility room.

As I came down the stairs, the overpowering smell of dry catfood overwhelmed me. Mouchie, hiding behind the couch in full freak-out mode, shot up the stairs as soon as he saw me. I had a few choice words upon entering the room. He had knocked over a newly-opened 15-pound bag of dry cat food from the top shelf. It weighed more than he did--don't ask me how he had the strength--and absolutely exploded upon impact dumping little pellets of cat food everywhere. And I mean everywhere. All over the top of the washing machine and dryer. behind them. Inside them, even though their doors weren't open. On top of (and in) the litter box. (Guess I should be thankful it had a cover over it.) In every dust-bunny- and cobweb-infested nook and cranny in the entire room. Including, of course, all of the nooks and crannies of the furnace and its myriad pipes and tubes.

I was on my hands and knees for at least a half and hour with the hand broom and dustpan getting it all. We had had ants before (who love dry cat food), so I made an effort to get every last kibble. It was like hunting for cockroaches; you see one, you know there are 10,000 more just out of plain sight. Honestly, that's what I was thinking when I pulled the flimsy little white pipes aside only to see at least 200+ kibbles way under there. I had to get them all! As you can imagine, I was kind of pissed at this point, and I took it out on those poor pipes, shoving their ends back in their little hole none too carefully.

Fast forward to today, the first day it was cold enough for the furnace to be on continuously for hours and hours at a time. The water from the humidifier just couldn't drain fast enough, and when its reservoir stayed full, it automatically shut off the furnace. Now that it can drain, problem solved. It sure is a relief that we (and our pipes!) won't freeze overnight, and that we are spared the ordeal of an emergency service call on a day that I'm sure plenty of others would be ahead of us in line.

Mouchie's New Bedtime Ritual

Some of you may recall a really annoying habit of Mouchie's I posted about in the spring. For a while, I had an evening routine of piling 3 cardboard boxes in front of the front door to keep him from peeing there overnight/before breakfast. As the weather got hotter and he became less active, I stopped putting the boxes down, and for about 3 blissful weeks he didn't do it. But then he started again. And then he did it on the floor next to the boxes. Evidently, it's not just a springtime habit any more. We have come to the realization that the only solution is to keep him out of the space all night, every night, no matter what.

I felt bad the first night I shut him up in the laundry room. Everything he needs is in there--dry food, water, kitty carrier/bed, litterbox (and only bare floor), but I felt like I was shutting him in prison for the night. He wasn't too happy at first and tried to bolt for the door. But now that this has been the new routine for a month, he is very accepting of it. And it certainly has solved the problem. As a bonus, overnight yack attacks are confined to the bare floor, making clean-up much easier. Although once he barfed on top of the washing machine, necessitating both horizontal and vertical clean-up, but it was still easier than carpet.

A part of me still feels bad having to restrict his freedom. I had a dream once that I put him inside an empty plastic milk jug which I then put into the refrigerator. I spent the rest of the dream worrying that he couldn't breathe, and that I wouldn't be able to get him out through that narrow little opening.

Not a Pretty Seasonal Transition

I have to say, this is one of my least favorite times of year. The weather mostly sucks. We still have a few filthy mounds of snow from the storm I wrote about three weeks ago. Wet, mud, and/or slush seem to be the most prominent features of "spring" so far. I thought surely the crocuses must be up by now, and took a walk up Hessler Street to check them out the other day. Not a one. Not even the greens yet. Just a few hardy snowdrops. Usually the crocuses are about spent by now and the daffodils are about to explode. It looks like the snowiest March on record has slowed down our already typically late start to spring.

The semester is almost two thirds over--only 6 weeks to go. I am enjoying the Financial Accounting class, but I have to say, the next College Composition class I take will not be the honors one. I am doing extremely well--my grade is a 95.77 so far--but, boy, do I ever have to work for it. I am still a slow writer. The assignments are getting harder and harder, so I never get any faster. The last one was the worst. I had to read several esoteric literary criticisms on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, most of which were so dense I had to read them all 5-6 times before I could even begin to understand their arguments. Then I had to pick one and write an essay on my take on their arguments, backed up with plenty of evidence from multiple sources. Ack. Easter was not fun. In fact, as Borat would say, writing it was major "pain in my assholes," as I described it to Paul. As a small comfort, my classmates also had a hard time with it and we were able to commiserate online. I actually did very well on mine, finally scoring a perfect 10 for the first time in this class. The discussion afterwards was actually exhilarating, and I made a really good comment in support of the value of literary criticism. Prof. Panza quoted my comment in one of his online announcements to the class, which made me feel pretty great.

Things are getting better. Sure signs of spring:

• I was able to ride my bike to church today, since it was above 35 and not raining!
• It's not pitch-black at 8 pm anymore.
• Spring concert rehearsal season is in full swing,

and

• Mouchie has taken to peeing on the floor in front of the front door again.

Ugh, ugh, ugh. As if "yack season*" weren't bad enough. I have no idea why he feels so compelled to do this. Every. Single. Spring. It's not marking behavior. He was neutered at 4 months, and it's only on the floor (not the wall). We actually use the front door multiple times a day, so if he thinks I'll give in and put another litterbox there, well, sorry, ain't happening. I've tried tinfoil and a carpet runner with the pointy side up. Supposedly, cats don't like walking on those surfaces, but he just brazenly pees on it. It only makes my clean-up job harder. Pet repellents and "training aids," both the clove- or citrus-scented organic and the nuclear-waste chemical varieties, have absolutely no effect on him. Even serving his food there won't stop him from peeing less than 12 inches away from the food dish.

Last year, I bought a heavy rubber front porch mat from the hardware store that had such a strong chemical smell it almost knocked us out. That really worked, and I thought I had fixed this for good. Apparently, the smell has faded to the point of losing its repellent power. There must be something about the changing light or the sound of the birds that brings out this lovely behavior. He only does it in the early morning before I get up to feed him. I wish I could booby-trap the area to dump water and/or make a nasty noise only when HE enters it, not when we do.

One thing that did work for 3 days last week: I put up a cheap wooden baby gate in front of the stairs, but that's not all. He can leap over it easily enough, so I got a large blanket out and draped it over the railing, clipping it in place to make the barrier too high and deep for him to penetrate. He foiled me yesterday morning, though. All the papers from the ledge over the stairs were scattered in the stairwell by the front door, and there was the puddle of pee. My barrier was untouched. The little stinker had used his acrobatic skills (which I had sorely underestimated) to leap down and then up several feet because he really wanted to pee there. This morning, Paul got up at 7:30 and put him out on the deck, which solved the problem for today, but only works if the weather is decent. I am running out of ideas.

Maybe I should go to the hardware store and buy a big-ass piece of thin plywood, big enough to reach from the top of the stairs to to door, and just lay it down over the entire area at night. If the entire surface is at a 45-degree angle,with no toeholds, may that will render it sufficiently unpleasant for him. I'd hate to have to shut him in the downstairs family room all night, every night, but that's the next step if this doesn't work, and if I do that, he might find some even more unpleasant way of showing us what he thinks of that idea. Any of you cat people have any advice?

*Yack season: that lovely time of year when we shed our winter coats and leave a lovely upchucked surprise on the floor (carpet only) several times a week.