Real personalities emerge during Snowpocalypse

Read Time:7 Minute, 31 Second

Nothing like two blizzards in as many weeks to get to know your family as well as you’d ever want to. Tempers are short and minds are dull after being in forced confinement with a snarky pre-teen, a half-deaf 6 year old,  7 cats, and a chihuahua. Add to the mix a convalescing engineer and a menopausal woman and you might be needing a rubber room before it is all over.

The snow is perfectly level with our porch, and covering the cars- again.

Just two days after we got the driveway completely clear- and even dry- of snow and ice, a second blizzard delivered at least another foot of ski-worthy powder.  We were worse off than Tulsa, who merely got another 4-5 inches on top of their previous fourteen.

We split the difference getting 20″ the first time, and 12″ the second.  Fortunately we’d had a few days of melt-off before the second blizzard hit. Today might have been a good day to shovel it off, were the temperature not 7 below freezing outside.

Others were worse off than us. Parts of Arkansas got two feet in one day. Other towns east of us have power outages. Plus this morning a town 40 miles west of us broke the Oklahoma record for low temperatures, with some resident’s’ temperature gauges reaching 31 degrees below zero.

If you look at the picture on the bottom, you can just see the larger park bench. The small one the cat was seated on is completely buried.

It is so cold that not even the cats with the heaviest fur coats want to go out. So cold in fact that it is too cool to sit near the window and chatter at birds.So inside they remain. All 7 of them.

North garden on a rainy day in July vs yesterday

Ordinarily having them in for a day isn’t a problem. But they have been cooped up together for going on two weeks now. Occasionally on a warmer day (which in this case has been just over freezing) one or two might go outside.

In good weather they are all out most of the day. Some of them prefer going outside to using the litterbox. Unable to go outside, you’d think they’d go ahead and potty in the box- especially since it is kept scooped.

bunny trail by the koi pond (right)

Our youngest was  recovering from the minor inconvenience of having his hearing restored with tubes in his ears, so we allowed him to restfully play his xbox.

Our daughter, now going on almost the third week of no school (having been ill the week before the snow hit) and her third day with no shower,  had become virtually indistinguishable from one of the pasty, unkempt video-game zombies she was so eager to virtually destroy.

Even after beating all the games in the xbox library none of the appeal had worn off. I could see there was going to have to be an intervention.

Different angles, but you can see the depth of the snow is level with the porch- not a drift, but the new on top of two days of melted old.

One of the benefits of being as terribly myopic as I am is not being able to see my wrinkles in the mirror. Another side effect is believing my home to be cleaner than it is because I can’t see the cobwebs. Even with two laser surgeries and glasses I am still pretty blind, and have no depth perception.

The Lawyer’s wife once teased me because I was trying to clean a shadow off the floor, as I was unable to tell it was not a smudge.

The only animal that behaved during confinement

Couple this with the fact that every uncaged mammal in the family had spent the last  two and a half weeks cooped up inside a house I’d only just started undecorating for Christmas… and you can understand it was less than “company ready”. Not that we’d be having any. Other than my adult son, we’d not had any visitors in a month.

we did have feathery visitors though

A bit of a workaholic, Krell  had been back to work just twice,  being home almost as long as the kids had- first with pneumonia, then with the roads being impassable for days.

Still  in hardworking mode, he was shut in like a retiree with too much free time on his hands.  So he did what most men do when forced into confinement with lazy children, shedding cats, and cobwebs.

Verruca thinks our discomfort is hilarious

He went on a cleaning rampage.

(This is much nicer and more productive than the killing rampage I was on the verge of going on.)

I was outside shoveling the driveway off, then down with a migraine and nausea the second half of the day so I was spared much of the drama.

(Above, top pic) After shoveling a path to the coop and dove cage. Then the new snow filling the path again.

Being the only one dressed for being outside it fell to me to feed the outside animals, shuttle the numerous bags of cat box scoopings to the trash, and to dump the vacuum canister.

The snow was up to my knees.  This was OK since at least  I had one pair of shoes that went over my ankles- my daughter’s suede boots.

Despite my ridiculous trash-bag innovation, the toes of the boots had gotten damp during the previous day’s shoveling.

The 13 gallon kitchen bags went up to mid-thigh

Today in subzero temperatures I would have to bang the ice slabs out of the outdoor water bowls.  The paths out back hadn’t been cleared yet, but with boots I should be able to hurry and be back in quickly enough.

It had been 24 hours since my previous foray into the frozen tundra, so my boots should have been dry by then. But one was truly soaking.  Thinking a glob of snow had fallen in it and melted, I turned it over- and poured cat piss all over my pants.

Bogart laughs inwardly at me for not having the sense to NOT pour piss out of a boot

So this is how they repay us for getting to stay inside in the warmth! Later we were to discover the true depths of their ingratitude.

After painstakingly (one might say obsessive-compulsively) vacuuming both the upstairs and downstairs and using the steam cleaner on them, Krell was horrified to find that one of thse wretched felines had crapped on the carpet in the upstairs hall.

This was a colossal pile- like someone had dumped an entire jar of Nutella. And because it also had the same consistency, removing it required a drywall spatula.

The only kind of box this cat likes to use

This was not the end of the fecal shenanigans. One cat crapped under the downstairs couch, another on the floor right next to the litter box. At least that one was trying.

At this point even I had had enough and was ready to banish the offender(s) to the barn. Because they were all inside, we couldn’t rule any of them out as the culprit. All we could do was watch to see which ones did use the box, and eliminate them from consideration.

These disasters were handled while we were oblivious to the impending shitstorm that was to come.

Two of the male cats got into a horrible fight- so awful that one scared the crap-literally- out of the other.

In this corner, Grendel, render of souls, destroyer of worlds

In this corner, Bogart (a lover not a fighter) He didn’t win.

The loser fled upstairs, a path almost entirely across carpet, leaving a wake of crapulence behind. We followed this trail of turds upstairs to discover that it led to a steaming pile in the very same spot as the previous one.

At least we knew whose fault it was now.  But we decided to banish the aggressor to the outdoors instead.

This meant we- actually Krell- had to capture him. No way was I going to get my arms shredded. What we needed was a pair of leather gauntlets, but lacking these, Krell’s leather coat would have to do.

After almost an hour of trying to corner this 20 pound brute with the temper of a tasmanian devil, Krell finally realized he had the answer all along…

Even Grendel hated the sound of a vacuum cleaner!

The only cat to behave like a gentleman at all during this entire time was Cletus, a grouchy old tom whose usual attitude was so surly that I had informally dubbed him, “The Asshole”. Not once had he fought with others, tripped us going down the stairs, or crapped where he shouldn’t.

Cletus, noticing our upstairs water has frozen!

All photos by Morgan Williams, taken during a brief moment of sanity

About Post Author

Morgan Williams

Gardener, designer, mother, and activist, Morgan has taught many subjects from art to history; from religion to yoga. Life would be better for everyone if people had a better sense of humor and would just learn to share.
Happy
Happy
0 %
Sad
Sad
0 %
Excited
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
Angry
0 %
Surprise
Surprise
0 %
0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of

15 Comments
Newest
Oldest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Hannah McDaniel
13 years ago

hey Morgan!! it’s Hannah from the Belvidere! 🙂 i couldn’t find you on Facebook but found your blog. search me at Hannah Marie McDaniel. ttyl! 🙂

Admin
13 years ago

How great is this??? Wonderful read. Thanks MH 🙂

oso
13 years ago

I am literally laughing out loud, and have been laughing all thru this post!

I’m imagining the living hell going on there but can’t stop laughing long enough to dredge up the sympathy it needs.

Your irony and style make your adventures a pleasure to read MH!

13 years ago

Ok, I stopped laughing finally.

We rescue cats. We have more than 2, less than 22. I have been peed&crapped on, thrown up on and had an vein slashed open (by a siamese it so happens) so both of you have my sympathy.

When I go to feed the outside abandon’s It’s like feeding time at the friggin zoo. I can’t move and it’s like a sea of moving cats at my feet. I sometimes get dizzy if I look down too long at them all surrounding me. Breaking up fights? I just hose them down now with this awesome soaker gun I always have loaded. 😉

Reply to  Dusty
13 years ago

Yeah- I don’t count all the cats I “feed” in the tally. If they come inside and /or I have taken them to a vet, then they count. More than 7 is more than we can afford, vetwise.

Reply to  Mother Hen
13 years ago

The ones we can touch outside get fixed by this great group called the cat people. Some are really ferals and not abandoned. We have tried to catch them but one of the dumbasses that is domestic will go in the cage after th food and get caught instead. I can’t bring any more in the house or I will end up on an episode of Hoarders. We find homes for a lot of the kittens thank gawd. But no one wants an adult cat.

If they get hurt, and it’s painful or life threatening, we take em to the vets and we have a vet that works w/the cat people so he gives us a great break on the price. But still, it is expensive. Can’t let em suffer.

13 years ago

Having lived the nightmare, I can say that Mother Hen is understating the mood. The grand finale of Grendel having the no-holds barred fight with Bogart… screaming like you wouldn’t believe, me jumping up to see Grendel about to give Bogart the killing bite on the neck.

So I got Grendel off Bogart and I turn and see what looks to be a shit powered fur rocket running the long way upstairs, making sure to cover every available clean part of the carpet that I had, as Mother Hen had put it, cleaning rampaged to a nice luster.

Removing a enraged Grendel from the house is not something to be taken lightly. The previous time I did, it took me 30 minutes to corner him. He was growling and spitting like a demon.

To test the waters, so to speak, I stood on one foot and slowly waved my other foot in front of his face. I thinking nothing is happening so I can proceed. All of a sudden….POW, he strikes my foot with his front paw. His claw goes through my tennis shoe and into my foot. Very impressive!

Reply to  Krell
13 years ago

a shit powered fur rocket Krell, I can barely type as I can not stop laughing over tht line.

Is that Grendel’s photo on your gravatar?

Reply to  Dusty
13 years ago

Yep, Grendel showing his better side.

Reply to  Krell
13 years ago

Yup- shit-powered fur rocket is exactly what it was. I can laugh now, but then we were about to give all of them the killing bite…

Jess
13 years ago

Oh I did laugh at you, not with you guys for the sorry state of affairs with your animals. I hope this does not ruin a budding online friendship, my laughing at your despair.

Reply to  Jess
13 years ago

I’m glad someone was amused. We are growing weary of the shit-nanigans, let me tell you.

Reply to  Mother Hen
13 years ago

I have a male cat that delights in spraying all my shoes..my expensive shoes. He is now 86’d from my end of the house. Then there is sweetie who won’t crap in a catbox that has been used by another cat. He will go just outside the box. He also thinks the ancient green shag carpeting is grass and..well..figure out the rest. 😉

Jess
Reply to  Mother Hen
13 years ago

Oh trust me, I would be too if I had to be inside for that long with mine, were they outdoor cats. Mine, for the most part, are all inside unless they venture out when I go out to the backyard.

13 years ago

Holy F*ckamoly Mamacita..and I thought my crew of cats were bad!!!!

Bestest story I have read in ages! I was laughing so hard the critters in my half of the house were staring at me like I had lost my mind.

Previous post FLASH NEWS: Mubarak will NOT step down-Protesters march on palace
Next post FBI to prosecute hackers who attacked anti-WikiLeaks sites
15
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x