OmegaMom

Our new house has a laundry chute.

Did I tell you that?

It’s so cool.  I highly recommend that anyone who has two or more stories put in a laundry chute to the area where the laundry resides.  It is very nice to have no more laundry baskets (faux hampers) taking up real estate in the bedrooms and slopping over with mis-aimed dirty clothes (courtesy of the dotter and OmegaDad–I, of course, never miss.  Or if I do, I take the all-of-two-seconds it takes to pick the piece of clothing up off the floor and put it properly in the basket.  Not that this sticks in my craw or anything.  Honestly.  Why would the fact that I bring this up after having a laundry chute for two months make you think I have a complex about it?).

We also have a Wooly cat.

I think you already know that.

Our cat finds closed doors to be an affront to his existence.

You would think that big, heavy, solid wood cabinet doors–like we have here–would dissuade him from trying to open them, but that merely makes it more of a challenge.

The laundry chute, unlike all the other cabinet doors, hinges on the bottom.  You’d think that the cat, accustomed to normal cabinetry that hinges on the sides, would give up and slink off.

Oh, no, not him.

The other night, while doing something upstairs, I heard a horrendous “CLUNK!” from the upstairs bathroom.  Later on, as I passed the bathroom door and reached in to turn out the light (no-one else in this house has the “turning off the light” gene), I saw the maw of the laundry chute gaping wide open.

OmegaDad met me as I was coming down the stairs.

“What is your cat doing up there to make such a racket?!” he asked.

I informed him, and we went downstairs together, to find Wooly cat emerging from the laundry chute door, looking very pleased with himself.

He has also discovered how to open the front door and the kitchen door.  This is not as amazing as it sounds, as those two doors don’t fully latch until you lean on them, hard, and hear a “click…click”.  If you don’t lean on them hard, they look closed, but easily surrender to a determined cat who has discovered that being outside is the Most Amazing, Wondrous, Astonishing Thing In The Whole Wide World!  So he sits by the doors, just waiting for us to not-latch them, and then he paws and paws at them until he gets them open.

This perturbs me for two reasons:  1) Wooly cat has never been an outdoor cat, and doesn’t know a thing about big wild hungry animals; and 2) it’s October and it’s already in the low 20s at night, and a wide open door makes me see $$ on the gas bill.

(Our other cat, who hides under the futon in the family room downstairs and only comes out once in a blue moon, has been an inside cat for years, since about the fifth time we had to retrieve her from the tree next to our house or the roof of the house.)

Another post will be about the wiener dogs next door, who like to come visit.

(N.B.:  O, Mr. and Mrs. Johnny Verbeck
How could you be so mean?
We knew that you’d be sorry for
Inventing that machine.
Now all the neighborhood cats and dogs
Will nevermore be seen
‘Cause they’ve all been ground to sausage meat
In Johnny Verbeck’s machine!

OmegaGranny and OmegaUnk will be extremely familiar with that song.  I’m just curious if anyone else out there in Internet-land is…)