Where are you???

Whew!

I haven’t posted anything for a while . . . did you miss me?

I have a perfectly good explanation, I went away to camp from the 13th – 16th, moved into a house in Hadley and watched the shyest kitty until the 25th, then moved again to Hatfield to watch two kitties whom I can’t tell apart  . . . and I had to give the right one a thyroid pill every day! We had several staring contests until I finally shook the pill bottle to see which one flew out of the room.

My suspicions were correct; the cat with the walrus like tooth was my target.

I moved home Sunday afternoon, but will move to a house in Easthampton tomorrow. 

Needless to say, Kelsey’s been a little nutty.

The extent of the nuttiness is starting to concern me a little. Not only am I holding conversations with cats, but I’m forgetting to do things . . . like locking the front door of the Hatfield house before I go upstairs for a shower!

I’ve seen Psycho – not something I wish to experience. 

House sitting is always an adventure, whether it’s for a new client or a repeat. Usually everything goes fine, but this time around, some crazy things happened . . .

My first house owns an invisible kitty - she hides under the bed all the time, but you know she’s alive because her food “magically” disappears.

After I’d moved all my stuff in, I turned on the TV and buried myself under my favorite red blanket from home. Since I hate commercials, I decided to get my lunch ready for the next day. As I flicked the kitchen switch, I received such a zap that I thought there was something wrong with the electrical system.

“Great,” I said to the cat,  my invisible companion, “I’m here for 10 days and her electrical is going haywire.”

A few minutes later, I once again got up from my blanket, went to turn the thermostat down and saw a lighting bolt jump from the knob to my finger that was 2” away.

“OW!”

After a series of zaps, I realized it wasn’t an electrical problem. It was the electrical charge from my favorite red blanket!

I got zapped the entirety of my stay and now flinch every time I reach for a light switch . . . but it gets worse.

It’s Sunday morning and I’m late for church as usual, but am making headway with the fastest shower of my life. I’m in my towel about to select my wardrobe when I hear the sound that every house sitter dreads.

DING-DONG

“Maybe it’s a sales person, and if I stay really quiet and don’t move, they won’t know I’m here!

I could hear the cat’s thoughts from under the bed: 

“Right, because you’re car is not in the driveway or anything.”

DING-DONG

They weren’t going away.

I threw on my PJs and found my former co-worker (the woman’s daughter) on the porch saying, “Did I wake you?”

“My hair’s soaking wet, Deb . . . does it look like I was sleeping?” 

On Wednesday, I came “home” to a normal house, but as I started to buzz around watering the plants, I noticed the dining room lights were left dimming . . . and they weren’t like that in the morning.

Someone had been in the house, perhaps still was! And I’ve seen enough horror movies to know that the stupid girl who scopes out the basement always gets killed.

So of course I grab the closest flashlight and head towards the basement.

I spent 20 minutes scanning the house to no avail. There was “no one” there; just me and the invisible cat. There’s a possibility I might not have turn the knob all the way off, but it wasn’t on in the morning – I would have seen it.

That same night, around 10:30 p.m., I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom . . . when the power went out.

Now the logical side of my brain kicked in and said it was a power outage due to the weather. The emotional side told me I missed a closet and whoever was in there cut the power with the intention of slicing me to bits.

I've seen Scream, and all I could think about was a man wearing a mask and black robes with a knife out and ready.

I used the walls to feel my way to the living room, almost collided with the piano, and found the stash of flashlights left out for me, “just in case.”

I fell asleep that night with 2 flashlights, the house phone, my cell phone, my stuffed cow (for comfort) and one ear open just in case the masked assailant tried his way to my bedroom.

All I heard was little miss invisible clipping up and down the hallway.

When it’s that dark, cat paws sound like a giant wearing cinderblocks.

Obviously I survived the night with the power coming back on an hour later, but it was one of the scariest nights of my house sitting career (thus far).

Nothing that crazy happened in Hatfield. Yes, I forgot to lock the front door and didn’t realize it until I was about to go to bed, but it was pretty uneventful. “The boys” are pretty easy to take care of and offer up some laughs and some frustration.

Quincy (Walrus cat) is good for a laugh. I was doing push-ups one night and he stretched our right underneath me in an attempt to “playfully” bat at my nose – a part of me wondered if this was payback for the pill?

Murphy is a little moody and can be frustrating . . . especially when he’s on your side of the bed and hisses at you when you ask him to move!

The next house is home to a cat named “Puddles” and he is Mr. Personality, strutting his stuff whenever he walks into the room. Should be a good time. Well, it’ll be an adventure of some sort.