Cats Over Somerville

In our old apartment, we had a piece of cat "equipment" known as the Cat Napper, a fleecy hammock thing that screws into the windowsill and allows Kitty to gaze out the window, revel in the fresh breeze, and make clacking gutteral noises when birds fly by.

At our new place, our landlord has been adamant that we not put nail holes in the sills, which is fair enough, but we still wanted to give our cats a comfy perch from which to survey the world beyond their indoor universe. Also, one of the cats had pretty much taken over my favorite red chair, infusing it so deeply with cat hair that no sane person would want to sit in it. I wanted to get them some sort of cat "furniture," but the things you can buy at the pet store are so ugly and carpety, not to mention expensive.

Here's what I came up with:

1 upholstered footstool, purchased at Target for $20.

1 fleecy cat bed thing, with sides, roughly the same diameter as the top of the footstool. Also about $20.

I sewed the cat bed to the top of the footstool, avoiding the fabric of the removable cover so it can still be taken off and washed when it gets too fuzzy. I also unscrewed the wheels from the bottom of the footstool after a cat jumped onto it and nearly knocked the whole thing over. Much more stable without those wheels! (It's still a little bit wobbly - I might bolt a piece of plywood to the bottom for extra stability.)

The result is a piece of feline furniture that looks okay in our living room, is easy to move from room to room if desired, was fairly cheap, and so far appears to lure the cats away from the people furniture in the room (at least some of the time).

The kitties feel that it is a good place for keeping tabs on the neighborhood ...


... as well as a safe place to snuggle down when they've had enough of it.

Cape Cod Notes

The other weekend we went down to Cape Cod to celebrate my birthday. A few thoughts on our trip ...

Thrift shopping is so very wonderful on the Cape, so wonderful that they even put out a pamphlet so you won't miss any when you visit. I think they are so good because a) the summer population gets rid of stuff at the end of the season and b) there are a lot of retirees there, who leave behind their lifetime collections of stuff when they finally say goodbye to this world. Here is an archetypical Cape thrift shop, "For a Song."


We spent one afternoon at a beach we like in the town of Brewster. I love how different beaches have their own particular shells, the remnant of the whatever sea creature happens to dwell there for its personal environmental reasons. Along this part of the coast, scallop shells are so abundant that one beachcomber apparently decided the cache they'd collected wasn't even worth taking home.


The sky was all feathery over the beach that day.


In lobster roll news, I got a very generous helping at Kate's Seafood, but it lacked flavor, and was more like eating tuna salad. It also happened to be mixed with lobster roe, which was exciting and helped diminish my disappointment in this particular lobster roll experience. I do not know whether there was any connection between presence of lobster roe and lack of lobstery flavor. The onion rings were good, at least.