Return to Sender

What young child would you allow to pick up a metal brush with sharp bristles and scrape the peewaddlin out of your brand new garage door?  And then the next night you allow them to do it again.

And if you were to make them go outside and play for awhile she would use that metal brush on your new back door.

And then you let that same child  knock the Christmas ornaments off the tree and rip them to bits on the living room rug.  And for good measure they climb up on the mantel and whack away at the little dangling icicles on the twig you put up with cardinals clipped on it.

And  if that’s not enough, you let them run down to the basement, find the new snowboarding jacket and pants and pee on them.

You know where I’m going.

Sooo we gave in to the scratching at the garage door and let the darn cat into the house at night.

Now about 3 AM we hear “maaa,  maaaaaa,  meaaaaaw”  I roll over and pretend I’m asleep like Andrew used to do when our children were infants and made that same noise at 3 AM.

I also occasionally hear a pack of coyotes outside at 3 AM too and the temptation is definitely there to give old Nixie the heave ho out the door.

Just as I was thinking maybe I should end on a positive note about this cat and how of course I wouldn’t dream of tossing Nixie to the coyotes, and what a terrific little bed mate she makes for whoever snags her first (Taite or Matthias that is NOT me), and how darling she looks all cozy on the sofa pillow; she throws up all over the living room floor.

We named her Nixie because it means water spirit and I found her as a kitten down at the Yakima River all tiny, hungry and crying.  But her name also means: “Nixie (Postal), a piece of undeliverable mail, or the postal marking on such a piece of mail which indicates that it is to be returned to sender.”

Believe me the temptation is there to  ”Return to Sender.”