It’s a new year and a new year means a new start. In that vein we’ve added a new cat to the house. Yes, Momiji needs a companion and Marsha thinks she may have found one. So far Imoto is rather spooky and shy. We’ve exposed the two cats to each other a bit and there has not been any fireworks so that’s good. This morning I went into the room Imoto’s staying in. She was hiding behind the curtain so I tried to get her to relax by talking to her in a calm soothing voice:

Ok Imoto, just relax. You’re doing fine. Imoto, you just need to calm down. Always remember that you’re safe here. We’ll never hurt you. Remember that, never. We’ll always take care of you. Mind you sometimes taking care of you means we might take you to the vet or something. I mean, they may hurt you. But it’s not us that’s doing it. So technically WE will never hurt you. I mean yes we do pay them to hurt you but it isn’t us with the needles and stuff so our hands are clean. So just remember that. You’re safe with us because WE will never hurt you. Well, deliberately at least. It’s always possible that we might step on you in the dark or something. I mean that could happen. We are primates after all and so we can’t see in the dark nearly as well as you can. So Technically that means if you get stepped on in the dark that would be your fault. Ok, ok, so let’s all agree that we will never deliberately hurt you, though that doesn’t exclude accidental harm, which we’ll stipulate would be your fault. And it would also not exclude us paying someone else to hurt you as long as they have DVM in their name. Now do you feel better about living here?

I’m really bad at this.

So this week will tell if Imoto will get to stay. We need to see if she’ll relax and if her and Momiji get along. Perhaps I should explain the name. When we picked her up, Imoto was called So-So after a character on Orange Is The New Black, but as we’ve never watched the show it meant nothing to us. We did however immediately know that we were going to change the name. We didn’t want to have a cat we’d end up calling “that little so and so”. We wanted to choose a name that would go with Momiji’s Japanese name. The new cat is a four year old female while Momiji is about eight so we chose Imoto, Japanese for Little Sister. 

It’s also time for us to start working on the garden. I sprayed the apple trees this week. They will get at least two and possibly three more treatments before the buds open to prevent scab. I’ve also started to plan what we will plant in the garden proper. This is proving to be a bit difficult. The things that I’m good at growing, tomatoes, potatoes, are cheap and so not worth the work. The things I want to grow, green peppers, bananas, don’t do well here. It’s proving surprisingly difficult to figure out what to plant.

Next Saturday is national Cut Your Energy Day. The idea is to, go “off grid” as much as possible. To reduce your reliance on big industrial power plants and corporations  that pollute the environment. To conserve. To get to be more in tune with the Earth. To prepare for this important event I’ll be stopping at Canadian Tire to get a little Honda generator. I mean getting off the grid is all well and good but I nave to have a cold fridge,... and power for the computer,… and the TV. You know, while I’m there, maybe I’ll check out the new Gas Grills. And I think I’ll take a look at a riding lawnmower. Oh, and I think they have an ATV on sale.

I might be bad at this too.

So this week I’ve been catching up on all the things I didn’t get to while I was in the play. Projects around the house, setting up computers, iPads, data backups, and such. Reworking Marsha’s office so it is more of an “office” and less of “the room formerly known as a bedroom”. After assembling a bookcase, and moving all the furniture around, and cleaning, and fixing and organizing it’s much better. I even set up a “charging station on a side table. No more of having the kitchen counter taken up with phones and pads and such all competing for outlet space. It’s all neat-ish, and organized-ish. Well, at least it’s not in the kitchen any more. So maybe I’ve found something I’m good at: 

Puttering.

Doug & Marsha

PIX: Imoto