My “baby” is twelve!

(I don’t think he reads this, so it’s okay to say that.) And we survived the birthday party…we took eight twelve-year-olds (both boys and girls) to see Hoot (which was better than I thought it would be, but I still prefer the book). It’s kind of funny when you show up at a movie theatre (or any other public place) with a crowd of kids…the people behind the counter smile at you, but they’ve got that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look in their eyes. Actually these kids were very well behaved…Preteen is lucky to have such a nice crowd of friends. After the movie, we brought them all back here for pizza, cake and just general running around (two minutes into the “running around” part I heard, “Uh, I think I’m going to need a towel…” Yes, a couple of them had gotten out the hose…to defend themselves against the lightsabers…)

We also survived the wounded cat…no, not our cat. This is our friends’ cat. They went away for a 4-day weekend, but one of their cats (they have four) is in a cast. And the person who was checking on their cats was willing to take responsibility for the three healthy cats, but the wounded cat made him nervous. So we took her for the weekend. I’d never seen a cat with a cast on its leg before. It’s amazing how well she got around…she could walk, run and hop as well as our cat. And we could always hear her coming on the wood floors (clomp, clomp, clomp…). It was only when she’d lay down that the cast would get in her way.

She didn’t like our dog much. She’d never been around dogs before. And our cat had never been around another cat before. She’s used to strange dogs coming to stay with us for a weekend (and she LOVES to torment this little Australian terrier from down the street who comes to stay with us now and then…the Australian terrier is scared to death of her!). But she’d never been around another cat. I always thought cats were social creatures and they liked to have “friends” around. Maybe that’s true of younger cats. Our cat was not amused by this other cat. Fortunately, the visitor is the “omega” cat at her house…she submits to everyone/everything else. So that helped our cat accept her…but still. Overall, I think our visitor got along better with our dog than she did with our cat.

So I’m finally caught up on everything after being gone for three days (I even caught up on my Tank/Mollie blogs)…the birthday/birthday party are behind us…the piano recital is behind us…and the wounded cat has gone home. Hopefully tomorrow things will get back to normal around here…