Gosh, the stuff you learn from animals!

The picture is not just my feet encased in my furry slippers. It's a whole way of seeing things, taught me by our bad tempered Persian cat, Tiger Fluffy Sheba. Her names come from her propensity to bite at a moment's notice, or none, her very very very uncombable fluffy coat, and her exotic origin.

Persians are touchy at the best of times -- during our pet care years I handled hundreds of cats, and even the best kept and loved Persians, there from kittens, were highly offended at the least thing in their environment, with a couple of wonderful exceptions, two silver Persians who were loving and fun and playful. But even they bit their families, they told me, in amazement that I was playing with these little hellions on my visits!

And Tiger Fluffy was not originally in a loving home, but rather in an unhappy one, from which we removed her via a third party, so she was pretty much a basket case. Five years before I could touch her without being attacked, but once she finally got it that she was here to stay, that I would never hit or scream at her, she acknowledged that maybe all humans are not rotten.

But she only extends this exception to me! I can pet and stroke her and remove the major knots from her coat, and she even returns the favor, grooming my face while I'm on the floor doing yoga, very helpful. I expect she thinks I oughta be doing Downward Facing Cat, come to think of it.

Anyway, one of her favorite sleeping places has become the slippers in the pic. Which are in fact solid black felty stuff from blessed Landsend, the only place that makes shoes I can actually wear without howling with my arthritic old tootsies. But she sheds a lot, and the fluff bonded irremovably with the fabric, so I decided to do the catly thing and pretend that's how I want them. They look exactly like fur slippers now, and I meant this all along..

Other domestic adventures continue apace, as they used to say in those wonderful futuristic things at World's Fair events -- Home of the Future, etc. Our Home of the Present leaves something to be desired now and then.

Such as this morning, when, after I'd shoveled bits of pasta and other leftovers off plates into the disposall, tiny bits that got rinsed off, said disposall just made a smug humming noise and refused to work.

Now I know that if it hums, the power is getting there, it just isn't in the mood to work. So, being Woman and Invincible, I attacked it with a wooden spoon, the idea being that if you can force the bottom plate in a complete revolution, you will revolutionize its attitude, and unblock whatever's upsetting it. this has worked numerous times for me over the years with various disposalls, and was shown me by a repairman who charged me $75 for the visit....

But this time the spoon approach did not work either, which revolutionized my attitude. We had to bring out the Big Guns. The Allen Wrench, to be exact. Now the directions just tell you how to proceed with it, but they fail to give a few bits of info:

1. What does it look like, again?

2. Who is Allen and why does she have have a wrench?

3. Where did you put it? well, naturally in the drawer that has all the other tools and stuff which you now have to sort through to figure out which is the AW in question.

4. Where do you insert the thing now that you have triumphantly found it?

then the rest is easy: just lie on the floor with your neck at a painful angle, bend your wrist the way it's not supposed to go, and insert the AW into the middle o the bottom of he disposall, six inches from the floor of the cabinet....and turn it angrily until it turns and then happily a few more times just to show it, and all is well.

Switch on the disposall, turn on the faucet and it's working! and I think yet again there should be some credit bureau in the sky that reaches down and hnds me the $75 I just saved on a service call.

In case anyone feels sorry for my having to be the Fixit Lady around here on account of HP's disability, I should mention that even when fully fit and well, he would have been totally unable to do this job without busting the wrench, the appliance or the welkin with curses....I'm just saying...knowing he doesn't read in here.