Friday, October 29, 2010

The Bitter Taste of Disobedience


Kody
Originally uploaded by lisablaschke
I may just lose my lunch. The chili I had was quite lovely, but I can't shake this bitter taste from my tongue. What does that have to do with the lovely photo of an apparently sweet little kitty I'm sharing today? It's her fault I may lose my lunch at any moment. It's her fault I live with the bitter metallic taste of "Bitter Yuck No Chew Spray" on a daily basis.

It all started with the loss of our lovely Siamese, Holly, last December. To fill the void in our hearts we adopted Kody -- the sassy Tortie with a taste for cords. It wasn't long before we found out just how troublesome this otherwise adorable feline was. She started with my daughter's Nintendo DS charging cord. She chewed it into little pieces. Cha-ching (that cha-ching I added in there was the cash register as it rung up the cost of new cord to replace the destroyed cord). Then she moved on to my cell phone charger -- cha-ching. Then she devoured my daughter's laptop cord - cha-ching, then the replacement DS cord -- cha-ching. She wasn't satisfied with those so she continued with Jayme's computer mouse, my computer mouse, the mouse to the laptop, the replacement laptop cord, the cord to my computer monitor, another cell phone charger and another laptop cord -- cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching.

All told I've spent a fortune on replacement cords time and time again. Banishing her to my daughter's room didn't help, banishing her to the garage didn't help. Banishing her outside seems to have slowed the mounting pile of ruined cords.

So now back to that horrible taste in my mouth to which I was referring. During the battle of the chewy monster, I picked up this innocent little bottle of yuck spray at the pet store. "Will not sting like other no-chew sprays" the label said. Well then I don't want it, I thought. A little sting sounds pretty good to me for this cat -- and I don't say that lightly. I adore cats and most of their silly antics as you'll see if you read my blog for any length of time. Nevertheless, I bought this yuck spray with the hopes that it would save me from further loss of income at the hands of -- or should I say at the teeth of -- this cat. I sprayed the cords on my computer, I sprayed the cords on my laptop, I sprayed the cords in my daughter's room.

Unfortunately for me, I happen to use my laptop quite a bit. I unwrap the cord, plug it it, then wrap the cord up again and pack it away almost on a daily basis. And every time I touch that cord, little invisible yuck spray is transferred to my fingers only to be transferred to my mouth every time I touch the vicinity of my mouth for whatever reason -- to brush a hair aside, to apply lip balm, to scratch an itch. The yuck that's left behind doesn't disappear easily. It was an hour ago that I pulled an external hard drive from my laptop bag and grazed that cord. An hour and the bitterness remains.

I sat down to blog about the lovely wedding I'll be shooting this weekend, but decided to grouch a little at the bitterness left behind by the joys of cat ownership. Perhaps it's good I didn't get the stinging kind.

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