A dusting of snow that didn’t survive the above zero temps of the day. ©voyager, all rights reserved
Jack is not happy today. Not happy at all. We put a new shelf in my closet this afternoon, and poor Bubba was greatly inconvenienced by the whole affair. It started out badly when I emptied the closet onto my bed, which happens to be Jack’s favourite place to rest in the afternoon. He paced up and down the side of the bed, looking up at the heap and making little crying noises, asking for help. So I cleared an area and gave him a boost because he’s old and I’m soft. Jack finally settled with his head on my pillow while we got down to measuring and marking. That’s when things went south again, for Jack, because next came the whine of the electric drill. It woke him with a start and then it droned on and off unpredictably. Jack isn’t one to complain, but I could see by the set of his ears that he was annoyed. His eyes were grimly shut, and they flinched at the inner canthus with each kick of the drill. Then peace for a few minutes, and I could see Jack’s features soften until the heavy, dull thud, thud, thud of the hammer and finally a bit of swearing when the humans among us concluded that the custom cut coated metal shelf was a smidge too long. Just a smidge, but too long is too long. So then the party took a break while more tools were gathered and more swearing was said, and then the humans moved into the kitchen to use the angle grinder (FUN!) That was a new noise to Jack, and his curiosity got the best of him, and he meandered down the hallway to see what we were up to. Well, his eyes got wide at the sight of sparks flying all around us, but he didn’t utter a sound as he calmly turned right and walked into the living room. Whatever we were up to, Jack wanted no more part of it, and he flicked his tail at us as he ambled out of sight. He spent the rest of the afternoon on the carpet in front of the fire as we wrestled the shelf into place, and it must have been a real hardship for him because this evening, he is still out of sorts. Sheesh, Bubba. You didn’t even do any work.
They do hate change… and there we humans are, bustling around and changing everything all the time.
But good deal on a new shelf and therefore more organization.
Plans for rest, shelved.
I guess if you don’t understand what is going on, it all seems very abrupt and disruptive.
I am entirely with Jack on this one. I too hate the noise, dust and all-round commotion of putting shelves up. Even though in my case I am the one doing all those things.
Poor Jack. We humans, always disrupting their rest…
I think I mentioned in TNET a while ago that I was trying to recover my parents’ turntable. As a consequence of that, I moved the bean bag chair that one of my cats loved to sleep on, like, 30 cm to the side. Closer to the heat source, so I thought she wouldn’t mind. That was months ago, she never slept on it again since. And she still looks at the new shelf with the turntable with distrust. Obviously she hated all the sound tests too and I think she simply doesn’t want to sleep close to the noisy thing, even if it is turned off most of the time.