Inter-Dimensional Travel

I have an inter-dimensional portal in my bedroom. I am not sure when it appeared, exactly. I have never even seen it myself, but I know it exists. How? Well, I have an unusual way of measuring its existence. My cats. I know, it sounds rather far-fetched and silly, but bear with me.

We have five cats. Right now, since we are staying with the in-laws in their house, we essentially live out of our bedroom while using their kitchen. We do at least have a bathroom to ourselves, even though it is across the house from our bedroom. The cats occupy the bedroom for all but a few hours in the evening, when they come hang out with us in the living room while we watch movies, play on the computer, read to the kids, etc. The cats would be welcome to run the house (they are indoor-only cats), except for the resident canines that sometimes have acted rather aggressively towards our felines.

Since at any single point in the day I can find every one of our cats in fairly predictable snoozing locations in the bedroom, when I CAN'T find one of our cats, it poses a real dilemma. Today was one among several recent days. I looked in all the nooks and crannies, but no cat. He would normally be on the bed going from the hot sunny window to the cooler shadows all day long. However, no cat, all day long. He reappeared this evening, and acted (as most cats do) as though nothing had been amiss. Mr. MIA is pictured here. The only explanation that makes sense is an inter-dimensional portal. It must take a huge amount of energy, which would explain why cats tend to sleep 20+ hours a day.

I don't know what they do when they travel to other dimensions. Maybe they even travel through time? Possibly go back to their home planet to report on what the Apes are doing. Or work as assassins, I suppose. Whatever they do, they certainly aren't talking about it to us!

Sourdough

I am not sure exactly how we did it, but we created a monster. Not just your fly-by-night everyday creature, but a truly horrible monster whose mere proximity leaves a rank taste in the back of your throat which cannot easily be removed.

It all started so simply, as stories like this often do, with a desire for fresh Sourdough bread. Last winter, having left our own carefully tended batch in the fridge at home, we looked locally for another strain to raise as our own. We finally located some, and brought it back. Fed lovingly on a weekly basis with premium organic whole wheat flour (despite avoiding wheat, we have not yet tried growing Sourdough on other grains). We baked we buttered, we loved our bread.

Eventually spring came, and is often the case when the house warms up, the Sourdough was left in its cool room to think about itself. We have neglected our strains before, with no ill outcomes, as even if the top turns black you simply scrape it
off and feed it once more and the culture returns to its former tasty glory. There was something different about this strain though.

Through the summer we occasionally started to get a whiff of something...dead. It is an unmistakable odor that weaves into your taste buds like few others. Once you have smelled death and its sister decay, you never forget it. We suspected a mouse perished in my mother-in-laws sewing room. Coincidentally the same room the Sourdough lived in. A month passed, and the scent not only lingered, but grew. After several months we had silently hoped the poor dead little thing had dedicated, as the smell was a little less obvious.

Alas, such was not the case. As the weather started cooling again, thoughts and cravings returned to our beloved Sourdough, and with it the nagging guilt that it had been abandoned for too long. My beloved husband, keeper of the cultures, took it upon himself to perform his ritual resuscitation of the Sourdough. He was unprepared for what greeted him upon opening the lid.

Actually, we were all unprepared for the overwhelming blow to our noses. He almost ran through the house with containers of cultures gone horribly, horribly wrong to remove them from the living areas. It took over three days for the smell of decay to finally start to abate from the sewing room. For another week, the containers of our new chemical weapon sat and thought about itself outside near the trash can. Not a soul wanted to deal with its disposal.

Eventually, my dearest spouse nerve himself up to the task and cleaned the bowls out into the garbage. After bringing the bowls back inside, he rinsed then heavily bleached them. Finally, they took a spin in the dishwasher, for their final triumphant return to daily use.

Except, something was still wrong. As the dishwasher worked, I still had that lingering scent in the back of my throat. Upon opening the machine, all I smelled was death. We ran the machine again. Still smelled like death. The scent seems to have permeated the plastic of the bowls now, so they sit outside while we decide what to do about them. We both hate the idea of tossing the bowls, as they could be useful.

Catfish bait? Something to pack in your luggage to dissuade the TSA to poke about in your undies? The possibilities are endless.

A Dog-Gone Mystery

One of our dogs is such a big goob. He is a sweet yellow lab, who normally is really well trained. However, when we stay here at the in-laws place, he kind of looses his brain. Here is a case in point. The neighbors on two sides have several dogs each. They love to run along the fence barking like mad at each other, whipping themselves up into a serious frenzy. They eventually stop, once they feel they have defended their own property from the dogs on the other side of the fence. Really annoying. Especially when our dogs join in on the game and get so focused on running the fence that they don't hear us calling for them to stop. I don't like having to practically drag my dog away from the fence and to his senses.

A few weeks ago, we noticed one of our dogs with a small hole in his side. We thought it was from one of the other dogs, or from running the fence. It was a pretty serious hole, which we treated successfully at home. Well, this week there are more holes, all at the same height. Yuck. Apparently we need to do some serious looking at the property again to see if we can figure out where it is coming from. Fun times!

Here are a few photos from when we cleaned it his morning. Much of the red is actually iodine, so it looks pretty ugly. It is starting to heal though, and should be just fine in a few days.