Oh my goodness my kitties are really pushing their limits this week!  They are 8 months old now, which puts them right about 15 years old equivalent human years.  They are definitely acting like teens.  On Tuesday I got this text from Colten after school:

Here, you need a closer view of those to fully appreciate the dirt.

Natasha’s face is normally white across the nose and left cheek.

Selina is only gray on the top of her head and across her back. Not so much anymore.

I looked at the pictures before I read the text and honestly was trying to figure out whose cats he was sending me pictures of because those markings didn’t match my cats markings.  It’s a gas fireplace and has the stones and fluffy stuff in it to make it look like wood ash. All of that was all over the hearth.  Colten, being the good kid that he is, cleaned up the mess.

When I got home, I gave the kitties baths, but that soot was stubborn and they still have some new markings.  And they weren’t even dry half an hour before Selina was trying to get back in there again.

I knew I had to figure out a way to keep them out, so I found an old collar of theirs and fastened it around the handles.  I thought this would work because you had to pull pretty hard to release the fastener.  Apparently not so much as Wednesday we got home and they had gotten in again.  Cleaned up the mess on the hearth.  Used some yarn to tie the handles together.  As I’m tying them, I can smell cat urine emanating from the fireplace.  Lovely.  Apparently their new spelunking cave is also their new litter box.

Yesterday we got home and again they were able to get in enough to pull out the rocks and fluff, but not climb in.  We’re making progress now.  We decided the best way to do away with the urine was to just burn it out.  So we had a nice roaring fire last night.  Those crazy cats were still trying to stick their paws into the fireplace with the fire burning.  Luckily they didn’t get burned.

After I closed up the fireplace, I went to the garage and got a large desk shelf that we had stacked with our random wood planks.  I brought it up, leaned it against the fireplace, moved a lantern against that and put two 3 lbs hand weights inside the lantern.  I let them sniff around and try their hardest and so far, so good.  We’ll see when I get home tonight.

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Other than that, here’s what I’ve been doing this week:
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READING:

I gave up on “The Tenth Justice.”  I couldn’t take the slow pace anymore.  Instead, I’m reading Mindy Kaling‘s book, “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?”  This is so much better!  It’s witty, funny and offers insight into Mindy’s journey to becoming who she is today.

PINNING:

This week featured drinks, home things, food, and exercise.

WATCHING:

Second attempt to watch this movie.  The first happened after an ill-fated outing with our friends.  We started at World Atlas and after 45 mins of confusion, we tried Looper instead.  However, we were 15 mins late coming in and had missed too much to really understand what was going on.  I was willing to stay and tough it out, but my companions were done.

So, I got to watch it on Pay Per View at home.  While I think I could have figured out the story based on where we started in the theater, there was some pretty important information in those first 15 mins, so I’m glad I got to watch it from the start.  I really liked it.  I love sci-fi, and so this was right up my alley with the time travel and crossing time lines.  I’m also a huge Joseph Gordon-Levitt fan, so I like pretty much anything that he is in.  He pulled off his Bruce Willis mimic perfectly.  I was amazed at the prosthetics and spent a good deal of time staring at JGL trying to pinpoint exactly what they had done to get him to look like Bruce.  But it wasn’t just the prosthetics, his mannerisms and speech patterns were spot on as well.

It’s an interesting story with a twist at the end.  You should see it.

DOING:

For Christmas, I crocheted my friends hats and scarves and hand warmers, and as I shared in this post, I crocheted the boys hats too.  But, Adrian got left out of the yarn madness.  So after taking a little break from the hook, I started working on a scarf for him this week.  I expect I’ll have it finished this weekend.  I’m about half way there.

What are you up to this week?