After the handful of half-chewed food (a.k.a. ‘shrapnel’ when stepped on in the middle of the night while barefoot) got dumped in the trash, I turned on the vacuum and began running it over the area. I could hear the smaller crumbs as they rattled their way through the machine and then suddenly ... silence. I promptly turned off the power, irritated that the very thing I had been trying to avoid had happened. Plausibly thinking all would be fine if I merely waited a few moments for the vacuum to cool off before trying again, I tentatively pushed the button, but nothing happened. I turned it off again and flipped the Shark over on its side, hopeful something would shake loose. I got down on my hands and knees to get a better look, but nothing had dislodged.
Well, I wasn’t going to poke my fingers into the apparatus while it was plugged into the electrical outlet, so I inelegantly pushed myself up off the floor and walked out to hallway to disconnect the cord and … that’s when I saw the real problem. Phoebe was sitting next to the outlet, smiling up at me (yes, I swear she was smiling), still smugly holding up the end of the cord in one paw!
This is just what I need – a cat who has learned how to silence the vacuum cleaner; especially since we’re already having issues with Phoebe answering the telephone for us. Furthermore, she didn’t even need opposable thumbs to accomplish this prank. This moment would have been great if we had security cameras to record the action on both ends of the cord at the same time.
Looking on the bright side of things, I guess I can always blame little Phoebe if company comes over and the floors are dirty. I wonder if I can convince anyone that she hides the rest of my cleaning supplies, too?
Coincidentally, our digital alarm clock quit later that same day. You can bet that the first thing I did was to check the outlet. Personally, I think Kiisu is responsible for the sabotage, but I can’t prove it. She continues to try to get me up prematurely to provide the morning cat treats. Kiisu strongly maintains the opinion that this should reasonably take place anytime after 2:00 am and preferably long before I truly wish to have a feline stampede across me. I habitually glance at the clock and inform her she’s being unduly early. But if I didn’t have a way to know the hour of Kiisu’s demands, it shouldn’t be a problem, right?
Regardless, Mike and I needed to go shopping for a new clock. It was a good excuse to replace it, since neither of us really cared for the last one. The numbers were too small for Mike to read without difficulty and he felt the red color of the display made it worse. I didn’t like it because the clock face slanted backwards and made it tricky for me to see without sitting up in bed and making Kiisu think I was actually going to relent and dole out cat treats which are, by the way, a thinly veiled bribe to try and get a little more shut-eye. I suppose one could consider cat treats the equivalent of a snooze-button.
Mike picked out a clock with extremely large numbers. The packaging indicated the numbers would be illuminated in blue; Mike has since admitted it impressed him that it would be a very soothing color.
He plugged it in and, even though it was daytime, my eyes reacted by squeezing tightly shut against the bright electric (in no way soothing) blue light assaulting my retinas. Well, I just assumed it would take a little getting used to, so I squinted at the display while setting the correct time.
When we went to bed that night and turned off the room lights, the neon blue glow was so bright I could have read a book. The problem was I didn’t want to read … I wanted to sleep; I could even perceive the light behind my eyelids. Mike said it felt like we were in a hotel room in Las Vegas. He finally grabbed a shirt out of the clothes hamper and tossed it over the clock, which continued to glow eerily through the fabric.
The next day I taped two layers of translucent vellum paper over the front of the clock. It subdued the glare, and yet the numbers were still legible. The first moments after ‘lights out’ that night we thought my solution was going to work, but as soon as our eyes adjusted the glow was quite obvious, although slightly more bearable. Both cats were fidgety; convinced the artificial radiance was the first hint of dawn and it was time for ‘you know what’.
The next morning Mike announced, “We’re going shopping for a new clock.” I grabbed my purse and keys and beat him to the car.
Selecting an alarm clock shouldn’t be this difficult. But we stood there in front of a diverse selection, comparing features and struggling with the variety as if this were singularly the most important commitment we would make this year. We opened boxes and peered inside trying to decide if the appliance appeared to be concealing any evil qualities. We eventually narrowed it down to one finalist (a return to the red numbers), but still had some misgivings, especially since the packaging declared this clock had a ‘nightlight’.
I suggested that we take it to the electronics department and ask if a clerk would be willing to plug it in for us so we could see if this was a gentle blush of light, or if it was comparable to an airport runway beacon. It turned out the nightlight feature (which was soft enough for a baby’s nursery) had an on-off switch and the red digital display was within ordinary limits.
Ahh … sweet dreams once again. Maybe I’ll feel like vacuuming the carpet tomorrow.
©2012 Roberta McReynolds for SeniorWomen.com
Photograph: Early electric vacuum cleaner by Electric Suction Sweeper Company, circa 1908, from Wikipedia
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