Sometime You Really Get The Perfect Gift

This has been an interesting week to say the least. Last Sunday I was getting ready to face the woodpile and see how much of it I could get stacked in the shed for winter. I heard noises outside in the shed but assumed it was Hubby just coming home. When I went outside, there was Youngest and his family, plus a friend of my grandson's, stacking wood in the shed. For the first time in our history, every single block of wood is now neatly stacked in the shed and outside it. This is remarkable since we usually don't manage to get that job done until Halloween.

It took 5 people 2.5 hours to stack this stuff. That's a lot of bending over, picking up 16 inch long blocks that weigh more than I care to carry, loading them into my yard cart, pulling the cart to the shed and unloading the cart. It's a job that usually takes Hubby and myself picking away at it, a few weeks to finish. Done in a matter of hours, this early in the year. We didn't know this was going to happen so not only was it a gift for us, it was a surprise. I keep looking out the window, admiring the finished stacks. It's a gift that is still giving pleasure.

Also this week we learned what happened to Dave, the former companion to our Precious Kitteh. It's going to make life somewhat complicated in the Precious Kitteh department, but we'll work things out somehow.

I had gone up to the local store and on the way back spotted Precious at neighbor Ed's. Stopped to pick him up, he likes the short drive home sometimes. Ed and I were talking when 2 pick up trucks pulled into the driveway at the abandoned property, unloaded some Toro brush cutters and started work on the weeds that were sadly overgrown.

The last Thursday in July there had been a county tax sale so we thought possibly someone had bought the property for taxes. It wasn't until Precious started mewing excitedly and running towards one of the guys that we realized it was Dave. He's been in county jail for the past 11 months.

Essentially the problem was the adult son of the girlfriend rather than the girlfriend herself. The son is in his middle 20s, wouldn't look for a job, wouldn't help around the home. He stayed up all night playing computer games, slept all day and pretty much took whatever he wanted without giving anything back. Of course, Mom didn't think anything was wrong with that picture and when Dave objected to being used, it got nasty. Dave broke the guys nose, got hit in the head with an iron fry pan which knocked him out cold. Dave spent time in the hospital ER and he came home after that but the girlfriend and son filed charges against him so he was arrested and hauled off to jail.

Naturally he was found guilty and drew a 10 month jail sentence on the charges filed against him. He's been out awhile, but didn't have the money to move back in so he's been staying with friends. He won't have money to turn the power back on until September so I still have a second kitty, but I suspect he'd rather be with Dave. I was quite surprised at how excited he was when he saw Dave. Cats can be very unforgiving when things happen which affect their living standards. By no stretch of the imagination would I ever believe Dave is a nice guy, but he loves that cat and Precious loves him back. That was pretty obvious.

He's been around to eat every day and sometimes will spend time in the house, but as soon as he hears Dave, he's out of here like a shot. Dave is trying to fix all the damage the squatters caused to his home. There's a couple of broken windows and the door to the cabin needs replacing. In addition to the yard work he's doing, he'll be around pretty much every day until he can move in.

After he moves back in I think Precious will pretty much decide where he wants to be. I'm sure he'll choose Dave most of the time. I'm also sure he'll come by from time to time since we feed the better cat food. This will give me a chance to make sure he's armed with the flea/tick treatment I use on him. He's a free spirit and enjoys time in the woods where the ticks all hang out and I don't care to find any of those ticks in my home, or fleas. Butterscotch wouldn't like that at all. Some gifts are just better than others.