guest tonight

i spent the morning and early afternoon cleaning the apartment to prep for niece em's visit tonight. she'll be spending the night...one guess as to which of the three won't come our from under the bed or use the litter box until two in the morning, when all is quiet and dark?

i swept, i dusted, i did dishes, i rearranged the living room furniture (again)...i got rid of the lovely red carpet, bought a year ago, which was shredded into unrecognizable tissue paper within two days. i hung onto it because they love it so, but today i just didn't have the heart to vacuum it.

to vacuum it would have meant moving the very heavy table, going over every square foot five times to pick up the cat hair embedded in the torn peaks and valleys, changing the vacuum bag at least once, maybe twice, to avoid bag-explosion, and then, then! with the carpet as clean as it can be, i'd have to place the vacuum head on its side and with pincer fingers, pull out all the long strands of red used-to-be-part-of-a-carpet from the roller brush.

so my pretties, i'm sorry, but not really. i think i'll buy you a nice scratching post, with levels and hanging bits. will that do?