Written on January 16, 2010 – 6:30 pm | by maxine |

Had this post been written when it should have been, it would have been titled “Happy New Year!!”  However, around here, one has to be flexible.  When our people rang in the new year we were ALL up to our ears in the middle of changes.  A lot of people stay up late on New Years Eve partying or at least counting down the minutes until the new year arrives and then they sleep in the next day.  Which, of course, is fine by the cats in our family, who tend to be a little nocturnal in nature and who appreciate having someone awake in the night to play with.  But, not around here!  Our people celebrate New Years with Newfoundland time which is an hour and a half earlier than the eastern time zone we are in.  That way they get to bed earlier and can start the New Years Day earlier and get right into whatever their New Year’s project is.

The “New Year’s project” was started early this year.   In early December we started massive rearranging in the house.  Now, we use the royal “we” because we all – four leggers and two leggers – participated but realize, the two leggers did the actual physical labour.  The rest of us worked more in a supervisory capacity!  Absolutely none of us four leggers endure changes well.  It is stressful not knowing where you can even lie down, leaving little energy left for physical labour!  Beside, supervisors also get higher pay, if in fact remuneration is being given.

In late November Mrs. Noah decided to move the overstuffed library (thousands of books) from the upstairs and turn that room into a guest room.  They had to completely rearrange the basement, build book shelves and carry other shelves down and set everything up and then load the shelves with the books.  There are so many books they had to leave some of the shelves in the guest room!  The basement had become one of those grand central dumping areas for the past couple of years because Mr. & Mrs. Noah and Andrea did not have time to deal with it.  We run a business, a church, several volunteer responsibilities and a family of three two leggers and eight four leggers from our small abode, with each taking up floor space.  Things got to be overcrowded.  So, we hauled van loads of stuff out of here and spent six weeks sorting and reorganizing.  We are still working our way through the stuff in five tall legal filing cabinets and shredding boxes and boxes of paper.   Buzz particularly enjoys supervising the shredding and Smokey likes to sleep in the box of shredded paper.  You should see what he looks like when he gets out of a box of shredded paper.  What a mess!  The tiny bits of paper stick to his long black fur and he deposits them everywhere he walks!  Too bad no one has thought to make a video.

There is now also a new bed/sitting area in the basement library and a small exercise area where Mr. Noah plans to lose something called a spare tire.  Now, we thought with all of the stuff they hauled out of there and with all of the organized space they now have he shouldn’t be able to loose anything down there but hey, you never know.  They don’t heat the basement so none of us really minds not getting to go down there to help Mr. Noah find the spare tire he is trying to lose.   But, would you believe, they made the guest room as an off limits to pets zone?  Now that sucks!  Especially after all we did to help them with moving everything.  At least one of us was on duty at all times, supervising.  We cats climbed up and over more boxes and piles of stuff than you can imagine.  We all carefully examined and pawed over much of what was hauled out.  We should have at least some access to that nice bed they put into the guest room!

Word has it that lots of changes are still coming.  In fact, they still don’t have everything back to rights yet.  Just about the time you think things are getting back to normal, Mrs. Noah sees something more that needs to be moved or rearranged.   So we are still living in what we call “flex” conditions.  Do have a happy and flexible new year!

The Livestock from the Ark.