Dear Ferret Folks-

What. Was. I. Thinking. I am 45 years old, that's halfway to 90. I'm
just old enough to be reasonably confident of my judgment. I know that
10 years from now I will be a sharper knife in the great silverware
drawer of life, and that 10 years beyond that I shall be sharper still.
But right now? I have this (smug delusional) idea that I have at least
laid a lot of the heavy stones that make up the foundation of genuine
wisdom.

So why, oh why, did I think that I could leave the half-empty bag of
feline pine litter on the FLOOR after I cleaned the cage's litter pan
this evening? On the floor. Opened. Unattended. Slumped wearily against
the wall, the top gaping wide like the pitch-black entrance to a County
Fair's "Haunted House Gondola Ride." Just hold on tight to your pastel
puff of spun sugar on its paper cone, and climb aboard for the riiiide
of your life...All the open top needed was a flashing string of colored
lights to draw more attention to itself.

There is a whole class of things that the Police call "attractive
nuisances." Poorly fenced in farm animals. Abandoned buildings. Retired
refrigerators left on the back porch without the doors being strapped
firmly shut. This entire class of things are extremely dangerous, and
suck the foolish or the unimaginitive in to their dooms. Attractive
nusiance, indeed. You'd think that these things would simply be viewed
as Spencer's (actually not Darwin's) "Survival of the Fittest." Climb
into the field with the bull to go cow tipping? You get the genetic
thumping you deserve. Especially when you try milking him first. I only
exempt children from most Natural Selection in action. Adults? Pee in
the gene pool at your own risk.

Todd and Caff-Pow heard the irresistible siren song of the open bag of
feline pine and found themselves completely powerless to turn away. Not
that I think they resisted. I think that they were ENTIRELY willing to
make the godawful mess that they made by knocking the glossy paper bag
over on its side and digging. I don't think that they resisted any
harder than Bernie Madoff resisted the urge to craft his wicked Ponzi
scheme. Actually, I don't have much trouble imagining him digging in
pet litter, used or otherwise if he thought that an ancient widower on
a pension might have dropped a dime into it, but I digress. I have been
told that I am somewhat critical by nature. No. I am simply a
consultant. I should pass out business cards to that effect.

Fortunately the 13.2 pound bag (I don't care what that is in kilometers
or nanograms, I don't do metric--it rots your brain and makes you think
that the Kennedys are watching you) was already half empty when this
outrage occurred. Half full, half empty, whatever. You wanna get all
existential about it, go do it somewhere else. *Quietly*. It was half
empty for the purpose of this rant.

Anyhoo...Where was I? Oh, yeah. The boys knocked the glossy, heavy
paper bag on its side, and emptied most of the contents onto the hard
wood floor beneath the computer table. A goodly amount of the litter
fell into the little spaces between the wires and cables resting on the
floor so clean up was *not,* as they say on TV, "a breeze." It was a
labor intensive horror that was achieved with me bent almost double,
trying to chase every little litterbit with a dustpan and whisk broom.
It was sort of like planting and harvesting rice in flooded paddies
without a water buffalo for company. In a word, it really sucked.

Just thought you should know,

Alexandra in MA

[Posted in FML 6658]