I love my dear old cat. But Daisy is, absolutely and without a doubt, a colossal pain in the posterior. She nags. She bickers. Worst of all, she gets underfoot on purpose. I have been knocked over by her more than once. Believe me, it's embarrassing to have to call the security company to tell them why the alarm has gone off at my house yet again: There is no emergency and I do sincerely apologize but I tripped over the cat when I was coming in the door.
Daisy also has the truly unfortunate habit of parking herself directly behind my desk chair. I have, quite without meaning to, rolled over her tail on multiple occasions. She hasn't been really hurt yet but sometimes she has lost large clumps of fur. I made a special place for her to sleep in the blue room and that worked just fine but when I moved the desk to the yellow room, the tail incidents started happening again and it became obvious that something really had to be done. Daisy is getting old (she's thirteen). She's my beloved animal and I don't want her to be jeopardy (even though I sometimes threaten to send her into orbit without a spaceship).
So I came up with a idea, although it meant disrupting some of my limited stock storage space: I decided to make a window seat for Daisy.
After lots of planning and plotting, I figured that my best option was to work with an old table that I attempted to renovate last year. I had big plans for that cute little table table but they went entirely awry when the table fell apart completely while I was working on it. The table had been very badly treated in the past and I knew it was junk when I bought it. But it was antique! But it was from England! I am very silly. Bad me. The table remained a jumbled pile of bits until this morning. But it was precisely the right size for the space and for Daisy, so it was time to give it another chance.
Then I happily decided that this was a great excuse for going to the hardware store for mending plates and paint. I love to go there, partly because I am always quietly amused because I know what the REAL name of the store is. Oh, it has the name of a chain posted over the door but it's actually Hooker's Hardware. It was named after a person, not the profession.
But common sense kicked in even before I had finished fixing my face. House Rules state: Shop At Home First. (Very sensible although not very fun.) So I looked in my "goody box" and found some reasonable substitutes for the plates.
I got my tools. I got some Pearson's Coffee Nips. (There's just something about making repairs that calls for candy.) I put Arashi's Popcorn album on the CD player for inspiration. And I got working. By the time the album was on the final song, I was done.
The poor table is absolutely bristling with mending plates and corner brackets and even metal strapping but, honestly, it had to be done because the table is simply impossible to restore properly (unless you're an expert, which I'm obviously not). It is Good Enough. And that's just fine.
The important thing is that it would be stable for the kitty. I decided not to paint the table yet. Best to do a feline test-run first because Daisy doesn't like getting up on furniture; there was a risk that she would reject the table. I got a pillow from the bed, and wrapped one of Daisy's favorite towels around it for comfort. While Daisy was quality-checking her new perch, I discovered that I could still use the space under the table for storage; that's a win.
And as I put the finishing touches on this tale, I see that Daisy has given her seal of approval. She is happy. When Daisy is happy, I am happy.
All is well.
Life is good.
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