It often happens that when I’m working on something in my studio, I convert the idea into a class for The Mansion.
This time it was the cat faces from the Cat Face Pillows I’ve been making. I wanted to show how by altering a few lines or shapes you can create different expressions.
Much like the cats on the linen towel I used to make the pillows, but even more basic.
But before we began I passed around my last unfinished Cat Face Pillow so people could see what I was doing and where the idea for the class came from. I also told them the rat story from yesterday.
“Oh rats are so cute.” Susan said. And no one was really surprised. Susan likes all animals and insects. She was the only one in the class who thought it was a good idea that I let the rat go.
After that I handed out paper to each of the people sitting around the big round table in the Activities Room at the Mansion. Earlier in my studio I had drawn four squares on each piece of paper. I’d also drawn some examples of cats with different expressions on their faces.
Next I showed everyone how to draw the basic cat face shape and demonstrated how to express the emotions with simple lines.
Then they began…
One of Cladia’s cats
Some people made only happy cats. “I’m feeling happy,” Rachel said, “so my cats are happy.”
Rachels Happy Cats
Jennifer surprised us all. I knew she was a good artist, but she drew with such confidence and experience. Jennifer was a ballet dancer into her early twenties. She gave it up to have a family. But she said she was always good at art.
Jennifer’s Cat Faces
Ellen was the only one to draw her cats with colored markers. We all realized, when she was done, that the colors matched her blouse.
Ellen drawing her cat faces
When I mentioned to Mary that her cats didn’t have whiskers, she said it was because he shaved them.
Mary’s shaved catsSomehow I missed getting photos of all the drawings. But we had a full table. And Robin and Paryese were there to help as always.
Most of Claudia’s cats were happy. But I loved the expression on the one below. As if she was trying hard to be happy, but was also acknowledging the realities of life.
There was a frost this morning. Enough to make a slushy layer of ice on the dog bowl outside, but nothing the spring flowers can’t handle.
I did see two barn swallows swoop into the barn circle around and fly out again. I know I startled them. I wonder if they know that Zip is around yet.
It’s early for the swallows, they usually come the first of May. But it was a warm winter. So warm that a few stalks from last years kale that I grew in my garden is growing leaves.
One day about two weeks ago a constant bird call got my attention. It was so consistent I wondered if it wasn’t tree frogs. But then I saw the birds circling over the pasture. They were Killdeers who come to the farm every year, although if they stay long, they are so well hidden, I barely see them.
This year, as far as I could tell, they didn’t even land, just circled overhead. That was the first time I wondered if they’d got news of Zip who prowls the tall grasses where the Killdeers make their nests.
I heard that birds know when a new predator has moved into an area. I don’t know how they get this information, but I do hope the barn swallows decide to stay.
Flo used to the hunt in the barn and hay loft. I’ve seen the barn swallows dive bomb her more than once.
I understand if the barn swallows choose not to stay. I’d hate for Zip to hunt them. But I will miss them if they decide to go to another farm and another barn.
I made one and a half Cat Face Pillows today. I didn’t get to putting the backing on the second one and stuffing it.
As long as the rat is really gone, I should be able to get this pillow done tomorrow. One of them may be spoken for, but then I’ll put the other one up for sale in my Etsy Shop. The pillow is 15″ square with a 4″ border. They are $90 + shipping.
I’m also working with Sara Kelly on making my Meditation Tree into an 11×17″ poster. We’re trying some colors for the border, but I haven’t made a decision yet.
And if I can’t find a backing for our refrigerator, (the one that Bud shredded trying to get rat), I’ll be making one out of cardboard. Seems it’s a more important part of the refrigerator than I would have thought.
Every time Bud barked, Jon got up and went downstairs to see if what was going on with him and the rat. I heard Bud bark too, but I decided to leave it to Bud till the morning.
Around 5am, there were sounds coming from downstairs that I hadn’t heard before. That’s what got both Jon and me up.
When I got into the kitchen, the refrigerator was moved away from the wall enough for Bud to have shredded the cardboard backing that covered the fan and motor. Dryer sheets that I had put on the floor to keep the rat away and bits of cardboard were scattered all over the floor. And one of the metal tubes (I don’t know what they are) was actually sticking out of the back of the fridge.
There were also rat dropping on the floor.
I guess the rat thought it had a pretty good thing going when it found all those crackers and stored them in the back of the refrigerator yesterday. Maybe she was even thinking of making a nest there.
Bud did his job last night holding the rat captive in the back of the fridge. Now we just had to figure out how to get her out of it.
As soon as I let the dogs out, the rat saw her chance. “There she is.” Jon said as she ran from the kitchen into the bathroom.
Jon closed the bathroom door. “I’ll get it,” Jon said. He hadn’t gotten dressed yet, and armed with a broom and dust pan he went into the bathroom closing the door behind him.
After a bit of banging and clanging, I went into the bathroom too and Jon told me the rat had run under the baseboard heater. “There it is,” he said, pointing to the rats tail sticking up from the baseboard writhing back and forth, “Grab it.”
I was close enough to grab it, but there was no way I was going too.
There are some things that I’m squeamish about and a rats tail is one of them. “I’m not touching that,” I told Jon and he reached down to get it.
But the rat was too quick and now hunkered down out of sight.
That’s when Jon decided to take a shower.
I wouldn’t want to be naked in the bathroom with a rat, but Jon wasn’t bother by the idea at all. He actually had a conversation with the rat telling it he was going kill it.
When Jon got out of the shower, I went into the bathroom with a box. I took the cover off the baseboard and the rat ran out. We have a very small bathroom with no other place for the rat to hide or escape. I was able to throw the box over the rat as she ran. Then I got another piece of cardboard and slipped it under the opening of the box. I turned the box over and closed it up over the extra piece of cardboard, not giving the rat a chance to slip out.
Now I had the rat in the box, but I couldn’t imagine how we would kill it.
Jon said he would shoot it, but I wasn’t thinking straight and pictured Jon shooting the rat in the box in the house. Of course that makes no sense, but that’s the image that came into my head.
“I’ll take it into the woods,” I said. Jon suggested drowning her in the pond, but I knew I couldn’t do that.
I’m fine putting traps in the house that quickly kill mice and rats. I’ve done it for years. And I don’t mind taking them out of the traps once they’re dead either.
But I don’t want to kill them myself.
I just couldn’t imagine a quick death for the rat, so even though I know that relocating a rat doesn’t work, they just come back, I was determined to put this rat way out into the woods and hope she didn’t come back.
As I climbed up the hill and over the stream, I tired to imagine drowning the rat, my mind wouldn’t go there. Instead I thought of how the rat had survived the night, hiding from Bud and how scared she must be. I though of how the hunter in Snow White couldn’t kill her and brought back a boars heart to the Witch instead.
I silently spoke to the rat, telling her this was her chance to get away. That if she came back she’d be killed. And I felt like a hitman in a mob movie.
Over another stone wall and on the other side of a marshy pond, I opened the box and the rat jumped out and ran in the opposite direction of the farm.
Maybe I thought, she was a he, without babies to get back to. Maybe he would do what rats don’t and not come back.
As I got closer to the farm, I heard Jon calling me. He standing at the Gulley Bridge, rifle in hand and Zip at his feet.
I think that was more shocking than the whole rat incident. It was all so incongruous. Jon in the woods, with a rifle and cat.
But it’s also when it dawned on me that it would have made sense for Jon to shoot the rat while it was in the box and the box was on the ground.
Then Zip surprised me even further by walking over the Gulley Bridge to greet me as if he did it everyday. And I guess he does. I saw cat prints in the mud on the other side of the bridge yesterday.
I guess I don’t know as much about his territory as I thought I did.
I knew Jon was annoyed that I let the rat go. But by the time he got back to the farmhouse and wrote about it all (while I took a shower without a rat to keep me company) he was seeing my side of things and even loving me for it.
It was a wild morning. And when it was all done, I gave Bud a special treat and told him that he’d done a great joy and to get some sleep.
If the rat does come back I hope she or he does it quietly and stays out of the house.
The sheep led by Asher followed me to the back pasture. “Not yet,” I told them as I slipped between the gates, making sure not to open them too wide and closing them quickly behind me.
Zinnia was at my heals and I knew Fate would slip under the gate by the time I got to to the Gulley Bridge.
A low, battered purple and white violet, greeted me at the stone wall.
At the stream one of the Marsh Marigolds was in full bloom. The thick petals and saturated yellow, a feast this time of year.
The dead tree with the owl pellets at its roots
Next I visited the dead standing tree. At its roots are a collection of owl pellets. It’s easy to imagine the owl living here, high up in one of the old woodpecker holes.
One of the owl pellets
Each pellet made of tiny bones poking out of matted gray fur. Off to the side a skull, its teeth intact.
A mouse skull?
There were no other flowers yet, but I found many mounds of columbine leaves and one trout lily on the verge of opening up.
Trout Lily
And a few ferns shrouded in cocoon-like webs waiting to unfurl.
Fern
There seems to be more life than death this time of year. But with the help of Zinnia and Fate I found the remains of a squirrel, mostly fur and bones in the hollow of a fallen tree. It made a kind of casket, the space in the log only wide enough to peer into.
Scat on the rock wall
And on the way back, scat on the stone wall.
It must be the Bobcat I thought. I couldn’t imagine a coyote squatting so high on the wall. But then to prove me wrong, Fate jumped up on the rocks and put her face in mine.
I heard the donkeys bray in the distance.
“I’m coming,” I said more to myself than the animals. But I have a feeling they heard me.
I saw just the smallest flicker of movement in the marsh this morning. I had to focus to the mallard couple. And as quickly as I saw them, they disappeared.
Bud’s fast asleep on his little wicker bench in the living room. I told him he’d better get some rest because he’s going to be on Rat Patrol tonight.
This morning when I walked into the kitchen, two empty boxes of crackers were on the floor. And the other things on the counter, where they had been, were all knocked over.
I knew right away that the rat was back.
The first thing I did was check the stove. There was no evidence that the rat was anywhere near it. The dryer sheets I had stuffed under and in it were still there.
We got a new stove a month ago because a rat had pulled the insulation out of the old one. She also left dropping in the walls of the stove and every time we turned on the oven the smell was unbearable.
When we got the new stove, Jim, who sold it to us, told us that Rats don’t like the smell of dryer sheets. So I stuffed them into the runners of the drawer under the oven and on the floor under the stove.
As I cleaned up the mess, Bud came into the kitchen and started sniffing around the refrigerator. When he didn’t quit, I got the message.
I pulled the fridge away from the wall and found a couple of crackers under it. But Bud kept sniffing at the back where the motor is, so I unscrewed the cardboard backing.
Half a box of crackers were piled up behind the fan.
I cleaned them out and Bud was still sniffing around. This time I moved the fridge even further away from the wall and found more crackers under it.
I thanked Bud for his help and was relieved to see him leave the kitchen as I mopped the floor.
But he didn’t go far. Now he was sniffing around the clothes dryer.
I pulled the dryer away from the wall expecting to see another stash of crackers. But instead I found a small hole chewed in the wall where the dryer vent came up from the basement.
I had successfully plugged the hole in the bathroom where the rats had come up the first time in late winter. Now I knew where they had made a new doorway into the house.
I stuffed the hole with steel wool then cut a piece of metal flashing, fit it around the dryer vent and screwed it to the wall.
I also put dryer sheets around the hole and on the floor in front of it.
Tonight we’ll leave Bud out of his crate once again. I’m certain it was his presence that kept the rats from coming back the first time they showed up a couple of months ago. I know it wasn’t the traps because after we caught the first three, they never went after the bait again.
Zip’s doing a good job of keeping the rat population down outside the house. And Bud is doing his part inside.
When it comes to rats inside the house, I’ve come to trust Bud completely. I think we make a good team.
I did my part this morning and he’ll do his part tonight.
