Thursday, February 25, 2010

Apple Jacks and the Alarm

So I should probably start with a few of the more obvious things you should know. We're in a warehouse. There's a series of really finicky alarms that have laser beams running all over the warehouse that make millions of little beeps throughout the day. And we have cats. Normally the cats are locked in the office at night (in a totally not-cruel way, they have all they need in there including the basic needs of kitties and lots of yarn) so the kitties tripping the alarm isn't really a concern. But this past week, everything changed.

We got a kitty door. At first both kitties, Apple Jacks (or Jacks, or Jack-attack, or don't-eat-that-Jack) and Captain Crunch (or Crunch, or Crunchy, or wittle-baby-kitty-girl) were absolutely terrified of this door. I seriously don't blame Crunch at all for this perfectly rational fear of kitty doors, she's missing one of her back legs and is already fairly imbalanced. But whatever.
But before I explain the sudden need for a kitty door, I have to go back a couple weeks further than that. I was working in the office by myself (Jennifer had a lunch meeting and would be in after a few hours) and I was doing the usual tasks of the morning like picking up whatever the cats had destroyed the overnight and checking voicemails. So mid-voice mail, Apple Jacks jumps over the desk to go smell Crunch or something, and spills my absolutely giant hot tea...all over my lap. So after a minute or two, I figured that since I was alone in the warehouse, it would be no big deal to take off my pants and continue working while my pants dried on a heater. Then I hear the fax machine going in the other room and I go to open the door to leave the office and find that...I've been locked in. The door was a really old and very heavy firedoor that was supposedly "fixed" so that it wouldn't lock anyone in...but here I am, alone in the warehouse, locked in the office with no pants. Great. I called Jennifer, who was still in a meeting. I called her again. Nothing. I start talking to myself like Jack Nicholson the in Shining. I realize that I'm talking to myself like Jack Nicholson in the Shining and then I call the owner of the building to explain to her that I am locked in the office and I have to pee and I'm really hungry. And she's all the way in Noblesville and is obviously no help to me. So she calls Jennifer, who is still in a meeting. I do some filing and then decide to call for help again. It's been about 3 hours at this point before Jennifer turns on her phone after the meeting and gets the eleventy-billion messages both I and the owner of the building left. And then help came. But by then my pants were dry and everything was okay again.
So now that you know the story of the Old Door, I will explain the story of the New Door. The New Door was ordered after the Old Door locked me in and it was discussed that while being locked in the office sucked, it would have been a lot worse had Jennifer been out of town and the phone lines were down and I had locked my Blackberry in the car or other infinitely worse situations, but the Old Door had to go. So New Door came a few days later, and while Jennifer had it specially made to fit the gap where Old Door was, it was still TOO BIG. So we had handy-man Jeff come in and saw the door down to where it needed to be to fit, put the door in and install the Kitty-door, and the cats were terrified. So Jennifer and I spent much of three days shoving cats through the kitty door and tantalising them with treats to get them through the door on their own. And then suddenly, Jacks discovered that he could go through the door on his own and stars would not collide, and the earth would not stop turning, and nothing bad would happen. So he did. A lot. And then the day that he figured the door out, we closed up shop for the night, locked the kitty door and shut the kitties in the office for the night. And then around 8 pm, I get a phone call.
"Uh, Paige, did you lock the kitty door?"
"Yeah...."
"Well the alarms are going off, I'm heading the warehouse."

Rats. Did I seriously forget to lock the kitty door the first day the cats actually figured out how to use it? No, I hadn't forgotten to lock the door. Jacks had tried to go through the kitty door, gotten a paw or something stuck, had a fit of rage/fear/probably a little hunger in there, and broke open the kitty door and was running around the warehouse with the bits of pieces of the kitty door laying on the floor. And then set the alarms off.

Never a dull day or night here at Alpaca With A Twist.

(Cat picture #1: Jacks. Cat Picture #2: Crunch)

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