Be Completely Criminal & Create Chaos – The Pussycat Credo

Caleb’s crime spree is continuing. This week Doug caught him trying to make off with the car keys. What fun that would have been, not being able to get to work because the cat stole my car keys – and I don’t even have an employer I can try out that excuse on.

Me, a Thief?  How could you believe such a thing?

Caleb’s been amazingly well behaved in the shop this week – suspiciously well behaved, to the point that I was beginning to think that he might be sick. He has a scraped and swollen chin at the moment, having undertaken a spectacular face-plant while chasing Artemis around the verandah, and I thought maybe it had become infected and made him ill. But no, our little boy is just growing up and learning good behaviour in the shop. Seeing how this is what I’ve been aiming for by bringing him in so often I shouldn’t be surprised, but he continues to be a ratbag at home so it’s good that he’s learning to compartmentalize and be well behaved in the shop.

Even at night Calypso
glows and is gorgeous.

She definitely glows in the sunlight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Calypso is supposed to be Shop Manager today but it's Caleb again because he's enjoying it so much and being a good boy to boot. Mischka was in the chair yesterday and was in total disgrace.  She took a flying leap onto my desk, skid across it, crashed into a glass bowl I had a few hundred bakelite buttons in, and it went flying and smashed into a thousand pieces.  She had been playing up all day, demanding to be the centre of attention when I had a lot of customers to deal with, almost killing several people by wrapping her leash about their legs, but let me tell you after the bowl broke she hot-footed it to my chair, where she sat up straight and was very quiet and well behaved while the mess was cleaned up.  Then she snoozed away the afternoon on my lap, looking the picture of innocence. Ha!

 

Sure she looks innocent now, but Mischka entirely lived up to her sign
(Beware of the Naughty Cat) during her shift as Shop Manager.



In terms of stock, we are looking forward to the arrival of our new consignment, which so far is scheduled to arrive in Australia on 3 December. Then we have the usual song and dance with Customs and Quarantine, but hopefully we’ll be having Unpack Day by mid-December. Meanwhile, we have continued the archaeological dig of our garage and have come up with three vintage wash boards that we hadn’t even unwrapped from a few trips ago. Lots of people still use wash boards for hand-washing, particularly lingerie, so they always sell well and I can’t believe we forgot about them for so long. Though actually, when I look at the layer upon layer upon layer of our garage, I can entirely see how that happened.

 

Random picture of stock I:
cute tiny wooden elephant

Random picture of stock II:
French glass vase & blue bakelite Art Deco lamp

I'm always cautious digging about in the garage because we know that various snakes live there, although I’m yet to see the large python that Doug assures me is in residence.  He found a large snake skin at our carport this week, and brought it up to show to the moggies, who went nuts over it.  Caleb was practically inhaling it he was sniffing so hard, and naturally he tried to grab it and run off because he’s not big into sharing. But I have confiscated the skin and shall ration it out for special treats.  We have taken considerable steps to ensure that the cats don’t have direct contact with snakes, but they are very interested in them and investigating the occasional skin is a treat.

Poison bottles in the shop.  The big clear
one has POISON in raised script near the neck

You know I always tell you about Strange People who come into the shop, and this week’s candidate is a man who looked at a very large clear glass poison bottle.  It clearly has the word POISON in raised script in the glass.  Why does it say ‘Poison’? he asked.  I hesitated, thinking that this must be a devilish clever trick question that I was about to get wrong, but seeing how I couldn’t determine the trick I was obliged to answer.  Er, because it had poison in it, I said.  Are you sure? he asked.  Pretty sure, I replied.  He shook his head and frowned and Hmmmed in a I’m-not-so-sure manner, and off he went.  But puhlease!  It definitely had poison in it.  Put it this way – I won’t be serving lemonade out of it any time soon.  Except to my enemies.

Artemis, Trapeze Artiste Extraordinaire,
constantly seeks out every little bit of extra height she can find.