A "Scratching" Post
Here we are, in our second week of teaching, we haven't even been living here for a month, and we have gotten a cat. Some of you may recall that back in March when we were considering coming out to Saco to teach, I insisted that I would need a cat for the cold winter months.
It's only August. Here I am, writing a blog post, with a happy, purring kitty on my chest.
We didn't intend to get a cat this early, but during the first week of school I might have mentioned to my students that some day I want a kitty. The very next day, I had a student who told me she had the perfect kitten for us. I told her I would have to go home and talk it over with my husband. We talked about it, made a lengthy pros and cons list with more cons on it then pros, then we went out and "visited" the kitty on the weekend. We brought Panther home with us that day. His previous owners had named him Panther, and we decided to keep the name since he is pretty much all black, and Saco's school mascot is the panther. Fitting!
We have been chronicling some of the kitty adventures on Facebook by sharing pictures, but overall he is a super lovable cat. Now that we have had him for a week, we feel comfortable letting him have free reign over the living room, kitchen, and laundry room. For the first while he was confined to the laundry room only... there wasn't much damage he could do in there with the linoleum floor. We are living in a rental home, so we are doing our best to keep it as nice as when we moved in.
To prepare for the kitty, we actually built him a scratching post. After all, we have a new couch we want to keep nice, and a rental that we don't want to have to fix any damages in. We made this scratching post entirely out of things we already had in the house. The most amazing part is, he actually uses it! Every time I turn around because it sounds like he is clawing something to pieces, he is actually clawing at the scratching post. I would call that a win!
You can make this! Scroll to the bottom for my first attempt at a "do it yourself tutorial." I'm not sure why anyone would want to make one, but we felt like spending $40+ on something he was going to eventually destroy was a little silly. If you want to know more about our lives though, read on.
In general, our lives are a lot slower here, and we are still trying to get used to it. In the very beginning it was therapeutic, because we really didn't have any crazy obligations and we could just "veg" out on the couch for hours at a time if we wanted to. We watched a lot of Parenthood, a TV series we were watching in Bozeman on Netflix, but we rarely got to watch it then because we were so busy working and getting ready for the wedding.
After a few days, we started to feel gross about our "new" lifestyle. We would go to school and work or plan or teach, but then have all evening with nothing to do. One night we went for a bike ride, another night we went out for a drive just to see what was out there. This weekend I even drug him into the weight room at the school to play around. (Somehow I can still do 8 pull ups, even though I have taken a large hiatus from actual workouts.)
Last weekend, before we got the kitty, we took a trip to Glasgow and got to see some of Fort Peck reservoir, the dam, and we breezed through the educational center, which had a dinosaur! We will have to go back on another day when we have more time, it was super interesting and had a ton of information.
I know I post happy photos of our kitty and our recent "adventures," but I want the world to know that it isn't all daisies and rainbows. With this new, slower lifestyle, we often even feel a little lost. The smoke from all of the fires in the Northwest is making it difficult to go out and enjoy the outdoors around us - I would much rather stay inside. Josey will go outside, even in the smokey air, just to pull weeds around the house to get the blood pumping.
When I don't have anything to do I resort to napping... which lately has become even more enjoyable because I have a cat to take the cat nap with. Or I scroll through Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. I refresh my email often, anticipating the wave of emails that I used to get while substituting in Bozeman or while attending the University, but my inbox is empty. I sometimes feel like I am waiting for something to happen.
The other night I got particularly down about not having anything I needed to do. I even thought to myself that I wish I had an RA staff meeting to go to, or a Kappa meeting, or even one of those "mandatory" student athlete meetings. After talking to Josey, we decided we just needed to make more plans, and actually DO them.
I got on the ball at school and gave out information about teaching private piano and voice lessons. I'll be a lot busier once I am teaching an hour of lessons each day after school! I also finally (almost) finished up our thank you cards and sent them out. Josey got really ahead with lesson planning and I, well, I still have some planning to do. It isn't a problem though, because I get a lot of prep time at school and during our three day weekends. My teacher friends in Kennewick and Bozeman, if you're tired of feeling super rushed and overworked, consider moving out to the country and teaching at a small school. We filled a lot of our time with Panther too, who is getting into a whole lot less trouble than I was expecting.
We also have made some big progress with our house unpacking/organizing/decorating. I think my next blog post will include pictures of the inside of our house, when we have our new piano (hopefully!) and when things look a little more finished.
Cell phone reception at the house is less than stellar, so we now have a home phone! It is a "local" line so we won't be using it to call out very often, but you can call us. Send me an email at chelsquinones@gmail.com if you want our home phone number. Also, we took a photo because we think it's pretty hilarious that Josey's cell phone is bigger than the home phone!
Anyways, I can only procrastinate lesson planning so long, I've already used up two days of my three day weekend. Time for me to finalize the repertoire for the band to play at the Saco Fun Days parade next Saturday, and to pick some elementary songs for Grandparent's Day in just a few weeks. I love my job, and my students. But more on that in another post, for now I've got to get to work.
Love,
Chelsea
What we used:
It's only August. Here I am, writing a blog post, with a happy, purring kitty on my chest.
We didn't intend to get a cat this early, but during the first week of school I might have mentioned to my students that some day I want a kitty. The very next day, I had a student who told me she had the perfect kitten for us. I told her I would have to go home and talk it over with my husband. We talked about it, made a lengthy pros and cons list with more cons on it then pros, then we went out and "visited" the kitty on the weekend. We brought Panther home with us that day. His previous owners had named him Panther, and we decided to keep the name since he is pretty much all black, and Saco's school mascot is the panther. Fitting!
We have been chronicling some of the kitty adventures on Facebook by sharing pictures, but overall he is a super lovable cat. Now that we have had him for a week, we feel comfortable letting him have free reign over the living room, kitchen, and laundry room. For the first while he was confined to the laundry room only... there wasn't much damage he could do in there with the linoleum floor. We are living in a rental home, so we are doing our best to keep it as nice as when we moved in.
To prepare for the kitty, we actually built him a scratching post. After all, we have a new couch we want to keep nice, and a rental that we don't want to have to fix any damages in. We made this scratching post entirely out of things we already had in the house. The most amazing part is, he actually uses it! Every time I turn around because it sounds like he is clawing something to pieces, he is actually clawing at the scratching post. I would call that a win!
Here he is, in his initial laundry room home.
Perching his little cat bum on the top of our homemade scratching post.
In general, our lives are a lot slower here, and we are still trying to get used to it. In the very beginning it was therapeutic, because we really didn't have any crazy obligations and we could just "veg" out on the couch for hours at a time if we wanted to. We watched a lot of Parenthood, a TV series we were watching in Bozeman on Netflix, but we rarely got to watch it then because we were so busy working and getting ready for the wedding.
After a few days, we started to feel gross about our "new" lifestyle. We would go to school and work or plan or teach, but then have all evening with nothing to do. One night we went for a bike ride, another night we went out for a drive just to see what was out there. This weekend I even drug him into the weight room at the school to play around. (Somehow I can still do 8 pull ups, even though I have taken a large hiatus from actual workouts.)
 |
| Dinosaur |
 |
| An old music stand from Fort Peck School. |
 |
| Bear? Where? |
The spillway.
Fort Peck Reservoir. I was really bummed that I didn't have my real camera with me to catch the drama! It was also really windy and cold. We will be back.
I know I post happy photos of our kitty and our recent "adventures," but I want the world to know that it isn't all daisies and rainbows. With this new, slower lifestyle, we often even feel a little lost. The smoke from all of the fires in the Northwest is making it difficult to go out and enjoy the outdoors around us - I would much rather stay inside. Josey will go outside, even in the smokey air, just to pull weeds around the house to get the blood pumping.
When I don't have anything to do I resort to napping... which lately has become even more enjoyable because I have a cat to take the cat nap with. Or I scroll through Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. I refresh my email often, anticipating the wave of emails that I used to get while substituting in Bozeman or while attending the University, but my inbox is empty. I sometimes feel like I am waiting for something to happen.
The other night I got particularly down about not having anything I needed to do. I even thought to myself that I wish I had an RA staff meeting to go to, or a Kappa meeting, or even one of those "mandatory" student athlete meetings. After talking to Josey, we decided we just needed to make more plans, and actually DO them.
I got on the ball at school and gave out information about teaching private piano and voice lessons. I'll be a lot busier once I am teaching an hour of lessons each day after school! I also finally (almost) finished up our thank you cards and sent them out. Josey got really ahead with lesson planning and I, well, I still have some planning to do. It isn't a problem though, because I get a lot of prep time at school and during our three day weekends. My teacher friends in Kennewick and Bozeman, if you're tired of feeling super rushed and overworked, consider moving out to the country and teaching at a small school. We filled a lot of our time with Panther too, who is getting into a whole lot less trouble than I was expecting.
We also have made some big progress with our house unpacking/organizing/decorating. I think my next blog post will include pictures of the inside of our house, when we have our new piano (hopefully!) and when things look a little more finished.
Cell phone reception at the house is less than stellar, so we now have a home phone! It is a "local" line so we won't be using it to call out very often, but you can call us. Send me an email at chelsquinones@gmail.com if you want our home phone number. Also, we took a photo because we think it's pretty hilarious that Josey's cell phone is bigger than the home phone!
Anyways, I can only procrastinate lesson planning so long, I've already used up two days of my three day weekend. Time for me to finalize the repertoire for the band to play at the Saco Fun Days parade next Saturday, and to pick some elementary songs for Grandparent's Day in just a few weeks. I love my job, and my students. But more on that in another post, for now I've got to get to work.
Love,
Chelsea
HOW TO MAKE A CAT SCRATCHING POST
What we used:
- a poster mailer tube
- cardboard boxes
- wire square shelving, just one square although we initially thought we would use two
- a roll of hemp
- scissors/box cutter
- patience
- scrap of rug
1. Find all of the materials, and then cut a hole in the center of the wire square shelf. I didn't get a picture of this, but he left "nubs" of wire so that they would dig into our cardboard mailer.
2. Insert the mailer into the hole you cut, pushing it through so that you have about 2 inches of tube sticking out underneath the wire cage. Poke the wire into the mailer.
3. Begin to wrap the mailer with hemp, pulling it really tight so that kitty has a lot to play with! When we got to the top we used a staple gun and tape so it's not very pretty. But it works!
4. Cut out 6 or 7 squares of cardboard that are about the same size as the wire square. Cut a hole in the center of each that is the same size as the mailer.
5. Stack the cut out cardboard underneath the wire cage. Make sure you have enough cardboard to fill the gap between the wire cage and the floor. (Unfortunately we forgot to take a photo of this step.)
6. Find an old ikea rug and cut a hole in the center of it that is the same size as the mailer. I ended up cutting a little slit in the circle to get it onto the post and over the wire cage, since the top of our post was wider than the bottom.
7. Fold the edges of the rug underneath the box layers, and staple/screw to the bottom. We found that stapling wasn't super effective so we got out the drill and drilled the rug right into the cardboard layers. We also drilled a couple screws right through the cardboard into the tube for added stability.
And there you have it! A kitty scratching post. Just in time for your cat to destroy it. :)
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