The other day, I asked son, Michael, to help me put together a storage unit that mounts above the toilet in our bathroom. Rob, DSH (domestic short haired hubby) had giggled when I'd picked it out and remarked that he was glad he wouldn't have to put it together for me, and after helping Mike sort out the pieces and read the instructions, I could see why.

We were deeply involved with trying to insert screw a into tube b (which was too short) when I noticed that QC had sneaked into the living room and was busily chewing one F the plastic tube caps. We took it away from her and shooed her out of the working area. We were measuring o-ring left and o-ring right when Mike looked over and saw her chewing on o-ring spare. We took her into the master bedroom and closed the door, and went back to measuring. A couple of minutes later I looked up and saw...you guessed it. QC had opened the door to the bedroom and was chewing plastic fastener peg G which became a spare item. QC was taken back to the master bedroom and Mandy, my 12 year old daughter was assigned to cat duty. We were almost done and were picking up the thing to insert it into the bathroom when I looked down and saw Berfert playing soccer with o-ring spare. The unit was put on the floor while we gathered up all the spare pieces and put them into a plastic bag so they could be taped to the bottom of one of the shelves of the unit.

When we got done installing the unit, we told Mandy to let the cat out of the room and walked into the living room to find Berfert trying to drag off a Philips screwdriver while Tanada was sitting on the sofa. I swear she was laughing. I suspect that the cats probably added a good 15 minutes to construction time and enlivened our afternoon immensely. I'm still trying to figure out what Berfert wanted with a Philips screw driver.

Copyright © Pam Shirk
October 15, 1999