I draped some white fabric over my workbench to take some photos and the next thing I know it had sprouted a cat. The particular cat that chose the spot is Izzy, who has the most black hairs of all our cats. There must be some universal law of attraction.
As an aside, it doesn’t matter what color I wear, there is a cat on the property that has contrasting fur.
I made up slips of paper with jokes on them to stuff in easter eggs. I used the OpenDyslexic font, which is brilliantly designed to visually weight down the letters and make each shape unique. Thor the cat decided that laying on the eggs was a comfy place to watch me work and take a bat at the occasional egg.
When we first moved to our house, there was a large wood workbench on the back porch, salvaged from an old workshop. Since it had been left out in the elements, many of the parts were warped and cracked. I disassembled the bench and reused the parts for projects around the house. One of those projects was a cat food cabinet made from two drawers and part of the workbench top. I turned the drawers sideways to make the sides of the cabinet, put on a top with back splash, and made a door with hinges. The wood I used for the door had a large split, which I reinforced with braces on the back and an old leather belt nailed to the front.
The problem with the wood top is that it was not smooth, so was hard to clean. To fix this, I added laminate adhesive tiles to the top, then gave the rest of the wood a boost with a rub down with Howard’s Feed-n-Wax.
It took a bit of time for the cats to figure out that the new surface was stable, and Thor would rather his wet food bowl be put elsewhere, but the surface is so much easier to clean now.
I can’t go up to my craft room without sitting down and sewing on the Singer model 66 sewing machine. Regular use keeps it in working order, moving the oil around the parts and keeping things from seizing up. I just have to plan an extra ten minutes (minimum) when I wander up there to sew a few more scraps together.
I also need to plan extra time to extradite Izzy the cat, who knows as soon as the craft room door is open and makes a beeline for the bed.
Thor the cat plays a dangerous game, sticking his paws under doors at Izzy the calico. His favorite thing to do is antagonize her, and she doesn’t mess around. She goes for the take down. Right after this picture she went after him, both paws and mouth open. Maybe they are playing? If so, she doesn’t play nice.
Critters and Craft 