first, I’m SO SORRY AUNT SANDY, for taking so long to write again.  things have been busy and hectic, but that’s no excuse.

three days ago i found out that some kitty had been chewing on the computer cord connecting the computer to the big block thing that then connects into the wall.

then i forgot to put the cord up that night.

then, the day before yesterday, my computer would not turn on.  uh oh.  the cord had been bitten through, a lot.

here is the main suspect.

he looks like a criminal, doesn’t he?

i went online and ordered a new cord and it came yesterday, which was amazingly fast.  last night i plugged in and…no power.

uh oh.  had the bite somehow fried the whole computer, and now it was broken?  amy brought her cord over and plugged in and…still no power.

damn.

then kevin suggested that i take out the battery and put it back in and VOILA, i am up and running again. i married him cause he’s a genius.

one portion of things is better, but then there’s the HUGE LARGER PROBLEM.

last night we had janice, garrick and ramsey over and sat down at the dock and ate dinner and it was really nice.  afterwards, we were sitting in the living room talking and there was lester, behind the TV, where he goes sometimes, plus i’m pretty sure chester does too.

suddenly the light bulb went off in my head. HE IS CHEWING CORDS BACK THERE.

crap.

i yelled at him and he retreated further behind the tv, but i finally got him outta there.

many, many cords had been chewed.  a couple have exposed wires.  luckily he didn’t chew through anything vital, like the cable for the cable, although he did gnaw on it a lot.

you know, it could have been chester, too.  he has taken to attacking the toilet paper rolls in the middle of the night, viciously biting into them, cause i’ve seen him.

it’s probably both of them.

the other guilty party.

we tried to figure out what to do next…we needed to at least secure the cords for the night.  kevin immediately suggested rubbing all the cords with tabasco sauce.  hmm, would that work?  wouldn’t it just wear off?  kevin was pretty insistent, though, and i tried to talk janice and garrick into staying to help, but they said they had to go.

we have many, many cords in back of the tv.  i sat there on the floor, rubbing the tabasco into them, feeling it might be pointless, and kevin was standing up doing the same thing.

i smelled one of the cords i’d wiped down, and it didn’t smell like tabasco.  so i licked it.  well, what else could i do?

nope, it didn’t taste like tabasco to me.

“here, lick the cord,” i said to kevin.

he wasn’t very excited about it at all, but i persuaded him to take a small lick.

nope, he couldn’t taste it either.

but then it kicked in.  he started gulping water, trying to get the heat out of his mouth.

i started to feel the heat, too.  and i was sitting there, feeling despondent about the daunting task of wiping down who knows how many cords throughout the house, and then the whole thing just seemed really funny, so i sat there laughing.

better to laugh than to cry, that’s what i say.

at that point amy hadn’t showed up with the computer cord so i didn’t know if the computer was working or not, so i was at a low point.

i called aunt sandy, because amy had told me she’d had the same problem with the cord-chewing.  sandy suggested rubbing them with soap.  she said she’d never actually don that; the cords were taped to the walls, but she thought maybe she’d read it somewhere.

it was just nice to talk to her because she was so understanding cause she could relate.

how will we know if the tabasco worked?  we unplugged all the cords last night, because what if they fried themselves biting through cords?  this morning i said we should have sprinkled flour on the floor to check for kitty footprints.  kevin keeps saying that if they get one taste of the tabasco, it’ll break them of the desire.

oh boy.

i will plunge into internet research on the subject, after i’ve uploaded many photos from the first half of april.

i hope your day is good, and free from licking of cords of any kind.

ok then,

mrs. thursday hughes.