I thought I'd be smart this time and do Juliet's cage first so the hard part would be over with. I got out the gloves and carefully moved her hissing, snarling, felineness to the cage above hers (Gladys was already out). Got Juliet's place all cleaned up. Put the gloves back on to move her again. She wouldn't budge. I couldn't reach high enough to scruff her so I tried to lure her down with a cat toy. No dice. We're in a standoff. I decide to just go ahead with cleaning Dottie's cage in the bottom row and forget about Juliet. So, I'm scrubbing away and I look up just as Juliet is about to leap - onto my head! I duck. She lands, claws out, on my shoulder. I scream. All work comes to a halt. Juliet jumps from my shoulder to her cage. I shut the door and try to act nonchalant, like "me screaming? naw, it must've been one of the cats..." . Holly asks if I need a Band-Aid. Tibet asks why I won't take off my shirt to see how bad the scratch is. I don't want to see how bad the scratch is and certainly don't want to take my shirt off in front of Tibet. Yikes. The sting goes away and I get back to cleaning.
So impressed with myself for surviving Juliet, I nonchalant my way through getting Vincent, the lunger, out of his cage where he's cowering in the litter box. The gloves and a strategically placed towel always work with Vincent. I'm golden. Once I get him out of the litter box, I notice it is full, I mean really full, I mean we are talking severe diarrhea. It stinks so bad I almost choke. I'm used to cleaning cat cages, even in the sick room, but this made me gag. Got that cleaned up and noticed that his food dish, which he hadn't eaten from, was covered with bloody snot as was the cage wall on that side. I clean furiously, like the white tornado from whatever cleanser that commercial was for. Holly comes out of the sick room for something and I tell her "I know you don't want to hear this but Vincent has bloody snot and wicked diarrhea." Holly is not thrilled as this means she'll have to take his temperature. Fortunately, Dawna returns from vacation just in time to hold Vincent while Holly sticks the thermometer up his butt. Having confirmed that he's sick, we strip his cage and move him to the sick room. So now I've gotta totally disinfect his cage all over again in case we need to put anybody else in there.
Snookie jumped out of my hands and hid under another cage while I cleaned his. He's not vicious, just shy. I left him hiding.
A postcard of a cool cat beaching it in Florida arrived for Jaguar. He was indifferent.
While Roberta was getting some clean bedding from the closet, Tibet started making jokes about her "coming out of the closet". Roberta was not amused. I had to resist just walking out right then and there. As far as I know, Roberta is straight. I'm none to sure about Tibet after her remarks about my taking my shirt off, and previous comments about the size of my butt, etc. One day Tibet was asking everyone whether or not they were/had been married. She stopped short of asking me. Thank goodness. I don't know what I would've said. In my fantasies I would've said "Of course not, I'm queer" but in reality I probably would've turned beet red and left the room. She scares me. BTW, Tibet is not really her name. My girlfriend dubbed her "Tibet" after my story about walking in one morning and being greeted with the word "Tibetan" about 6 inches from my face with no preliminaries and no further utterances. This was after the day she asked me if I'd ever read The Little Prince when I asked her for the broom.
Today I cleaned 12 cages, filled the food jugs, swept the floor. Entertained the kittens (Holly and Freddy - now we have a feline Holly and a human Holly so we can be confused), petted Jaguar, took the trash out, and hightailed it outta there to my usual Starbucks.
I went to the Bruegger's next to Starbucks for a bagel and found Tom there reading the Herald. He joined me at Starbucks and just as I ordered my coffee, Julie joined us with a book of Emerson's essays she'd gotten on interlibrary loan and Internet for Dummies. I gave her a 10 minute basic tutorial on buzzwords and basic html for a job interview and showed them my sumo pictures. They're both sumo fans since they lived in Japan.
After my coffee, bagel, and Unitarians, I raced over to West Parish Cemetery to walk with Joan and Priscilla. I saw a great blue heron in the cemetery pond. I worked up quite a sweat going up and down those hills and turned into a couch potato when I got home. Of course, Wilbur likes it when I turn into a mass of exhausted flesh the better for him to sit on and get attention.