Cat + Paint = Blog

I had finished priming all the walls upstairs except for the door to the cat room. The door needed to be open while I painted, and Ray needed to be gone for that to happen.

So first thing this morning, I dropped Ray at school, came home, assembled my painting paraphernalia, and got ready to prime the door to the cat room. Hugo was nervously pacing about so I walked with him downstairs and opened his cat door to the outside so that he could enjoy some sunshine. I returned to my job upstairs.

Since everything else was already primed, I was using a small paint tray with just enough paint to prime the door and frame. I loaded up the paint pad and made quick work of the door, then added a bit more paint to the tray to finish up the frame. I was stashing the bucket of paint out of the way when I saw Hugo out of the corner of my eye. I watched, stunned, as he nervously walked up to the open door, right through the paint tray, and across the area rug. As he reached the hardwood floor he realized that there was something seriously amiss with one of his paws so he stopped, lifted the one that had the most paint on it, and flicked it. Paint scattered

At this point I tried to intervene.

"Hugo," I cooed to my scaredy cat, "Come here, Hugo."

Hugo, recognizing the voice I use to try to lure him into his cat carrier for a trip to the vet, made a dash around the bed and took a dive under it. Because he is a fatty, he scooted under the bed on his belly, wiping up paint-prints with his belly-fur as he went.

I decided, at this point, that maybe I should just do damage control. Using a wet rag, I de-painted the rug, then scrubbed at the footprints on the hardwood. Hugo, feeling slightly more secure at this juncture, came out from under the bed and jumped up on top of it. He walked across the sheet covering the bed, then turned, lifted his painty paw, and glared at me (like it was my fault). I calmly walked over, pinned him down, dragged him to me, and spent 20 minutes or so trying to get all the white paint off of the two-toned cat. As soon as he was once again wholly black, I returned to de-painting the rest of the room.

Through this whole process, all I could think was that I had TWO dogs here the other day, one of them blind and one of them with a frilly skirt and I managed to prime an ENTIRE upstairs. The only collateral damage through that event was a spot of paint on Ray's left eyebrow. And here I was priming one little door and I had to spend an hour on damage control because of a cat.