mmm, cats

So - you know how, for the past few months that we've had our cats, they have respected the symbolic barrier of the baby gate, although they have the physical capability to jump over it?

That time has passed.

Pretzel, the adventurous one, has started leaping over it.

So, visitors to our house - please, please, do not open more than one door at a time. If the outside door is open, the inside door should be closed, and vice versa. Pretzel does not like being outside. He finds it terrifying. But if both doors are open and he gets freaked out he may run in that direction by accident. We do not want this. We do not want to have to chase him around the neighborhood - he is FAST.

Please also be VERY careful with the kitchen door leading to the basement. It should never be left open. In some ways, him getting down there would be even worse than getting outside, because the space is very confined and he could get stuck.

We may put up a door, we may just accept his becoming a free-roaming kitty. Not sure yet. For now, if you see him outside of the second floor, please feel free to let us know, or bring him back inside his defined territory.

Thanks.

Edit: Oh, right, our cats are energy sensitive! I completely forgot! We may have a solution to this after all.
I just put up an energy barrier where the door is. Pretzel looked at it, looked at me, and then wandered off. After he had been staring at the door for hours. Okay then.

[books] Blood Rites and Pagan Homeschooling

Another entry in the "summer fun" category is Blood Rites by Jim Butcher. This is book six in the Dresden Files. I love these books. I was describing them to an_gadhar as "like really funny film noire, with demons." They aren't getting crappy over time, either, which I really appreciate. Also, there's the understanding that the line between the good guys and the bad guys is not always entirely clear. And the past few have included kinky sex. We like kinky sex. Four stars.
There are some plot inconsistencies from book to book, but that's to be expected of cheap genre fiction. Those issues are really for the editors to fix, not the authors, imo.

And in the "books to look into" category, we have Pagan Homeschooling by Kirsten Madden. I wanted to find out if this book was good before I invested in it. So I got it through ILL and leafed through it. The answer is "Heck yes." This is a surprisingly comprehensive resource for the length of the book. It includes bibliographies with every chapter as well as actual excercises you can do with your actual children. Then there's a lot of encouragement that you can do this and make it work, even if you don't have tons of money or fancy textbooks. Highly recommended, and I'll definitely be buying it for myself. Five stars.