So stinkin' cute

This is Dora, who will curl herself up in any box, any garbage can lid, any anything as long as she can squeeze herself into it. She likes nothing better than a blankie cave, or tunneling under the rug, or squishing herself into a paper bag, as long as it's small and dark.

Yes, I'm going to be the freaky cat lady today.

This little girl is also a squirrel. I've seen her climb trees faster than the resident squirrels, and race across branches that by gravitational law and modern science, she has no business being able to traverse. From the smallest little twigs to the roof, across several other trees, and back down as if it's just a plain old sidewalk. She amazes me every day.

And today, she has amazed us with her immense outbreak of fleas. In the last 24 hours the entire house has erupted with the little buggers, and I'm guessing - just a stretch - that it's the cats. Who have just started scratching too. I think it was only a week or two ago that I was thinking to myself, "what luck! how did we escape the fleas this year?" Um, no.

So there have been long hours vacuuming everything again, washing every blanket, sheet and fabric square within these four walls. A run to the vet, and home to squirt the beasts with flea drops, and choking back the flea pills too. With any luck, we won't wake up tomorrow morning scratching and moaning like today with little red fires all over our legs. Pets. What fun.

But how can you resist this sweet little face who took her pill with such grace and thought the flea drops were such fun that she drooled happily all over the table and then plopped herself in the potting bench sink to nap it all off? I could not be irritated for more than a single minute with a little pink nose like that poking out from the edge of the dining rug which has just been turned upside down with toppled chairs . . .