What's silver, yellow and runs all over?
Two things - a bucket of yellow Tremclad paint, and a silver tabby kitten. Not bad, in and of themselves, but an awfully messy combination.
How did this happen? Well, it all started innocently enough - as these things tend to. Two people donated dog crates that were slightly rusted. After sitting outside our shop - Small Things: Kitty Boutique and Cat Adoptions - for a few weeks, they got even more rusted.
So I got this great idea - I could scrub the rust off and then they could be used by foster homes, I wasn't sure for what, but it was still a "great idea." Well 90 degrees Fahrenheit and a scrub brush later, I decided there must be a better way.
Off to my local hardware store to learn about rust-covering paint. Not only was there grey paint - the colour of the two dog crates - there were other colours like fire engine red and electric yellow.
Hmm, our store colours are red, yellow, black and white. Not adventurous, but certainly more illustrious than grey.
I bought a bucket of yellow and two spray cans of red. Yay! Only one problem with this plan - I hate painting. I don't even know how to paint - or at least not well. My last excursion into industrial-style painting was when, at three years of age, I decided to help my grandfather paint the household's grey steps brown. Problem was, he has just painted the front steps grey and the brown was for window trims. Thankfully my mother was opposed to spanking children or else I'd have had the paint stick liberally applied to my bottom.
At any rate, the bag of paints sat on a large shelf atop the Small Things kitchenette until today, when I decided to balance on a bar stool to reach for some picture-hanging things. My reach exceeded my grasp and down came the bag of paints - just missing my head and landing on top of the stairs.
It was a cartoon-like scene - yellow paint rolling and sloshing step by step by step until - thud - it hit bottom. NOOOOO! The adult cats - up for adoption at our shop - knew to scatter. No good can come of something that exudes fumes and someone that spews expletives. But Eddie, the silver-tabby kitten, decided to investigate - with paws, face and tail. Sigh! Super what-a-mess. (For context, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe7uKhHj-kk).
I cleaned up as best I could, only to have Eddie knock a red spray-paint can down the stairs - thankfully it didn't explode too. But the evidence was, and is, everywhere - in my hair, on the stairs of course, on my landlord's stuff underneath the stairs, and on Eddy.
Tomorrow (Thursday) is kitten day at the shop. A dozen of kittens will vie with each other to attract the wandering eyes of a would-be owner. Eddy is not a likely candidate.
He is older than the others. He is not well co-ordinated - especially after inhaling a can of paint fumes. He is not that interested in people - particularly now that he can see pink elephants, I'm sure.
Plus he's kind of plain.
Or he was. He now has electric yellow highlights and a bit of a woozy in his walk.
Just call him Mellow-Yellow.
Jan Carrie Steven is a volunteer with Cat Adoption Trust Sudbury (CATS) and the co-ordinator of Small Things: Kitty Boutique and Cat Adoptions. For more information, go to www.smallthings.ca.
- Posted by Jenny Jelen
