Help with House Projects

As I mentioned, Kevin has been tackling a few house projects. I guess our pets decided that since I've been a slacker wife, they would fill in and lend Kevin a helping paw. Squirt was the first big helper on Saturday. Kevin took off a set of double doors which seperated our entryway and kitchen since we decided they didn't have much of a purpose. He then patched up the screw holes with wood putty. Well, Squirt decided the patch job just wasn't smooth enough, so she was kind enough to lick it in attempt to smooth it out. After discovering that she'd licked a decent chunk of putty off the wall, I sent Kevin to look for the bottle & ingredients. Reading the warnings for human ingestion, we realized it was probably pretty bad news for dogs as well. Since I had caught her in the act, we decided to try a home remedy some friends had told me about, which causes dogs to puke. 15 minutes and a few teaspoons of hydrogen peroxide later, poor Squirt was in a pretty sad state. After she was done (we kept saying.."Is she done yet?...oh, guess not..."), we had full confidence that she puked up every last bit of the putty, and she bounced back to her perky self within 30 minutes or so. It was definitely a scare we'll never forget, we definitely have to be more careful in the future about restricting access to our projects!

Our second helper this weekend was Hobbes. About 1 1/2 years ago, we had our house re-ducted, which resulted in our return vent being sized up and relocated, leaving a hole in our wall from the old vent. It had been covered by cardboard (and blocked by the aforementioned door), but Kevin set about patching it up permanently with a chunk of drywall. He got the drywall all screwed in and sat down with me to relax for a bit, but we kept hearing weird banging sounds. It's not unusual for the cats to be running around wrestling upstairs and make weird noises, but Cali was sitting on the couch w/ us, so we couldn't figure out what Hobbes could be doing by himself. Finally, Kevin deduced that poor Hobbes had filled the role of "Inspector Kitty" and had hopped through the hole in the wall while Kevin wasn't watching! Kevin went to the hole and said "Mr Hobbes! Hey Buddy!" and sure enough, poor Hobbes let out a big "MEOW!" in return. Luckily he wasn't trapped in there for more than 5 or so minutes and he didn't look too traumatized. We now realize we need to take pet inventory before sealing anything up!