Who needed sleep tonight, anyway?

Outside on our porch is a small Glad(TM) lidded semi-disposable plastic food container. On top of that is the thingy Andy uses to hold charcoal for the grill until it's warmed up. Inside of that is a large, heavy, ceramic mug.

Inside of the container is a large (maybe half an inch) spider. It is shiny black in color, and on its stomach are what may be two or three red stripes, or what may be an hourglass. The spider was in our downstairs powder room. I want it identified, and I'm going to discuss the policy on exterminators (specifically, is there one) with Toby tomorrow.

At least if the spider escapes it's outside, and no longer where a curious kitty might find it and perhaps try to play with it. Or where an unsuspecting bleary-eyed person might accidentally step on or near it.

@name me=Dory

So, we were supposed to see Finding Nemo the day we got it; on Monday. We finally watched it tonight. I found myself identifying with the little blue tang with no short-term memory. Imagine that. Now, what was I saying?

I stayed up very late last night researching black widows, since my black spidey didn't have the very obvious hourglass seen in the most common pictures. I did finally find some with patterns matching the one on her stomach, so we had a widow. Because I stayed up way too late I also slept way too late. By the time I got up my wonderful husband had gone over and talked to the apartment folks. Though they've had black widow sightings in garages, this is the first (reported) instance of the spiders being found inside a house. They'll be sending over exterminators on Wednesday.

This may be the first time I've ever said this, but it was a very bad day at Kitty City. Not heart-rending like when we found out Mau Mau and Susan were gone, but very tense and hissy. All of the familiar cats except Blackberry, Lara, Shadow, Spooky, and Tiger were gone. There were a bunch of new cats, all adults, and none of them were very happy. I was scratched several times and had to kick one off of the bench I sit on when he started harassing Blackberry. The music of the night was hissing and growling. One cat never came out of her carrier and hissed any time she saw movement; another didn't come out of her carrier but was happy to be petted.

I eventually discovered that at least two had been fighting -- Bosco (the one I had to kick off the bench) had a claw slash on his nose, which may have explained his bad mood. Spooky had several slashes on his nose, though he was as affectionate as ever. If I haven't mentioned him before, he's an Oreo kitty who begans meowing loudly, as if mortally wounded, if a person stops petting him.

I managed to surprise Andy partially today. I'd brought home ice cream and snuck it into the freezer yesterday, and I'd bought caramels in an after-Halloween candy sale. He heard me peeling and dropping the caramels in to be double boiled/melted and guessed what I was up to, but the ice cream was still a surprise. I had my small piece of pie sans a la mode and sans caramel, and it was still yummy.