So I've been so down about the holiday season I've neglected to look for the subtle hints that Christmas is all around. I've decided that I'm living in The Nutcracker….well, at least the part with the army of rats. When I got back to Masha I was welcomed by a trashed kitchen. They ate through my plastic containers filled with sugar, honey and flour. They didn't eat the flour but it appeared that they rolled around in it than ran all over the place. Every surface was coated with white powder. My Ramen noodles were all eaten and everything not locked up had little nibbles taken out of it. I was kind of amused, I expected something to have happened while I was away. So I laughed it off and cleaned up everything, washed every dish, pot and pan, washed the floors and went shopping.
The next day every vegetable was eaten and things were thrown all over the place. Not funny anymore. Every morning I woke up to a mess and a few missing items. A few days ago I found the nest, and in it was 6 sponges, 2 dish rags, 2 pot holders a water bottle, my salt shaker, the lid to my oil and mounds of rat droppings. Disgusting. My landlady found a bunch of kittens and gave them to my sitemate and I. They lasted two days before mama cat found them and stole them back. Good thing, too. They were too young to be away from their mother and smaller than my rats. Pretty useless. So a few days later a friend of mine brings over her cat to help us out. This cat (we've named Pooh…not after the lovable character of our youth, but after her horrible flatulence) has been both a blessing and a curse. She has not caught a rat yet, but she cries SO MUCH and SO LOUDLY that the rats are afraid to come near. So we don't have rats, but now we have this crazy, obnoxious cat. She does have her moments that she is sweet and will sleep on our laps, but other times she is so animalistic and wild it's a bit scary. We feed her bull lungs and leftover food. When we come back from the butcher with the bull lung she turns into a wild animal. One she leapt a few feet in the air, grabbed onto the bag and hung onto it until it tore and the meat was free. She drives us and our neighbors insane, but it's nice to have my kitchen back and be able to keep food for more than a day. It's like having to choose the lesser of two evils. I hate how it always has to be one or the other, and things can't ever be perfect, not even for a little while.
