The week in review

A review of the week in list form:

1. We had our roof shingles replaced. Relatively soon after the snow melted, we noticed that when it rained or was particularly windy little tiny bits of our roof would wind up on the ground. I had someone come take a look at it, and he confirmed that our shingles were disintegrating. He indicated that it didn't look like it had gotten so bad yet, and since we hadn't noticed any leaking, we had probably caught it at just the right moment. It turns out that our roof is a very simple one, and made the job easy (and as inexpensive as a job like that can be). On Wednesday morning the roofers showed up just before I went to work, and we had a new roof before we got home. Fortunately, they only had to replace 8 ft.² of the plywood underneath the shingles, so that also made it easier, faster, and less expensive. Now we have a ten year guarantee for the workmanship, and a limited lifetime guarantee for the shingles, so any problem we have for a long time will either be covered by the warranty or by our insurance (lots of people here end up having to make claims due to high winds and/or hail, but if you can't prove that the roof was in good shape prior to the severe weather, the insurance can deny the claim). It feels good to know that the literal roof over our heads is strong and secure.

2. We made reservations for camping two more times before the end of summer. Toward the end of August, we will be going up to Prince Albert National Park, which is about a five hour drive north of here. Compared to where we have lived before, Regina feels pretty far north, and compared to Regina, Prince Albert National Park seems pretty far north. And although it is located in the boreal forest (a.k.a taiga which, you may recall learning in school, is a northern biome out-northed only by the tundra), it is only on the southern end of the boreal forest and less than halfway up Saskatchewan. For now, I see no need to explore the northern half of the province :-)

The other camping trip we have planned is for next weekend, which was a bit of a last-minute decision, and there were almost no campsites left anywhere within a three-hour drive of here. In fact, it looks as though we may have gotten the very last campsite in that radius. We're going to Crooked Lake Provincial Park, and we know very little about the park, and even less about why this particular campsite was still available when nearly every single other one in the entire province was taken. It may be a terrible campsite, and looks as though it might be really near the highway, but anyway it will still be fun to go camping.

3. Maddy is on a murderous rampage. While we were away in June, she killed several mice. Last summer, she killed a few birds. We have never been happy about this, but tolerate it to a certain extent because after all, she is a cat. It was rare that she would bring in a dead animal in Eugene or Seattle (although sometimes there would be a streak), but here it is much more frequent, and while most people just don't let their cats outside here, since she had already been an indoor-outdoor cat for nine years before we moved here it would be nearly impossible to force her to stay inside now.

Well. We have never seen anything like this weekend, and are no longer sure what to do. Yesterday, she brought in three birds. The first one she ate the body, but left the wings and head, the second she didn't eat much of, and the third she ate all but three feathers (we know because she brought it into a location where we could watch her eat it, though we chose not to). Mid-afternoon, after the third bird, we locked her in for the rest of the night. Today, she brought in a mouse. Jeff is so tired of cleaning up dead animals that he is currently watching a movie in the basement with the dead mouse still down there – he says he'll clean it up before we go to bed.

Maddy seems to be doing nothing but hunting. Last summer we tried making her wear a cat bib (it is worth checking out the link) to try to stop her from killing birds, but she figured out how to take it off and kept losing both it and her collar. I do wish there was some way to stop her murderous tendencies, but, she is a cat. Any suggestions would be appreciated!