Wrong Kind of Roasting Due

[rejectomorph]

The small crickets are loud tonight, which makes me grateful that none are very near my house. I hear them across the street and over the back fence, as well as up and down the block, but hear none in my yard or next door on either side. I wonder if it's possible that my feral cats have caught and eaten all the nearby crickets? If so, they have certainly earned their keep for the year. The small crickets make one of the most annoying sounds I must endure here.

The feral cats already prevent blue jays from building nests nearby, relieving me of another annoying noise (the baby blue jay is one of the loudest of birds, and screeches from morning to night except when its parents are stuffing its beak, and they are very fast eaters.) They also kept my yard fairly free of gophers and moles, back before the drought, when the soil was damp enough to support such creatures. Needless to say I like the feral cats very much.

Today the reheating began, and it will continue to be hot for at least the next ten days. Worse, the nights will be getting warmer again too, though so far no nocturnal highs above 70 degrees are predicted. Still even at that, I'm apt to be forced to have recourse to the air conditioner again this week and perhaps next week as well. I had hoped I was done with it for the year. It's another hole in the budget, which has already taken an enormous hit from the heat as well as from the large increase in the price of fire insurance (another consequence of the drought, most likely.)

I'm currently about three hundred dollars behind where I ought to be by now in saving for this year's property taxes. It's unlikely that I'll be able to save an extra $75 a month for the next four months, as there's very little left in my budget to cut, so I'll probably end up waiting until the last possible date to send the second installment of the taxes in, which will be at the end of February. That means I'll be two months late starting to save for next year's fire insurance and taxes, so I'll essentially just be kicking the can into 2016.

The good news is that the financial bomb in the can probably won't blow up until next July. With any luck I'll then be able to get the feral cats (who I will no longer be able to afford to buy cat food for) to then kill and eat me, and thus I'll beat the insurance company. It will be such a relief not to have to hear those damned little crickets at all next year!

Comments

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

Looks like the freeloading cats could chip in and pay your insurance. Goldbrickers. Well, as you say, at least they keep down the pests. (Blue jays are pretty, but they really are a noisy nuisance.)

[rejectomorph]

I tried to get credit cards for the cats, but it turned out none of them had bank accounts, so they were rejected.

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

Bummer. Does Portia? ;)

[rejectomorph]

Portia is very secretive. If she has a bank account it's probably in the Cayman Islands, but I'm sure she won't tell me. I know nothing about her past— not even how old she is. As she was already fully grown when she turned up here, and is so reluctant to share information, I've always had a suspicion she might be in the witness protection program.

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

Haha! I bet you're right. :D