Things that go growl (and squeak) in the night

We already knew one of our cats was a mouser and when he caught a mouse in our home a year ago June, we were grateful for it. But something I haven't blogged about are all the mice he's caught since then...

Since this past spring, it's been the same routine, about once every 6-8 weeks: we wake up in the the dark - usually between 3 and 4am, but once as late as 5:55 - to the sound of growling on the little white rug beside the bed. Growling from our kitty only means one thing around here - mouse! And he'll keep sitting there, growling, until we acknowledge him. He wants us to know how awesome he is.

Light goes on, and indeed, kitty has a mouse in his mouth. If we make a move for it, he goes downstairs where we follow. Then try as we can to take it away from him, he manages to gobble it up. He's getting better at it. He used to swallow it whole, which always makes us worry he's going to choke. But lately he's learned to gnaw them in half first (natural toothbrush!). Once night, he presented us with a live mouse, so we were awoken by "grrrrrrrrrrrr.....SQUEAK SQUEAK......grrrrrrrrr.....SQUEAK." Then, after following him downstairs, we watched him finish the poor little critter off.

We're glad that, like most cats, he seems to want to show off his prize. It lets us know that we have mice. Because we wouldn't know any other way - we haven't seen or heard any sign of them.

But that's the problem, and the reason for this post. One mouse every month or two didn't seem so bad. Even though we didn't seem to have this issue until about 6 months ago, having an occasional tiny gray mouse - when we live in a suburb with a yard and trees and other outdoor critters - seemed like part of the package, along with spider crickets, spiders, moths, stink bugs, etc. But now, maybe because it's starting to get cold out, the frequency has dramatically increased. In fact, this week he caught a mouse on Wednesday and one last night. On Wednesday he was obliging enough to give D time to get a photo:

Do you think we need to call in professional help? Is this something exterminators would handle? Or do we need some kind of general contractor who would help us seal off our home? Because we don't really need help with the former. But since we aren't seeing signs of mice (until they're in this vicious beast's mouth), we have no idea where they're getting in, and they're so tiny the possibilities seem endless. 

We have to do something, don't we? Or do we just praise and reward our cat (who is probably having the best time EVER!) and let him continue to do all the work?

Haunted

Good title for a post around Halloween, right? Well for a few weeks we really were starting to think we had ghosts in our house. Earlier this month during the evening, we heard a loud, short burst of bass. Like a loud, vibration. It lasted for about 3 or 4 seconds and went away. Throughout the evening, we heard it a few more times - each time we would run around the house trying to figure out where the sound originated. At one point, we thought it was coming from our AC unit outside the dining room window. By standing near an AC vent, we realized that the short bursts of sound (varying from about 3 to 10 seconds) were accompanied by air coming through the ventilation. But the AC unit outside wasn't the source. At about the time we figured this out, the sounds stopped completely.

The thermostat was set to run the AC if the house got above 80, but the temperature inside was only about 75, so the AC shouldn't have been clicking on at all. But just to be safe, we turned the thermostat to "off."

Then late one night a few days later, I woke up to the loud, vibrationy whoosh sound again. This time from our bedroom, it sounded a lot louder than downstairs in the dining room. We realized it might be the blower, which lives in the attic eaves behind our bedroom. The sound haunted us a few more times that night, even though the thermostat was off. D crawled back to the blower and found a physical switch to kill the power - it completely turned the thermostat off and also the blower itself. Finally, no more noise.

I guess if there were an ideal time for a part of an AC system to break, October would qualify.

We called our heating guy (the same company who came half a dozen times a year ago to fix our heating problems). They came out a few days ago to diagnose the situation and found a fried relay in our circuit board. Of course they didn't have the part they needed, so they promised to order it and come back later. Fortunately, "later" turned out to be a few hours after their first visit - they were able to find the part they needed locally. $300 later, we have exorcised the ghosts from our AC system - it is on and behaving. We also got to keep the fried circuit board to take pictures because, you know, that's what we do here on Brave New Home:

More nursery details

A few more additions have added up to the nursery being almost finished, so after that short hiatus from nursery updates, here goes:

First, we needed a wardrobe, since we didn't have a closet in the room. We yet again turned to Ikea, this time to their Stuva series of children's furniture. We liked the silhouette of one of the floor models that created a step effect. So we knew what we wanted our base unit to look like:

The rest became a little more tricky and we relied on the detailed product list plus a few drawings of our own - this is what we finally decided on, after trying a few different combinations of drawers and closets (we realized quickly that drawers on the top left would be too high to be usable, for example):

Many many boxes later (each drawer is sold separately from each drawer door, each set of doors is separate, etc.) here's what it looks like:

(If you look really closely just to the right of the door, you can see we also painted and installed a cover for the electrical box.) So far, we have a few poles installed to hang clothes on, but we've avoided putting too much inside in terms of spacers and organizers until we see what we need.

Next update - the seating area. It just so happened that my parents have been holding onto a chair that they bought for me back when I was the one who needed a nursery:

I have no idea why I am wearing tiny baby bell bottoms...

We're not a fan of super dark stains on wood furniture, so my parents stripped it and sanded it down:

It's still pretty dark, but a little less glossy and fake looking. Any of the remaining color comes from the wood itself and from absorbing all that stain over decades. A few coats of satin Minwax polycrylic later, and it looks fresh and new, just awaiting a few cushions:

A few other updates to note in this picture - we spray painted the built-in wood shelves blue (and by "we" I mean D, since spray painting is so full of fumes and chemicals), bought a play rug to keep the chair from scratching the floor (thanks for the recommendation, ten), and also constructed the leaf canopy that I have literally been pining for since way before we were expecting a baby.

Speaking of rugs, one last update. Special thanks to kaitl365 for pointing out a few good 8x8 candidates on Overstock. I always hesitate to trust their quality, but the reviews for this particular rug were excellent and the colors worked perfectly, so we took a chance:

Love it! (As do the kitties!) Of course now that we have it on the ground, I see that I think we could have managed to squeeze in 2 more feet comfortably and gone with 8x10. Oh well, this works great and was way cheaper than our other choices. Now we just need to get a rug pad (the one we like on Amazon provides cushion but no non-skid, so we can't decide if we should get it and layer it with a rubbery pad or find an all-in-one - we'd like one a little more padded than the super-cheap ones we usually get just to hold our rugs in place).

We've been busy, haven't we?!