Two Cats

I got to run the Bobcat last week at work! We were filling up our porch floor with cement, and Steve had to level out the cement and make it all fancy and flush and whatever else he was doing with that framing square and 2x4. So I got to drive the 'Cat back and forth across the 12 inch deep mud that was Kentucky yellow clay (I probably will never get it out of my clothes, and definitely will never get it out from under my fingernails), filling the bucket up with cement from the truck, then dumping it into the porch frame thing we had made with concrete blocks.

It was so super awesome! First of all, because there is a lot of power in that tiny little machine. When you whirl and push all of the levers and gears to make it turn around, you can feel it pushing against the mud it's stuck in and pushing itself right out. Amazing. Secondly, it was nice to be at work and using my brain. It's hard to keep track of what all the levers do, and remember which way makes the bucket go up and which way makes it go down. (This is really important when hauling cement!). So I made little jingles that I repeated under my breath in the cab: "HEEL-UP TOE-DOWN HEEL-UP TOE-DOWN!" and didn't dump out a single load of cement in the wrong place! There were def some moments where I thought that I might knock Steve out by lifting up the empty bucket too energetically, but we both made it through alive.

The cement dude was super-duper nice, too. Every time I wheeled the Bobcat back to his truck, he grinned and gave me a thumbs up - then halfway through, he got out of his truck and gave us all peppermints! It's silly how a little thing like that can really make the whole day shiny. Above and beyond, Mr. Cement Dude.

But the best part was later, when it was starting to get really chilly, and my fingers were really numb and starting to hurt from the wind, so while he was pouring cement from his pour-spout into my bucket, I blew on my fingers a little and sat on them to try and get the blood flowing. When I came back for more cement, he crawled out of his cab and gave me a pair of black cotton gloves. "I know it can get real cold working that machinery!" he told me. "You go ahead and keep those! And keep up the good work! You're doing great for your first time on it!"

Blessings all around.

But this isn't the end of the story of The Cat. Because this story is not about one cat, but two cats.

Because after meticulously leveling the cement; after scraping all the edges of the porch with strange metal tools; after running trowels around the inside edge to give the cement a nice soft corner; after brushing the top of the cement with a special broom to give it grooves:

we showed up the next morning to a set of dainty pussy cat footprints that stretched from one corner of the porch to the other.

It was hard to stop Steve from heading to the hills to track down and kill the offending critter.