CATs Living With Autism: Chuck and Dawn Come to Visit

Sunday during my morning ... rest ... in the nursery room, we suddenly heard the elephant humidifier in the bedroom go nuts. The fan went from nearly silent to sounding like it was grinding wheat into flour. Everyone was quite alarmed. My initial solution was to turn it off.

Later that morning I took the humidifier apart and figured out it was the cooling fan. That humidifier's insides are awfully complicated. There's circuit boards and everything. Anyway, the fan was a computer's fan, and my brother does computer work, so I called their house. I was a little confused because when it wasn't attached to the base, the fan didn't make noise. But when it was attached, it made the horrible grinding noise.

It's made that noise before, but turning it off and back on always made the noise go away. This time that didn't help. And while it seemed like the fan was the problem, maybe it was the attachment points? I'm not very good with diagnosing mechanical type issues. Which is why I called them.

My sister-in-law answered. She also does computer work with my brother, so she said it was likely the fan's bearing was wearing out. And that they would be in town later in the day and could drop by and look at it.

Perfect. I'd been trying to figure out a time for them to come visit Colby and Thimble anyway, but between me trying to get sick and the kittens actually managing it, I hadn't found a good time. Sunday afternoon seemed as good as any, and I'd get a solid diagnosis of my humidifier problems and what to do to fix it.

When they showed up, they had a new computer fan and the things to attach the fan in place of the old one. Okay, that was really cool. I'd rather expected to have to order one off the internet and put it together (put the humidifier together with the fan, not that the fan comes disassembled!) myself.

So my brother did that, and the humidifier now works like a charm again. It's a little higher pitched because this fan runs a little stronger than the old one, and it has taken me a while to get used to the sound, but because it's a constant white noise type of sound, it won't take long. I think it's louder but it could just be the higher pitch, as I perceive higher pitched noises as louder than the same decibel-level lower pitch.

And they played with Colby and Thimble. Apricot, of course, disappeared under the couch the minute I turned the house alarm off to let them in the door. He's figured out that if I make the alarm make those noises, it means another human is coming in, and now he won't even stay to see who's coming through the door, just disappears on general principles.

And they played some more with Colby and Thimble. My brother and his wife have so much energy is baffles me. They played with the kittens for more than an hour. The braided rug bed came into it when I mentioned that the kittens like to flip it over on themselves and then play footsie underneath it.

So my brother traps Thimble underneath and was toy-taunting him, trying to get the paws to come out. At one point Colby was reaching underneath from one side and Thimble was reaching out for a toy on the other side, and it looked like long-cat, because their paws are both white. Unfortunately I messed up with the phone and didn't get that picture.

But here are some of the braided rug bed playtime: