Charley Girl in her favorite spot by the woodstove | Jane Boursaw Photo
Charley Girl in her favorite spot by the woodstove | Jane Boursaw Photo
Feel free to share this post...

To view or leave comments on this story, click HERE.

(The continuing adventures of Charley, the little black cat that Tim sent me the day after he passed. Read all about her shenanigans here. -jb)

Where does the time go?! If my calculations are correct, the last Jane & Charley story I posted was on June 6, 2024. This will not stand!

Old Mission Gazette is Reader Supported.
Click Here to Keep the Gazette Going.

The number one question I get from OMPers when I’m out and about is: How’s Charley doing? What’s happening with our little black cat? We need more Charley stories! And I agree. We do need more Charley stories, so I will do better at posting about her regularly.

I feel like last year I just got caught up in a bunch of things that got me off-track, story-wise. Election stories and op-eds monopolized my time, starting in July with candidate questionnaires and carrying through the general election and results in November.

Plus, anyone who owns a home knows how time-consuming it is, especially when you’ve lost your partner and you’re having to do a lot of it yourself. I’m slowly catching up with maintenance stuff, starting with a long-overdue project of re-staining the exterior logs. Tim and I built this house ourselves 35 years ago, and log homes require lots of upkeep over the years. Nothing has really been done to ours, partly because we spent much of that time trying to keep Tim alive.

I’ll write more about the house-staining project separately, because it’s a lot. The Reader’s Digest version is that in October and November, I finally got two coats of stain on the most damaged wall, but still need to repair some chinking on that side, which I’ll do in the Spring. Then I’ll continue around to the other walls throughout the summer.

The good thing is I kind of know what I’m doing now. There’s about a dozen steps to the whole process, involving multiple products, some of which are SUPER-pricey! But my timing was really OFF last year, so by the time I figured out what I was doing, I was racing the weather in November to get that one wall of bare wood covered before snow flew. I laugh and laugh about the fact that I thought it was a job that could be done in a few weeks. No, Jane. No.

In the meantime, Charley, the cat that Tim sent me the day after he passed in 2022, continues to be a source of comfort, joy and entertainment. She’s parked by the woodstove most of the day, and spends most of the night curled up next to me. Now that my hair is long enough to put in a pony-tail, her new thing is playing with my hair-ties like they’re the greatest thing ever invented. We find them all over the house.

Charley Girl in her favorite spot by the woodstove | Jane Boursaw Photo
Charley Girl in her favorite spot by the woodstove | Jane Boursaw Photo
Charley Girl, staring into my soul | Jane Boursaw Photo
Charley Girl, staring into my soul | Jane Boursaw Photo

I also realized the other day that if I gave her a haircut, she would be all white. Her fur is black on the outside and white on the inside. Of course, I would never do that because for one thing, she’d be mortified, and for another, I love her just the way she is. You can see how white she is under there.

Charley could be a white cat | Jane Boursaw Photo
Charley could be a white cat | Jane Boursaw Photo

One of the things I wanted to write about last year but never got around to was the bat incident. It’s always thrilling when you’re hanging out on the couch watching TV and an animal flies by you. Charley and I were both majorly freaked out. And of course, it happened when my son Will was in Chicago for a few days with his friends, so we were on our own. She retreated to her hammock under my bed, and I stood by the front door, trying unsuccessfully to push it out the door with a tennis racquet whenever it flew by.

I called in a pest control pro to check out the house, who initially thought I might have a whole colony of bats living in the space under the roof. What?!!! But after poking his head through the too-small opening into that area (Who built this house anyway?! We need a better way to get up there!) and taking some pictures with his phone, there did not appear to be any Dr. Phibes-level of bats living up there, thank goodness.

So I decided to try some bat-control ultrasonic plug-in thingies, along with some steel wool to stuff into any holes where they might be getting in. I did some research and landed on these plug-ins. They’re pricey, but after I plugged them in, I didn’t see or hear any bats, so … maybe they worked…?

My pest control guy said to sit outside around dusk and see where the bats fly. I did that, and actually saw bats headed towards the house who then made 90-degree turns and flew off into the woods. That seems like a good sign.

I also bought a box of pest repellent-grade steel wool, but didn’t get around to stuffing it into the holes up there yet. That’s on my project list for this year. John Wunsch, who dealt with bats when they moved into the old Pratt house on Center Road, told me that bats can actually fit through a hole the size of a pencil eraser! So I’ll be steel-wooling the heck out of the roofline. I just need to figure out how to get up there without breaking a hip.

After my attempts to push the bat out the front door failed, he disappeared. Did he fly back out the way he came in? I have no idea. It’s disconcerting. My sister-in-law Sherie came over to help me look for him the next day, but we couldn’t find him. I haven’t seen him since that night. And believe me, I’ve looked everywhere, but oy, there’s lots of clutter in this house where a flying animal could hide.

There’s an opening in one of the rooms upstairs where my stove-pipe goes through the roof, and I plan to install some sort of door there, so that I have access to it but can also close it off (and seal it off to bats and other flying animals). Until I can get to that project, I went to Menard’s, hauled home a giant piece of heat-resistent drywall, cut it to size, lugged it up the stairs, slapped that baby in there and duct-taped around it. No bats getting through there!

No bats getting through there! | Jane Boursaw Photo
No bats getting through there! | Jane Boursaw Photo

I was also going to write about my first-ever deer vs. car incident, but this is getting long, so I’ll save that for next time. It’s quite the story. My trusty Subaru Outback is currently at the collision shop, and the Ford F-150 I bought last summer to haul wood with (262,000 miles!) won’t get up the driveway even with good tires and 4WD. So I’m hoofing it up and down the driveway whenever I have to go anywere.

I need the exercise anyway, and all my annoyances are now measured by “well, I didn’t lose everything in a fire.” So my small problems are just that — small.

Next Time: Deer Tales! I’ll leave you with this…

It's a cat's world | Jane Boursaw Photo
It’s a cat’s world | Jane Boursaw Photo

Also Read…

SUPPORT YOUR INDEPENDENT LOCAL NEWSPAPER: I started Old Mission Gazette in 2015 because I felt a calling to provide the Old Mission Peninsula community with local news. After decades of writing for newspapers and magazines like the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Family Circle and Ladies' Home Journal, I really just wanted to write about my own community where I grew up on a cherry farm and raised my own family. So I started my own newspaper.

Because Old Mission Gazette is a "Reader Supported Newspaper" -- meaning it exists because of your financial support -- I hope you'll consider tossing a few bucks our way if I mention your event, your business, your organization or your news item, or if you simply love reading about what's happening on the OMP. In a time when local news is becoming a thing of the past, supporting an independent community newspaper is more important now than ever. Thank you so much for your support! -Jane Boursaw, Editor/Publisher, Old Mission Gazette

To keep the Gazette going, click here to make a donation.

To view or leave comments on this story, click HERE.

Bay View Insurance of Traverse City Michigan

5 COMMENTS

  1. We had a weird bat encounter when putting up a wreath by our door before Christmas, it was sleeping above our door on the frame and scared me to death when I needed to put the extension cord on the frame! I took a broom and tried to sweep him/her off but it clung for dear life and as I tried harder it raised its head, showed its teeth and HISSED at me, LOUDLY! Yikes, I didn’t know they could hiss! I eventually dislodged it and sent it on its way, however reluctant it was! (Shudder)

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.