I’ve been formulating a plan.
It’s taken me a few weeks to work out the details, but I’ve finally got it.
It’s going to take cunning, guile, and I’ll be honest. Not all of you are going to make it.
But you’ll be at peace knowing that you made the ultimate sacrifice.
Ready? Did you have your Wheaties?
Excellent!
TO ARMS!
Here’s a review. (You can also read this post to get up to speed.)
I want you all to keep your eyes on the prize! Your noses to the grindstone! Your shoulders to the wheel! Your kidneys to the asphalt! Your hamstrings to the leprechaun!
Got it? Ok. Here is a detailed schematic of target zone.
This detailed map will allow you to penetrate enemy territory quickly and efficiently. Please note, however, that there are far more houses in my neighborhood than are rendered here, that the houses are not actually colored like this, that I don’t think I’ve drawn the streets accurately, and the target is not really conveniently marked with a big, giant graphic X. BUT, my house is yellow. So you’ll all be fine.
Let’s talk weaponry.
After careful planning and reading the “fun for the whole family” blurbs on the back of the “RISK” box, I am fully qualified to establish means of assault and the armaments necessary to achieve our aims. Which are what?? Taking the Pumpkin Tramp down!
Study this diagram carefully.
As I was not able to acquire any offensive weapons that involved plutonium or gun-powder (damned seven-day-waiting periods) we will make do with older, more classic measures. A catapult filled with a secret weapon.
What’s the secret weapon, you ask?
That’s right.
Nimbus.
She is so gonna be toast.
So here’s the plan.
She doesn’t stand a chance.
Once I launch the cat with the…er…catapult the devastation will be the stuff of legends. Her beautifully perfect house with her disgustingly adorable pumpkins is gonna look like THIS:
And I will finally sleep like a baby.
Where does the risk to you come in, you wonder?
It’ll be YOUR job to get Nimbus back into the house.
Good luck with that.
In Pursuit of Martha Points 
Or you could just sneak over one night with a real long thing-a-ma-bob, and knock those suckers off the roof.
Well then what the heck am I supposed to do with this giant catapult???
LOL. I like Matty’s idea. Or…my hubby just found some super cute Halloween pumpkin lights and put them up over our garage. They are so cute.
I love light-up things!
That’s why I have all these plug-in pumpkins inside the house.
Except now I have used up all the outlets and we can’t plug an actual lamps in any more.
So the kids are doing their homework by light-up pumpkin.
Holy crap I just snorted my diet shake up my nose. That is the funniest thing EVER! Love it! Poor kitty… hope she likes flying!
Well, we’ve not actually tried it with a catapult yet, but Himself regularly launches Nimbus down the hallway after he attacks Topaz.
We can say that those are “test flights.”
My dad used to do that, though he’d use the fan as a catapult-type-thing…
Your dad used to catapult cats with a ceiling fan??
I mean, I can’t even imagine getting Nimbus UP that high without the catapult to start with,
He is a BIG cat with fairly strong opinions about things.
Yeah. We had smallish cats and low ceilings in the upstairs. It was fun. That and he loved to put tape on their feet and scare them and make them try to run from him on the wood floor. Aah… good times!
That cat knows what her job is. Really, can you ask for more in a cat?
The only other thing I would ask for from THIS cat would be that he (he’s actually a he) STOP ATTACKING THE OTHER CAT.
I typed that really loudly so that maybe he’ll hear me and get the idea.
Cause actual shouting hasn’t helped yet.
I see only one flaw in your plan. You need more cats. I have a few extra I am willing to donate for the greater good. ~~Marie
I could use my other cat, but she’s made of styrofoam. The weighs nothing. Nimbus is a good 17-18 pounds.
So if your cats have some heft, I’m happy to launch…er…borrow them.
My Primary Cat is a Norwegian Forest Cat and has much mass, but she’s kinda indispensible around here. I have a Bonus Cat I could spare but she’s small. But I can spare my two Maine Coons for this most noble of causes. They have a lot of heft. I’ll stick a stamp on their foreheads and drop ’em in the mail, I’m sure they’ll get there on time.
I’m laughing at “bonus cat.” Was she a gift with purchase? Or a reward for meeting a quota?
But two maine coons, now…I bet they’d be PERFECT.
Do they get riled up? Nimbus is part tasmanian devil. That’s why he’s such a good choice.
He’s a berzerker kitty.
Oh my garage. I’m Dying over here! I love the drawrings. Love. That poor cat. But yes, it’s job is clear. Attack! And gimme the owl.
Once the police investigation clears up we’ll have to see if the looters have left us anything.
I was bummed that you don’t actually live in a neighborhood of huge Skittles. I love those things.
Anyway, I am all for anything that will help you sleep at night, and I say she had it coming.
Thank you for cracking me up this morning…breakfast without you would be quite boring.
i hate boring breakfasts!
Breakfast should be the most entertaining meal of the day. Or, was that the most influential meal of the day?
The most anticipated meal of the day?
I hate when I get these things mixed up.
You know how much I so love the drawings. :)
The catapult design? OMG. I almost inhaled my chai.
I still maintain that you should sneak in the picture of Himself in there….hehehe…
The clog dancing one?
Cause yeah, that’d intimidate the heck out of ANYONE.
Well, a distraction might be necessary. You don’t want the pumpkin tramp to see Nimbus catapulting onto her roof! Perhaps Himself clog dancing would be just the distraction you need to ensure Nimbus’s success (and safe return – we don’t want to get busted, either…Ahem.)
Um, well, no…
NOT being busted for all this is sort of integral to the plan.
That reminds. We should probably take Nimbus’ collar off before we strike.
In case he gets captured, it’s probably not good tactics to have your phone-number on the weapon.
Is her house brick? If it is you are IN LUCK. Apparently a wonderful way to be semi-destructive when the evil tramp whore object of your loathing lives in a brick house is to take canned biscuits and fling them at the brick. Apparently they will stick for-evah. I should send that tip in to Martha.
Seriously???
I had no idea!
And no…all the houses in our neighborhood are wood siding.
Which can effectively be cleaned with soap and water.
Phooey.
I’m sitting watching swimming lessons trying to look like a *normal* mother. You are not helping. I’m falling out of the chair and snorting with laughter.
But I’m in. Nimbus- no cat left behind. I’m there for you.
What? Why on earth would you want to be normal?
No!
Glad i could be of service here.
We can’t have any normal thinking.
No.
The problem with the catapult design is, if you want it in your yard, it’s going to have to be pretty much the size of your house to have the range to reach her house, given the other houses between you. Would a closer neighbor, perhaps one who has to see those pumpkins across the street every time she looks out a window, allow you to build a catapult in her yard?
Because the only real option I can see, based on the map, is a drive by cat flinging, where one person sits on the roof of the car as flings the cat at the pumpkins as you drive by.
“Drive by cat flinging”? *snort* That’s some funny right there!
That one just about made me lose it myself.
I could survey the neighborhood. That’s possible strategy.
And I’m dying…I mean DYING…over drive-by cat flinging.
And I feel really bad for the person trying to hold onto Nimbus while perched on the roof of a car.
There’s a reason Nimbus is the perfect cat for this job.
Lori Lori Lori… clearly you’ve missed the obvious solution.
Throw cat nip onto her house with the catapult. Then all the neighborhood cats with scurry to destroy her decorations.
Plus, the more cats, the less obvious the blame.
(Obviously the neighborhood dogs will somehow get stuck with it.)
Ohhh…
Ok, you’re on tactics from now on.
DAMN.
I HATE when the brilliant ideas make their way to someone other than me.
Inspired. Truly inspired.
We have two cats in my neighborhood who fight in the middle of the night, right beneath my bedroom window. I would happily deliver the scrappy demons to you to help with your cause. It would be a win/win!
(The drawings just slay me!)
That’s perfect.
I’m not sure that Nimbus needs the help, but you know…he might get distracted.
He’s like that.
In which case back-ups would be prudent.
I think our heroine is smoking heroin. I’m no cat lover, but I’m quite fond of Nimbus so don’t be surprised if you get a call from PETA.
Would it make you feel better if I strapped a wee parachute to him?
I am a cat lover but currently own a schizoid feline w/a nasty oozing abscess that I would sacrifice for this brave and justified cause.
My husband will happily deliver him to you at your convenience. (Just don’t tell my kid!)
Signed, your partner in crime.
As much as I’d love more cat poundage, I think it would be unkind to wrest that cat from your clearly highly attached wee child.
That is my story and I am sticking to it.
Bwaaahahahahaha!
Question? Are you open to renting said catapult out after Halloween? I may need it for Christmas, and I don’t build stuff.
I see all kinds of fun uses for the catapult!
You could hurl fruit-cakes at annoying neighbors, or take down Santa and keep all the presents for yourselves.
I never really appreciated how flexible the medium is!
Oh my goodness…Christmas! If the neighbor isn’t stopped, can you imagine what kind of cutesy, sickness-inducing decorating she’ll get up to next?
Stop the madness!
Honest to goodness…it’s not as bad at Christmas!
It’s that…they’re pumpkins!! On the roof! How friggin’ adorable is that?
Grrrrr….
Lol, Nimbus TOTALLY looks up to the task!!
He is a crazy little kitty.
Except he’s not little.
But totally crazy.
And very devoted. He would totally defend my honor this way.
If I can just get him OFF MY LAP.
I’ve got a guy named Wile E. Coyote that you should use for this endeavor. He never messes these things up.
I’ve seen his work.
He’s got a flair for destruction, that coyote.
I respect that in a canine.
I don’t know if I would trust anyone named Wile E. Coyote. He always gets blown up himself and the object of his desire always gets away free and then beeps at Wile to add insult to injury.
The catapult might work but its evidence that you were the cat-apulting marauder. You don’t want to get caught do you? Halloween only comes around once a year. Thank you God.
Thanks to all for the morning laugh. Glad I already finished my coffee so it didn’t go up my nose.
No, I totally don’t want to get caught.
But I’m thinking i can camouflage the catapult as a hydrangea bush.
That should work, right?
Sounds like you may have yet another business opportunity here. If this is successful, you can sell your services online. What? Your cat cat-a-pulting services, what did you think I was talking about?
Do you think there’s a market there?
Also, I’m bad with promotion. I’d need the service to really sell itself.
What’s the SEO like on cat catapulting, do you think?
I have a few cats I would be willing to sacrifice to your mission! Two are really fat and will cause substantial damage!
But will they also slash pumpkins to shreds?
Cause I really need the cats to be mission-focused.
Nimbus comes with destruction built-in.
Just ask the leather ottomoan…
Or the hardwood floor…
or the finish on my car….
I can feel your genuine dislike for her house. It must keep you up at night.
And I always love your drawings, and how you can be so official yet so comical all at the same time.
Ummm…maybe that’s the split personality coming out again?
Dear Ms. Chablis,
Mother Hen understands cat-a-log = cat on a log, but cat-a-pult? What’s a pult?
Unless you meant poult, as in poultry, in which case, Mother Hen is your chick!
She will practice her skills on the housecats pronto.
Now where did she put all her bendy things?
Martially yours,
Mother Hen
Nimbus, for all his hyper-active destruction, is mostly afraid of other animals. Except for our small cat.
But that could be compensating.
But I’d love….LOVE …to see what he would do around a chicken.
Try to hide under the couch would be my guess.
So stop by any time.
Mother Hen will check her datebook and get back to you.
So far, though, the cat-a-poult practice hasn’t been going well. The housecats aren’t being terribly supportive of our efforts. Cats are big fans of Halloween, you know. They are staging a cat-cot (as opposed to a boy-cot. Both the housecats are female.)
Maybe MH could practice with a dog?
I’m sure practice with a dog is perfectly acceptable.
Except I didn’t see this till now, so, I’ve sort of missed the cat-flinging.
But Christmas is coming and if she does anything extreme I swear I am going to fling a flaming ball of mince pie.
Oh my, I loved this! Your diagrams were stellar, I can only imagine what shall happen when Nimbus sets sail.
Obviously you’ve put a lot of thought into this. Kudos to you (I mean the chocolate snack bars of course)
Chocolate? For me??
Why, thank you! Don’t mind if I do!
Lol what a well designed attack. You may have missed the fact that your cat will then be under the false impression that flying is a newfound skill and that she is some kind of superhero and demand a cape and cute outfit to match.
Hmmm….well, Nimbus is a “he.” (sort of)
But I still see him demanding costuming.
He’s kind of a diva.
But he’d be so CUTE with a cape!
I think you need to take a picture of her pumpkins so we can see it before your kitty takes ’em down! Then another shot after…to see the damage.
lol…people keep asking for pictures of the house, I’m just thinking that it’s probably a little dicey to take a picture of someone ELSE’s house and post it on the internet.
Cause you know, i want to have a zillion readers some day.
And then her privacy would be totally ruined!
I’m thinking anyone with cutesy pumpkins on her roof WANTS her house pictured on the Internet for all to see.
On message boards and forums probably, huh?
Well, you can blur out the street numbers if it makes you feel better :)
A woman with a plan (and a cat) never fails!
Good luck and may your cat make it home in time for dinner. The drawings are hilarious…it’s all hilarious!
If there is food involved, Nimbus will never, ever, ever be late.
Nope.
Not ever.
Now that MIGHT be the best use of a cat I’ve ever heard! I totally think this will work!
Except I think you might need more than one cat.
I think of the destruction he’ll wreak and I get all gleeful!!
I’m evil.
I know.
But I match the cats.
And I’m such an adorable evil, aren’t I?
Lori, you are out of control with your little electronic drawings – and I dig it. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy a woman with a score to settle. A score of gourds. Count me in! I have the perfect plan for getting Nimbus back. And it involves kidnapping pumpkin lady’s family pet and arranging a trading of hostages.
Ok, that one made me totally laugh…and i was sitting in a waiting room trying to keep some sense of decorum.
Which I don’t really pull off under the best of circumstances ANYWAY.
And…hehehe…”a score of gourds!”
Next time?
Paint-ball guns.
Yes.
Much more effective weapon than a pussy assault.
What?
Are there automatic assault surface to air paintball guns? Cause that might totally work.
And…dear lord…
I am going to get the hiccups.
And my hiccups can be heard for three counties.
It confuses the doppler radar even.
You truly have a hero in Nimbus.
The only one of my 3 large enough for your plan is a large sissy.
Now, on the other hand, I have one that is quite the bitchy kitty and would gladly knock the offending pumpkins off for pure, malicious spite. And the smallest would knock them off for pure malicious fun.
So, if Nimbus would like back up? We got him covered.
Excellent!
Nimbus is totally a destructive force to be reckoned with.
But he gets distracted.
Especially if there is food.
So a neighbor opening a can of tuna and we’re sunk.
Do your cats test gravity regularly to see if it still works? Sounds like it. That’s what mine do.
And it drives me bloody nuts!
LOL! Love the flying Nimbus
If Nimbus was flying through the air at me, claws out, yowling his angry yowl, I would SO be in a bomb shelter.
OK, Girly-girl. The neighbors have warned me about you! Bring it, sister…
One can of tuna on the porch and that pussy of a cat won’t make it anywhere NEAR my roof! He’ll spin around in mid air like Superbowl pass to get to the food! HAH
BTW, I prefer “Pumpkin Tart”.
Holy crap! I’ve been discovered!
Ok everyone…we practiced what to do if this happened….
RUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You can run, but you can’t hide! I know where you live!…at least I think I do…that map’s pretty lame.
Yeah, well, you try cartography in Paint.
It’s not as easy at it looks.
So glad that Kris posted this link her comments section! I read your tweets (not in a stalker kind of way, I just follow you and giggle where appropriate) and have read a few posts a while ago…I think I need to be reading more frequently because this post made me laugh hard than I have all week. Thank you!
I’m glad there is giggling!
And laughing.
As long as there is not also pointing.
Cause that’s never good.
Hee!
The breadth of your engineering knowledge astounds. Seriously.
(No, really, seriously. I was an English major.)
I’d like to put my ability to out engineer an English major as an accomplish, seeing as how I was once a creative writing/lit major myself, but my husband is an engineer, and mostly he laughs at me.
Not WITH me…at me.
Like “thing that bendy thing bends over” isn’t totally appropriate technical nomenclature.
Instead of a cat, I have a teenage boy I can loan you. He can be sneaky & destructive at the same time. We can dress him like a cat if it makes you feel better too.
I’m sure Nimbus would feel right at home if he was dressed like a cat.
And it’s Halloween. Who’s going to find it odd?
I love the cat-a-pult idea. They did it on Malcom in the Middle with dirty diapers.
And the cat flinging made me laugh so hard, as well as your catapult camouflage idea.
But I have another idea- dress in black, camo makeup, & those bazooka water guns. You’d have to do it in the middle of the night & sneak from bush to bush (or tree). It sure would be fun.
Grr…missed this comment at first! My apologies.
And could I set the diapers on fire? Cause I like that idea a LOT.
Although, sneaking through the neighborhood while dressed in night-battle dress sounds sorta fun too.
I’m good with the fire part. Flaming flying poopy diapers sounds fun.
Yeah, I liked the dress up in sneaky night gear too. And at Halloween, you can find that black make-up stuff. And black is always very slimming. One should look good when getting caught shooting pumpkins off the roof.
You can probably recruit the neighborhood teens to help too.
I had to get caught up and read the previous posts on Pumpkin Wars. Wow. I love this series. Will you be able to do another one for Christmas?
And what will you use as a catapult then? Will the cat perform multiple times?
BTW..you need to change the title of this blog to In Pursuit of PowerPoints. Because you are using PP to its fullest right here :)
She doesn’t annoy me at much at Christmas, it’s just lights.
I can deal with lights.
It’s the pumpkins ON THE ROOF that get to me.
I mean HONESTLY.
There may also be some jealousy there.
Just a little.
oh good I was going to say I’m all in for this as long as we don’t have to do it again at Christmas…
This is genius. Pure genius. Be sure to video.
I think I’ll station Himself in a pyrocantha bush with a video camera.
Once4 again hysterical! I actually read this yesterday but in the middle got distracted by my husband calling to discuss the ongoing remodeling of our house, seriously doesn’t he know I have blogs to read???
I had a cat to offer, however he passed about this time last year, God rest his soul –all 22 pounds of it.
We now have a half kitty as I call it. He’s all of about 9 pounds, and he thinks he’s a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel (like our other 2 furries). Ever seen a cat get giddy at your return home? Yeah it’s rather weird.
And he does test gravity to see if it still works.
WP stole this comment from me!
Darned WP.
And we have those cats.
Our cats scamper to the doors and bounce when we get home.
WHAT KIND OF CAT DOES THAT?
Yes, they’re highly weird.
But we love them.
Bwah-ha-ha-ha!!! Love it! I’m so in. Now if I can just find my black spying outfit and ski cap…
I’m catching up with all the blogs… OMG, this is too funny. That map of our neighborhood is just hilarious, but the idea of sending Nimbus up the roof of HER is priceless. When are we going?
We may be being done in by the weather.
Nimbus does NOT like water coming onto his head.
What do you mean you don’t know where to get plutonium?
From the LIBYANS. All you need to do is trade them a box of puzzle pieces or something and the plutonium and 1.21 jigowatts of electricity is yours.
Damn…I HATE when I overlook the obvious solutions.
Although it’s possible that there’s a shortage of Libyans around here.
I think one of the neighbors is from Finland. Does that count?
I laughed SO hard I think I peed my pants!! I have visited here long ago… and wonder why in the heck have I not been back?? You are SO stinkin funny… Bless you for making me laugh so hard… Man I love laughing… but not when it leads to wetting my pants. if you will excuse me… =)
Oh dear!
Well, I hope the seeping was kept to an absolute minimum!
Hee!
And I love that I mad you laugh that hard.
this is why i love you.