Sunday evening, I walked the 3/4 mile or so trip to the grocery store to do some shopping. Food for Christmas for some years now has been a large block (5 or 6 pounds) of frozen lasagne, salad, and garlic bread. It involves little work, and is definitely "treat" food for me, plus there's leftovers for days. (As an aside, I had Stouffer's lasagne Italiano; it was superb!) Also intended to get fruit, some English muffins, and so on, but the reason I had to go then was that Bif was out of food, and down to the little fragments that he prefers to not eat. He will if he's hungry enough, but I don't like to put him in that position. So waiting until light in the morning wasn't really an option. I also meant to get him a catnip toy, but forgot- I'll pick one up in pre-New Year shopping.
I think many of the items I ended up getting were overstocks, and my final bill was surprisingly low to me. But one that was obviously normally priced was the 7 pound bag of cat food for $5.99. Now that sort of surprised me. I've been buying cat food at local convenience stores since last Christmas, and have become accustomed to paying about $3.00/lb. So, um, wow. A mile and a half round trip, carrying substantial weight on the return half, is truly taxing to me, and I dislike it. But this was sort of a wake-up pointing out just how much money I'm wasting in avoiding that chore.
So I get the heavy stuff into my pack, a couple bags of lighter stuff in my left hand, and seven pounds of cat food in my right hand, I set out into the light drizzle, light fog, and complete darkness for the trudge home.
About a block and a half from the store, I was suddenly confronted by a construction project. I couldn't see where it ended, but there was chain link fence extending to the edge of the street. Hoping that it was only a lot or two, rather than cross over to the sidewalk, I just followed the edge of the pavement- there was basically no traffic.
It extended two blocks.
I was nearly to the end when I tripped over one of the perpendicular supports at the base of the fence, and went down, hard, face-first, into the pavement.
I was fine. I managed to toss everything and catch most of the impact with my hands. Other than a bunch of grit on my face, a bit of a tender spot on the bridge of my nose where my glasses got rammed into it, and minor road rash on my left palm, no harm done. The light stuff- mostly bread, a couple cans and plastic bottles, was fine. But...
The bottom of the cat food bag had burst completely open. There wasn't much actually spilled, but from side to side, the bottom was completely open. Brushing the crap off my face, and checking around for wounds I couldn't feel (there weren't any), I pondered the situation. Several options occurred to me, then I realized I could simply carry the bag top-down, holding the burst end closed in my hand. Essentially the same configuration I had been in before my belly flop into the street.
The rest of the walk home- better than 3/4 of the last leg- was uneventful.
So when I got home and through the door, I immediately set down the grocery bags, and made a bee-line for the kitchen to get the cat food stowed in a place where it wouldn't spill.
Right as the top-now-bottom was about to reach the counter, it gave out.
Cat food. Everywhere. Floor. Garbage. Counter. Food Bowl. Water bowl. Miscellaneous dishes and a box.
On the positive side, perhaps only a third of the bag spilled before I had it shoved into a position where no more would spill. On the negative side, you have no idea how much 2 pounds of cat food actually *is* until you've strewn it all around the kitchen.
Bif was in heaven. His tail was flagging like a bandleader as he ran from pocket to pocket, eating one or two kibbles from each. I cleaned up the worst on the floor, and scooped much of it into either his bowl or onto the bag- there is no "into" with respect to that bag anymore- but he was having so much fun, I just felt it would be kind of grinchy to do a full-fledged cleanup just then.
As of last night, I'm still hearing crunching sounds from the oddest places, as Bif finds a kibble here, a kibble there. And sometime in the next few days, I'll actually make a cleanup call on aisle one. But for the time being, this is officially Bif's BEST CHRISTMAS EVAR! The fact I forgot to get him a toy is forgiven.
I just hope he's not going to expect this every year.
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