Happy Independence Day, my fellow Americans!

This is an awful day for pet owners, because the fireworks will be traumatizing cats, dogs, and the rest all night. I think that they've been banned here this year because they don't want another fire raging in the heat we've got going on, but that never stops everybody. There's always people who will ignore it all and fire them off anyway...

When I bought my home, the previous tenant left a Speed Queen industrial washer and dryer. I was going to replace them with something cool and modern, but a friend told me I would be a fool to throw out tough, reliable, industrial models for new tech garbage where the electronics are always failing and they break at the drop of a hat. And boy am I glad that I heeded my friend's advice. Those old models just keep going no matter what I throw at them. Their capacity is huge. Clothes get really clean (the mounds of cat hair are no problem). And they are truly built like a tank.

Because I can wash such huge loads of clothing at a time, I often go weeks without washing to save money. And that was the case when I finally washed this past week. I had baskets of clothes sitting out to take up to my room.

Enter my cats.

They were very interested in the piles of clean clothes.

Jake decided he wanted to lay on top of one of the baskets, but it was piled too high. So I sat and watched him grab a single sock... walk across the room... drop it... then go back to get another sock. This time he took a few steps, decided it would be too much work to empty the basket, dropped the sock, then fell asleep on the couch.

Jenny, on the other hand, sniffed around all the baskets for a while, then went upstairs to sleep on my bed.

She could have taken some laundry with her, but did not.