Today I would like to introduce you to my quilt inspectors. Here is Inspector Number 9. Around the house, he is most commonly known as Earl.
And here is Inspector Number 21. She gets called Ally most of the time.
They have assigned themselves jobs. Earl has become my alarm cat and thinks it’s very important to get me up at the crack of dawn each morning. None of this sleeping in until 7 or 8 o’clock for me. No, I must be up at 6:30 a.m. in order to add dry food to their dishes. It doesn’t seem to matter if the dishes are nearly full or not, more must be put into each bowl.
The most important job the two share is quilt inspecting. No quilt or photo of a quilt can be shared with others until it has their stamp of approval. When I lay a quilt out on the floor to take a picture, I can bet either Number 9 or 
21 will flop onto it or run across it. Here you can see Inspector Number 9 checking out the border of this quilt.
I’m not sure he approved of this quilt since he didn’t flop down on it and stretch out to his full length, but then again, he may have hurried off because I was yelling at him to get off. Oh, wait, he’s never once paid any attention to me when I’ve yelled so that’s probably not it.
Number 9 was particularly suspicious of this small wall hanging. He checked out each little dress 
hanging on the line. He took a whack at the clothesline. Once he decided it was okay, he sprawled out making sure each tiny dress had its fair share of cat hair. He is a firm 
believer in the saying, “No outfit is complete without a little cat hair.”
Inspector 21 doesn’t feel like finished quilts should be their only priority. In her opinion, the materials I might be using to make a quilt should also pass inspection.
She gives close scrutiny to every quilting item placed on the floor. I’m pretty she has a check list and it probably goes like this:
- Is this quilt soft enough?
- Is it the perfect color to show off my lovely coat?
- Does it complement my blue eyes?
- Can I fit into the suitcase it is being packed in?
- Will it slither across the floor as I run over it like I’m possessed?
- Is it large enough that Inspector Number 9 and I can both lay on it stretched out to our fullest?
- Will people looking at this dark quilt notice that I have lain only on the upper right corner?
- Will I be able to bury my toy mouse deeply enough into the folds so the human won’t notice it until she pulls it out of the suitcase?
Number 21 likes to make sure I’m on the ball and keeping track of my quilting supplies. When she thinks I’m being careless, she carefully picks up after me and carries the item she has found to her food bowl and deposits it there. It took me a while but I did learn that the food bowl was the first place I needed to check for missing patches, yo yos, nearly empty spools of thread or my thimble.
The inspectors have asked for business cards because they think they have become experts in their field and would like to branch out and work for others. They seem to think that if they earn enough money, cans of Fancy Feast will again be stocked in the cabinet instead of that nasty hypoallergenic food they are being forced to eat just because the vet said that would be best.
I promised them I would get the business cards as soon as they got their own phones.
