Thud

Trade Secret

A Liaden Universe® Adventure

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

Approximately 126,600 words

Submitted: May 25, 2013

The great cat tree caper

Readers of this space will perhaps recall that the cats ordered in a cat tree a couple weeks ago.  They bought it on eBay, from a company based in New Jersey, and it arrived very quickly, whereupon it sat in the living room looking like this:

Cat tree box
Coon cat provided for scale

. . .waiting for someone to open the box and assemble the contents.  Clearly, Mozart wasn't going to do this, and neither was Scrabble.  We intended to, but had things in queue ahead.

Right after the box landed, I did some prep work -- moving the couch. . .

Couch. . .before
Oil on the left is
The Wizard and His Companion (Lynn Barnes)

. . ., and taking the paintings down. . .

Paintings in corner.
The big oil is the cover art for Pilots Choice (Michael Herring).
The giclee print is the cover art for Necessity's Child (David Mattingly)

Today, having early (early!) this morning sent Jethri on his way to Madame the Editor to be Disciplined (*ahem* Sorry. Wrong story.), was the cat tree's day.

Steve is a Hero of the Revolution.  He did all the heavy lifting and building and stuff.

So, here's the cat tree, unboxed. . .

Scrabble among the pieces

...and here is the base, going together with, may I say, majestic deliberation:

Step One

Step two. . .

Scrabble was extremely into this whole building thing.  She performed multiple inspections of the pieces, and climbed on the incomplete tree to encourage Steve in his efforts. She also performed a little half-time cheer, to keep his spirits up.  I don't know that we've talked about Scrabble's considerable skill as a choreographer here.  Below, you see her in a classic move:

Scrabble performs half-time cheer

Cheered, Steve returned to the task with renewed energy, and very shortly, we had. . .

Step three...

Step four. . .Scrabble is discussing the final step with Steve, who declined to be in the photo

The completed cat tree

As of this writing, Mozart remains of the opinion that the cat tree worked better when it was inside the box.  We expect him to shortly publish a revision.

Here ends this photoessay.

UPDATED TO ADD:

That didn't take long