While we are on the subject of false alarms

8:15 pm this evening, I decide to start doing the dishes, taking advantage of the fact that I only have Léa out and that she is fairly well behaved in the evening.

Start making some progress when I hear a dreaded and all to familiar sound. The pre-fire alarm noise..and sure enough, after a rather long introduction, the building-wide fire alarm starts.

Oh great.

The Boy is out of town for a few days and I've been dreading that this would happen while I'm alone. Unfortunately, we are well within what is now known as "false fire alarm season".

So off I go to find Léa's carrier. We left it in our bedroom since there isn't quite the enough space in the birdroom closet for it. Trying to put Léa in was rather interesting as this was her first fire alarm and the noise kinda put her off edge. I wasn't in a kid-around mood though so I managed to stuff her all too quickly in the cage.

Now the others..do a quick pass by my bedroom again for some pillow covers. Why? Well while I can hold Piper, Shade and Pixel in my hands and do whatever I please with them, it's not quite the same deal with Zuri, Petey and Joey. First tackle Zuri - I had to chase him around his cage a bit, but once I managed to get him in a corner, getting him with the pillow cover was a piece of cake. Transferred him to one of the larger cages in our escape bag. I think I might have done Piper, Shade and Pixel next, to get the "easy" ones out of the way. Then Joey...he's the one who managed to deliver a nip through the pillow case, although the pillow case prevented there being any break of skin - I'm really liking these cases! One left..and the worst in my mind. I actually doubled the pillow cases and went for him..and it turned out it went pretty easily, got him in the other larger cage in no time. Zipped them up and into the living room they went, to keep Léa company. Finally had to get the cat and once I was out of the bedroom with her and back into the living room, Léa decided to let out this scream - I've never heard her do this and not needing any reason to get on edge (I was surprisingly calm throughout the whole put-animals-in-cages-on-my-own experience), I covered her carrier, which did make her quiet.

Having a strong feeling that it was a false fire alarm and not wanting to go down the stairs with all of them unless I had to, I had them all lined up at the door and went out to peek if I could see anything..and I saw a whole lot of people do the same thing in the building across and there were a lot of people just standing near the entrances so I figured it was nothing..and it wasn't.

Another false fire alarm.

A few good things, since I chose to look at the positive -

1) the fire alarm was in the evening NOT in the dead of night. Please, this does not mean there can be another. One a day is PLENTY.

2) The evacuation bag served it's purpose rather well. We put this together in the event that I would be alone to bring all animals out, I managed to put all of those that were to go in the bag in their small cages in a very reasonable time and without getting an actual bite.

3) Well it just makes me want a house even more - I'm getting rather tired of these false fire alarms.

4) When all was done and I put the little ones back in their cage, I went back to my dishes. However, Léa wanted nothing to do with being alone in the living room and came to keep me company..on my head. Which meant I stopped to go in the living room for a cuddle session with her. She was being a bit of a brat today but this has clearly subdued her..and now she's drooling.

Oh well, off to put her back in her cage and then back to those dishes..sigh.