No happy camper.

I have a very grouchy creature in my home. With good reason......her life has been turned upside down by a 50-lb, balls-to-the-walls terror full of fur and crazy. Bernice has not-so-smoothly come into her own recently finally figuring out a purrrfect day's schedule spread out amongst her nap breaks. But then we pulled a fast one on her.

We brought home this guy......

In not so many words, he's the devil. But we love him.

Baxter joined our family of "B's": Ben, Bernice, and Bossy (me, as Ben so lovingly refers) about a month ago. It was another one of my notorious - "Ben's out of town, so lets do something rebellious I'll regret later" - moments. Less than 12 hours after I saw the add in the paper, I was hauling him home in the passenger seat of my car.

Now he spends his days chewing anything he can find (my new welcome mat, our beloved K-State windsock), eating cat-poop treats and wandering outside our house until we get home in the evening. He sleeps inside at night, but we were quickly made aware that our modest little 1200-ft house is not big enough for all of the crazy he unleashes on a nightly basis. So we've taken to walking him in the evening to wear him out. (I should remind you - we have yet to break the 35 degree weather yet and still have 24" of snow on the ground).

Anyway, we adore him....for the most part, until all hell breaks lose about 8:30 p.m. when we're about to call it a night. And we happily report that Bernice has taken to her own form of retaliation against him, even though she has no claws to do any real damage. But beware of any visitors to our place, she will molest you as soon as you come home, as remind you that she is the queen of the house.