Sunny weekend, cloudy Monday.

Woke up to a foggy day here. Did we click our heels and end up in London?

The weekend was beautiful, very warm and sunny. Yesterday we went to the Kemah waterfront and had brunch out at one of the waterfront restaurants. We used to go to the Crab House for our Sunday sit-and-watch-the-boats-go-by mornings, but now we've switched to Landry's restaurant. The Crab House is now The Chart House--- with an upscale (translation: expensive) decor and menu. The new menu is posted by the door..... $29 and up for an entree.... I don't think so. This is Clear Lake, not NYC.

Landry's has the same sort of menu that the Crab House used to offer--- lots of seafood dishes, with all the fish from the Gulf...... and they have a big salad topped with shrimp, crab, and salmon, which is what I always order. Perfect weather to sit outside yesterday...... nice and warm in the sun but the temperature hasn't reached the high 90s yet here, so you don't feel like you're broiling. That will all change by the end of the month.

When we were driving home from Kemah yesterday, my cell phone rang and it was Miss C. Where are you?!?! I told her we were in the car--- "And where are you?" Miss C was at our front door, along with her friend M. They had walked over to visit with us, and C said she had something for me. I told her we were on our way home, so they decided to walk to the park and meet us at our house within the half-hour. I told my husband that C sounded very motherly--- Where are you?!?!? -- as if I wasn't supposed to leave the house that morning.

C and M were doing a charity walk for a student at her school who had passed away from cancer. The student's mother founded a charity to benefit the Cancer Society, and every year around the time when the girl passed away, students pay a few dollars to the charity, and walk a certain number of miles in memory of the girl. So C and M made our house a stop-over during their walk. C came in with a handful of wildflowers that she picked from the park, and a little beaded orange/white cat key chain for me. She said the little cat reminded her of our cat Rusty, who died a couple of years ago. She liked Rusty because he was our first cat and she used to play with him when she was a second-grader. ("When I was just a little kid," says C.)

Speaking of cats....... AngelBoy is still on the porch. C said I will probably get soft and let him in the house again, like I always do. I told her I will do my best to keep him out there this time. Having AngelBoy in the porch makes life in the house much easier--- I'm not going from one end of the house to the other, looking for AngelBoy and making sure he's not doing anything stupid. (Translation: finding a corner that's softer than his litter box.)

That cat....... he is such a hard cat-- hard to understand, hard to love. A cat's cat, as compared to our other two, which are more like doting puppies than aloof cats. In one of my cat books, I read that the best cats are the ones who choose you-- as opposed to you choosing the cat. With our two black cats, ShadowBaby and Mickey Kitty, they were strays who literally found us. ShadowBaby was sitting outside an antique shop in a tiny Texas town northwest of here..... my husband and I got out of our car and there was this tiny black kitten who ran right up to me as if he'd been waiting for us. When we asked the owner of the antique shop who the kitten belonged to, she told us "Well, he's yours now... that kitten has been sitting on the curb all morning not bothering with anyone till y'all came along." So instead of coming home with antiques that day, we came home with ShadowBaby.

As for Mickey Kitty, my husband was in the park with our dog Gracie and he heard the meowing of a tiny kitten..... he walked down near the bayou in the park and there was this tiny black kitten who sat there at his feet with the biggest eyes and the loudest meow. My husband picked him up, and Mickey Kitty sat in his arms for the rest of the walk around the park, and then all the way home. To this day, Mickey Kitty will sit in my husband's arms, or on his lap, or on top of his head, or squeeze half of his little body into my husband's slippers.

Our "first" Shadow...... I had been walking around our subdivision (when we lived in League City) with a neighbor when this tiny black kitten started to follow me. I picked up the kitten and put him into the front yard of the house we were walking by, telling the kitten I already have a cat, so go home. (We had Rusty then, who was just a couple of years old.) As quickly as I put that tiny black kitten behind the fence of that yard, he was at my heels again, trying to keep up with me as I walked. Once again-- I picked up the kitten and put him behind the fence of yet another yard. And minutes later, he was at my heels, struggling to keep up with me. My neighbor told me that it looked like the cat had picked me and that was that. When I walked into our house with this tiny black kitten, my husband said that two cats couldn't be that much harder to take care of than one. We named the kitten Shadow because that's what he was like--- my Shadow, constantly following me everywhere I went. He was the best, best cat, and his death was very sad. We spent over a thousand dollars trying to make him well, then realized we were making him suffer so we wouldn't lose him. We vowed never to do that to another pet.

And AngelBoy...... he didn't find us at all. I had gone to the SPCA about six months after our first black cat (Shadow) had died. I was looking for a cat to "replace" our beloved Shadow who died from a concussion after having a fight with a stray cat right in our own driveway. (It was after that when I decided that letting cats go outside was not a good thing, no matter how much they loved running in the grass.)

So there I was at the SPCA, looking at all the cats, with my eyes puddling up whenever I looked at the black cats. How could I have another black cat when I was still so sad over losing Shadow? When I saw AngelBoy in the crate, this fluffy white/gray cat with the bluest of eyes, I thought he was the most beautiful cat there. And he was, and he still is the most beautiful cat. But he's also the most ornery, the most picky, the most sensitive, the most pee-ing-est cat I've ever known. And those blue eyes just kill me every time, I swear.

The best cats we've had are the black cats. All black, from ears to tail... the three we've raised have all been the friendliest, the most loving, the best behaved, the most perfect of cats.... and not a blue eye on any of them.

Maybe that's the trick-- never choose a blue-eyed cat.