What kind of cloud are you?

Okay, we have a cloudy day here this morning. The weather wizards have predicted, in all of their mighty wisdom--- rain. We remember what rain is, don't we? That soft wet stuff that falls from the sky and makes everything green and lush and fresh-smelling. Unless, of course, you have a hurricane and the rain pelts down hard and smashes everything in sight. But let's not put that thought out into the universe, especially since hurricane season has begun.

We seem to have the correct clouds today--- not the big white puffy ones that you used to stare at while flat-out in the grass when you were a kid..... (there's a bear...... that one looks like a snowman..... and that one looks like the fifth grade nun!) Today's clouds are just gray and scattered, and hardly clouds at all..... it looks like the sky is just a mass of blotchy gray.

So maybe...... if all goes well, we really will have some rain today. I refuse to count the sixteen raindrops of the other day as a "real" rain. Never, in my wildest dreams, would I have ever thought I'd get tired of sunny and hot days. But this year has just about done me in. Non-stop heat since the beginning of May....... with just about every day reaching 100 degrees and then some. (It was the then some that has made everyone cranky.)

On the bright side....... (and there always is a bright side)...... our dog Gracie and our outside cat Gatsby have become best buddies. When I walk Gracie up the road after dinner, Gatsby follows us.... sometimes meowing all the way, sometimes so quiet that I have to watch where I'm stepping or I will fall over that cat.

Walking with Gatsby goes something like this: I take two steps to the right as Gatsby veers towards my legs, three steps to the left as he side-steps in front of me, two steps to the right and then he stretches so I have to stop walking until the back part of his long body catches up to the front of him, and then I have to repeat that whole process. Sometimes Gracie will nudge Gatsby along with her nose, but then that slows Gracie up and she's right in front of me and if I'm not paying attention I will fall over her. I have to wonder if any of the neighbors are watching me weaving left and right and patch-working my way down the road. I'm hoping that I am just a dot on the horizon if they happen to be looking out their windows.

I have made the appointment for Gatsby's "fixing" at the local animal clinic. Local being a relative term, since very little is really local this far into the hills of the countryside. On the night before his surgery, his last meal has to be at eight o'clock. Now that should be fun... this once-starving cat who is now used to getting a last portion of Fancy Feast at 10:00 at night will be sitting with his nose to the back door waiting for me to come out with his dish. I will just have to stay away from that back door and not look at those green eyes of his.

The clinic will not accept a cat if it's not in a carrying case..... and that will be a challenge on the morning of Gatsby's surgery. I have no idea how I'm going to get him into that crate, but I guess the best way is to just pick him up and guide him in there, and hope that his claws don't come out and sink into my skin. I can see it now.... driving down the road with a screaming Gatsby in the back and my wrists and arms bleeding all over the steering wheel in the front. (And let's not put that thought out into the universe either.....)