Dreaming of AngelBoy.

I woke up this morning expecting to find that blue-eyed AngelBoy cat of mine cuddled up in my arms. My dream of him was so vivid and so real that I could actually feel his long fluffy fur in my hands as I was waking up. When I realized that it had all been a dream, I could have cried.

It has been nearly eight months now since we brought that cat to the vet to be put to sleep, and hardly a week goes by that I don't think of him or see those blue eyes of his right in front of me. Regardless of AngelBoy's countless in-house accidents over the years, he was still a special cat. Nearly everyone who looked into his eyes made more or less the same comment: "Those eyes of his makes AngelBoy look like there's a little person living inside of him." AngelBoy's blue eyes could be warm and loving and grateful, or they could turn hard and spiteful and downright cold.

I remember a time when our friend K came to our house for lunch and AngelBoy walked right up to her chair in the dining room and put his paws on her legs as he tried to get a closer look at her. Other than his closeness to my dad when he was a kitten, AngelBoy just wasn't interested in being a touchy-feely cat with anyone other than me. But there went AngelBoy that day, to practically put his nose up against K's face and the first thing she said was "You are such a precious beautiful cat, AngelBoy.... does everyone realize how sensitive you are?"

That comment from anyone other than K wouldn't have meant much, but K is super-sensitive herself to her surroundings and the people in it. K can see and "read" people's auras, and she is totally in tune with every living thing around her. She told us that she immediately sensed AngelBoy's innate sensitivity and could see a sparkling aura surrounding that blue-eyed cat of ours. He was, indeed, a different sort of cat. If he saw someone he truly didn't like, AngelBoy would scrunch up his face at them and you immediately knew he wasn't pleased with being in the same room with them. AngelBoy could pick out a non-cat person within three seconds.

When AngelBoy was less than a year old, my father came down to Texas and lived with us for six months. He immediately liked AngelBoy and the first thing he said was "That cat has blue eyes like Frank Sinatra." AngelBoy liked my dad as well and would carry his toys to him and they would play for a good long while, till either my dad tired AngelBoy out, or vice versa. Daddy made AngelBoy a toy with a red and white checked ribbon tied to a white shoelace. That became AngelBoy's favorite toy and he would carry it all over the house with him. My father couldn't even go into the bathroom without AngelBoy following him in there. When Daddy went back to NY, AngelBoy would bring that red ribbon toy to me and expect me to play with him for as long a time as my father did. But I had meals to cook, laundry to do, a house to clean, groceries to shop for-- how could I play that long with a red ribbon tied to a shoelace? But AngelBoy stayed close to me always, made sure everyone knew that I was his person, but I did wonder from time to time if he missed my father playing with him for hours on end. The red ribbon and the shoelace--- it was AngelBoy's favorite toy for all of his days... the red had faded, the shoelace had frayed, but he loved it just the same as the day daddy made it for him.

So there I was this morning, just waking up from my dream.... the room was so bright with sunlight that I thought AngelBoy was sitting in the sun and that's why I couldn't see him right away. Within just a few seconds, though, my wide-awake brain kicked in and I realized it had just been a dream and that's why my arms weren't filled with his long silver-gray tipped fur and I really hadn't been mesmerized by those blue cat-eyes of his. As I woke up, I heard myself telling my husband AngelBoy was here. I know he was here. I felt his fur. I honestly felt his fur.

It was a rude awakening. I still miss that cat, and I still wonder who could have been living behind those blue eyes of his that could either melt your heart or turn it to stone.

Spring. Almost.

Our record-breaking, never-before-seen one inch of snow melted the same night it fell. Had my husband not taken pictures to prove the white stuff really did fall here, no one would have believed it. The photos looked like our house was dropped into the middle of a Christmas card, and one of my cousins suggested we use one of the photos for our own holiday cards next Christmas. Not a bad idea, actually.

The day after the snow fell, the temperature was at least 20 degrees higher and there wasn't a snowflake in sight. I was watching a local news channel that next morning and they were saying that native Texans who lived in towns that didn't get the snow were driving an hour or more to the snow-covered towns just so they could "see and experience" snow falling out of the sky. I guess I'm too jaded, after having seen major NY snowstorms over the years, and one inch of snow didn't seem worth a one-hour drive. But I guess if you've never seen snow before, the drive was worth their time.

Speaking of NY storms, they can't seem to get out from under the snow clouds up there. My cousins keep telling me of one storm after the other. No sooner do they dig out from one snowfall and they're getting ready for the next. I need to quit complaining about the weather here, that's for sure, because it can't compare in inconvenience and severity to what's going on in and around the Big Apple. (Do they still call NY The Big Apple these days?)


Our friends C and L stopped by yesterday for a surprise visit. They called me from a town about 40 minutes from here and asked if they could drive here and see us and the house. We haven't seen them since our big going-away party back in Clear Lake last year-- they've been busy building a new house of their own and the construction has been over-whelming and over-budget since they started. C had hoped to be in their new house for this past Christmas, but now she's hoping that her next Christmas tree will be put up in the "dream house." They loved this big old house, they were impressed with the acreage, and L was astounded that we had such a big barn. "Are you going to get livestock?" he wanted to know. Not this city girl.... I have enough trouble keeping up with the neighbors' livestock.

Our neighbors on the other side of the hill have horses and cows and goats, not to mention chickens and roosters. We give the horses sliced apples now and again, and sometimes they wait by the fence for us. This particular neighbor's cows never get out of their pasture, but the neighbor behind us has his cow pasture right adjacent to a pasture of ours, and time and again, one or two of his cows will get out and my husband goes out there and coaxes them back onto their own field. The neighbor with the goats--- we've chased those goats down our hill and up their own time and again. Some of the goats get their heads stuck in the fence (to get to the taller, greener grass) and we go out there and grab hold of their horns and sort of push their horns through the fence so they can get their heads back in there. When that doesn't work, we have to drive down our hill and up the neighbor's hill and tell them one or two of his goats are "stuck in the fence again" and then he comes down and frees up the goats. I swear, that neighbor raises those goats for meat, and I'm betting that the troublesome fence-sticking goats are the ones that end up in his cooking pot. (Which is why we try to free up the goats without telling him.)

So, given all of the above, I definitely don't need any livestock of our own in that big old barn of ours. Once again, I am so very glad that I came to my senses and didn't buy those miniature horses that we went to look at last summer. With this horrible (horrible for Texas) winter that we've had, there would have been no end in sight for me trying to keep the horses warm and out of the wind and the snow and the rain.

But....... the past couple of days have been like Spring. Before we know it, our fields will be covered with bluebonnets and these past few months will be a distant memory. Maybe not that distant, but far away enough that everyone will be welcoming the hot weather.

I have finished painting the TV room..... the peachy beige has grown on me and looks very nice. The hardest part was painting the trim in that room-- white on white isn't the easiest thing to do with paint, and after a while your mind gets numb. I was all set to put the can of peachy beige into the garage, in hopes of not picking up a paint brush anytime soon, and then I thought of using that paint to add some color to the wall behind the fireplace in our bedroom. That fireplace is original to the house, and it was probably a dark stained wood like the fireplace in the living room, but the previous owners painted it white. The white fireplace on the white wall gets lost... and the peachy beige color would make it "pop," as they say on HGTV. So I'm thinking about it..... I don't want to pick up that paint brush again until I'm sure I won't be disappointed with the color in there. Plus, I need a break from the painting anyway.

I need a break from winter weather. The entire country needs a break from this past winter. This will be a very warmly-welcomed Spring.

Snow.

Totally stupid weather. Period.

This afternoon's sleet turned into snow. Huge fluffy flakes that stuck to everything except the stone courtyards, the wet road, and the wet driveway. The yards and the pastures are white, white, white. The tree branches and the bushes are covered in a layer of snowflakes. The field around the pond is all snow-covered and the pond looks like a mirror in the middle of it.

We opened the door for Gatsby, our outside cat (who's been mostly inside since Thanksgiving), and that pure Texas cat took one look at all the snow (not knowing what it was, of course) and he turned right around and went into the bathroom to use the litter box.

My husband went outside to take a photo of the house and the property as the snow was falling. I haven't seen the picture yet, but I'm sure it looks like a post card. Looking out the windows at all this snow (less than an inch, really) it is so hard to believe that we're still in Texas.

Maybe the Wicked Weather Witch has waved her wand and sent us to Kansas. I have a pair of red shoes in my closet..... if I put them on, click the heels three times........ maybe summer will magically begin and this snowy, sleety, freezing day will be just a bad dream.

Sleet.

As I type, the Texas sky has opened up and sleet (sleet!) is dropping down out of it. I can hear it falling on the roof, the trees, the driveway....... of all things-- sleet! This has been one godforsaken never-ending winter and I can hardly wait for it to come to a blessed end. Wasn't it just this past Sunday that the sun was shining and it was 68 beautiful breezy degrees and you would have thought that winter had disappeared...

When my cousin F up in NY heard the weather we were expecting today, she eMailed me to ask if we had a snow shovel, snow boots, and an ice scraper. My answer was "no" to all three. I gave away the ice scraper that I always kept in my car before I had the vehicle shipped from NY to TX back in 1993. And I don't think I've ever seen a snow shovel in any of the house and garden stores down here. As for women's snow boots....... they sell boots in the shoe stores, but they're either high-heeled dress-up fashion boots, or they're hand-tooled leather western boots. (Note to Yankees-- they don't call them "cowboy boots" down here.) I do have a very nice pair of western boots, but I would never go out in the sleet and/or snow with them.

It has been cold and rainy and drippy and messy all day today-- perfect day for another pot of lentil soup. I have lost count of how many pots of soup I have made since November. If I knew how to knit, I would be making little sweaters for my poor chickens. On rainy days like today, they go underneath the guest cottage and search for bugs and worms without getting their feathers wet. But they still feel the cold wind as it blows across the pastures, and I'm sure they're just as sick of this winter as we all are. The hens are still giving me eggs every day--- two at the least, three at the most. I am so glad I left the heavy plastic up around their coop... it may look totally silly, but at least the plastic is keeping most of the wind out of the coop for them. (Our neighbors call it "the uptown coop.")

I took a break from painting today. The walls are all done, and I started on the trim the other day. All I have left to do is the bottom woodwork on two walls, plus two single doors. The three big windows are done, as is the big double door going out to the side porch. Slathering fresh white paint on the already white trim was the most boring part of the room. White on white..... couldn't see what I had done and what was left to do unless I got down on my knees and looked at the trim at an angle. Makes me wonder if I had to paint the trim at all, but once it was started, there was no going back. It won't take but a few hours to paint the rest, and then I will retire that paint brush for a good long while before I get to painting anything again.

Although... I have more than half a can of the peachy beige paint left........ I'm thinking of painting the fireplace wall in our bedroom with the rest of that paint. And there is some detail work on the fireplace itself which would look nice with a little touch of gold paint. See what happens? You paint just one thing and then you look around and your eyes see a bunch of things just screaming out Paint me! Paint me next! (Which is what keeps all of those house and garden stores up and running.)

Peachy Beige.

Our TV room is going from bright hospital-white to a soft peachy-beige. We went to Home Depot to pick out paint last week, and I've started painting the walls, one wall a day. I don't like to use a roller (I'm too messy with that thing). I bought a three-inch wide brush and that's what I'm using..... I'm much neater with a brush, plus the walls are a bit textured in there, so the brush is giving everything a nice heavy coat. So while the TV is turned on to the HGTV channel, I'm on a step-stool with my brush filled with peachy beige and trying to keep an eye on the cats so they don't dip their paws into the can of paint. So far, they have been napping while I paint, which is a good thing.

Yesterday, I gave in to my hair...... and got it colored. Rather than looking in the mirror and seeing more gray hair than I think is necessary, my hair is now a soft but deep brown. I didn't want to get started with coloring again, but I also got tired of the gray hair I was seeing because it was growing in with a totally different texture than my darker hair. The girl who cuts my hair told me (more than once) that the gray hair was aging me and I should get rid of it. I told her that I had a few cats who were aging me but I didn't plan on getting rid of them.

But I gave in....... I don't know why....... maybe my 58th birthday last month had something to do with it. I don't feel 58, I don't think I dress 58 (thanks to the show "What Not to Wear"), but when I looked at the 58-yr-old gray hairs coming inbetween my original color, that just got me a little nuts a couple of weeks ago. I thought the gray hairs were making me look 58 from the neck up.

I'm happy with the result...... and I will probably even get some lighter highlights in a month or so, if the sun doesn't give me natural highlights. (Can you get natural highlights in tinted hair?) I wasn't happy with spending the extra money on the coloring, though. I can think of a bunch of things that I would have rather spent that money on, but the hair color doesn't come cheap when you get it done in a salon. And I'm not one to buy bottled stuff and do it myself. I know my limitations...... let the professionals do what they've been trained to do and get it done right.

The weather has warmed up some..... yesterday was a beautiful day and my winter coat is back in the closet and hopefully I won't have to take it out again till the next godforsaken cold snap. We had more than a cold snap this year...... we had a frigid freeze that just wouldn't go away.

Back to painting.......

Valentine's Feast

We invited neighbors J & J over for Valentine's dinner yesterday. Actually, we invited a few of the other neighbor-couples over, but they had made plans for the weekend, so it was just the four of us for Valentine's Day dinner. I fussed with the table, just like I always did for our parties in Clear Lake, and the entire dining room looked like something out of a Victorian magazine. For just a couple of dollars, I had found a remnant of red glittery fabric and that became the stage for beaded-heart Mardi Gras necklaces, votive candles in red goblets, heart-shaped candies, pink and ivory china, and elaborate place cards that took hours to make but were so worth the time. I had the food set up on the kitchen counter so we all helped ourselves, buffet style, and when J walked into the dining room she just stood there for a few minutes looking at the dining room table and said she'd never seen anything like it before.

The food...... for four people, we had a feast. I had cooked beef ribs (that we had in the freezer from Joe's BBQ in Alvin), cornbread (which I cut into heart shapes), zucchini quiche, tiny rolls stuffed with cheese and chopped-up mussels in pesto. J & J walked in the door with a tray of steamed salmon, baked sweet potatoes, fresh bread from their bread machine, a huge bowl of fresh fruit salad, and huge strawberries with a bowl of chocolate for melting & dipping the strawberries. We all agreed that we could have invited four other couples for dinner and had more than enough food to go around.

We ended up splitting the dishes that we had left.... so J & J went home with half of what I had cooked, and they left half of what they had brought with us. The big strawberries they brought were delicious, and we melted the chocolate in the microwave and then decided we needed to have a fondue party one of these weekends. I have two fondue pots and lots of extra fondue forks, so we can invite more of the neighbors and just tell them to bring things for dipping into either cheese or chocolate fondue.

Yesterday's weather was a mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly. At noon-time yesterday, it was so warm and sunny that my husband and I had a light lunch out on the porch, sitting in the sun. (The good.) It was heaven.... and we thought we had turned this horrible weather-corner that we've been having. By 4:00, the wind kicked up and the sky got dark. (The bad.) I ran outside and called the chickens and they followed me into the coop and I locked the gate. I'm sure they thought I was crazy because they don't usually go in the coop that early, but the sky just looked so hard and awful. By 5:30, just about the time J & J got here, the wind was just awful, howling like a horror movie. (The ugly.) J & J were getting blown sideways trying to get from the driveway to our back door without the platters they were holding being blown out into the pastures. What happened to the beautiful Spring day we started out with?!

This morning, the sun is out, the wind has died down, but it's still a bit breezy and still a bit colder than it needs to be. Mardi Gras has begun! We're officially into Spring here! And Spring means warm weather that builds up slowly into the heat of summer so that by the time April gets here you're wondering how Spring disappeared so quickly without anyone noticing that Summer had bloomed in a heart-beat.

This state is ready for Summer. We can all just by-pass Spring this year and get right into the heat of April, May, June, July, August, September, and October. And I swear, I will never never never never complain about a hot day ever again. This has been the worst winter.

Happy hearts day.

Young Miss C drove up to spend the day with us today..... she left Clear Lake early this morning and got here at ten o'clock. This is the first time she has driven up here herself-- she has a GPS-thing in her car and she is fearless with that thing. The day was cold and cloudy, drippy and damp, just downright ugly. We spent the day right here in the house, chatting over tea and egg salad for lunch-- Miss C went to the chicken coop twice today to gather the eggs-- three of them, even on this too-cold day. She doesn't really like chickens-- she's more of a "horse and cow girl," as she said, but she does love eggs.

We made a zucchini pie for dinner-- she did the crust, I cooked the zucchini and onions, she mixed everything together and cleaned up the counter when we were done. When the pie came out of the oven, it smelled too good to wait till dinner, so we each had a little sliver of it, with still more hot tea. C said we haven't "lost our touch" in the kitchen.

Between the sliver of zucchini pie and dinner-time, C and I made some Valentines. That girl can sit down for hours with a stack of papers and rolls of pretty ribbon, plus she went through my boxes of buttons and beads, and the hot-glue gun didn't get cooled down till we were all Valentined out. The three of us had dinner together, then C left for a 40-minute drive to see her friends in a college town a bit north of here. They were all going out for country-dancing, then she planned to spend the night up there with her friends before driving back home tomorrow.

I laughed out loud this afternoon when C and I were making the Valentines. She was talking about "young teens" who drive while trying to text and talk on the phone. In her words-- "I don't know what's wrong with the 15-year-olds today... they're too young to drive... they shouldn't have their own cars till they're 18 and they're not so careless." I told her that was a very mature thing for a girl of her age to say. (C will be 19 next month.)

Our dog Gracie got all excited when C walked in the back door this morning, and more excited still when C got down on the floor to play with her, the way C has been doing since she was in the second grade. Mickey Kitty remembered C right away-- and crawled up on her shoulder to play with her hair--- Mickey's favorite thing is to rub his paws in someone's hair, and C has very long hair, so Mickey was in kitty-heaven. Gatsby had seen C over the summer, and again at Christmas, but I don't think he really remembered her because he spent most of the time outside before all this blessed cold weather came our way. C hadn't seen Sweet Pea before today, being that we just found him last month, but Sweet Pea is friendly with everyone and it took only a few seconds before that cat jumped into C's lap and curled up.

When C was here, the house was lively and bubbly..... when she left, everything went back to being very quiet. I love the quiet. But it's hard to beat lively and bubbly at times.

Damn that groundhog.

Is the groundhog ever wrong? That furry little prickly bundle pronounced winter would last for six more weeks and he was right. Everyone across the country is cranky enough now with all of this blasted cold, wet, snowy, sleeting, hail-tossed frigid weather. In six more weeks, the Hawaiian islands may sink to the bottom of the Pacific because anyone who can afford to fly there will do just that in an attempt to escape this blessed weather.

As I type, we're having yet another cloudy and cold, drippy and rainy, nasty and never-ending winter-y day. We had sleet yesterday, and native Texans who hadn't ever seen sleet before were outside taking pictures of the frozen rain falling out of the sky. I can't remember the last time the sun was shining outside. Oh yes I can... wasn't it two weeks ago, when the temperature was up in the high 70s and the sun was blindingly refreshingly bright and the Hill Country was filled with people wearing shorts and tee-shirts that said This is NOT our usual Texas winter weather, so y'all please come back next year and we'll do better.

Even the livestock has gone a bit crazy. The goats across the road keep getting their necks stuck in the square openings of the barbed-wire fence. I don't know how they manage to get their heads through those squares, given the size of their horns, but they get their heads through those metal squares so they can munch on the taller grass just outside the fence-- and then they can't get their heads back out. When we first moved here, I would go into a slight panic at that sight and get my husband to go across the road and down the hill to rescue the trapped goats. I have since learned to just put on a pair of gloves, walk down the hill myself, pet the goat on his head and calm him down, grab hold of the horns and just ease him back through the barbed-wire openings. Yesterday, however, the imprisoned goat's horns were way too long, way too curved, and he was way too scared. I had to walk back up the hill, get into my car, then drive over to the neighbors and tell them to please go out into the pasture and rescue that goat so I wouldn't hear him screaming and see him struggling from my kitchen windows. (The neighbor was probably thinking Dang city girl!)

The pasture behind our own fields belongs to the neighbor all the way at the end of this road.... he has eight cows on his property. Two of those cows are always finding a way out of their own pasture and they come right on up to our barn or our property around our pond.... and they make themselves at home. We have nice tall green grass there, because we don't have cows of our own, and the neighbor's cows know that, which is why they keep wandering over here. I have lost count of how many times my husband has gone out into our pasture behind the barn and chased the cows back to their own field. I haven't done that yet, not because I'm afraid of the cows, but because with all the rain we've had, the pastures are a mucked-up muddy mess, complete with cow-poop from the two escapees. I have nearly knee-high rubber boots, but I still don't want to be walking through tall grass land-mined with four-inch high piles of cow-poop.

The new group of chickens that we bought last month continue to lay eggs every day, despite the rain and the cold weather. Both Scarlett and Prissy lay an egg every day, and Mammy gives us an egg nearly every day, just missing a day here and there if the weather is too close to the freezing point. Prissy is becoming as friendly as my Dolly-girl hen used to be, but I haven't tried to pet Prissy or pick her up lately. I think I got too attached to the first group of hens, and when the hawks and/or coyotes took some of them away, it was just too heart-breaking. So I think, with the hens, it's better to just be friendly, and not get too attached.


On Super Bowl Sunday, we went up the hill to J&J's house, along with some of the other nearby neighbors. We all brought something to add to their Football Buffet and we watched the game on their new big-screen TV. The guys enjoyed the game... the ladies enjoyed the commercials but kept wondering why such great commercials were being interrupted by guys playing with a football. That day was cold and windy also, but without the rain we're having now.

With all of this horrible weather, no one is out on their property-- except the livestock, which doesn't know any better. Our neighbor B has put a blanket-coat on her horse Diablo-- that blanket has been on Diablo since before Christmas and she's probably leaving it on till the flowers start blooming. When we do see neighbors outside, everyone is bundled up in layers and layers of clothing and we're all looking like little kids from the 1950s, in the days of those multi-layered snowsuits where you were so packed up with clothing that you could hardly move.

The weather is much worse, of course, in the mid-west and the north-east. But this is Texas! People from the mid-west and the north-east come here to get away from the frigid weather up there --- and this is the best we can offer them?

I cannot wait for summer.

ShadowBaby

We found a tiny black kitten in February of 1999... he was sitting on the sidewalk in front of an antique shop in the tiny town of Waller, Texas. My husband and I had driven there that day to talk to a dealer about vintage Christmas lights. I saw that tiny black kitten when we got out of the car, and as soon as the kitten saw me, he ran right over. Of course I picked him up, and he snuggled underneath my neck. He was a tiny thing, barely three or four pounds.

The dealer in the shop said she hadn't seen that kitten before, but she did notice that he'd been hanging around outside her shop all morning long, and it was noon-time when we got there. Next door to the antique shop was a florist, and we went in there to see if the kitten belonged to anyone. They said they hadn't ever seen the kitten before that morning.

We asked the florist if she had an empty box, and we put that tiny black kitten inside an FTD box for the ride home. My husband and I were hungry for lunch, and it was a long ride back home from Waller, plus the kitten was crying also-- hungry for his own lunch. Waller had one restaurant on its main road, and we stopped in there for a quick sandwich, leaving the kitten in the box on the back seat. We ordered quickly and ate quicker, and when we told the waitress about the black kitten we had just found, she brought us a piece of chicken-fried steak "for the baby kitty." I cut it into teeny pieces and that was the kitten's first meal with us.

Over the years, ShadowBaby was a good cat. He was affectionate and playful, and appreciated anyone's lap or arms to cuddle into for a long nap. We named him ShadowBaby because a few years before that, our first black cat had passed away (named Shadow) and we had been heartbroken over him, so this second black cat was christened ShadowBaby, and besides, he followed us all over the house, just like the first Shadow used to do.

About four years ago, ShadowBaby started putting on weight. When we lived in Clear Lake, we would let him out in the backyard sometimes so he could get more exercise, plus we had the screen-porch on the back of that house so ShadowBaby could spend time out there watching birds and squirrels instead of watching his food dish. When we moved to this house last year, ShadowBaby put on more weight-- no screen-porch on this house, and we couldn't let him outside because we couldn't possibly keep an eye on him with 23 acres for him to roam. One of the reasons I decided to let the cats come up to the second floor of this house was to give ShadowBaby more exercise. He quickly took to the stairs, and he went up and down all day long.

But still.... the weight. ShadowBaby's favorite thing to do was eat. Not only his own food, but he would bump the other cats out of the way so he could get to their food after he had gobbled down his own. And if their dishes were empty, ShadowBaby would just walk (wobble) over to Gracie's bowl and eat whatever dog food happened to be in there. On more days than I would care to count, I would have to stand there as a "food cop" to make sure the other cats got to eat their lunch or dinner before ShadowBaby came over to lick their bowls clean.

I knew what was happening to ShadowBaby--- the same thing that happened years ago to Rusty, our orange and white Manx. And Rusty was about the same age as ShadowBaby (nearly 12) when all of this manic eating and water-drinking began. A trusted vet and friend of ours told us (with Rusty) that taking care of a diabetic cat was nearly impossible, and not recommended. We didn't put Rusty to sleep until he started to have diabetic seizures in the yard. And he was out in the yard because I couldn't keep him in the house or even on the screen-porch because he couldn't control his bladder, or couldn't get to the litter box fast enough. We waited too long with Rusty. Those seizures were horrible for us to watch, and more horrible for Rusty to endure.

Once again, ShadowBaby followed in Rusty's paw prints. For the past few weeks now, I've been cleaning up accidents from ShadowBaby. At first, I didn't even know it was him, but I caught him in the act a few times and I was so shocked that I couldn't even say a word to that cat. I knew what was happening, and I also knew that he couldn't help it.

As I learned with AngelBoy when he had to be put to sleep, there is always a "last straw" that breaks the carpet cleaner's back. Last night with ShadowBaby was the last straw. That cat walked up the stairs, walked straight into my sitting room, plopped himself down on the carpeting and proceeded to leave me a puddle to clean up. Before I even got out the cleaning stuff to take care of the mess, I knew what we needed to do. I was not going to wait for the seizures to begin. And I was not going to let him continue on like this, the way I did with AngelBoy.

First thing this morning, I called the vet. At ten o'clock this morning, my husband and I were there in the clinic, ShadowBaby was on the table, and they were preparing him for the shot. My husband and I had said our goodbyes to ShadowBaby before we even got in the car, and the drive to the vet's office, with all of the meows coming from the back seat, wasn't a happy one. ShadowBaby never did like being in a moving car.

We knew what was going to happen, but my husband and I were both crying anyway. We were crying as the needle went into that cat, and we cried after ShadowBaby's heart stopped beating.

It is never easy to give permission for this kind of thing. AngelBoy was the hardest one to go through for me. ShadowBaby wasn't at all easy, but I know I'm not going to be heart-sick for weeks on end, like I was with that blue-eyed AngelBoy-cat of mine.

Part of the heart-break is the fact that a pet-owner can walk into a vet's office and with just a signature on a dotted line, that pet's life can end. Quickly. Quietly. Permanently.

Stupid groundhog.

Today's weather was so beautifully Spring-like that it's hard to believe that we may get another overnight hard freeze next week. (Is there any other type of freeze?) Up until my cousins tell me that they're celebrating in Chicago because the weather is finally in the double digits, and other cousins tell me that a major snowstorm just missed them out in Suffolk County, it's easy to forget that our day today wasn't enjoyed by the rest of the country.

With all the rain that we had last week, the fields and pastures are a deep green and the horses and cows (belonging to our neighbors) were just grazing and munching and enjoying the sun as much as we wer today. My husband and I have been taking a walk every day (except in the freezing cold and rain) and when we get to one particular piece of property, there are three cows in a pasture there that just wait for my husband by their fence so they can get a handful of long thin grass. There are two brown cows and one black cow-- the larger black one pushes in front of the other two, trying to get all the grass it can. My husband picks handfuls of the longer grass on the other side of the fence, where the cows can't reach. I have walked the same path without my husband at times, and the cows just ignore me as I'm walking. They know who's picking the grass for them, that's for sure.

Our own "livestock"-- the cats. One minute they are playing together, the next minute they're hissing at one another. I don't know who starts it all, but I've caught Mickey Kitty being the culprit on more than one occasion. Truly, he isn't happy at all with the two "found cats" who have joined us. I didn't realize Mickey Kitty was so sensitive-- he was always the happy little baby-cat of the house. Now he's the baby-cat with a mission.... to either make me crazy or torment the new cats, whichever comes first.

When the weather is nice, Gatsby goes outside and loves it, so that's one less cat in the house to bother Mickey. But Sweet Pea just cannot go outside because of his heart murmur, so Mickey Kitty is just going to have to get used to him.

After letting all the cats have run of the house, I've changed that rule here as of today. Mickey Kitty and ShadowBaby and Gatsby all stay downstairs now.... and I'm sure that Mickey isn't happy about that either. Sweet Pea stays downstairs practically all day long, but we'll let him come up here at night so the others can have a rest. Sweet Pea wants to run and play with everyone, now that he has quit having his own little hissy-fits.... but not everyone wants to run and play all the time.

I keep telling my husband No more cats. No more cats. No more cats. NO MORE CATS! And I keep telling myself the same thing.

I had to take Sweet Pea to the vet the other day, for the rest of his shots. When I told the girl behind the counter that we had found two cats since living out here, her answer was "Just two?"
She told me that customers have brought in cardboard boxes filled with half a dozen tiny kittens that had been abandoned. She told me to consider myself lucky that we haven't had to deal with that.

For the life of me, I don't understand why everyone doesn't spay or neuter all of their pets. It's healthier for the animal, it's easier on the owner, and it's just a sensible thing to do.

"That there furnace..."

Picture Gomer Pyle from the old Mayberry days with Andy Griffith.

Now picture Gomer with snow white hair, reading glasses, and a little cell-phone thing clipped to his ear. That's exactly who showed up at our back door this afternoon after we called the heating and air-conditioning company to check the furnace.

We called this particular company because the previous owners had given us their card-- they have taken care of the unit since it was installed in 1995. They have the records of what's been done, what should have been done, and what never got done. (The never-got-done part is what's catching up to us now.)

So when Gomer came in, the first thing he said was that the kitchen looked different. Well, of course it looks different... when the old owners moved, they moved all of their furniture with them. (Their furniture was very nice, but we like ours better.)

We told Gomer what the problem was...... the furnace had kicked off sometime after midnight on Friday night and we woke up to a frigid first floor on Saturday morning. We didn't have a clue as to what happened because the unit for the second floor was working just fine. My husband opened the hatch-door thing on the furnace and poked around a bit.... found a re-set button and pressed that..... the furnace kicked on about twenty minutes later, but it took a good long while for the first floor of the house to feel even a little bit warm. Of course, a furnace never goes out when the temperature is 75.... it waits for a 40-degree morning.

The heating company got back to us this morning. I asked them over the phone if they had an emergency number for weekends-- "Well, sure we do..... but we just can't be giving out my cell phone number to everyone..... so only my customers have that there cell number. Know what I mean?"

When I gave them our address and told them the problem, they realized that this house was on their customer list, so they arranged to get out here as soon as possible. And that's when we met Gomer. He told us that the unit was installed in 1995, and "this, that, and the other thing right yonder there" had been replaced since then. With this new problem........ he can either replace "this here whoziwhats" or "we can just go on and replace the whole dadgum unit with a Trane."

My husband told Gomer that he thought Carrier was the better unit. Gomer insisted that Trane was the way to go.... "most 'specially with these here big old houses.... y'all can cool 'em down a whole lot faster than y'all can heat 'em up.... and don't think your propane company don't love y'all to pieces." (Indeed they must.)

Before he left here, Gomer took all the measurements and wrote down everything he would need for both options--- to either replace the faulty part, or replace the "whole dadgum unit." He will call us in a day or two. Until then, the furnace is working, and will probably keep working just fine, but may need a little "kick up on that there re-set button" if it continues to work itself into a fever with all the unusually cold weather we're having lately.

While the heating guy was here, he asked us if we had picked the pecans up from our trees.... and we told him we certainly did. He said if it hadn't been so cold, we would have had more pecans. (More pecans? We picked enough pecans to make pies for everyone from here to San Antonio, for goodness sake!) Gomer also saw our chickens outside, and asked us if we were getting any eggs from them. I told him that the hens give us eggs every day, even on the cold days we've had lately. "Well, imagine that........ y'all move up here from Clear Lake and turn y'all-selves right into farmers!"

We certainly did, Gomer.