Raining on the Kitty Parade.

Today is our first rainy day in quite some time. We have been enjoying summery days, with lots of warm breezes and hot sun. Thankfully-- normal weather for here.

The cats are having a blast out in the yard, and Mickey Kitty has discovered and explored every little bit of the property between the house and the garage, the cottage and the barn, and everything inbetween. I always know when he's been in the barn because he comes back to the porch smelling like the barn.

It was just drizzling a little bit this morning when Mickey wanted to go outside, so I let him go, along with Sweet Pea, and Gatsby (who was already out there since yesterday). As the morning went on, the rain got a little harder...... and a little harder still..... and before long, Mickey's whiskers were getting wet. He flew up onto the porch and gave a loud meow by the back door. No sooner had I dried him with a towel and brushed him down a bit, and there he was by the back door again, wanting to go outside. I let him out the back door and all he did was run around the porch to the front door and there was his little face, looking in through one of the glass panes of the front door. His mouth was opening into a meow but I couldn't hear him through the glass.

I'm still not comfortable with the cats (especially Mickey) being outside by themselves, but so far, it's been working out. Mickey is such a small cat and when he's outside, he looks minuscule. Sweet Pea has climbed the pecan trees in the side yard and used them as a stepping stone to the roof of the gazebo. Both Mickey and Sweet Pea have climbed up the mesquite tree in the back yard, but only Sweet Pea went all the way to the top of that tree and then jumped onto the roof of the house. Without front claws, I doubt Mickey could have gotten up that far. Sweet Pea spent over an hour exploring the roof of the house, then the breezeway roof, then the roof of the garage, then the roof of the coop...... jumping from one to the other like a feline Spiderman. (Spidercat?) The vet had told us that Sweet Pea had a heart murmur. Watching him scaling the roof lines and jumping from one to the other doesn't suggest a murmur at all. (My husband says that I will be the one with a heart problem if I don't stop worrying about the cats when they're outside.)

One thing I can say-- the cats are no longer bored and restless. They spend so much time outside and use up so much energy that when they come in, all they want to do is get something to eat and then curl up and sleep. Mickey hasn't had an "accident" inside the house since we started letting him go outside.

Our dog Gracie has been confused since the cats have been allowed to go out. She has always "herded" them away from the doors... she just somehow picked up on the fact that we didn't want the cats too near the doors and we didn't want them outside. Now when she sees all of them out in the yard, Gracie will look from one to the other, then back to the first one again..... sort of like she's trying to figure out which one to chase back to the house first. What usually happens is that Gracie starts playing with the cats out in the yard.... it looks like a Norman Rockwell painting at times.

The dog.... the cats..... the chickens. Once again, I am so thankful that we didn't get those horses last year. I don't know what I was thinking, but I'm glad I came to my senses.