Simply Saturday....

As I type on this post-Thanksgiving Saturday morning, it is raining outside. I woke up sometime during the night and heard the rain pouring down, but then quickly fell back to sleep. I think this is just the fourth rain storm of the whole year, and every blessed drop counts. We had water in the pond from last week's rain, and today's rain will raise the water level in the pond even more. Thank goodness for rain clouds that hover over this part of the Hill Country.

We had Thanksgiving dinner up at J&J's house.... they made the turkey (yaaaay to that-- I hate cooking a turkey).... actually, J cooked the turkey in a smoker, and I was under direct orders from my cousin F to "Take a slice of that turkey and eat it so you can let me know what it tastes like!" -- the turkey was excellent, nice and moist and juicy and it did have a mesquite-smoky taste to it that was delicious. So there... I've had my slice of turkey for the year, and I didn't have to cook it. My husband made his killer mashed potatoes and oyster dressing.... and I made Aunt Dolly's sweet potato recipe (no marshmallows, and a pox on anyone who melts those things on top of a perfectly delicious sweet potato-- am I the only one in the world who doesn't appreciate marshmallows on top of sweet potatoes?)

And of course we had pie..... J made a pecan pie, we bought an apple pie from Royer's. I have to admit that I wasn't pleased with their apple pie this time.... way too much brown sugar on top of that pie-- clumps of heart-stopping brown sugar that I just left on the plate. From now on, I'm making my own apple pie (which I think is better than Royer's-- with apologies to Bud, the Pie Man).... and I did miss making my pumpkin pie, which I intend to make as soon as the last of that apple pie in the fridge bites the dust. (I've been eating just the apples, and giving the brown sugar topping and the lard-crust to the chickens. Again, my apologies to Bud the Pie Man. Maybe I should also apologize to Scarlett, Prissy, Audrey, and PittyPat.)

Yesterday, we drove into town to get the Christmas tree from Home Depot... they had stacks of just-delivered trees, so we got to pick out the best tree before they sat on the concrete too long. Right now, the tree is in the garage, sitting in a bucket of water and waiting to be carried into the dining room and set into the solid steel and iron cat-proof tree stand. We have had 14-foot trees in that tree stand, with not a branch swaying or a trunk leaning towards the fireplace. And one year when Mickey Kitty was just a baby, he managed to climb up into the Christmas tree and there he was, poking his whiskered face out from between the branches as he tried to get to the very top.... and the tree held firmly in that stand.

Black Friday yesterday..... I hate that term, I hate the retail-minds who conjure up this shopping frenzy every year which prompts senseless people to fight and push and intimidate other shoppers as they grab and punch and kick to get the perfect gift for a reduced price. Is anything out there in the stores worth that sort of inconsiderate un-Christmas-y behavior? And do the stores really have to open up at 9:00 on Thanksgiving night? Pretty soon, the retail Powers That Be are going to do away altogether with Thanksgiving, and call that day "Thankless Thursday," which will be a prelude to "Black Friday." Give us all a blessed break.

Speaking of break......... I called the nice people at Lowe's last week to tell them that our two-days-shy-of-one-year-old refrigerator was making funny noises and clicking sounds. This is the smaller fridge that we had bought for the pantry last year (Nov. 26, to be exact). Of course, any appliance that is made these days is only set to last a year before something goes wrong with it.

And I'm telling you, there are two refrigerators still in my grandmother's house in NY that were there when I was a kid, and they're still there and still working. Why is that? My theory is that the American factories where appliances were made years ago put out good products that would last. Now everything is made overseas in heaven-only-knows-where, by people getting paid pennies a day for tedious work that no one is checking because there's no one in charge who cares if the damn appliances last ten days or ten years because what do they care if Americans have working appliances because the people putting these things together are probably living far below poverty level. (How's that for a run-on sentence?)

Anyway..... the repairman was here this morning, and of course the fridge was working perfectly. Mind you, at ten o'clock last night, we were taking the frozen food out of that fridge and putting it into the fridge in the garage because we thought the pantry fridge had just up and died. But this morning, the noises stopped, the clicking sounds weren't there, and the fridge and freezer were running perfectly and soundlessly, just as before. The fridge guy said he couldn't fix a problem that he couldn't see or hear....... and "what y'all call a click may not be what I call a click so I really can't help y'all any with that there." (They sent Gomer Pyle to fix our fridge, in case you hadn't guessed.)

The conclusion we came to was that the clicking sound was the fan hitting a piece of ice that built up behind the freezer unit, which made the fridge go into 'defrost mode,' which caused the end of the clicking, and the sound of melting ice dripping into the pan underneath the unit..... so this morning when we woke up, we had just what we had before-- a quietly running, efficiently working pantry fridge. "Now the next time that happens, if it does and it probably will, y'all can get out a recorder and tape the sounds it'll be making and that way I'd be able to hear the clicking sound y'all are talking about and maybe I can be of more help to y'all." Before Gomer said goodbye this morning, he told us half a dozen stories about other customers who heard strange noises coming from their refrigerators. I resisted the urge to tell him to say hello to Andy and Barney when he got back to Mayberry.

Almost Thanksgiving...

Not much happening lately....... except for two nights of rain, nothing has been going on up here. The rain was pouring last night and the night before-- so much so that the ponds now have water in them. Imagine that-- a pond with real wet water.

Over the weekend, we had dinner at J & G's... along with J&J and W&L, this was their first 'company dinner' since their big move from PA to TX. J&G's formerly 'June-only' house is now their permanent home back there in the woods...... and it truly has become home. And of course, now that Pumpkin Kitty has taken up residence on their back porch, what further proof does one need that their little house in the woods is now their one and only home? Plus, you can toss in a visiting raccoon who steals bird-feeders and eats cat food, and sprinkle in a knock-out vintage red kitchen cabinet, and Home is what J has made.

We're still walking every morning.... me and J and J, and sometimes G..... most mornings have been warm, but on the few cold-snap mornings, when JS walks down the road in just jeans and a tee-shirt, it just makes me shiver all the more. No jacket? No sweater underneath? No hood? No gloves? No scarf? J says this Autumn weather has been just beautiful... and indeed it has, except for the occasional cold snap that blows in and gives us 50-degree mornings. I told JS that her body is still set to Yankee-time..... and these November mornings don't feel cold to her yet because her interior thermostat is expecting temperatures to already be hovering around the freezing point. Next year.... just wait till next year.... she'll be bundled up in four or five layers like the rest of us as soon as the temperature goes down past 58 degrees.

I've sent out invitations for our Christmas party.... friends/neighbors here, and friends/neighbors in Clear Lake........ This will be our first Christmas party in this big old house of ours, and certainly not the last, one would hope. Some of our friends from the old neighborhood are planning to make the two-hour drive from there to here for the party. I wish we had a wide choice of live entertainment selections that we had in the Houston area. We always booked a different kind of band for our Christmas parties back there, but I don't think we'll be doing that here. What would our choices be? Country. Or how about country-western? Quite possibly Cajun-country. I think, for this first holiday party here, we will all just have to be our own entertainment.

We've been getting ready for Thanksgiving dinner..... we're making part of the dinner, J&J are making part of the turkey (including the turkey, which I truly hate to cook)..... and then we'll be enjoying our Thanksgiving dinner together. Gobble, gobble.

The ghosts of Christmases past have kept me tossing and turning on more than a few nights lately....... I always get a little sappy around the holidays, and this year is no different. So many memories... they started when I set up my parents' Nativity set...... I don't even have to close my eyes and I can hear my dad asking my mother "What color light do you want in the manger, A.... a blue one or a white one? Or how about yellow?" Every year when the tree went up and the Nativity was set out, my dad would ask my mother that very same question. My mother's answer was almost always "blue," but one year she picked a yellow light bulb....... daddy said it made the baby Jesus look like he had jaundice. (At four or five years old, I had no idea what that meant.)

And every Christmas, daddy and my mother would tell me not to play with the sheep around the manger. Of course, I did.... those cute little sheep would be on the living room coffee table, on the dining room table, in my bedroom on the second floor, or riding on the Lionel trains in my playroom on the third floor.... they were everywhere except in the manger. And now... I set up the sheep around the manger... some on the left side near the cow, a couple near the donkey on the right side, one is near the Infant's crib..... and they stay right where I put them. Oh well.

Just about 34 more days till Christmas. And then maybe the Christmas ghosts will rest.

The Santa parade....

.... and there's always room for just one more. Every time I go to the thrift shops looking for things for my space in the antique store, I find these cute little vintage Santa figurines on the shelves. Those twinkling little hand-painted eyes stare up at me and say Take me home... take me home.... And of course I do, with the intention of putting a price tag on them and displaying them (and selling them!) on the shelves in the antique store. Somehow, that doesn't happen.

As I clean off the dust from their beards, boots, and hats, the Santa faces come to life and I just can't put a price on their jolly old heads. This afternoon, I walked around the living room and dining room with a porcelain Santa in each hand.... surely there was room somewhere for just two more Santas. And there always is.... I must have nearly 90 Santa figurines now. Big ones, little ones, miniature ones... vintage ones mostly, with a few new-but-old-looking Santas tossed into the Christmas parade. They all seem quite happy.

My friend V back in Clear Lake has a Santa parade also..... every year, her Santas come out from the storage boxes and she lines them up on her mantel, her tables, her window-sills..... and she has a vintage postal-style wall of cubby-hole squares that hold countless Santas and Christmas decorations. V's Santa collection is legendary..... and every year, she finds 'just one or two more.'

The "find of the day" at the thrift shop today was a Victorian two-story house music box, made by the San Francisco Music Box Company. Just $7, for goodness sake.... when the Christmas music plays, two couples dance and twirl in the first floor living room of the house, and upstairs, a little girl is saying hello to Santa after he comes down the chimney. As the music plays, the fireplace lights come on, and the dancing couples and the little girl move around effortlessly. When I saw that on the shelf in the thrift shop, my first thought was to put a $49 price tag on it and bring it to the antique shop. It's in perfect condition, and the San Francisco Music Box Company does not make cheap products.

However..... once I got that Victorian house home and dusted off its roof and wound up the key to make the music play.... and the lights in the fireplaces came on.... and the couples started dancing.... and up in the attic of that house, a little window opened and a cardinal came out on a perch and chirped--- that was it. There was not going to be a price tag on that Victorian house/music box. It is now sitting in the front hallway next to the guest book.

Jingle bells. 38 more days until Christmas.

Second Spring.

For the past few days, the weather has been warm and spring-like..... so much so that the roses between the cottage and the barn are in bloom again. My husband waters those roses regularly, so I'm sure that helps, along with this balmy weather. I'm hoping the weather stays relatively warm this winter.... I know we'll have a couple of short cold snaps (we've had two already) but I hope we don't get slaughtered with a deep freeze again, as we did last winter and the one before. Is that too much to ask?

Pumpkin-Kitty hasn't been on our porch for days now, and I'm guessing that Gatsby is keeping him away. I still go out there and call out Kitty/Kitty/Kitty from time to time, but the only meows I hear in return are those from our own three cats right here. No little meows coming from the barn. Just as well..... we don't need a fourth cat....... I'm just hoping that Pumpkin-Kitty has found his way back to JS's porch where there is a bag of cat food waiting for him. Cats.... stray cats... there will always be strays up here.

I firmly believe that the best time to mail Christmas gifts is the first couple of weeks in November. I've started to mail out packages to my cousins, and within two or three days, those boxes were at their door-steps. Even the books that I sent via Media Mail, which usually takes 8 to 10 days-- they were delivered in less than 3 days. Early November must be a slow time for the post offices because anything that I've mailed was given 'priority' status and delivered quickly. Three cheers for the post office!

I've finished decorating for Christmas.... the silver aluminum tree was the last thing I put up this week, and now it's all done. Everything except the 'real' tree, which we don't get till the day after Thanksgiving. Into the dining room that will go... in this house, that just seems to be the best place for the live tree..... plus we can see the tree from the glass doors between the dining room and the breakfast room.

After the success of the Halloween party, we're planning a Christmas party. I'm glad we finally got back into the party-mode here. We had so many parties and dinner parties in our old house and this big old house was just screaming out for the same.

Nothing much going on this week.... no wildlife adventures that have me pointing a gun and closing my eyes.... no horrible mishaps with the plumbing.... everything is quiet on the Hill Country front here.

Welcome to my cat-world.....

As I type, our mostly outside-cat Gatsby is in the TV room with our two inside cats. The stray orange/white cat (we named him Pumpkin-Kitty-- my cousin F's suggestion) is outside on the back porch sleeping on one of the chairs. This is the first we've seen of Pumpkin-Kitty in the last two days.... since Gatsby barreled into him because he caught me petting the 'new' cat.

We haven't even decided what to do with this orange cat yet, but Gatsby decided that he was going to be the 'last stray' on this property and he took it on himself to get that point across in the only way male cats know-- running at full speed like a bowling ball and scattering whatever is in his path. And in his path was Pumpkin-Kitty, who ran into the barn and up into the rafters and didn't come down for two days.

All day yesterday until it got dark, I was walking around the property, calling Kitty/Kitty/Kitty.... no little meows from that orange/white cat. I had seen him up in the rafters the morning after Gatsby plowed into him, and he looked like he was going to jump down when I called up to him, but Gatsby came up behind me and gave Pumpkin-Kitty a look that would topple a lion...... so I'm sure Pumpkin-Kitty stayed well away from the house these past couple of days.

Tonight, though...... I just happened to be looking out the window of the kitchen door, and there was that familiar orange/white face looking up at me. I went right outside-- and just caught Gatsby coming around the corner of the porch. I scooped him up, put him inside and got some food for Pumpkin-Kitty. Poor thing ate two cans of Fancy Feast....... starving, starving, starving.

I'm not letting Gatsby outside tonight..... he's grounded.... at least until after Pumpkin-Kitty has had his breakfast in the morning. I'm hoping that Gatsby won't be so mean to him during daylight hours. Is that too much to hope for?

I don't know what we'll do with Pumpkin-Kitty...... I don't want a fourth cat..... and I don't want a bully-cat either. Gatsby came into this household with not so much as a screech from our other cats, so the least he can do is have decent manners with any other stray that happens along. And I am firmly convinced that there will always be stray cats out here...... it's just the way it is.

We can't keep them all..... we can't save them all....... there are shelters and rescue-houses for that...... Somehow, cats just find their way to me.

Saturday adventures...

I have spent the last couple of days taking the Christmas boxes out of the storage closet and setting up Santas, angels, and Christmas trees..... the house is beginning to look like Christmas. As always, as the things come out of the boxes, I ask myself "Who bought all this stuff?!" It looks like a ton of money was spent on this holiday, but mostly all the decorations came from resale shops, eBay, antique co-ops and yard sales...... when you stay out of stores like Macy's and Dillard's, you can have a house filled with Christmas for just pennies on the dollar. (My kind of shopping.)

Everything is out of the boxes and each room has more than its share of Christmas..... I know I could make a few more small trees and have rooms to display them in, but the long shelf in the storage closet has no more room for another tree, and my rule is that if there's no room to put it away neatly and safely in that closet, then I can't buy or make another little tree.

I was at the very end of that storage closet this afternoon, putting away the empty boxes... and I had forgotten to lock the door at the top of the back stairs........ and how do I know that? Because when I came out of the closet and walked into the kitchen, it was eerily quiet in the back of the house, but all sorts of meows and screeches were coming from the front of the house. Not a good sign. Up the back stairs I went, and the bird cage was face down on the landing of the stairs, in the middle of a zillion bits of birdseed....... Mickey was in the living room inspecting one of the large Santas, and Sweet Pea was in the dining room, hiding under the table.

First thing I did was make sure the parakeets were still in the cage--- they were still in there, and thankfully, the little cage doors were still shut. I left the cage right where it was.... picked up Mickey and put him in the TV room and shut the door...... picked up Gatsby and put him outside... and then went to get Sweet Pea, who by that time had run up the front stairs and was hiding under our bed. I knew he was the birdcage-tornado..... that cat can't resist anything with wings, from the tiniest fly to the largest black crows outside. Had those cage doors come undone, those parakeets would have been history while I was making everything all neat and tidy in that storage closet.

I coaxed Sweet Pea out from under the bed....... he crawled out only after he turned over on his back with his belly up in the air, looking at me upside-down with that 'poor kitty' look that cats can do so well. I picked Sweet Pea up, told him the birds were fine, the cage was fine, and the only not-fine thing was that he gave me a blessed mess to clean up. Into the TV room went Sweet Pea..... and into the front hallway went me....... I looked at the cage and the mess on that stairway landing and I hardly knew where to start.

Houdini and Bluebell were upset to be in the middle of a mess of spilled birdseed and water, plus some of the little branches broke when the cage went flying to the floor...... aside from little clouds of parakeet feathers, the birds were okay......... I put the cage on the kitchen counter so they could settle down while I cleaned up the mess on the landing. All that birdseed that I swept up....... into the yard it went, and the chickens ate up every last seed. I cleaned up the wood floor of the landing..... chased after those tiny feathers which moved around the hallway with every breath I took..... then I put the cage in order and replaced the broken branches with my 'stash' of pecan tree branches that I keep outside for their cage. From start to finish, it all took about an hour..... and of course my husband is never at home when excitement such as this happens.... by the time he got back from the neighbor's house, every last drop of water and bit of birdseed had been cleaned up and the parakeets were back on the landing in their cage and perfectly content.


We haven't seen the raccoon lately..... not since the night I went out there and shot twice at him with my eyes closed. I either hit him or I scared him enough to find another place to hang out....... a place that doesn't have a crazy woman who can't keep her eyes open when she pulls the trigger of a gun.

The orange cat........ we're calling him Pumpkin-Kitty for now........ he's still around, still meowing on the porch when he's hungry, still not letting me get too close when I feed him.......and we still don't know if we're keeping him. Even for an outside cat... I just don't need another pet...... I'll be worried about him when the temperatures get colder during December and January........... do we really need another cat? Of course not. Do we even want another cat? Of course not. My cousin F suggested the name 'Pumpkin," but this being the south, everyone gets a middle name and everyone uses it, so Pumpkin-Kitty it is for now.

Last night just at dusk, there were three huge deer in the front pasture. So huge that at first I thought the neighbor's horses were out roaming around...... from my front door to the middle of that pasture is a good long way, and it was nearly dark and hard to tell from inside the house. I told my husband that we'll have to remember to look outside tonight, around the same time, to see if the deer come back.

Raccoons in the middle of the day, deer at dusk, cats who overturn birdcages.... another day on the ranch here.

Annie Oakley is alive but not well.

This afternoon as I was going into the chicken coop to check for eggs, there was a raccoon in there..... in the blessed middle of the blessed day! The raccoon looked at me, I looked at him. I think he was having an afternoon snack of chicken feed and water. Thankfully, the chickens were under the bushes by the back porch and not near the coop.

I thought of shutting the door of the coop so the raccoon would be trapped in there, but I didn't know if he'd go nuts and start climbing up the chicken wire and trying to claw his way out. I also didn't know which of the neighbors were home so they could come down here and shoot the damn thing. (Of course, all of this stuff happens when my husband is at work.)

The only thing I could think to do was to grab the broom that I keep near the coop-- and I used the broom to swat the backside of the raccoon. Once again-- he looked at me, I looked at him. Telling him to "Get out!" didn't seem to help... he just looked at me and stared with those masked eyes of his. There we both were, inside that chicken coop. Again, I smacked his backside with the broom-- not hard enough to hurt him but just hard enough to get his attention. Three times...... and finally, he took the hint and walked slowly out of the coop and went to hide underneath the cottage.

I walked into the garage and got out the cage-trap.... the same cage-trap that I told my husband not to leave out in the yard when he wasn't home because I didn't want to deal with whatever creature crawled into it. Into the cage-trap went a store-bought egg (not going to waste the fresh ones on a damn raccoon) and a thick slice of orange. I put the trap near the spot under the cottage where the raccoon chose to hide. It wasn't till all of that was done that my hands started to shake because I had been inside a 12' x 12' chicken coop with a raccoon who could have turned on me and taken a chunk out of my leg. (Or worse yet, I could have broken a nail while smacking his butt with the broom.)

I called my husband at work..... something I hardly ever do...... and I told him what happened. He said I should have shut the raccoon in the coop, went inside and got the gun, and shot the raccoon inside the coop. "Not a chance," is what I told him.

Tonight I was outside on the porch with the orange/white cat that's been hanging around every night around 8:00....... he meows to get my attention, and of course I go out there to feed him. He was very friendly tonight, coming closer to me than he has in the past. The cat ate his dinner, and was just walking around the porch watching Sweet Pea and Mickey through the screen door. All of a sudden, the orange/white cat looks out into the yard and starts to growl under his little kitty-breath...... I looked out into the yard, and there was the raccoon, munching on bits of bread that the chickens had left there in the grass. The raccoon looked at me... I looked at him.

I came back into the house.... took the gun out of the closet..... took the clip of bullets from the cabinet..... I even remembered how to load the gun. I went back outside and shot the gun into the dirt, hoping to make the raccoon run into the hills. He didn't even move... he looked at me.... I looked at him. In the background, I could hear the orange/white cat growling low, watching the raccoon through the porch railings.

I looked at that raccoon and thought that it had to be either him or my chickens.... or one of the cats. The chickens are an easy kill for a raccoon.... the cats would be harder, but if the raccoon was desperate enough, he'd certainly try. I rested the tip of the gun on the porch railing.... I raised it up just a little bit.... all I had to do was pull that damn trigger. The raccoon was still looking at me. I closed my eyes for a split second and pulled the trigger. When I opened my eyes, the raccoon was hobbling towards the bushes... the same bushes where the chickens usually hide from the afternoon sun. I looked at the gun. Did I really just shoot that thing?

It was too dark out there to see if the raccoon came out the other side of those bushes.... I will have to look closely in the morning and see if there's a dead raccoon under there. (Or worse, a wounded one.) Until I know for sure, the chickens will have to stay inside the coop. They won't be happy, but at least they'll be safe.

As for me, my hands are still shaking a little bit. It was very easy to type all of this because my fingers are moving quite nicely inbetween the shaking parts. My husband called from the office a little while ago. I told him this whole story and he could hardly believe it. Then he said he's going to the next Gun Show and buying me a rhinestone-studded purple rifle for Christmas.

Life in the country. It's supposed to be peaceful and quiet and serene. As my dad would have said: Baloney!

All things 'boo...'

Every last pumpkin, witch, and black cat have been packed away now.... took less time than I thought, but I guess that's always the way. Arranging and re-arranging things around the house takes more time than putting little pumpkins inside big pumpkins and filling up the plastic storage bins. Three bins, two boxes.... and another Halloween comes to a close.

We're still talking about the elaborate and imaginative costumes..... our friend J with that head-to-toe witch's hat that she could barely walk in...... amazing costume. And J with his purple pimp-hat with the leopard trim, dripping in jingling-jangling coin-belts over green striped shirt and slacks. "A hot mess" would be what a fashion guru would call that outfit of his, but because it was Halloween, it just worked. My husband and his two-week's worth of beard made him a fine pirate... all the pirate jewelry that we've found over the years made him look like he took accessory lessons from Capt. Jack Sparrow.

When we see our friends here now, we will be picturing them in their Halloween costumes, and wondering how they can top this year's get-ups with next year's ideas. Halloween was actually Monday, which was just another day here. So far out in the hills, we don't get trick-or-treaters, so that just seemed to be the perfect day to pack up all the decorations. By the end of this week, I will start getting out the Christmas boxes..... from start to finish, it usually takes me a little over a week to get everything just so, and then right after Thanksgiving my husband will get the real tree for the dining room and then that takes a few days from start to finish. So hard to believe it's November already, but I say that every year.

We're already talking about a Christmas party.... also our first in this big old house of ours. How can you have such a house and not fill it with friends and neighbors for the holidays? My grandmother's house was always the go-to house when I was growing up. Sunday dinners were celebrations, with both the dining room table and kitchen table filled with family and any neighbors that happened to come by. And the holidays in that big old house of hers were a major production. When my husband and I settled into our old neighborhood, we began having parties for all the holidays... that house was filled with friends for holiday celebrations, and some made-up 'holidays' like the party we had to celebrate the last book of the Harry Potter series.

Anyone can live in a house, but it takes a lot of effort to make a house a home. My grandmother and my aunts accomplished that with ease, seemingly without any effort at all. Not until I was a teenager did I realize all the preparations that went into making the actual day go smoothly and effortlessly. "Love is in the details," as Aunt Dolly would say. And heaven knows there's an endless to-do list of details when you start planning a party. But when you see everyone smiling and laughing and just enjoying themselves in the moment, it's just the best.


We've been feeding an orange and white stray cat lately...... (We? Me. -- Although, my husband saw the cat from the window and said he was 'a cutie.' Both of us are nuts-- we keep saying no more pets.) This particular cat started out further up the hill at J's house.... but she thinks he may have wandered down here because there has been a huge coyote prowling around between her property and J&J's. I heard some gunshots tonight, and I was hoping that someone's bullets found their way into that coyote. I hate for anything to be killed, but a coyote is never a good thing to have around.

The orange cat was meowing on our back porch a few nights ago. I thought it was Gatsby and I went out there to call him in, and there was the stray, keeping his distance but clearly letting me know that it was long past his dinner time. I've been feeding him ever since. If you don't feed a stray, they'll find some place else to go, but I just can't ignore hungry meows. The orange cat hasn't let me pet him yet... he watches me put the food dish down, and he had been waiting till I went back into the house to approach it, but tonight he ate while I watched him, then meowed his thanks and sat down on the porch. Gatsby was on the porch with him, and only started to howl when he saw me talking to the stray. I just picked up Gatsby and brought him in the house, then went back outside to let the orange cat know that he was welcome to sleep on the porch furniture instead of the hard wood decking.

I'm guessing the orange cat is hanging around here because of Gatsby.... and he must know by now that all it takes is one or two pitiful meows and I will be out there with a dish of Meow Mix or Fancy Feast.