Happy Kitten Day 2024

Where are we goin' Mama? (approx Nov 2010)
Looks like Grey Mouse, out on the porch, exploring with mama Patches.

The Ambush.
Grey Mouse, cool grey with more stripes as a kitten, on the footboard of Grandpa's old bed, clearly ready to pounce on a sister below.

 

My darling kittens were born on Sept 7, 2010. Only Grey Mouse is still here with me out of 4 kittens, (Rex, Spot, Lassie, Grey Mouse),  Mama Patches, father Sugar Mouse, and auntie/grandmother Mousie.

In the recent "cooler" weather, Grey Mouse was sleeping again on my shoulder or lap. We had another heat wave, but it is cooling again...
 

Remember when . . .

This great picture was posted by Cara Wasilewski on FB page Indivisible Women of Nevada County

Well, here we are. Dying.

Because, first of all, because dt had disbanded the Obama-era task force on preparing the US for a potential pandemic virus. And got rid of the stockpiles of equipment. And removed the observers who were in China watching for such a thing. (Although that is not the only place to watch; swine flu started here.) And then his administration did nothing when warned in January about the virus.

And thanks to the stupidity, greed, and incompetence of dt and his many repub enablers, and his trump-cultist followers, many of whom are still with him. They have drunk the KoolAid.

If only they weren't taking so many of the rest of us with them into oblivion. (Over 150,000 Americans have died from Covid-19 by Aug 1, 2020)

And it is not just in the Midwest or the South, or Michigan, that there are armed trump-cultists trying to impose their stupidity on the rest of us. Without, let it be noted, any attempt at federal intervention against actual threats against the governor, by armed thugs, like in Michigan. No, the only 'federal' response is anonymous thugs in Portland OR, beating up, tear gassing, pepper-spraying, shooting, peaceful protestors who made dt look bad. And dt threatening to send them against other Democratic cities.

But locally here too, on Saturday, a large maskless protest in Sacramento, with local idiots as well as out of state agitators. Then they moved up here for a large maskless protest in downtown Grass Valley. What are they protesting? The withdrawal of operating permits for several restaurants who had refused, (despite long attempts to help them), to follow any re-opening guidelines for masking, distancing, cleaning.

I don't think those out of town agitators, and the local anti-vaccers/anti-maskers/exteme-right-wingers, would be able to keep those restaurants in business all by themselves anyway, since all the reality-based community is saying that they will never eat there again. As several said, if they are refusing to follow cleaning guidelines now, what do you suppose their kitchens are like normally?

The ones I saw in Safeway a few weeks ago without masks were old white guys, and the store was doing nothing about them. Luckily there are a few other groceries who are better. And it isn't only old white men who are so stupid/uncaring of others' safety. They are just some of the most arrogant.

Wearing a mask or not is an IQ test, not a political statement. And besides, the government's facial recognition surveillance can't tell who you are in a mask...

Definitely time to sew again...

Empire-style dress design drawn for a costume history class in 2016

But not with a patterned fabric used like this batik-style one, although I just made over 2 dozen versions of this design in colorful new incarnations.

I have been falling for wonderful linen fabrics, which come also in the soft greyed colors which are my favorites, as well as brighter colors. And some of my favorite fabric designs go with some of those linen colors.

So, the parts of this picture with the patterns will be solid colors of linen, with a pattern on the front of the bodice.


Maybe one of those 2-Sprig colorings I just made. This version of the design fits more closely together, and has some interesting layouts.

You can see that these textured designs look like embroidery.  So for me, they seem more appropriate for smaller areas like a bodice front.


Time to start making something...

When I was in school the first time, 50 years ago, I used to draw the costume I was going to make during vacation, and prop it up on my desk to look at while I studied for finals. I find this drawing has the same effect. I keep looking at it.
 

Between Every Two Pines

Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.  John Muir

I found this wonderful quote by John Muir for the booklet I did for Mom's memorial service. It's something like the way I always felt, thinking about going back into the woods on my own, when I was a kid.

I took the picture in a graveyard up near North San Juan, after another funeral; I was looking for two pines.

Now I have made it a transparent picture for dark t-shirts, and like this for cards and journals. (Photoshop online made available by the college, whose students can't come to campus to the library now.)

Maybe with the quote below it instead of interrupting the sky...

Pacific Coast Iris hybrids 2010, 2020

Hybrid Pacific Coast Iris, growing among hardy geraniums

Picture from May 16, 2010.

I'm mourning that I haven't seen any of these beautiful small irises around the house this year; there used to be several of them. And a particular loss, the beautiful white one with lavender and blue lines, that Cyndi gave me decades ago, from a Native Plant Society sale, is all gone. An idiot tenant had dug all of it's offspring out years ago, but there was one survivor - finally choked out by blackberries and neglect. The beautiful ground cover hardy geranium visible in this photo is almost gone too. It's shade tree had died, then they were dug out by the friend of a tenant, who thought he was weeding. They haven't recovered, not helped by being taken over by blackberries (mostly cut back now).

The tall purple iris just started blooming a few days ago, and the little white-with-blue-lines wild iris started blooming last week in the woods down the hill.

And the old-fashioned almost-wild roses down the hill by the highway just started blooming this week. They are always the earliest. And the lilacs. And I heard the first (Mountain?) chickadee song yesterday. 

May 1, 2020 There were lots of flowers on the tall dark red-violet iris in this area; last year's clearing was good for it. And the more sun from losing so many tall trees. There are still a few small plants of this beautiful small iris that should be in big clumps. And a few buds. One beautiful survivor is the small lavender-color ground cover Veronica Waterperry. The incomplete but careful hand clearing I did around and among it helped. Time to do it again this year, and really dig out the returning blackberries...

Keep In Touch 2020

Fallen mailbox  March 19, 2011

Grandpa's large old mailbox was knocked down in a fast snowstorm, maybe by the mailman or a snowplow, maybe by a neighbor with a tractor -- tracks were visible under the top several inches after they melted. I left it out there since at least it was a marker for the address -- I was using a post office box at the time. And after a month, someone took it, before I could put it up again.

I have a new, small mailbox now. I am emailing with a family member, and went back on Facebook to get back in touch with a couple of friends. (And started again looking at a couple of groups as inspiration for starting some projects, which I have already collected fabric for.) And this is definitely an opportunity to clean the house. . .

And the OLLI adult education, which cancelled its classes, all on campus, first thing for this semester, has developed an entirely new Zoom schedule of classes for this semester, and is planning for summer. 

Old friends have moved away.

4/24/2020 And I had lost touch recently with a close friend, but it was just a misunderstanding. We are talking on the phone again.

Campus Is Closed 2020

Library, Sierra College, Nevada County Campus

This picture of the library on campus from across the pond is from several years ago, maybe 2013. It was the semester we lost 3 Thursdays to snow vacation. The picture was taken on Friday, the day after it started snowing quickly during class and campus was closed.

I walked home; it's only 2 miles on the wooded trail, a little farther the way I went along the roads. At class next week, we discovered I had reached home before the professor had gotten out of the parking lot with everyone trying to leave at once.

Last October, we didn't have any storms, no rain although some wind. But we had SIX power outages from PGE, the first one over 3 days. No wind here when the power was off. Supposedly only 10 days total. Everyone, including grocery stores, lost freezers full of food. Yes, some of them had backup generators; it wasn't enough.

Now, with the Corona virus pandemic, and shelter-in-place/social-distance, almost everything except grocery stores is shut down. Government offices and some businesses/restaurants are curbside pickup. I was glad to hear hardware stores are open, in case of a stopped-up drain. And I need batteries and light bulbs.

Our wonderful local independent radio station is unusually running many already recorded programs, but still keeping us updated on what is happening. And YubaNet, which we usually depend on for weather, fire, election and meetings information, is moderating regular virtual town meetings.

But schools are coping. They are shut, but at least most California districts are trying to get school lunches to kids. And some online, I don't know details. But I know at least 2 community college students who have been homeless, and certainly many more can't do online courses without the library. Over the last few years, this campus has lost the majority of its on-campus courses to online ones, and the computer lab closed several years ago.

The exception was the adult ed OLLI short courses, all I have taken for the last year, which were all in person. But since they were for older students, they were cancelled first thing. And now they are back! The 2 I had wanted to take are not, but a bunch of interesting things are available this semester on Zoom. They put that together in a month...

Old dogs are learning new tricks.

PS. Minimally Photoshopped -- I took out a garbage can.

Irrationality? Floating rocks? Rockbergs! Feb 14, 2018

Floating ice and floating rocks, small pond on campus, March 7, 2016

Time to reread one of my favorite books, Irrationality, by Stuart Sutherland. An excuse for a few quotes. He's funny; you have to watch for it.

"What constitutes a rational decision depends upon one's knowledge. There is a rider to this. If one has reason to believe one's knowledge is insufficient, then it is rational, particularly in the case of important decisions, to seek out more evidence: unfortunately, as we will see, when people do so, they usually act in a wholly irrational way, since they only seek evidence that will support their existing beliefs." (p. 5)

"The effects of conformity on beliefs and attitudes are the more injurious because people tend to associate with others who have similar beliefs to themselves. ... the only way to substantiate a belief is to try to disprove it. But because like mixes with like, people are rarely exposed to counter-arguments to their more deeply held convictions, let alone to counter-evidence. Their beliefs conform to those of their associates: hence, there is little possibility of eliminating persistent errors. "(p. 41)

"Everyone is irrational some of the time and in particular everyone is susceptible to the availability error. I give a final striking example ... In 1969, Jerzy Kosinsky's novel Steps won the American National Book Award for fiction. Eight years later some joker had it retyped and sent the manuscript with no title and under a false name to fourteen major publishers and thirteen literary agents in the US, including ... the firm that had originally published it. Of the twenty-seven people to whom it was submitted, not one recognised that it had already been published. Moreover, all twenty-seven rejected it. All it lacked was Jerzy Kosinsky's name to create the halo effect: without the name, it was seen as an indifferent book." (pp. 28-29)

"People have an amazing capacity to remember pictures. After being shown 10,000 photographs just once they can correctly recognize almost all of them a week later. This is in marked contrast to the very poor memory for isolated words."(p. 19)

"The term 'love' was defined in an authoritative dictionary of psychology as 'a form of mental illness not yet recognised in the standard diagnostic manuals'. (p. 115) [The authoritative dictionary was written by S. Sutherland...]

Now, about those floating rocks. I have seen that pond drained. It is about knee-deep, and there are no rocks sticking up in it. What happens is that when the pond freezes over, students throw rocks out onto the ice, trying to break it. At first this doesn't succeed, and in the freeze-thaw cycles, some of the rocks get frozen to the ice. When they finally break it [that's why there are those entirely unnatural sharp edges to the ice], some of those rocks are attached to large enough pieces of ice to support them, mostly invisible under the water, and the rocks go floating around the pond. Rockbergs.

Re-examine what you see. Go over the evidence. There are floating rocks, and underground jumping rocks. More things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies.

But real. With rational explanations.


He gives citations for almost everything, but not for the Jerzy Kosinsky story. I have to wonder who that 'joker' was who re-submitted the story...

Stay Warm

Lassie on heater, probably spring 2011

Doesn't she look grumpy? And she is looking down. I think someone might have been there to dispute the possession of the heater with her.  She is glaring "Don't you push me off!"

This is probably the kittens' first year, spring or early summer 2011. She doesn't have her adult color green eyes yet. And that year they were kept in the bathroom with a heater, separate from Rex. That was the year that they were all on my lap in the chair, and we were enjoying a fire in the woodstove - on June 2nd!

We had a dry December this year - bad news in case we go back to drought conditions without fully recovering from the last one. We haven't had snow yet here, but back east they are having feet of snow in a winter cyclone, and record low temperatures.

I recently asked myself, "what do you do when the power goes off?"

And the answers I immediately came up with:

What do I do when the power goes out?
I get a fire started in the wood stove, (and if it happened today I’d be cursing myself while I cleared away the clutter in front of the stove) and be sure to cook dinner over the stove before dark. And go bring in more firewood before dark. Before it rains. Or snows.
Or dye some fabric, or take a bath, or wash the dishes with the last warm water in the water heater.
Or put extra blankets on the bed, and curl up in the dark and call my mother, whose phone number was the one I knew in the dark.

Seriously. There are lots of things to do to take advantage of/survive the situation. Those with a live-in lover have another option. Why they have lots of births 9 months later in cities.

Those answers are in reverse order, most recent to oldest, of things I have actually done over the years. It depends a little on what time of year, and time of day it is. But the latest wisdom I learned several years ago, when my power was out for more than 3 days.

[That is common enough here that it is necessary to have another source of heat and cooking, and lights, handy for when it happens. The bus driver, a few blocks away, had his power out for 2 separate weeks that year.]

That time, after a couple of days I had used most of the wood I had inside, and was wading through a foot of snow carrying firewood. And the lights I had were not bright enough to see what I was doing if I had to cook dinner after dark.

I learned to bake bread the summer I turned 16, at the cabin in Northern Idaho. In a woodstove. And the little woodstove heaters don't channel heat to the top the way a cookstove does. Much harder to cook over.


The next time the power went out that year, it came on only a few hours later. But by that time I had started a fire, and heated some leftover soup, and was having dinner.


2020 Last October, 2019, PGE turned the power off 6 times -- more than 10 days off total! We all, including grocery stores, lost freezers-full of food. There wasn't any rain all month, some wind -- not necessarily where the power was off. They were doing planned maintenance.

Partial Solar Eclipse Aug 21, 2017

Partial solar eclipse photo through the bottom of a colander

written and back-posted April 26, 2020

I would have had to drive north to see a total eclipse, it was just partial here, so I used this colander to watch the shadow cross the sun in the round spots of light that came through the round holes.

When I was a kid there was a partial eclipse, and Dad made something like a pinhole camera with a box, and aluminum foil, and a pinhole, for us to watch the spot of light.

Somewhere in the late '70s, there was a total eclipse visible in Washington. I was home at the time, and Mom and I drove halfway across the state looking for a hole in the clouds. We found one near a farm, and pulled up just as the eclipse was starting. As it darkened, Mom said the cows started 'lowing', and they moved towards the farm buildings. I think there were birds calling too, like at dusk.

The eclipse itself was spectacular too.

Totally worth traveling to see.

Mousie approx. 2008 - July 2016

Mousie in 2011 with one of the kittens (Grey Mouse?) - looking stripey

 

In December 2010, most of the kittens got calici virus. If Mom's cats had had their shots, it probably couldn't have happened.

They got it after they were weaned. Rexie was very sick, had to be hand-fed again, and 2 others had it too. Then their father Sugar Mouse died in early 2011, of a different horrible disease. I thought Mousie was maybe the carrier.

So I separated the kittens from their mother Patches, and Mousie. And Mousie didn't get to cuddle like this anymore. When she and Patches were frightened, they squeezed into 2 tiny drawers on either side of the sink to hide.

She was living here with Patches when the horrible guest of a renter kicked out the screen in the kitchen door, and then chased Patches out to die. Months later, he tried to do the same to Mousie, but she outsmarted him, and hid where he (and I) couldn't find her. After that, I moved her upstairs. (Buddy was gone by then, so there was a safe place for her.)

She was never friendly or pettable, but she co-existed with me, and liked to sleep in her padded nest-box. She told me when she was out of water or food. There were sunny windows, and a heater in the winter.

But it wasn't such a safe place after all. First, on a really hot day in July, she got very overheated. I re-arranged things so the fan could blow on her, and she seemed to be feeling better. But in the morning, she had knocked over the stuff in the nearby corner, and was across the room trying to hide behind the refrigerator. And among that stuff was a small black widow spider.

So whether it was the heat alone, or mostly the spider bite, she is gone.

The last of Mom's cats. Goodby Mousie. 

Sleeping Beauty's House? No, but Grandpa's blackberries. Summer 2016

Grandpa's blackberries have blockaded the house

When he was in his eighties, one evening on the beach at the cabin in Idaho, Grandpa told me the story of his life. This was a spontaneous event, I didn't have a tape recorder. And I wasn't smart enough to think of going inside afterwards and writing down everything I could remember.

But I was listening very carefully, and I remember some of it.

One of the stories he told, as a joke upon himself, was that he had planted some blackberries when he was a young man. Way down at the edge of the property, near the road. (Sold long ago). I haven't told this story locally, because I didn't want the neighbors to blame him.

These blackberries are called Himalayan. Definitely not native; they have taken over large areas of the West coast. (If they were native, there would be a natural control on them.) When I came here in 1981, they had at least 3 of the remaining 7 acres. And now they've surrounded his house. I and a friend have finally started cutting and digging them, a couple of hours a week.

So in his story, everybody told him not to plant the blackberries. And he told them he was young and strong, and he could "grub them out".

And now I'm not young and strong anymore, but I get to try to get them under control...

Rexie Stops to Notice the Roses Thursday April 30, 2015

Rexie on the balcony railing with St Mary mini rose, April 30, 2015

(Written and first posted Sept 30, 2015)

This was a rose year. (It's always Rexie's year, he/(she) and his/(her) sisters.)

I have sequential hobbies-obsessions. They repeat, not in order, every several years. You can kind of tell that, from reading this blog. Roses & gardening, sewing, cross-stitch design, quilt design, jewelry design & making, textile design, fabric dyeing...

This spring and summer again it was roses. In pots on the balcony because of the drought, the conquering horde of blackberries, and the deer. I have never before succeeded in growing them successfully up there, partly because it's too shaded in high summer, although fine in spring, late summer, fall & winter, when the sun is more to the south.

Partly because, I thought in the past, by July I couldn't carry enough water to keep them healthy. That turned out to be not true. 6-8 gallons a day for the whole row, in still-fairly-small-pots. The problem in the past turned out to have been spider mites (and aphids, etc) drying them out. Soapy-water spray &/or dip turns out to fix that. Plus watering on the leaves more. Plus a couple of friendly spiders.

As for the shade question, I mostly bought and grew shade-tolerant roses, as I could get them. Yes, there are shade-tolerant roses! Especially Hybrid Musks, which are mostly contemporary with this 1917 house, but with some new ones too. I passed on the totally tempting Darlow's Enigma, which apparently wants to be 12ft x 12ft! Not on the balcony...

But I love Lyda Rose. Also old favorites Angel Face and Iceberg are shade-tolerant, and a few minis. And several of David Austin's English Roses, like Abraham Darby. And I also tried some totally tempting ones, which I'm thinking of trying to breed - purples Ebb Tide and Rhapsody in Blue.

Because I think what I need here for the balcony are shade-tolerant, heat-tolerant (Lyda Rose and probably other Hybrid Musks are both plus disease-resistant), fragrant, purples or pastels, disease-resistant. And for the long-term in pots, small roses or larger-bush minis, or hanging basket minis.

So I was out on the balcony very early in the morning for much of the summer. Trying (trying!) a little hybridizing just to learn how. Plus potting-up, fertilizing, spraying soapy water for bugs, or apple-cider-vinegar for diseases (mostly a minor problem). Also in pots, I knew from when I worked in the nursery, roses can become Magnesium deficient, although there's plenty in the soil here.

I can do better with all of that next year, and get more flowers. But the advantage of the balcony is that everything is close up. I always had some flowers, mostly fragrant ones. I took 1000s of pictures. And Rexie was out here with me part of the time - but he kept telling me (by walking on the rail between me and the flowers, and bumping me) to stop taking pictures and Pay Attention To The Cat.

He also decided that the balcony was his exclusive territory, and his sisters couldn't go out there.

Rosemary, that's for Remembrance - Remembering Buddy

This picture of Buddy out in the snow on the balcony is from March 18, 2011. Pandora was out there too.

(Buddy died Oct 30, 2014 written Jan 6, 2015, first posted Jan 8, 2015 )

Buddy and Valentine were the 2 kittens whose feral mother was killed either by a raccoon or a boy and a dog. They were in a cage in the shed. Something pulled the bolt on the cage. Something killed the mama cat, who had just been spayed.

I had tried to bring them in for the night. The idea was that they would go back into the carrier inside the big cage, and then I could pick them up and take them in. The big cage did not have a secure floor that i could have picked up. (My good big cage had Cheesecake in it, who had been badly beaten up by something, and was supposed to stay confined for a month. The vet was surprised he survived.)

But when I went out to bring them in, they were all wild-eyed, and didn't go into the carrier. I didn't make the connection. And, fatal move, I fed them out there.

So, probably the giant killer raccoon who also probably beat up Cheesecake, and whose 3 inches across footprints I had seen on my windshield, pulled the bolt, opened the cage, and killed the mama cat.

But she fought long enough for the kittens to escape. And because they were used to coming to my car, when I went to feed the feral cats behind where I used to work, the kittens found their way to the house.

So I fed them canned cat food for a few times, sitting out on the porch. Then I got the bright idea of tying a cord to the screen door, putting the can of cat food just inside it, and letting them go in, and pulling the cord to close the door.

It worked. Then I had wild kittens loose in the house. I do not recommend this idea.

Eventually I got them up into the bathroom, where I had started taming other cats, and then out onto the balcony with the others, when it was warm. Buddy was named for his liking to be friendly with other cats, and do his greeting ritual with them. He became very good friends with Dovey, although not with her brother Lovey. (They rolled off the roof in a fight once.)

Originally he was not pettable, except over the backs of his friends at feeding time.

But in recent years, after he was upstairs with (Cheesecake and?) Pandora and Bob and me, he did become pettable, and even liked sitting on my lap when he had the chance. And his tabby fur was very soft.

He was one of the only 2 of my old cats who were still alive when I brought Mom's cats here. I put Musketeer upstairs with Buddy and Pandora, since he had lived with us for a while, until Mom took him away.

Musketeer lasted an amazing year and a half, considering how skeletally thin he was. When he finally went, after he stopped moving, he woke up from time to time, and took a little water in his mouth from a syringe. I spent several days in the nearby chair to be with him.

When Pandora went, she only lasted a few days after she stopped moving around.

I was keeping the older cats separated from my kittens, as much as possible, because of the various disease possibilities. So Buddy got to be with them out on the balcony on warm days, without food or water there, but did not get to just live with us. Or he was outside while we were inside. Or he was in the room with the wood-stove and we were in the bedroom area.

I always meant to get a picture of his large Buddy-face outside the window, and little Rex's small tabby-face inside the window, since they were similar soft-furred tabbies, only Rex and his sisters are so much smaller.

But this summer he stopped going out the window onto the roof and balcony. He was getting thinner, very thin. His fur got harsh. I was trying to feed him more, but he stopped eating the canned food, just ate the liquid off of it. I should have brought him some grass. I should have taken him down outside into the grass. There was a fenced area, until a tenant tore it open.

I wasn't paying enough attention to him. I wasn't sitting with him. It wasn't wood-stove season. I spent time with my "kittens", but not with him. He called and I didn't always come. I didn't really notice when he stopped eating any dried food at all. I didn't try to give him canned food at every meal. He was still trying to move around, to the cat-box and the water dishes, the day he died. He died on my lap.

When I buried him, as I put his little light curled-up body into the grave, I suddenly thought "rosemary". I went to pull some rosemary off the old bush which Grandpa or Grandma probably planted. (Mom's sister's name was Rosemary.) I had never done that while burying a cat before.

But when I pulled at the trailing branches, some of them broke off with roots. So I planted them around the edge of the grave, and tossed the others into it. The rosemary was beginning to flower. It was just before a rain, and it rained a little bit every week or two this fall. The rosemary should survive. Maybe I'll try to find some rue too.

So I will always know where Buddy's grave is.

Smoke Vacation! Sept. 23, 2014

Yesterday late afternoon - the ground-level smoke had cleared somewhat

I took this picture to show the charming old sawdust-burner, from when this was a lumbermill, all grown-over with a vine. It's turning color at the top - not sure if too much sun/too little water, or fall color. And also to show the exaggerated atmospheric perspective given by the smoky low visibility.

The last time we were having smoke for weeks on end, from over a 1000 fires* caused by one set of lightning storms, I was wondering just how smoky it was in Renaissance Italy, when artists discovered the idea of atmospheric perspective. (How things get fuzzier, lighter, and bluer with distance, caused by more atmosphere between us and them with more distance.)

This was about noon today!

Today visibility is much lower; that further hill which just showed yesterday is gone today. (Maybe just a ghost there.) Normally, I think I remember, there's another hill or two to see...

And the air smells much smokier. So glad I had a chance to open up the house for a while yesterday evening to air out - my rooms had been closed up for 3 days - and even more glad that I was awake in the middle of the night to close it all up again, including the floor which was open before.

*This time it's one giant fire to our Southeast. It's West and Southwest of Lake Tahoe. The King fire.

And the college campus, as well as the high school, is closed today. We've had snow vacation before, but smoke vacation? That's a new one to me.

Lassie Came Home August 7, 2014

Lassie on balcony railing. You can see how she might fall off, with the birds going by at eye level.

 (written Aug 29, 2014) (first posted Sept 12, 2014)

She, as it turned out, fell off the balcony, apparently, rather than getting taken off by one of the (now 3!) Great Horned Owls from down the hill. There was some wind, a large branch fell nearby, a drawer that was leaning against the railing fell off, not right below where it was. So she might have made a frightened leap, and she and the drawer fell together.

But Lassie is one of my "kittens". They come running when I call (for food).* I had left them out on the low roof/balcony after dark for the first time, forgetting why I had been so careful to not do that. (The rabbit that I saw the owl killing, before sunset one year, was no smaller than these cats.) It rained some that night. (Yes, rain. August.) When I let them in, she didn't come.

So I called and called. And walked around the house looking, for 2 days. The second night after the evening when she vanished, I was on the balcony, calling. Well, having Siamese cat hysterics, really. Loudly.** And someone said something, somewhere nearby. I asked "who said that?" No one said it again. It didn't seem to be any cat I could see, inside or outside.

But it turns out that Lassie must have found her way up onto the roof right over my head. Because first thing in the morning she found her way in through the high window on the other side of the roof, into the kitchen.

Now, don't you think there is something in the idea of cat names as self-fulfilling disasters? Since it was Lassie , (not Rex or Spot or Grey Mouse) who went off and had an adventure? And came home.


*In fact, a great thundering horde of cat...

**Lisa taught me to speak Siamese long ago. We used to keep in touch that way, going for walks in the woods together. And twice, after she had been missing a long time, she found her way back after I went up on a high place and called, in Siamese cat,"Where are you?" Once we had just moved to a new city, and she had gotten lost. Once, down at the coast, she had been shot. (Hunting chipmunks in the neighbor's garden.) She had to have her shoulder pinned back together.

Siamese cat hysterics, you ask? Speak in Siamese. The same thing that the mama cat says to the kittens when she comes back in and lies down to feed them. Meowwrrrr. With a purr at the end. The same thing that the tomcat says outside the window when he is calling a female to come out and play. MEOWWRRR. Now, louder and deepen your voice. Again, louder and deeper. Stand up straight. Make a megaphone with your hands. Louder and deeper. Let how upset you are show in your voice. Tighten your diaphragm. Put an echoing crack into it at the end of the call. Bounce it off the neighbors house a block away, just to check. And of course, when you do this, all the not-missing cats will stand up and put their paws on your knees, to tell you that they are here. And if they are inside, they will be answering you.

PS Happy Kitten Day, September 7 (The kittens birthday)

Lost Cat, May 2014

She's gone. She was my mother's cat, born in her house, slept on her bed. She was beautiful. And before anyone else moved in here, she used to sit on my shoulders.* She was  the mother of my darling "kittens" (3 years old now, still act like kittens).

She was probably gotten by a wild animal the first night.** It rained. She might have tried to come back in through the hole in the screen where I had left the door open for her, and gotten chased off by the Horrible Roomer's cat or dogs. She wasn't very old, maybe 1 or 2 in 2010, so 6 now, or less.

A disadvantage of indoor cats is that they may not really learn to come when I call. She hadn't. (My outdoor cats came running when I called them.) So when they're hiding out or lost, I don't have that second chance for them to find their way back, to my calling. I called. I looked.

She liked being out on this screen porch, she and her friend Sugar Mouse, that first summer, before they had kittens. (My mother's cats had not been fixed nor had shots.) She was a good mother, protecting her kittens from their father and everything else. Once a kitten made a squeak when I was near it, and she flew at me to protect it.

When she got frightened, she and Mousie, her companion, they used to squeeze into the little drawers on either side of the kitchen sink. She was frightened by someone just before she vanished, and hiding in there. And I took a picture of her. With a flash. She maybe thought it wasn't a safe hiding place anymore.


**Dogs and cars kill more cats here, though.

*This last year and a half it has been too unpleasant here for me to sit with her at all, in this part of the house, with the Roomer here. I really missed that, her sitting on my shoulders. I'm afraid she missed it too.


I learned later that the low-life slime who lived here, guest of a renter, the one who had kicked out the screen in the kitchen door, had deliberately chased Patches out to die. 
I learned it when he tried to do it to her companion Mousie too. But Mousie was too smart for him; she hid where he couldn't find her. And I locked him out forever. (They were already supposed to have moved out.)

Bats in the bedroom again… August 8, 2013

Brown bat in bedroom June 26, 2006, 2am close-up. He was about to fly out the window when I flashed in his face. Whoa!

Two nights in a row, Aug. 4th and 5th. First time in several years. Cheesecake and I used to have our bailout protocol all figured out for when there was one circling the bedroom. (Screens are tighter now, usually.)

The first night it was very late, maybe 3:30 or 4 am. I was waked up by the *kittens* bouncing all over me and the bed, chasing it. By the bedside flashlight it looked like a small bat.

Small bat in bedroom, June 26, 2006, 2 am approx

So I grabbed the Spot *kitten*, who was closest, locked her up, then caught the others one at a time, and once they were all locked up, closed the bedroom door to wait for it to settle out.

Once all was quiet, I went back in with the flashlight. Didn't see it. (They usually settle clinging to a screen.) So I opened a window wide and left. By that time it was almost showing some light in the sky. Went to sleep for the rest of the night in a chair.

I had hoped that it had gotten out, but kept the kittens and Buddy locked inside all day, and not in the bedroom. Because in the past I have thought that a bat had gotten away, but as soon as I let the cats out, they found it. (Once  a very small one had crawled under the cat-house on the porch. They were trying to fish it out. Once there was a bat clinging to the shingle siding outside the bedroom. Several times one was still in the bedroom. Once in the torchiere lamp. It couldn't get out. After I had gone back to bed, I heard it skritching. Had to tip it out the window as soon as it was slightly light.)

So the next night, the bat appeared early, maybe 9:30 or 10:00pm. I was still reading, the light was still on, but luckily cats still locked up. It looked like a larger bat this time.

Medium-size black bat in bedroom, June 26, 2006, approx 2am Notice the same calendar is in this picture.

Leave, close door, wait for it to settle, go in and open window, and TURN OUT THE LIGHT. (Very important, otherwise there will be lots of bats in the bedroom, following bugs! See previous post about bats.)
http://wrwcolors.blogspot.com/2006/10/bats-in-bedroom.html

This time, it was so much earlier, I just read in the chair for an hour or two, then went back to bed. Good chance it had escaped, and seems to have done so.

Think I've found where it/they got in — screen pulled loose from frame, and I had left the window open too far so they could easily get in.

I'm sure that this time it wasn't this guy - you can see (there's that calendar again) how much larger he was, and brown not black.

These pictures, from June 26, 2006, when I stood out on the porch roof and took pictures, the time I cleverly opened the window from the outside, thus leaving the light on, show, I think, three different species of bat.

I like my bats a lot. Haven't seen a mosquito for a month. But I prefer them outside, not in the bedroom.

Haven't heard them for a couple of years now. My extra-high-frequency hearing might be gone.  (Never heard them in the bedroom; apparently it's the social calls, not echo-location, which are in human hearing range, sort-of.) 

** The kittens are all grown up, though small, cats. But they still act like kittens. And they're my kittens, especially Rexie. (He thinks so too...)

Full moon puzzle

full moon mandala photo, @15 sec. July 22, 2013 1am

The full moon was clear and bright in a black sky. The exposure was 15 seconds, f6.3, with a tripod.

Apparently that was enough time for the close bright moon to light up the surrounding sky.

I don't know why the photo has a star shape, with hexagonal patches of light, and a greenish sky color, but I like it.

This doesn't look like a heat wave . . . July 4th, 2013 noon

July 4th, 2013 noon - over 100 degrees today

But it was.

With the clouds and extra moisture, it was hot and muggy, and didn't cool off as well at night. And around 100 degrees F all week!

At least the possible thunderstorms didn't happen and cause fires.

This week, July 18, it's about to heat up again, after a week of low 80s. 100 degrees by Saturday.

Amazing how cool 80 degrees feels in the summer. And how hot it is in the spring.

And at the end of that week, walking up the hill, I met a neighbor who said how cool 90 degrees felt!

Of the 2 tall trees on the left, the right one was the redtails' home tree. You can just see that steep crotch, near the top. You see how far away it really is.