Transitions

Last weekend it looked like this...

The starlings had brought the grackles to the coontina Saturday morning and there was lots of muttering about the lack of service. Then it kept snowing...

On Sunday, Violet had had enough. I however, was strangely captivated by this last snowfall on the first day of spring.

Brian called and confessed that he had said out loud to someone that he wished there was one last snowfall. He took full responsibility. I couldn't be mad because some years I'm guilty of doing the same thing.

The snow didn't last long though because on Sunday the temperature was in the 50s and it started melting fast. Soon you could see the formerly snow covered crocuses reappear with their little stretched necks poking their heads above the melting snow. They were probably thinking- "What the heck happened there?"

Those crocuses are tough girls though and can survive just about anything.

In two days the snow was almost gone and more of those crocus girls appeared.

Eight-ten inches of snow and just a couple days later...this!

Some of them with the color of sunshine.

Then it was back to the usual gloomy days full of precipitation. But now that the daffodils are starting to put on their show, it is finally, finally definitely spring. The sun might be busy in other parts of the world but at least the sun-colored flowers of spring are located here.

There was another transition of sorts this past week. This permanently scuffed up cat shows up at the coontina twice a day... mostly for pets, not food. I've always wondered what his story was because he's always recovering from fights and certainly looks and acts like a stray but every now and then he will wear a collar...but never the same one. He'll wear a collar for a couple days and then it's gone and then several weeks later, a new collar. Who is putting them on? ....And who is taking them off? Anyway, he showed up in yet another new collar this week and this time with a nametag attached to it. Now I know he belongs to someone and is not a stray. The name of this cat just makes me laugh though because I would never ever have matched that name with this cat.

Ladies and gentleman (Russ, that's you), you have now been introduced to...

Pablo

Stray cats?

The new red cat that has been visiting is extraordinarily round and has maintained that shape since she first came to the coontina about a year ago. One whole year of unchanging roundness...come to think of it, I think she's even rounder now! <:-/

This guy....wouldn't you think he was a stray??? I sure did.

But now I am totally confounded as to what is going on because look what he's wearing. A sparkle blue collar and bell. Huh?

And the cat that smells like cigarettes? He showed up the other day smelling like cigarettes and aftershave.

Oh those cats. I suppose like anyone, eating out is more fun than always having to eat at home. I always wondered why those cats sometimes didn't eat that much. They sit outside for who knows how long patiently waiting for me to notice them and then once they get some head pets and a meal they are off to.........really, who knows?

It's finally warm outside! It's 20 degrees!!!!

It snowed on Christmas Eve and it was gorgeous. Then there was a blizzard. Then it snowed again. Maybe it snowed again after that. And every day and every night, although the outdoors has remained pretty and white, the temperature kept dropping lower. This has been going on for weeks. I find it just wrong that my freezer has warmer air than what is going on outdoors or worse, what it feels like indoors! Brrrrr.

When I lived in Minnesota, cold temperatures were no big deal. You got used to it...your eyeballs felt like they could freeze solid if you stayed outdoors too long, you carried flasks of alcohol in your back pocket to keep away the "snow snakes" and it was not unusual to watch ice melt off the sidewalks in..... June. But heck, that's what Minnesota is supposed to be like. Kansas City is an area where the Civil War was fought. It's semi-southern. This temperature hovering at the zero degree mark for weeks is just not right.

Two weeks ago I took a picture of this guy patiently waiting for the coontina to open while he sat in the falling snow. When I looked at this picture a couple days ago I thought those were the good old days. Why? Because the temperature had dropped even lower than when this picture was taken. How do these cats do it? I worry about their ears getting frostbitten and falling off and all sorts of things.

But yesterday the temperature finally hit the 30 degree mark. And even better, the upcoming week promises to have even more "warm" days. The cats seem to know all about this and have returned to the coontina...last night there were three of them in line. Three of them. Not a very well behaved line but everyone looked good and still had their ears. :-)

This past summer was unusually cool and felt like it was borrowed from another area of the country...some place far north. Guess the weather that was borrowed from this area is being borrowed for the entire year, not for just one season. Brrr. More Brrrr to follow I'm sure.

Bad pictures of some somewhat bad cats

I've run out of things to photograph in the garden and Violet has not exactly been obliging. This is usually the face I get from her, if I can get a photo of her face at all.

Yes, here's another one. The exact same face showing complete resistance to any picture that I might be thinking of taking. And I probably had to take about a dozen shots "in profile" just to get this one! At least you can see some tail action in this one...tail action is a given when there is a camera around.

Since Violet has successfully escaped from having any portraits taken in the immediate future, I might as well take advantage of the other cats that show up. 

The resistance to facing the camera starts immediately...

"I think I saw air move over your shoulder. I must be the witness for that."

I kept trying to get a full face picture but somebody just kept moving. Side to side, distracted with all sorts of imaginary things happening in every direction except for the one facing me.

Okay, I've been challenged. I am going to get that shot of a cat's face and you know, I don't even care what the photo looks like at this point. I started clicking away at any direction I thought the cat might be looking at in the future.

Ha! Gotcha!

These cat face pictures are horrible...but they're pictures of cat faces. I won I won I won! Once you throw out that whole aesthetic thing, picture taking moves along pretty fast. Just grab the camera and heck, who needs a viewfinder to see what you're photographing? Just take that camera and hold it anywhere where you think a good photo might happen and click away.

Which meant that Violet had not escaped from  being a photographic subject. 

But um, it became immediately clear that this technique could be extraordinarily dangerous if used when photographing birds.

Eddie concurs.

Stray cats

I woke up this morning to see something encouraging and rather civilized. These two have warred with each other for over three years but there they were, perfectly and blissfully passed out, sleeping in the sun together...

This is usually the scene. Two bad cats claiming their turf.

March came in like a lion and left like a lamb...and sort of did the same thing with these two. Hope the effect sticks.

The Coontina/Catina

This is the newest patron of the Coontina, or should I say Catina. A lot of fur missing from one ear, some scabs on the face, an eye that will probably be better in a couple days, and a pretty blue collar (he used to belong to someone...maybe he still does?). This is the new cat figuring out the hierarchal cat seating arrangements at the Coontina/Catina. And don't you love that smile on his face? Good times ahead for all of us.

And here's Eli literally moving down one more step on the food serving hierarchy and knowing it.

Last year at this time I was trying to trap a white 4 month old feral kitten who had an injured tail. When I set up the live trap, Eli was caught over and over and over. He never caught on to the concept that if you approach the smell of tuna in a wire contraption, a gate will fall down and lock you in. Such is the cat known as Eli. 

I was really surprised to finally capture Spawna one night (full name being Spawna Satan) and then being able to take her to the vet the next morning to have her fully checked out. Her tail had to be amputated because it could not be saved but after getting herself spayed, deflea-ed, de-wormed, given a full set of shots, a one week hospital stay to get her fever down,  she was then able to be released. Oh, that was expensive. And I only saw her once after she bolted from the house, and I mean bolt. I would have kept her as a house cat but after a month or two of recovery in my house, she remained one nasty wild animal. It was like something from Monty Python. A little white fluffy kitten who would probably kill all of us in our sleep. Nope. They have to meet you halfway. And she was definitely not going to compromise.

But you just want them to be safe or have a chance to get themselves on track again to continue with what they need to do to keep on going.

This morning I got a call from Brian, my lawn guy, who asked for a loan... and I gave it to him. If I never get the money back, I'm cool with that, but I don't think that's going to happen. He's too honest.

He was over this past week to repair a door leading to the basement that blew off in a storm a couple weeks ago (high winds, tornados, not unknown for the area where Dorothy Gale grew up). That guy sure can tell some stories. While he drilled and hammered, he told me one about getting hijacked to Cuba in 1969. He and his buddy were high on acid (Gawd) and were laughing about the possibility of getting hijacked and then decided to pick out the person who would be the hijacker on their flight. Well.........they were right. That just threw them into hysterics. The pilot had to announce that there was a gentleman who convinced him that the plane needed to be flown to Havana and that he thought they should oblige him. This was back in the time when it was a political act to hijack a plane, not a terrorist act, so nobody was harmed. Once they landed, the 747 couldn't return with all the passengers because Havana did not have a runway long enough to accommodate a plane with that much weight. So some of the passengers went back on the 747 and the rest were bused to another part of the island to a resort on a gorgeous beach (which had been built up and developed by the Russian mob) to wait for a smaller plane to be flown in that would be able to fly them out. He said those two days were absolutely fabulous and Cuba was absolutely gorgeous, especially seeing cars from the 30s being driven on the roads. 

Car-geek. :-) What man isn't?  When I lived in Minneapolis in the 70s, I had a neighbor who lived on the bottom floor who was a gay activist who would host all sorts of group meetings in his apartment. I remember one time being there for some reason when he had a group of transvestites in his apartment. What was their topic of conversation? Cars. I'm not kidding. CARS.

Seriously, what did men talk about with each other before they invented cars?

Anyway, another time Brian and some friends were digging up an old stream bed to see what sort of treasures might be buried. They dug and dug and found a big metal plate. They were excited because they thought they had found a safe. Nope. An intact Model A car, just missing the engine.

I really enjoy his stories and he's such a kind person. He took the initiative of storing his mowing equipment in my garage a while back (I never use my garage and if he hadn't told me, who knows if I would have even known). Sometimes when I'm in the backyard and he doesn't know I'm there, I will hear him behind the fence walking up the driveway on his way to the garage and if he sees a bird, he tells it "Hello, bird." I don't want to get into the circumstances of what's going on with his life, just that it's dire, and I think that's how it's always been. I don't know how long he'll be around the neighborhood or in KC but he's a good guy and I just want him to get things together and on track again. 

Thanksgiving Day

My sister (the bad one, not to be confused with the other who is....the bad one......not to be confused with how they describe me........the bad one) called Thanksgiving Day and told me she called my mom (who is spending Thanksgiving with the rest of the family at my other sister's) and told her how sorry she and I were that we could not make Thanksgiving dinner this year because we really, really wanted to be there with them. There was a pause and then bigggggggggg laughter erupted from my sister. We are the WORST FAMILY ON EARTH. 

You can put us together and add a dozen other people and still, it is rare for a Thanksgiving dinner to last more than 15 minutes because everyone can't wait to get away. We had a family reunion once where we timed from when the last plate was set on the table to the time the first plate was taken away. Thirteen minutes. People had taken planes to be at that Thanksgiving dinner. 

I just heard about one friend's Thanksgiving dinner yesterday where everyone at the table had to say out loud what they were thankful for and when my friend said the new president, her sister erupted with screaming about how he was a baby killer, then turned red with anger and then got so worked up she started "speaking in tongues." Yes. Thanksgiving. Quantity confined time with family. I don't have the stamina to do it every year (not to mention the patience required to handle the shenanigans of the airlines). 

So then there's my tradition of making a Thanksgiving dinner and serving it to all my pets. Before Thanksgiving everyone thinks this is so darn peculiar and eccentric and weird and after flying back from being with their families, they say they wish they had done the same thing. Ha ha ha.

So yesterday I made a turkey and stuffing, cornbread, sweet potatoes, a Silver Palate black pepper, chive and ricotta bread....some other stuff too. I'll have to look in the refrigerator and see what I missed. Anyway, the gray stray was waiting all day but arrived too early for a turkey dinner because I was so late in getting started. But I think he knew what was up. I got to keep the back door open because the weather was sunny and near 60 degrees. A really pretty day to spend time in the kitchen.

"Well, stop taking pictures and get back in there and cook. I might have all day but I don't have all day. Focus lady, focus."

Since I got such a late start on the whole cooking thing, nothing was ready until about 8 or 9 pm. Eli showed up at the appropriate time and had a plate of turkey set out for him. He had let it be known earlier that he wanted dinner but the smell of turkey just turned him extra feral so as soon as I would spy him, he would bolt out of the yard. I'm surprised I was even able to get this shot of him. He probably thought I couldn't see him (with those eyes?????????).

But he calmed down a lot after the first plate (notice-no "Children of the Damned" eyes) to come back and ask for a seconds and this time he got an even bigger plate of turkey.

Freddie the raccoon never showed up although I looked for him until 1 am. I do hope that Freddie shows up eventually. I'm curious to see what he would try first. Since everything is carried from hand to mouth, I don't think he'd be very happy with mashed potatoes and gravy.... unless I give him a spoon. But I do have two finger bowls waiting for him when he does show up.

The birds got their plates of food but would they let me take a photograph? No. They see that camera and they do everything they can to get away from it and tell me no at the same time. So, since I will have leftovers for days, I'll try to reenact the experience over the next several days and try to take a photograph again. Not promising anything. :-/

This is the first year I attempted serving Eddie some stuffing (cornbread) and that was definitely not a success. It wasn't eaten. When Eddie doesn't like something she picks up the side of her plate and pushes it to the floor. Eddie had transferred all the food that she did like into her seed dish on top of her cage and then, the stuffing left on the plate was shoved to the floor with great enthusiasm. Good thing I didn't use the china. :-)

Everyone's a critic. Animals, people, they're all weird as all get out and impossible to please. Put me in that group too because although I do think of family, friends and pets on Thanksgiving Day and am sincerely thankful they are all in my life.........just don't make me stay put with any of them for more than 15 minutes, I've got things to do.

Preening the fritters

When Starlinka (the starling) was a baby, she couldn't quite get a handle on the pronunciation of "feathers." In the early stages it came out sounding like "fritters." She quickly learned how to pronounce "feathers" but I instantly learned a new way of mispronouncing it. 

You know how sometimes you hear a word that is so grandly mispronounced, you can't resist using it yourself? I remember when I first moved to Kansas City and heard someone in a store pronounce designer Evan Picone as "e-VON pe-CON." I can't say it any other way now..."e-VON pe-CON." Say it out loud. It will make you laugh.

Anyway, this is a little movie of Eli visiting all the birds yesterday while they were out on the deck enjoying the gorgeous, sunny fall weather. He's the cat I mentioned in an earlier post that was feral his whole life except for a couple month stint with some former neighbors down the street. He didn't like it there. He didn't like their dog....or them....or their cat.....and one day he just took off and never went back.

I heard the birds sound out a gentle alarm that something a little amiss was going on and looked out to find Eli very politely sitting there with the birds. He was so good about not bothering the birds that I served him a plate of food. He's still confused about this civilization thing as you can see. Doesn't know what the hell he's supposed to do.

But he eventually figured it out. It was the time of day for everybody to preen their fritters.

It's warm. It's sunny. It's October.

When cold rain falls nonstop from a sky full of low-hanging dreary clouds, I forget that this is what happens just a day or two later...

One thing I love about fall is the golden light reflected from the trees that have changed color.

Just makes you happy standing under a canopy of such incredible yellow.

Some of the leaves have already started to drop from the trees.

In a couple days, Violet will help with the raking (she gets all the bags open for me). Right now, it's time to take advantage of some warm concrete under all that wonderful yellow.

The color this time of year is just crazy. It's so supersaturated.

See these snapdragons? When I bought them this spring, they were orange. They were orange for a long time until fall happened and then they decided to add a little crazy to their color. 

The cat that has adopted my yard as his, has been taking lots of naps on the glider, ignoring other cats that come up on the deck during the day and possums that come up at night.

I may not like him too much, but I do like those freckles on his face. 

Those whiskers poke out from a perfect grid.

But enough of this camera in his face business, he had things to do, but first a little stop to get  a drink.

I question the direction that goldfish is swimming...

...but everyone seems to be in a friendly mood on such a pretty, sunny day.

I just wish the sun stayed out as long as it does during the summer. I am missing those long days already but I suppose this fall color is like a finale in a fireworks display. The best show comes rapidly at the very end and then...you get to have memories.

Last Saturday morning...

I walked out my backdoor to see this...

Once out the door, I got their full attention. They had been waiting...

...and, in the rain.

I was getting quite the staredown. Maybe they were just being considerate and were checking to see if I got their message which took all summer for me to figure out. "Maria, just go for it. Honestly, we don't care what it is." I think more likely they were done with their summer eating and before they left, they wanted to make sure that I knew that they appreciated the datura. Maybe next year I could add to the menu since they were going to bring even more of their friends and family.

This one started crying because I told them datura would not be served next summer. It was permanently off the menu (I know, I know, I'm a mean, mean woman. I appreciate their thanking me and their kind farewell thoughts but one summer of grasshoppers is enough).

When I left them and walked down the deck steps to the yard, it was just like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds," just with grasshoppers playing the parts of the birds. The backyard was full of baby grasshoppers-all kinds, and crickets, all colors. Leaping, leaping, leaping. And then on Sunday, nothing. They had all left. All of them. I haven't seen one grasshopper since.

But when one party leaves, the next party arrives.

See that cat in the background? Not mine.

See this cat? Not mine. I don't even like him. He's one of those cats that if you pet him once or twice, they will turn around and bite you. I have a scar. But he still shows up to be fed every once in a while. I'm not sure if he's a stray or not. Hard to tell. One time he showed up smelling like cigarettes so who knows where he goes or what he does on his food route around the neighborhood.

"Lady, the food goes in here. Hurry up."

This is the poor cat I do try to feed. Eli used to live a couple doors down the street but that family moved. Eli was a feral farm kitten when he was adopted and decided after a couple months of being indoors, it was not his lifestyle. He left that house and never went back. I've been feeding him weekdays for three years now. And after all that time, I have never been able to touch him. I don't see him that often on weekends because he gets his meals from another neighbor down the street, but only on weekends. 

He's a very polite cat. He will come to the backdoor and find a good vantage point on the deck so he can stare into my house to try and get my attention when he wants something to eat or just some light conversation. He has a very hard life but he's 95% feral and even if he wasn't, I have a house full of birds, as well as Violet who is not too enthused about sharing her indoor life with other cats. And being a feral cat, he is not adoptable. This is probably the best sort of life he can have but at least he does have two people feeding him. That makes it a little easier for him.

The local volunteer animal group that spays and neuters stray or unwanted cats now releases the unadoptable cats (after spaying/neutering) back to the places where they were originally trapped. Their reasoning is that there is a need to have a few cats in the neighborhood to keep the mouse and rat population down. There was a big problem with rats in my neighborhood several years ago. I remember finding a dead one on my driveway one morning and since it was trash night, I decided to just put it in a bag and then throw it out in the garbage later that night. The only bag I could find was a shopping bag from a high end women's clothing store which had lots and lots of tissue in it. So I wrapped the dead rat in the tissue and then stuffed the rest of the tissue in the bag and left it on the front porch. It looked pretty, like it was a gift. When I got home from work that night, the bag was gone. Ha ha ha!!!!! Cats might help keep the rodent population down but I'm not sure what's big enough to keep the criminal element in check. I'm hoping whoever thought he had a big prize when stealing that bag from my porch, thinks two or three times before trying that again. Ha ha ha. Still makes me laugh. :-)