Cat houses. Not that kind.

I have cats in my backyard. Feral cats. I suspect the mom (a tuxedo with white back feet) is herself one of a batch of kittens we discovered in a box in the carport when we were first moving in, a year and a half ago. Sometime around mid-March this year, she had two babies. "Papa cat" has been hanging round quite a bit too, making a cute cozy family group out on the patio of an evening. Papa is a gray tabby with black down his spine and tail. "Uncle cat" is a gray whose tabbiness (stripiness) is less defined; he's around sometimes too, when Papa's feeling tolerant. The bold kitten is another gray tabby, with white back feet like mom and black spine like dad. The timid kitten is another tuxedo, with white whisker patches.

This is actually the third batch of kittens that has lived in our yard. Batch A, from the carport, disappeared for a bit, then began to be seen again, before disappearing around the time the kittens were weaning-age. Batch B, last summer-ish, was based both in the carport (which we don't use, for cars anyway) and in the fern jungle along the south fence. My brother tried to catch/play with them once in a while, and named the (relatively) tamest one Balthasar. Now we have Batch C, population 2.

I'm going to try to catch them tonight. (The kittens, and hopefully the mom, at least.)

I've been doing a bit of reading, and apparently the current best practice re: humanely managing feral cat colonies is Trap-Neuter-Release (TNR). You trap the feral cats without hurting them, take them to get spayed or neutered, and then release them back where you found them. This means that the cats (who, once they have grown up without human contact, are unadoptable) can live out their lives reasonably happily, but without multiplying. A colony, allowing for the occasional wandering new arrival, will over time shrink in numbers.

I poked around the web a bit and finally found a local group called TLC Adoptions that could help me out a bit with information* and a couple of loaner traps. Trying to make sure I'm doing everything right, and not forgetting anything, is stressing me out today not quite as much as being caught is going to stress out the kitties. I just wish I'd been more organized and got round to this sooner, when the kittens could have been young enough to be adopted. But hopefully they will have a reasonably happy -- though childless -- life around our backyard. Perhaps they will discourage any gophers from developing designs on my carrots.

*Some of the information was verrrry interesting: they were not unfamiliar with our neighborhood, indeed a particular house farther down our alley is apparently a sort of cat-multiplication Ground Zero. When kitten batches A and B disappeared around the time they got old enough to be weaned, it was probably because their mom (yet another tuxedo, now dubbed "Grandma"; she's started showing up in the yard again this last week, too) took them "home"... there.

4. If you could eat lunch with one famous person, who would it be?

What I'd really like to do is get all of my friends and a lot of the people whose websites I read (some are sort of famous, depending on your criteria) together in one place, and form a rational political party, and sweep the nation, and fix everything. The good party names are probably already taken, though.

I dodged this question last time. I'd rather answer it this round. I'm just having trouble thinking of an answer.

[ten minutes pass as I go stream-of-consciousness trying to think of famous people]

Maybe Aung San Suu Kyi. How strange a shadow-life she has been trapped in. Apparently she is known for (among other things) a speech/essay titled "Freedom from Fear." FDR had something to say about that too, as I recall. I think fear is a root of so many things. If one can let it go, how much lighter life becomes.

song of myself 2 & 3

The re-launch of All About Me continues.

2. What time do you wake up in the morning?
I usually wake up spontaneously around 6 AM, if I've had enough sleep. This is harder in winter, but still happens. Sleep deprivation may lead to the need for an alarm, but even if I'm free to sleep in as long as I like, I can't usually stay abed past 7:30.

That was a short one. Let's do one more.

3. What's your favorite article of clothing?
Hmmmmmm. I could be cute and say my wedding dress, and I do love it so, but obviously there's some symbolism clouding the issue. Discounting that, I choose a dress I bought last fall that is a knee-length green chiffon number with purple flowers embroidered on it. Not that I've had an opportunity to wear that in public yet either, since it's kind of summery (soon now, soon!). If we're talking about things I wear regularly, then I pronounce a tie between two t-shirts, one mottled green with silver shiny-sparklies around a rose near my shoulder, and the other purple with a golden peacock with sparklies in his tail. Not only are they pretty in perfect colors, but my honey got them for me.

blackbird singing in the dead of night

Actually, it's a mockingbird. It is nine minutes to midnight (yes, I have been puttering with computer funthings, and my sweetie is out of town and not here to gently push me to bed), and our resident Mockingbird of Insanity is chirruping away. I love mockingbirds, and songbirds of all kinds, but I don't understand why this one is singing at night. They don't, normally, do they? This one does.

I'M going to sleep now.

edit 14 Sep 06: I since learned that night singing is a "feature" of mockingbirds well known to many people other than me. I guess I just never happened to be awake to hear one before. Live and learn.

song of myself redux

Three years ago, I posted my answers to an "answer these questions to describe yourself" email forward, which I had received in two different forms from two different friends. I merged the two sets of questions and answered the whole shebang, over several days.

This proved to be a mildly fateful decision, because only a few months later, I met the man who is now my fiance. His interest piqued, he decided to do a little "research" on me by reading the purple tricycle, and found the April 2003 question-and-answer sequence enlightening. In a positive way, luckily.

I'm in the mood to kick off this new Blogger phase of my journaling by revisiting those questions and comparing present to past answers. I'll try not to look at the old answers before writing the new ones. For those interested in following along with the 2003 sequence, it begins
here. I did several per post before, but this time I'll do one per.

1. If you could build a house anywhere, where would it be?
I have a better idea of the sort of house it would be -- solar-paneled, well-insulated, capable of transitioning off the grid in the future, when that becomes necessary -- a house on enough quality land to raise some good food with. The size of this envisioned farm, and whether it includes farm animals, fluctuates with my mood. It would be a solid house capable of anchoring an extended family over many generations. I'm still trying to figure out where good locations would be for it, though. I want it to be at least 300 feet above the current sea level, so that it will still be above water when the polar ice melts. It should also be within a strong, friendly, like-minded community in or not too far from a town, because a farm in the middle of nowhere will be no good in case of banditry. (I'm thinking very long term, collapse-of-the-Roman-Empire timeframe, in case you hadn't noticed.) Current possibilities include the vicinities of San Luis Obispo, Monterey, and the Pacific Northwest, as well as Vancouver and Victoria in Canada in case of theocracy.

I don't want it to be very far from the ocean partly because of weather moderation, partly because fishing could be a secondary food source, and partly because I simply love the ocean.

little purple

not done yet

further development after sleep. still fiddling.

once more with title

cha cha cha.