And other animal adventures …

Jezebel the kitten has now achieved a whole three pounds, weight-wise. We have had begun weighing her on the bathroom scale, rather than the kitchen scale which only goes up to two pounds anyway. Of course, to us who see her constantly, she looks about the same as ever: a cute, small, immature feline, tortoise-shell in color and with eyes which still look sort of a muddy grey-shading-to-green. She is comfortable with the dogs, but still a little nervous when encountering the Lesser Weevil at ground level. Three pound kitten, seventy-pound boxer-pit mix – who would win that encounter? Given the size differential, I’d be nervous myself.

Otherwise she is bold to the point of being brash, friendly and affectionate to all humans. The instant she is picked up, she begins to purr like a small electric engine. She spends those evenings when Blondie is watching television, curled up on Blondie’s chest like a little cat-fur collar. We speculate that it is because she likes the sound of a human heart-beat. Perhaps it is as comfortable to other infant mammals as it is to babies, the sound of that heartbeat. She also has an enormously long tail, proportional to the rest of her – and with an endearing kink in the end. Why do certain cats have kinks in their tails – surely it wasn’t caused by an injury? We speculate that there may not have been room in the womb for all of Jezzie’s tail – sheer lack of space forced it into a slight bend.

She has formed, as expected, a comfortable bond with Percy. They were both detected last night, curled up comfortably together on a chair seat, while Percy washed her, with loving and careful attention to her ears. Well, we always have thought of him as our little gay hair-dresser cat. Sammy, the faded flame-point Siamese with the gammy leg has also been detected in a playful mood with her; rather like a crotchety old uncle deigning to pitch baseballs for the edification of the junior set. He does not do it with good grace or for very long, but these actions are promising. The other cats couldn’t care less – all stodgy dignity in the face of kitten impudence.

We did another dog-retrieval this weekend; this one considerably prolonged because of the holiday. The subject in question had a rabies-tag on the collar, but the clinic where it had been issued was closed over the long weekend. Our neighbor Judy captured him; a stray which made himself notable all along the street for his size – which was enormous – and his friendly demeanor – which was unmistakable to all, and the fact that no one recognized him. That’s the thing about neighborhoods; within a certain radius, everyone will recognize a familiar dog, especially a big one which most likely, has to be taken for walks. She couldn’t keep him at her house, her three cats would go absolutely ape-shit at being forced to share quarters with a very large dog. Not that any of ours would have been all that happy, just that they have become inured to it. Blondie thought at first that we could keep him in the back yard; he was a large, leggy dog with ears that stuck out like Yoda’s. He looked like a German shepherd mixed with generous lashings of Doberman and god knows what else. Just what you want to introduce to a houseful of other cats and dogs! We called him ‘Yoda’ or alternately ‘Big Boy’ – neither of us really wanted to prod his nether regions to see if he had been neutered or not, but that was unnecessary, for he turned out to be the original metrosexual dog. Terribly gentlemanly, affectionate, obedient and well-behaved – wussy, even. If he were a human, Madonna would never even consider dating him. As it turned out, he was terribly frightened of thunderstorms. One rolled in, on Saturday afternoon, and he plastered himself against the slider door and trembled so awfully that the whole end of the house shook. We relented and let him, holding our breath. Not to worry – everyone behaved themselves, although Jezzies’ tail swelled up like a bottle-brush and she shot all the way up the curtain in the den doorway to the top and sat there for I don’t know how long. He slept for two nights in the corner of my room, although the Spike was loudly indignant about this. Like a true gentleman, Yoda/Big Boy – whose real name turned out to be ‘Doofus’ restrained himself from slaughtering her. It turned out that he had run away from his home on Friday evening, after being so terrorized by the sound of fireworks that he took out a good chunk of the backyard fence in his haste to depart.

His owner had spent the whole weekend looking for him – but since the place where he lived was a subdivision a good way away up the Nacogdoches Road – without luck. Always nice to return a pet to its rightful person, especially when it’s a dog which has gone a considerable distance from where it was lost. The larger ones do that; the first year that we lived here, we retrieved an elderly golden lab named Tommy who had been missing for two weeks and from five miles away after being panicked by a thunderstorm. But we will have to go around tomorrow and tear down all the posters that we put up, in this neighborhood and the next one over. No way would I ever call the city pound for an animal that I have found, not when I know that they are for the gas within three days of being picked up.

Owing to a particular circumstance – that of Blondie’s boss having a pair of sons who were very into 4-H activities this past year, both of whom raised prize-winning pigs – our freezer is filled with the most delectable assortment of pork products. It seems that part of the whole scheme for students of the agricultural arts in raising such animals … is to partake of the resulting bounty. (Er… they are being raised to provide that sort of thing; ham, chops, bacon, the rest. The kids who do this are perfectly clear on the concept, as was my Granny Jessie, raised on a Pennsylvania farm at the beginning of the last century. Charlotte’s Web aside, farm pigs weren’t intended to be pets, as clever and endearing as they tend to be.)

Anyway, Blondie’s bosses’ family freezer quite overflowed with their share of two pigs, so a portion has been passed on to us, and oh, my! Chops, sausage, thick-cut cured bacon, ham slices, back ribs and a roast which we have already cooked in the slow cooker with two cans of Rotel tomatoes and green chilis for burritos. All of it delectable, succulent, flavorful… the sausage has very little fat in it and the ham? The ham is perfectly divine, unlike anything else I’ve ever eaten, although Honey-Baked does come close in hammy perfection. Believe me, all this will be portioned out and used in recipes which will show it all off to best effect. Should the house catch fire, mine and Blondie’s first thoughts will be for rescuing the pets, my computer, the Yoshida prints… and the contents of the freezer.

This is what the farm-raised stuff must have tasted like, and what the expensive, organic specialty ordered meats must be like, the stuff that I cannot afford, at least until “Adelsverein” and “Truckee’s Trail” are way, way farther up in the Amazon sales ranking than they are at present. In the early 19th century, pork was the meat of American choice, rather than beef – and now I know why. Food of the gods, people, food of the gods!

Short for Jezebel. About five inches tall at the shoulder. Eyes: muddy gray, will possibly turn green when mature. Overall color: mixed hues of black, several shades of brown, tan and pale orange. Weight: 2 lbs. Approximate age: 6 weeks. Temperament: carefree, affectionate and playful. Breed: Short haired American domestic feline. (I am guessing about the short-hair, though.)

Yes, after lamenting Meek, the adoring lap-cat with the beautiful celadon-green eyes, Blondie has acquired a kitten – or the kitten has acquired her. It’s kind of hard to tell with these things. There are those people who have “Incredible Sucker for Our Dumb Chums” written across their foreheads in invisible letters? Yes, Blondie is one of them, and the neighbors who originally provided us with Sammy (who with incredible fickleness fell madly, deeply, irrevocably in love with Blondie about three years ago) are another. A couple of weeks ago, they rescued a pair of infant felines from under the bushes at a neighborhood church, and took them both home to their menagerie of eight small and two large dogs and a number of adult cats. They found a home for one, and at a yard sale they were holding this last weekend, cunningly offered to show Blondie the other one.

Which, aside from being as endearing as kittens usually are, totally fearless with dogs, also is the spitting image of Patchie, the cat that I found as a kitten on a building site in Athens, and who accompanied us to Spain, Utah, California and Texas before succumbing at the age of 16 to complications from old age and feline diabetes. No, this was something ordained, although the other cats are probably objecting in no uncertain terms. Here is a kitten, a playful, adventurous infant being added to their staid and mature circle. Seeing that they were all neutered at an early age, and have lived indoors ever since, Jezzie is possibly the very first immature specimen of their kind that they have encountered in the last seven years.

Percival condescends to play with her, but Henry, Morgie and Arthur are all very much offended dignity. She gets a warmer and happier welcome from the dogs, oddly enough. They are both so very much larger – in the Lesser Weevil’s case, about forty times larger – that we must take care that their affections and playful urges do not put Jezzie in danger through accident. She, by the happy chance of being cared for in a household overrun with small dogs, appears to rather like dogs. She will play, pouncing on the end of Spike’s plumy tail, and will curl up between Weevil’s outstretched paws, on the floor of the den while we are watching TV of an evening. And whenever one of us picks her up – her purr-motor kicks into overdrive; all together a most endearing little catling.

Honestly, though – we are maxed out as far as the capacity for pets goes. No more. Really…

My pet-loving neighbor, Judy, claims that the very best cats have something of the qualities of dogs in them; they are friendly, curious and open to all kinds of adventurous interaction with other species. Sometimes such cats as these like water, are perfectly agreeable to walking on a leash and display a fondness for dog-like amusements such as playing fetch, and eagerly eating anything that takes their fancy. In childhood, my family had a Siamese cat who had a peculiar fondness for popcorn, cookie dough, canned peaches and cornflakes – but then Siamese are notoriously eccentric. In any case, perhaps we can consider a name for these special cats. They are not kitty-cats – they are puppy-cats.

The most determined puppy-cat we know is a black cat named Horatio Caine, who lives just up the road – obviously his people are CSI fans. He has a collar with his name-tag hung on it, and the usual sort of animal license tags. I know nothing about his owners, save for what I can deduce from their garden: neat and ornamented with about the average number of garden tchochkas – fancy pots, banners, chimes and sculptures, and their car – slightly more than the usual number of in-your-face bumper-stickers. But they have a really cool cat.

Horatio lives in the garage, which he seems to prefer. They leave the garage door cracked about six inches, so he can come and go as he pleases, and does he please! He is almost always somewhere close by, when we come past with the dogs, and often comes trotting down the sidewalk to meet us. He has become perfectly amiable with Spike and with the Lesser Weevil. He will throw himself down on the warm concrete and bat at Spike with his paws, in an attempt to get her to tussle with him. One day, he even ran out from behind the car and batted Spike on the hindquarters to get her attention. He twines himself around the Weevil’s legs, walks underneath her and rubs the side of his face against both of them. This action may be taken as affectionate, but I am also told it is how cats mark objects for their own. This sometimes happens twice in a day, as we go out and as we return; it really seems that Horatio is glad to see us. When we depart, he runs after us the length of several houses, before trotting back to his garage.

It didn’t happen overnight, of course – he wouldn’t come very close to Weevil, at first. Spike was much closer in size, and not nearly so intimidating. Gradually, he put aside a certain wariness about the Weevil, coming closer and closer, or allowing her to come closer to him, as they sniff at each other in a companionable way. For the last month or so, they have been easy and comfortable with each other. Horatio walks below her chin, and she drools on him. I think the Weevil would like to be better friends with cats, but of ours, only Percy and Sam allow any such familiarity.

It is really quite marvelous, to have a cat be so friendly with dogs that are not part of their household. I shouldn’t be surprised to know that Horatio has other dog-friends, but it must make a curious sight for anyone driving through our neighborhood: a black cat, so utterly friendly and affectionate towards a pair of dogs, out for their daily walkies. He is obviously very fond of his people, and they of him - otherwise, we’d add him to our menagerie, or at least see if he wanted to put on a leash and go on walkies with us.

Meek the cat had to be put to sleep this week. He was one of Blondie’s cats, the other being Sammie From Across the Road – like Sammie, he took a look at my daughter and fell into deep, abject adoration. Unlike Sammie who did have a home (although it was overrun with small, yappy dogs) and people who wanted him, Meek was a dumpee. That is, someone who had him as a pet, and thought enough of him to neuter him… and then dumped him. At some point the veterinarian deduced that he had been hit by something which had injured one of his legs, floated a rib which nature did not intend to float, and left him with a small hernia on his chest. Those injuries were at least a year old and healed without the aid of medical care. Until last fall Meek was one of the semi-ferals who hung around Blondie’s workplace, a former little frame house turned office premise just off the I-35 in Selma, Texas. There was a small coterie of these cats, some of whom were tameable and whom my daughter fed and worried over, especially when one of her favorites was hit by a car and killed quite messily. Meek was the other one. He took to following her into the office, waited for her on the porch and generally gave every indication of deep and undying devotion. One morning she left to pick up office supplies and Meek followed her car down the drive, out onto the access road and appeared to have every intent of following her onto the highway on-ramp. Obviously, he had decided that if he couldn’t live with Blondie, he didn’t want to live at all.

So he came home with her, after a short side trip to the vets, where he was given all the appropriate shots and tests, judged to be clean of feline AIDS, intestinal parasites and fleas (not ear mites, which proved to be persistent). He tolerated the dogs, formed a pair-bond with Percival, the little Russian Blue that I tamed with great care a number of years ago, and generally lived the lush life as a cat of the First Degree.

He was white, with brindle spots, and had beautiful jade-green eyes, which were set off by dark eyelids, as if some cat-beautician had lined them with kohl. He was a talky, responsive cat, and zeroed in on any lap with the speed and precision of a heat-seeking missile. He loved to hang out in the evening with us, watching TV in the den – if not on Blondie’s lap, on the arm of the sofa next to her or on the window sill above her head.

Late one evening this week, Blondie thought he seemed lethargic – and most distressingly, was straining over the litterbox without producing any urine. We know what that portends in neutered male cats. (I lost one of my early cats to it – an awful, heartrending experience at the vets’ and the cat still died of it.) Meek was at the veterinarians next day. Since he had eaten and drunk normally that morning, and was able to produce a small dribble, the veterinarian had a very cheerful prognosis; yes, it looked like he had a tendency towards feline cystitis. They gave him the first of his pills, advised us to switch over to a special food for this kind of problem and were about to release him to go home when he crashed right in front of us.

It looked and felt for all the world as if he was having a sort of feline panic attack. I had my hands on him; he was shaking violently and his heart rate was through the roof. The veterinarian said “Oh-oh… that doesn’t look good.” She asked to do some quick tests. They came back showing nothing good. He was already in crisis. There was a surgical option, but it cost a bomb and there was no guarantee. It’s a chronic condition – it could have happened again next month or next year. His old internal injuries may have even exacerbated that condition . So, we did the kind thing. Blondie held him. He was so happy to be in her arms, he was purring up to the very end. The veterinarian, who was also crying as she put the drugs into the shunt in his leg said “At least you can say that you gave him the very best eight months of his life!”. Last night, when we related this to Mom and Dad, (who have had to do this with about half a century’s worth of beloved pets), Dad said very kindly, “You can’t save ‘em all, you know.”

Well, you can’t – but you can give them the best eight months, or eight years, or whatever.

I know this probably sounds silly to many of you, but we need your prayers. Our Hemingway Cat, Miko, has managed to somehow open a gaping wound in her chest. I’m taking her to the humane society to see what they can do for her, but I’m pretty sure she’s septic and quite frankly, we can’t afford to have much done so there’s a good chance she won’t be coming home.

I haven’t felt quite this helpless in a very long time. The family’s heart is broken. We just thought she was grumpy about the kittens which is why she was hiding out. She was even rubbing against my legs while I was doing Tai Chi like she always does. It wasn’t until I picked her up and she growled at me that I saw what was going on.

Been up all night. Had her crate next to me with my fingers in the bars so she knew I was there and could rub against them.

I feel terrible.

UPDATE:  The good people at our local humane society say they can fix her!!!!  It actually looks much worse than it is and it would even heal on its own  with anti-biotics, but they’re going to be able to repair it at about a quarter of the cost I was anticipating.  I’ll be letting those vets take care of her and all our pets from now on.  I’m a complete sap for our animals.  I’m a complete wreck after the past ten hours.

Pippin and I don’t play “Fetch,” we play “Catch.”

Hope at least some of our readers have spring weather to enjoy. We’re certainly enjoying ours!

There’s one terribly inconvenient and sort of disgusting thing about daylight savings time… well, aside from the bit about setting the clocks ahead one hour. The additional daylight in the evening is nice, very nice. Nicer when I was working until 5 at various corporate hellholes, and usually arrived home after dark throughout the winter months; very pleasant, all the way around to arrive home with an hour or two of daylight remaining, and sit out on the back porch and go through the mail, while the birds squabbled around the feeder. But it puts the dark at the other end of the day now, and when I set out at sevenish for Spike and the Lesser Weevil to drag me around several blocks at the end of their leashes, it is still quite defiantly dark. Dark when we head out the door, dark when we jog up the street, with the Weevil leaping and pirouetting like gazelle on amphetamines. And dark when we get to the corner and run along Creekway street… where, with luck one or both of them will want to poop.

Good god, do you know how hard it is to see dog poop in the dark, let alone be sure of getting all of it into the plastic bag? Even with a flashlight, it’s no picnic. A couple of lines of dog poop blending in with un-raked leaves and uncut grass, especially when everything is wet… definately no picnic, I assure you. There are means of training dogs to use a king-sized litter-box or pan of something or other, so I have been told. By summer, I might very well consider that.

Lesser Weevil’s socialization continues apace. She will sit and hold her bearing, when commanded in a sufficiently masterful voice, while other dogs trot by… all but the bad-tempered little black and white rat-terrier from up the street. His name is Peanut, since he is hardly larger than one. He barks to beat the band, whenever he sees us. Spike goes into hysterics of barking – noisy but relatively harmless. Lesser Weevil seriously wants a piece out of Peanut, and stalks onward, turning her head towards Peanut and growling in a fairly menacing way. One of these days, she seems to be saying. One of these days, you piebald little rat.

On the other hand, Weevil is perfectly amiable to the pretty young Weimaraner female, who lives along one of the side streets and comes to the iron gate to be courteous, whenever we pass. She got out one Sunday and followed after us, which is how we came to know her. The family who owned her had just moved in, and discovered only too late that she could squeeze through a gap in the iron fence. They tell us that they had another dog, an older one who died about eight months ago, and that she misses the company. So, when we walk together, Blondie takes Weevil up to their gate so they can pass a few minutes together; rather odd because Weimaraners are supposed to be rather standoffish about dogs they haven’t been carefully socialized with

Then there is Horatio, the cat who is more dog than he is cat. Horatio is black and looks rather like my own Morgy and Little Arthur, is extremely sociable and doesn’t seem to mind dogs. He lives mostly in the garage of a house up the road, where the garage door is very considerately left six inches open to facilitate Horatio’s social life. When we pass by the house, we usually stop and call him, and he trots out to say hello. Blondie likes him very much, saying that he is such a cool cat and she doesn’t think his people appreciate him nearly as much as they ought. If she didn’t already have two cats of her own, she would have taken him home already.

It rained, rained buckets yesterday, accompanied by amazing quantities of thunder and lightening; no way of knowing if this spring and summer will be as rainy as last year – which was so rainy —

—-how rainy was it???—-

That the spring wildflowers lasted all summer, and some of them were still going strong in the fall. And instead of turning light brown and crispy by mid-summer, fields and brush remained pretty green all year. Kind of nice, seeing Mother Nature do all our lawn-watering for us, but I just don’t think we’re going to be that lucky. Whatever weather we have in Texas… there’s always too damn much of it.

‘Villa Junque’ (pronounced in Spanish as Hoon-kay’) – sounds so much better than ‘garage full of junk’, which is what mine has descended to, what with Blondie enthusiastically collecting ‘stuff’ for her eventual first apartment/house/place of her own. A couple of years ago, I saw a tee-shirt/sweat shirt with “It isn’t an empty nest until all of their stuff is out of the garage” and truer words were never printed across the parental chest. All of her accumulated stuff from two hitches in the Marines came home with her – the large TV, the stereo system, a lot of Target and Walmart bought kitchenware, a microwave, and several boxes of shoes and bedding. And a strangely comfortable metal-framed armchair and footstool which was apparently the prize of the Cherry Point single barracks, as it gravitated from room to room until my daughter inherited it from a friend and shipped it home with her stuff. She pleaded with me to re-upholster it, which I did… and to give it houseroom in the den… which I also did. As I said, it is strangely comfortable. Her TV and stereo also were allowed in, with some reluctance on my part. They were newer than mine by about a quarter-century, so a bit more complicated… but worked a little better. The classical station still receives badly, but that’s an eccentricity of their transmitter.

Her dog and her two cats were also folded into the household, and it generally works out, although three of my cats hate the dogs and prefer Blondie’s end of the house to mine. It’s all her other stuff which has made my house into the Villa Junque, although I do admit that some of the stuff I moved into the garage was specifically dedicated for her first place – the dining table that was too big for the dining area, some bookshelves superfluous to my needs once I put up hanging shelves and some other small stuff. Really, it wasn’t a patch on what I notice in other people’s garages. I could actually get my car into it, still. (Well, I could until Blondie moved in her stuff.)

Besides being drawn to the 70%-off shelves at fine retail establishments (where we have snapped up plenty of Christmas ornaments and wrapping paper for next year) Blondie is also a dedicated yard-sale shopper. Walking the dogs early on Saturday morning is nothing more than a disguise. She is actually reconnoitering for yard sales. With luck and walking the dogs, we can beat the roving pros, descending with their battered step-vans and pickup trucks and snapping up the good stuff. I don’t know where these people go with their oddly assorted gleanings; they are usually Hispanic and go for the furniture and the used appliances, but do not distain the clothes, bedding and toys. Blondie now has a nice collection of glass and silver-plate knick-knacks, garden lanterns and ornaments, chairs and crockery. She hopes that some of it may be Antiques Road Show-worthy some day.

I think our neighborhood is moving up, socio-economically; there is a better grade of stuff at yard-sales than formerly. Even the stuff put out for the trash – especially when someone is moving and is sick to death of making decisions about stuff – is a better grade. We struck a bonanza this year with pots and plants, but the absolute prize was spotted Sunday afternoon by our equally bargain-fanatic neighbor Judy. She saw a love-seat placed by the curb with a lot of other trash and made a special visit to our house to tell us where.

It turned out to be upholstered in leather, only a little worn on the seat cushions and two tears in places, and so heavy that it probably is a good grade of furniture. Well and I know that because of the chore it was for the two of us to load it in the back of the Montero and then carry it into the house. Whatever it will be to reupholster a solid hunk o’ small sofa like that is still less than it will cost to buy new. And it is amazing the difference that some cleaning solution, and some carefully placed throws and pillows will accomplish.

The Weevil loves it, since it is large enough for her to sprawl in comfort; Spike and the cats love it because the back and arms are broad enough for them to stretch out in equal comfort and all of them together. And I have to admit – it is a very comfortable place for humans to lounge as well.

But – we are swearing to everyone that we actually scored it at a yard sale for $20.

Topmost on my list of such thoughts is – oh, god, it’s good to be home! It’s good to be able to sleep in ones own bed, to stretch out and not have cold feet, cold hands, cold-whatever-body-part-winds up pressed against the side panel of the Montero and is just a thin sheet of metal and some miscellaneous plastic bits removed from the frigid, wind-whipped New Mexico or West Texas weather.

Oh, yes, it was bloody cold out there; there was no snow to show for all that cold, but some nice patches of blowing dust and sand. The winds kicked up the day before we left Mom and Dads and made such a racket we couldn’t sleep that night anyway – and followed us all the way across three states. Nothing says “I want to go home” quite so much as vacating the area at 2 AM.

The best thing about departing in the wee hours on New Years Day – no traffic, once you finish dodging the drunks. There was one suspiciously careful driver, weaving gently down the Valley Center grade, which Blondie felt obliged to try and call 911 about – but all we got was it ringing about twenty times and then an answering machine. On 911; I guess they had their hands full. And the driver we were worried about didn’t look to be the reckless sort of drunk driver.

The “Starbuckifaction” of the coffee-drinking element has spread it’s what some would claim is an insidious influence far and wide, yea my brethren even to the truck plazas and gas stations along the interstate highway system. The Flying J/Pilot stores provide a surprisingly excellent selection of coffee… and have half-and-half on tap. Not just exclusively that ghastly powdered chalk non-dairy “cream” muck, thankyouverymuch. Extremely drinkable and for about a third of the cost of an equivalent at a Starbucks. No demerara sugar, though, but I expect that to appear by the next time I do a long, long road trip.

Oh, and speaking of coffee in the wee hours, I must pour scorn and derision upon the Carls Junior, just off the 1-8 in the eastern suburb of San Diego where we attempted to purchase some handy breakfast comestables and coffee at 4 AM. Yes, I know it was 4AM on New Years Day and the single unfortunate young person running the place was so junior as to make drawing fuzzy end of the lollipop and working that shift inevitable… but still; no breakfast items? We were told that only lunch items were available… oh, and sorry, the coffee brewer wasn’t fired up. And payment could only be made in cash. Yeah, so he wasn’t senior enough to have the keys to the debit-credit card processor or the coffee urns, but lunch items at 4 AM? Jesus jumping key-rist on a pogo stick, the whole damn reason for 24 hour fast food places is to dispense coffee!

Gas prices – not to shabby once outside California, and Blondie’s Montero got very good mileage on the highway. We filled to the top four times and came in well under budget, having allowed for gas at $3.25 a gallon when we planned the trip. Most gas stations along the interstate in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona had it within a nickel of $2.90, either way.

What to call the road-kill count – Bambi Bits? Bambicide? Whatever it is, the deer population takes a hell of a beating; that stretch of 1-10 through the Hill Country is a veritable holocaust for them. As a stratagem to keep ourselves awake and amused after coffee ceased having the required effect, we counted road kill from Mile 300 to Mile 511 in the median, on the roadway and off on the shoulder. Not counting various nasty looking smears and blots on the paving, our grand total was 49 deer, 8 raccoons or opossum, 3 skunks, 3 large birds (turkey or guinea-fowl of some sort) and 23 U-L-O-M, which is our acronym for “Unidentified Lumps ‘o Meat”. At that, we probably missed about a third as many, off-sight on the opposite side of the highway.

So – we’re home – and when I get home, the first thing I find is that Eric at Classical Values posted a lovely review of “To Truckee’s Trail” and Da Blogfaddah linked to it. With a resulting uptick in sales through Amazon. Maybe I should go away more often. Oh, never mind – provision of good bloggy ice cream will commence as soon as I finish going through my email in-box.

OK, so we arrived after an epic drive of about 20 hours, and three stops to cat-nap uncomfortably in a car full of dogs, Christmas gifts and luggage - variously in Lordsburg, someplace about two hours farther west than that, and a rest-stop in the mountains above Tucson. Look, when it’s too cold to sleep, and the air mattress has developed a slow leak and the dog and your child are bogarting most of the available space anyway… well, you may as well drive. Dunno about what rush hour traffic is like in Tucson these days, what with all the new construction, but it’s a breeze at 2AM!

We haven’t killed any Californians yet, we had a nice Christmas and will return with less stuff than we came with, the dogs haven’t fought too much with my parents’ dogs, they think the Weevil is a charmer (except for her chronic tail injury opening up and her painting blood all over the place… thank god for the invention of liquid bandage and lots of paper towels and spray cleaner….) and Spike is as cute and fluffy as ever.

Blondie is spending a couple of days in Pasadena with Pippy and her family, and my youngest brother, I am holding the fort at Mom and Dads - where they still refuse to move into the last quarter of the previous century and venture into the wild uncharted waters of the internet. But they do have a functioning computer, and I am pounding out a couple of reviews and another two or three chapters of the Adelsverein Trilogy, or Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and a Lot of Sidearms.

Yes, we’re alive, nothing has blown up in our absence, and I just emptied 3,000 spam comments out of the queue - about par, considering.

Merry Christmas, to everyone but whoever is running the spam comment generator. (You should be tossed out naked in a field of poison ivy and fire ants.)

Sgt. Mom

…or at least that portion of it encompassed by the inside of a small tract house in a north-side San Antonio tract house. Yes, the Meek-cat, whom Cpl/Sgt Blondie brought home from her workplace is adjusting to being a sheltered and protected indoors cat. His fur already seems to be thicker and plusher, thanks to a diet of premium cat kibble. He talks – that is, he is one of those cats who is responsive to remarks addressed to him, answering up with a variously pitched “meow”. I think of him as “Chatty-Catty”. Blondie calls him “Meow-mix”. He frequently curls up adjacent to Percival, and indulges in some mutual-ear washing, but is still a little wary of the dogs. Not total feline-claws-and-hissing-spazz-out whenever he happens to encounter Spike and Weevil in the very same room, more of a delicate unspoken negotiation not to try and occupy the same spot on the same chair at the same time. He is perfectly amiable about occupying different parts of the same chair at the same time, though. Usually when we are all watching TV of an evening: he and Sammy are lounging on the back of the sofa, Spike on my lap, Percy on the arm, and Weevil wedging herself onto the cushion next to me… TV watching in our house sometimes bears a close likeness to the stateroom scene in “A Night at the Opera”.

Yes, we have a lot of animals. Those people who see it as their life mission to find the perfect home for a dog and cat would doubtless look at us and curl their lips contemptuously. That is, if we would ever be demented enough to go to one of those oh-so-select shelters like the infamous Moms and Mutts and pay out a wad of money for the privilege of being condescended to, and having a couple of snoopy busy-bodies dictate the terms of pet-maintenance to us. Five cats, two dogs, erratic income and working hours… really, who do these people think they are?

A number of years ago, through no fault of my own, (other than not being able to afford the $500 vet bill that it would cost to neuter a female cat on the Spanish economy, or the long drive from Zaragoza to Torrejon to have Patchie neutered by the American vet there) I occasionally had litters of kittens to place with a suitable family. Since Patchie allowed Blondie and I to handle her kittens practically upon birth, they were always beautifully socialized as well as being very attractive kittens. (Damn that handsome orange tom!) Our home then was in Torre San Lamberto, just outside urban Zaragoza. It was a development of townhouses and four-unit garden apartments that were popular as summer rentals. Popular in a less savory way was the summer renter’s habit of abandoning their pets when they returned to their city apartment in the fall. There were always cats and dogs who had been abandoned by summer people, thrown upon the charity of those of us who were susceptible to appeals of our dumb chums; every one of them pathetically grateful to be taken to live indoors again, and fed properly.

So on this particular occasion, I had an ad on “swap shop” for two of the extraneous cats – one of Patchies’ get, and one of the strays. A listener called me at work and said she would take both the cats: her husband was going TDY to Germany, and by the time he returned she wanted to present him with a fiat accompli. “Cats – oh, those cats! I’ve had them for ages, darling – why do you ask?!” Could I bring the two of them to the base, and she would meet me at the station and take them home.
“B-b-b-but don’t you want to see them first?” I asked, somewhat boggled by how she had made up her mind already.
“No, I’ll just take them,” she answered, and explained that in her experience the cats which she had spent a great deal of time over choosing had never seemed to work out well. In fact, the cats which had been the most satisfactory were those who she had accepted on the spur of the moment, or which had just walked in and made themselves at home. Her husband had left the very day that she heard my swap shop ad for the cats; as far as she could see the timing was perfect. Those were the cats she was supposed to have. She showed up at the station with two carriers and took them away without any fuss at all. The powers that dictate such things had already ruled, and she had been chosen.

We do not choose our pets – they choose us. I just hope that there is no other cat out there, walking down the street, casting a businesslike eye on my house and deciding that yes, it would do very nicely. There isn’t much room left on the sofa….

There may be a chance – albeit hopefully a distant one - that at some point in the future either Blondie or myself will be taken away by kindly attendants in white coats while horrified animal control authorities remove a zoo of cats and dogs from an unspeakable house as neighbors gape in horrified disbelief and the news cameras roll. Unless there has been a mega-spectacular crackup in rush-hour traffic or Teddy Kennedy has been found in bed with a live boy or a dead woman, the resulting story will be about third or fourth down in the evening newscast.

Sigh.

Which is by way of saying that my daughter has brought home another animal! To add to the menagerie! In a very small house! And like a sucker, I said yes! Like a sucker I tried to insist that this one MUST go to the no-kill shelter eventually! Like a sucker, I know that it probably won’t! As soon as it has finished a period of quarantine in the garage, it will join the rest of the happy clan, shredding the furniture, shedding drifts of hair all over the house, fast asleep on anything soft, and it will remain until it pops off of old age!

Or Blondie takes it with her, when she finishes veterinary school and has a place of her own. Jay-sus, she had better qualify as a vet, it’s the only way we’ll ever afford to keep all the furry freeloaders in the manner to which they would like to become accustomed.

This one is named “Meek”. He is a cat, a neutered male, white with a brindle saddle and ears, about three years old. He’s been hanging out at the place in Selma where Blondie works part-time, one of the herd of tame and semi-ferals which she has fed off and on for the last year or so. He’s one of the tamest and the most slavishly devoted to her; she has always thought he was dumped by his previous owner. One of the other tame ones was run over and killed by a car a couple of months ago, and this morning when she left the office to run an errand, Meek ran after her and followed her car almost to the highway. Evidently, he has decided that if he can’t live with Blondie, he doesn’t want to live at all.

Not good survival instincts for an outdoor cat, living adjacent to a highway. The veterinarian pegs him to be about three years old, a real sweetie… and it appears that he has already survived a traumatic event that broke one of his legs and ribs. Hard to say if he was dumped first and then injured… or more horrible to imagine, injured and then dumped.

Sigh. There is a kind of symmetry to it, though. Two dogs, two gimp cats, two grey and two black. I swear on a stack of bibles, though; Weevil, Sam and Meek are Blondie’s critters. And there won’t be any more. Really….

There must be something in the water, or a phase of the moon. One of my neighbors blames it all on the comparatively wet summer – another sign of global warming or cooling or whatever. A co-worker from the radio station blames it all on that old devil, the sex drive. Whatever the rationale, it seems to Blondie and I that a very high number of our neighborhood dogs have suddenly developed a serious wanderlust and Houdiniesque escape skills.

Since we have two dogs, whose high point of the day involves towing me at a brisk pace around a long circuit through the neighborhood, we’ve encountered most of the other resident dogs. Mostly they are towing their owners around a similar course, or leaping up and down behind a window or a fence in a frenzy of barking. Most of them we know well enough to know their real names, others only have a nick: Einstein, the not-very-bright young boxer who always goes nuts when we walk by, Goliath the enormous Papillion, Daisy-May the golden lab who likes jumping up on people, Fluffy the little white something or other who looks like an animated fuzzy bedroom slipper bouncing around on four little legs… you get the idea. Weevil and Spike usually have a lovely time barking back at them. It all reminds Blondie of the ‘midnight barking’ in 101 Dalmatians; for all we know, the dogs may be passing on messages.

It’s the other dogs that make our hearts sink right down to our running shoes – the ones who are out and about, unconstrained by a leash, an owner or a fence. Last week it was an elderly German shepherd whom Blondie named “O’Malley”. He lives two streets up and has perfected the technique of slipping between the fence bars. He’s been getting out all summer. By now, everyone recognizes O’Malley and knows where he belongs, but I don’t think his owners have a clue. I’ve walked him back to his house a couple of times, and he hops back through the fence obediently and trots around to the back with the air of a hard-working dog having done his duty for the day. The week before that, it was a fluffy little Shi-Tzu who followed me all the way along Creekway, barking like mad, and dashing out into the street. I thought sure the little wretch would be run over about four times. I tried to catch him; not with any success, being encumbered by my own two, who were going nuts. And I am still pretty damned annoyed at one of the neighbors, who primly refused to let the little dog stay in her yard, tied to a tree for safety and visibility. She had called the pound, though, since the dog had been hanging around for a day or so. I finally turned around and dragged Weevil and Spike towards home, with the stray following after, figuring that I could at least catch it, once I had put the two of them inside. Luckily, a pair of kids walking to school overtook us before I got very far: the stray Shi-Tzu was theirs.

A couple of Saturdays ago, we retrieved another German shepherd – this one a well-mannered female whom Blondie called ‘Lady’ for the lack of a better name. We found her at the bottom of the neighborhood, and Blondie put her on a leash and walked her around the neighborhood all that afternoon, until she found where Lady belonged. And it turned out her name really was ‘Lady’ but her owner was so unenthused about getting her back, it was really no wonder she went wandering in the first place.

We had an easier time yesterday, but still – two loose and lost dogs in a single day. The Chihuahua who lives in the house with all the sculptures got out and went skittering across the road, chasing after us. In all the excitement, Weevil slipped her leash and the Chihuahua, aka Mr. Teeth bit Blondie’s hand… didn’t break the skin, fortunately, and we managed to return Mr. Teeth to his owner. Didn’t latch the gate after himself, and didn’t notice when Mr. Teeth headed straight across the road to pick a fight with two larger dogs and a Marine. Forty minutes later, when we came back down the road what do we find at practically the same corner? A sad little min-pin, a miniature Doberman slightly larger than Spike, with no collar… and as it turned out, no chip, either. But he let me pick him up, and we went through the whole routine, walking down the street asking people if they recognized him. No one did, although he was very obviously a pet and well-cared for. We took him home, where he got on amazingly well with Spike and Weevil. We planned to do the whole sweep of the neighborhood this weekend, but fortunately Blondie spotted the posters that his frantic owners were plastering on the neighborhood mailboxes. They were very glad to get him back, since he had been missing for two days.

And I thought yesterday was the far frozen limit, but I just now came back from being towed around the block and it happened again! There was another Chihuahua-type doggie, innocent of collar running along the creek-bed that I couldn’t catch, and which snapped and snarled at me anyway… and a pretty and affectionate Weimaraner female who came running after us. At least the Weimaraner had a collar with her name on it, a telephone number, a rabies tag and one of those electric-fence restraint thingies. Which is no advertising for that system and the telephone number turned out to be disconnected! But at least today, one of the neighbors helped me catch her and has promised they will keep her safe tonight and call the veterinary clinic tomorrow… if no one comes around looking for her before then (as I am sure they will.)

Really, this is getting past a joke; being a magnet for every sort of lost and loose dog in the ‘hood. I’m really almost afraid to go out tomorrow; at this rate there will be a lineup of the lost and pathetic, waiting for me at the bottom of the driveway. Perhaps we should begin asking for a reward; through repetition, we’re getting pretty good at it..

Such an occurrence is popularly said to be a sign of the impending apocalypse, or global wamening (or coolerizing or whatever the current cause for hysteria is) or even just something like another Michael Bay movie.

Wait, there is another Michael Bay movie out? No S#*t?! Well, just goes to show you, there might be something to it.

Because it’s happened, and if I had thought of it and Blondie were quicker with her cellphone camera, we’d have the evidence that the Lesser Weevil and the Percival-Cat are more than just a large, rawboned boxer-pit mix of a dog, and a small, timid grey cat who happen to share the same house and a mutual affection for the same set of humans. They are indeed, the best of friends.

Or they just might share a freakish interest in soft furniture and mutual body-warmth. You can never tell, I suppose. The two of them are a bit of an odd couple, in more ways than just the species difference.

I wouldn’t have expected Percy to have become the boldest of the resident cats, when it came to establishing a rapprochement with the dogs. When I first began to tame him, he was so timid that I thought he was a feral. It was the careful and gradual work of months for him to become so accustomed to me that I could even touch him. Once translated into an indoors cat, he spent the first three or four months huddled miserably in various hidy-holes, fleeing all human approaches besides my own, and having any friendly feline overtures cruelly spurned by the senior cats, Henry VIII, Morgie and Little Arthur.
Over time, though, he adjusted… especially when Blondie’s three-legged flame-point Siamese, Sammy joined the household. Sammy and Percy buddied up together, in the manner of two nerdy kids spurned by the middle-school in-crowd becoming friends… even though they both have since reached some kind of grudging acceptance with the senior cats.

The advent of Lesser Weevil and Spike made for a drastic re-grouping of the territory. Instead of the cats having the run of the house all day and night, and sleeping wherever they wish, the dogs now pretty much have my room, the den and the living room during the day, and the cats have the other half; Blondie’s room, the hallway and the closet where the washer and dryer live. Only at night, with Spike sleeping in my room, and Weevil in her crate, do the cats have undisputed reign over the entire house. The senior cats, that is.

Sammy and Percy don’t seem to care in the least about the dogs. Sammy was raised by some people who kept a large herd of Chihuahuas, so that was no surprise, but for Percy to be similarly casual… playful, even! That’s one for the books. Over the last couple of months, he would romp with Spike, and allow her to nip at him, responding with a bat of his front paws, only fleeing to a windowsill when the play got too rough. He wouldn’t do that with Weevil; she is an enormous lump of dog, compared to his dainty grey self. But when he was curled up on the seat of a chair, Weevil would park her nose and head next to him, and he would set to work washing her ears and licking the top of her head. Very amusing to see; this is why we took to calling Percy our little gay hairdresser of a cat.

Last night, we were watching television in the den, and Weevil came and curled up on the sofa next to me… yes, we let the dogs onto the furniture. I mean, the cats are allowed onto the chairs, and so is Spike who is hardly any larger than the cats, so why not the Weevil? How can we make the distinction? That would be size-ist, or something… and really, she curls up into a very small shape, quite compact for such a large dog. (Look, I hold on to some standards, ‘kay? I don’t let any of them onto the kitchen counters!!) And after fifteen minutes or so, Percy hopped down from the back of the sofa, and curled up next to and half on top of her. They slept so for the best part of “Eureka”.

If I had a big enough den, I swear I would buy another sofa… with the dogs and cats and all sleeping on it, there is barely enough room for me, these days.

Ok, so this is one of those sort of weeks… although I did get a dividend check from the auto insurance company; a paltry sum but actually very welcome nonetheless, and another agent sent the usual SASE reply saying she is intrigued and can I send her the Whole Entire Manuscript, Please…getting a print of all 336 pages and mailing it will still happen in something less than toot-suite time, and probably cost the whole of the dividend check! Well, things happen for a purpose, I guess.

William is here, a week before I was really expecting and ready for him, missing his flight last night… which I only found out about after I had been waiting at the airport for an hour, this after putting in three hours putting together some brochures for the current occasional employer, the worlds tallest ADHD child. So, out of bed at four AM, doing four circuits of the airport pick-up area; honestly, if I weren’t so fond of him and if it hadn’t been so long since he was here last, I would have just told him to get his ass into a taxi at the airport and I’d have breakfast ready by the time he got to the house.

And I have to re-write the Hot Wells article, it just didn’t suit the editor… but I think I have racked up bonus points for being agreeable about re-writing I was complimented on being completely professional about the criticism… which inclines me to think that a lot of the other writers must be… I don’t know; high maintenance? Prima Donna? Temperamental, even? Eh… if you are paying me enough for bespoke word-smithing, temperament is something I can’t afford to indulge in.

I was worried about Spike the Shi-tzu, AKA the Poop Factory for a couple of days, too. Plenty of input… no observable output. Given that every disgusting thing she comes across goes straight into her mouth, I was afraid it was only a matter of time until she ingested something that would expensively obstruct the old alimentary canal. Not to worry, though. The evidence of normal digestive function was fresh on the doormat last night. The smell of it would have gagged a buzzard, though. (What does that little wretch eat? And do I really want to know?)

I am sure that Spike was the one who dragged Williams boxer-shorts out into the living room around mid morning and left them on the sofa. Blondie to me; “Jeeze, Mom, can you consider that I live here too?” She only rolled her eyes when I said Spike must have dragged them in. From the pile of laundry that William carelessly left on the floor.

Wrote up a book review, over at BNN… is anyone reading me at all this week, or is it just my imagination?

Blogging at a minimum this week due to a confluence of other literary demands, and just no enthusiasm for writing about something suitable for here. The WOT is the same old mouthful of well-chewed gristle, ditto for the prelim-presidential-campaign… jeeze, if I feel that way about it now, I’m going to be hiding in a bunker by next year. People, can we give it a rest? Ditto for American Idol (who?) And as regards Paris Hilton; this may be the only time I shall ever mention her.

Over the last month, we have had a very demented bird, a female cardinal who has taken to perching on a branch of the almond verbena, just outside the window to the living room, and flying repeatedly into the glass window. She will do this for fifteen or twenty minutes at a stretch; regularly thumping against the window, as if she is either fighting another female cardinal reflected there, or trying to land on a non-existent branch. We have named her after the stupidest celebrity we know: Paris Hilton.

The pictures of Hot Wells came out very much as I hoped, so finish polishing the article to a high glossy shine, and edit the pictures suitably. I have a thick book to read and a review to write for BNN, ditto a DVD to watch and review… and there is another book on the way. Just when I worked out how to lead into events around the election of 1860 and the secession crisis in Texas, as they affected the characters in part two of Adelsverein; or as a reader described it “Barsetshire with Cyprus Trees”. So I am getting ready to plunge into the operatic drama of the Civil War; murder, lynch mobs, treachery brother-against-brother and all that.

I did get a response from the agent who wanted a look at the first 100 pages; a regretful pass. The first four chapters just did not send her into the transports of enthusiasm necessary to take on representing it, and a paragraph of the usual blah blah blah saying that it was a terribly subjective business, wishing me luck in getting representation elsewhere blah blah blah.

I have sent out fifty query letters for “Adelsverein” including a SASE for response over the last two months, but only gotten back twenty or so letters which usually begin “Dear Author/Writer” and apologizing for the form response. Which leave me wondering where the other queries are, and if they are peeling off my stamps and using them for something else!

Back to work, on Chapter Three, Volume 2. (First chapter posted here)

Wherever the globe is warming, it isn’t around here. Spring has been mild, and rainy. Some days the temperature climbs up into the eighties, but not for long, and the nights are cool. A storm-front went through this week, threatening high winds, and several hours of thunder-and-lightening starting around midnight that sounded like a WWI artillery barrage and kept the sky fairly continuously lit up. You’d have thought that would have made sleep impossible, but I must have managed it. Local newscasts that evening were breathless with anticipation, repeating the tornado watch warning all the evening beforehand. Blondie says there was a shelter-roof by one of the gates to Ft. Sam that looked like it was trashed, but otherwise we came through OK… no hail, at least. And lots of rain. The trees are well out in leaf, and so is everything else.

We added some plants: a friend had a roommate move out, leaving behind a lot of potted plants. We took a lot of them, as my friend has zilch interest in gardening, and so my place looks even more lush than usual at this time of year. The nice part about working at home is that Lesser Weevil does not get so destructively bored. It’s been almost a year since she killed any plants, or tried digging a tunnel back into the house via the perennial border. Blondie has hit some of the neighborhood yard sales. She returned yesterday with a pair of tall ornamental pillars and a replica of the Venus d’Milo, which will look better once they’ve been brushed with a concoction of watered-yoghurt. This is supposed to encourage moss and mildew and other natural things to grow on them, although I won’t go to the ornamental extreme of one of the neighbors, who has so many statues in their front yard that the place looks like a hobbit graveyard.

The two of us are watching way too much of the Home & Garden Channel…

Another rite of spring: Spike the toy shi-tzu had her summer clip. I’m sorry; life is just too short to maintain her in the style which apparently that breed has become accustomed, with twice-weekly baths and constant brushing of her long, long fur. Off to the groomers she went, for what Blondie described as a “shaved puppy”. (Which sounds uncommonly like some of the p0*n spam I empty out daily). Everything between the plume on her tail and the topknot on her head is clipped down to the skin. I think she feels cooler and more comfortable, especially on the daily morning walk.

Or as one of the neighbors calls it “the daily drag around the block”. The Weevil and Spike tear out ahead of me, lunging at the end of their leashes. I must have become more accustomed to this; it’s been ages since either one of them managed to trip me up or knock me down. The Weevil is especially exuberant during the first few blocks: she leaps clear of the ground, over and over again. “You can tell she’s had her Wheaties!” observed the same neighbor, upon observing this performance. There is also speculation afoot that she might be part jack-rabbit. Taking them both out is not just “walkies”, it’s an upper-body workout too.

Rites of spring, indeed.

As best I know, Al Gore has not come to San Antonio lately to bang on about global warming; this winter ice storm is just one of the usual South Texas winter things, only colder, icier and more of an inconvenience than usual. Ice, freezing rain, bitter north wind; all the elevated highways and overpasses closed, school classes cancelled, and as many people as possible being urged to stay home. As Blondie lamented this morning to the Lesser Weevil:
“Ya suppose if we gave you the leash, you could just walk yourself?”

It’s a good thing that I still have all of my serious winter gear from when we lived in Utah. At the rate I wear my winter parka, insulated boots, gloves and other necessary winter stuff, they will last me the rest of my natural life, since they only get good use maybe three or four days of the year. This being one of them: our version of a snow day. Residents of northern tier states are laughing their asses off, though. By their standards, this is a good winter day. Only the ice all over the roads is cause for pause. I’ve seen these folks here drive on wet streets, the last thing they need is black ice. I am not keen on being anywhere in the vicinity when Bubbah from the West Side zips up to the big intersection at Thousand Oaks and Perrin-Beitel in his monster SUV, slams on the brakes as he hits a patch of ice and spins all the way down to the Post Office, scattering other cars before him like ninepins before a 3,000 pound bowling ball. I can drive on ice, and in snow, I just have no faith in anyone else on the roads around here being able to do so. After all, they only have to do so about once every five years, and that is just not enough to keep those skills current.

At least we had plenty of warning about this cold front; so all the tender plants are in the garage, or under cover on the back porch; so far the only potted plant badly affected is Blondie’s painted coleus… which may or may not make it. I just don’t think it is any more sheltered in the garage than it is on the back porch.

We walked up the hill with the dogs at about midmorning: treacherous patches of ice in odd places on driveways and on the sidewalks. Spike the toy shi-tzu is always invigorated by cold; must be all that fur. She bounded ahead, displaying every evidence of keen enjoyment. Sometimes I amuse myself by picturing a team of six or eight little dogs like her, all hitched to a miniature sled and dragging it through the Arctic snow. Even if it is a breed which is supposed to be pampered lap-dogs all, I suspect that Spike and her tiny kind actually have dreams of glory, and heroic deeds. Today she skidded on a couple of patches of ice, and did not venture onto a lawn more than once. The trees, the lawns and parked cars are all glazed over with a layer of ice, crackling underfoot as if you are wading through cornflakes. The scattering of trees which still have leaves are coated also; the north wind rattles the leaves and branches like bamboo castanets. We met one of our neighbors, grimly scraping ice off his windshield with a credit card, and we both tried to remember how far down in our respective glove-boxes are buried the plastic ice scrapers.

Blondie was to start classes today; something she was looking forward to after three weeks of being bored out of her mind at home, but classes at most schools today are cancelled. Practically every elevated overpass and freeway ramp is closed, so even if she did still have classes, it would take at least half the day to get across town to them. Public events and lectures have also been cancelled or postponed, and a couple of corporations and city offices are either closed, or ask only essential employees to come to work. No, this is a day to stay home, and stay warm, and work from home. My sometime boss, the real estate broker doesn’t even want me to venture out: the ice is even worse in his neighborhood. And most unusual for here, it looks to carry on for more than one day. It’s rare for a winter storm to discommode San Antonio for more than one day at a time, but this one looks like going for a record. No word on snow, though. It last snowed seriously here about twenty years ago, and people are still talking about it as if it were a blizzard that left fifteen-foot deep drifts.

I’ll flog away on the next book, and Blondie is going to do some loaves of bread: all you can do on a day like this! That is, as soon as we melt the ice around the door lock to Blondie’s car. Global warming, indeed.

It’s almost 1am, and I’m sitting here, wide awake. Yes, I should be sleeping. Yes, tomorrow is a work-day. Yes, I’ve been awake all day, and should be tired enough to sleep, and Yes, I’ll regret it tomorrow if I don’t get some sleep tonight.

BUT.

Tomorrow is a new beginning for 2 beings. A new start for two critters who should be well past the stage of beginning again. There’s a door in my heart, that was slowly, and sadly closed last September (but not locked!), that is open again, letting air and light into a dusty room. Tomorrow evening, that room will no longer be empty.

Honestly, it’s not empty now. It’s cluttered with memories of my little nuisance, Jessie the Italian Greyhound, but the tears that I’ve shed in the last four months have helped to clean the clutter and the dust away. It’s a good thing, because now there’s room for Zoe.

Zoe is a 12-yr old Italian Greyhound who had to be re-homed by her current mom. Her current mom is actually her second mom - her first mom wanted to euthanize her at the age of 7, I don’t know why. Her 2nd mom was a vet tech at the time, and when Zoe was brought in, instead of going to the rainbow bridge, she went to a new home (with the first owner’s approval). Her 2nd mom recently lost her job, and the housing that went with it. While she has a new job, she doesn’t have dog-friendly housing, and has no idea when her life will get settled again.

She’s tried for weeks to find a new home for her little angel - the rescue groups were full, and the shelters told her that a 12-yr old dog is unadoptable, and if she came to a shelter, she would probably leave by way of the Rainbow Bridge.

In desperation, she poured out her frustrations on a message board. An internet friend of hers, somewhere in Texas, made it her personal mission to find Zoe a home in the day or two that were left before the shelter was the only option. Someone told her about a greyhound message board, and suggested she post there. None of these people have ever met in real life - they only know each other from online.

Late Friday afternoon, she registered on the message board and wrote a post about Zoe. She posted two pictures, and I fell in love as soon as I saw them.

Eight hours, sixteen emails, and two phone calls later, it was all over. Zoe would be mine. We just had to get her from central Florida to northern Georgia.

Not a problem! My dog-sitter’s husband is in southern Florida this weekend, at some kind of airshow (he sells small airplanes). He’d be driving back to Georgia on Monday, and Zoe’s current location is about 30-45 minutes north of where he is. So he’ll be stopping in the morning to pick her up, and then they’ll stop every 3 hours on the way so that she can relieve herself, and by 8:00pm tomorrow, she’ll be in my arms, being fussed over and told how beautiful she is.

Her current mom tells me that she’s in perfect health, with no known medical issues. She expects Zoe to live another five years, which is a good lifespan for an IG. For me, it’s not how many years she has left that matters. It’s that she be allowed to live out the full span of her life, and knowing that she is loved.

She has been loved, and she will be loved. These are facts. I already love her, just from that second picture where she’s cuddled up under her blanket. I am SO looking forward to the little annoyances that come with IGs in the house. The little annoyances that it took me forever to appreciate in Jessie. And I’m looking forward to having a snuggle-bunny again.

I’m not usually one to wish the hours away, preferring instead to try my best to experience the moment I’m in, but boy, I wish it were tomorrow evening, already.

And all of this happening because someone knew someone through an online message board. Other than my friend doing the transport, none of us know any of us that are involved in this. This is truly the power of the Internet.