"Hmph," said Serena. "Why don't you stay home, grow some fur, and play with me all morning, then snooze on the storage bin just below mine all afternoon, instead. That would be much more fun."
Serena, the Queen Cat next to the barrels, sorely misses Traveller, the young tomcat next to the camera. While he was living I didn't think this photo of Traveller was especially good, but since it's the last one there will ever be...Traveller was the cuddliest kitten ever, and, sadly, it's often the case that kittens who aren't as healthy as they ought to be are extra-cuddly; presumably the sensation of snuggling distracts from pain.)
"Hold out for readers to send us some more of that premium-grade kibble," said Samantha, who is Serena's mother and who induced lactation, as social cats often do, around the time Serena was ready to end the lactation cycle. "If they'd been sending us glyphosate-free, GMO-grain-free food, Trav might be with us still, and Swimmer might not be so bony. I worry about that kitten. It demonstrated the ability to swim at such an early age because it was weaker than the others, and although they were all born the same size--small--it's hardly half the size of Silver now. Even my milk supplements aren't helping it grow."
Swimmer was the cuddliest, friendliest kitten--not that there's ever been much range of variation in this look-alike litter--so when it rejected cuddling this weekend, I suspected that its ribby little body is in pain. Fatal Manx Syndrome would have happened earlier and would not have affected a kitten with a complete tail, but glyphosate sensitivity, or who knows what else, may be interfering with its growth.
"I'll write it! Let me at the computer!" said little Black Stache. "I may not be a Tortie or even a calico cat, but I do have a patch of mixed black and white hairs that look gray, on the back of my neck, as well as patches of black and white. I ought to count as a three-colored cat. And I'm three months and three weeks old now, so I know everything! I'm big enough that Ma's let me go out to the gate several times and even spend the night on the porch twice now!"
"That's because I was out late and fell asleep as soon as I came in, fed you, and leaned back on my bench beside the computer," I explained. "But by all means, since I'm getting tired of picking your little two-colored body out of the doorway every time I go in or come out, such that I've felt tempted to grab you by your long white tail--which is a cruel act no cat owner should ever do--let's show the world how adorable and adoptable you are."
12
34 Z
ZZZZZZZZZ
ZZZZjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjhhhhhjjjjjjjjjj
"That's enough typing for one day, Stache," I said. "Now I'll tell readers what we really mean to say here."
1. Black Stache got its (I suspect her) name from the character on the cover of this book, which is as funny as you'd expect from the authors' names on the cover:
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| Way funnier than the original Peter Pan and Wendy, this one started a series. |
2. Samantha is the true Tortie (a three-colored cat with large areas of black-and-orange mottled fur). She is still beautiful. She's been much calmer and friendlier during the prolactin surge of being a nursing grandma cat. She has not only purred and cuddled, but positively called me to participate in purr-and-cuddle sessions.
Though she's reached her full adult size--average, smaller than Serena--Samantha is still a young, bouncy-pouncy cat, still learning the rules of etiquette about which she was badly confused while growing up around middle school boys.
She is strong and energetic, and likes to show off her ability to jump five or six feet off the ground. This is a bit of a Cat Sanctuary record. One of our Founding Queen Black Magic's many unique achievements was routinely jumping up through the transom, over ten feet, in what might have been called a single bound, but actually Magic relied on little booster push-offs, placing one forepaw on the doorknob and one hind paw on the top of the door before surging through the transom--it only looked like a single move. Samantha can get one forepaw up above my head by leaping straight up in the air.
Unfortunately she likes to practice by trying to grab anything that might contain food out of my hands.
So during the recent heavy rain, when Samantha grabbed a bucket and spilled water all over us, I devised a new game called Mad Pans, which all humans at the Cat Sanctuary are encouraged to play. To play, the human picks up any container, full or empty, covered or open, and waves it about shouting, "Beware the Pan! Pan's coming to get revenge on Samantha! All cats off the porch now!" Containers may be clunked against objects, or against any cats who fail to clear off the porch. (Not hard enough to hurt a cat, just hard enough to jangle their sensitive nerves.) After all cats clear the porch, humans may or may not choose to show the cats what's in a container, and offer it to them if it's food.
Mad Pans is similar in principle to my new, temporary-I-hope, policy of blocking all "promoted tweets" on Twitter. It's excessive and may seem mean-spirited to strangers, but its goal is to resolve a problem before the problem gets worse. The cats know the porch is still their home; the sponsors know they're still welcome to behave politely on Twitter.
My goal is to get corporate Twitter accounts to use Twitter in the way that made Twitter great, just as my goal is to get the cats to step back and warily watch anyone carrying any rounded container.
3. Twitter has, for whatever reason--Google updates that made all web sites less functional last week, the activist Twits (others as well as me) blocking all the promoted tweets, Jack Dorsey's not actually being as stupid as the political statement behind New Twitter made him seem--gone back to its original format, at least for me. Hurrah! Does anyone miss anything about New Twitter? Well...I liked the nice neat f'list format...but that's still available at mobile.twitter.com. The "dark mode," which shows up on browsers other than the user's as a black screen? I was curious about whether New Twitter really would show that on other people's browsers; none of my Tweeps was new enough to the Internet to try "dark mode" but apparently it did cause a few tweets to show up in a few Twits' screens as black holes. The filtering and "top views"? Feh. Bury them deep! Long may original Twitter wave.
(This week's chat worked very smoothly on original Twitter. Not nearly as tedious as the last few Tuesdays have been.)
4. In phenology news (I really ought to do more phenology posts! Youall ought to sponsor some!), summer flowers are blooming beautifully. Along Route 23, the red clover, chicory, fleabane daisies, and white vetch recovering from last year's glyphosate madness are especially colorful. White roses are gone, red roses have peaked, and I saw the first mimosa tree in pale but lovely bloom this morning.
I also noticed, on some private person's lawn, an especially gorgeous selection of daylilies. Orange "tigers" are the daylilies we all know best, but they've been cultivated in a wild array of colors. This local daylily fancier has decorated the lawn with some orange daylilies, some pure lemon-yellow ones, some in a lovely shading of cantaloupe-pink that my cheap cell phone failed to capture, and these great gaudy things...Google got something right. Who knew the cell phone could photograph shades of red?
These showy flowers take root and spread. With a little encouragement they'll crowd out grass, which is a plus point as far as I'm concerned. If you get tired of looking at them, which is a possibility with this purple-and-gold variety, you can also eat them! Pure white daylilies have also been cultivated. If you want to spend money on daylilies, rather than just digging up some of the neighbors' surplus as is customary, it's possible to buy strains that will reliably bloom in every color except blue.
Many moth and butterfly populations are also rebounding. I saw Vanessa, the Painted Lady, sunning her wings on the not-a-lawn this weekend, but didn't even try to snap a picture as good as this one:
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| Shared at Wikipedia By Jean-Pol GRANDMONT - Self-photographed, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27747981 . |
More about this group of "Cosmopolitan Butterfly" species at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanessa_cardui and https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2017/09/status-report-money-phenology-news.html . The bottom line is that although there currently seem to be three distinct species of Vanessa in the Eastern States, it can be hard to tell by looking which one an individual butterfly belongs to. Generally V. atalanta is darker than V. cardui, and V. virginiensis has showier underwings, so the one who visited me was probably V. cardui.
Baby Vanessas have bristling spikes that seem to be trying to copy those on stingingworms, but the bristles don't have sharp points or contain venom, and the caterpillars are much smaller. They eat "weeds," so they are among the lovable animals threatened by glyphosate. (The butterflies need little nourishment and are "cosmopolitan" partly because they can get what they need from all kinds of sources, including sweat; if you sit still on a hot day you might get one to lick your hand.)
Real weather news is that, while we've been complaining of too much rain and too cool mornings, here in Virginia, a deadly heat wave may be moving our way. Last week in India several people died of 45-degree Celsius heat. (45 degrees Celsius is approximately 113 degrees Fahrenheit.) As usual I've seen no real local news from the Middle East but now the brutal heat is menacing France. That we've not had a deadly heat wave in Virginia for some years did not disprove global warming theory, and if we get one next week, that won't prove global warming theory either; our ancestors survived many heat waves, at least long enough to become our ancestors. But it will make the flatter and hotter corners of the state unpleasant places to be and it is my (not very) painful duty to report that although Gate City just doubled its downtown AirBNB capacity, the new BNB rooms are already booked for most of the summer. During August Race Week, refugees from the north and east may have to settle for lodgings in Roanoke. Urban Virginians, plan your escape routes now.
5. The cafe will as usual be closing for the first ten days in July. In search of long-term writing jobs I've referred people to this web site. Here are the links some new readers may be looking for:
Survival food:
https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2019/05/survival-food-weekend-part-1-may-yea.html
https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2019/05/survival-food-weekend-part-2-may-be.html
https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2019/05/survival-food-weekend-part-3-may-nay.html
Review written from research...This one originally started with the sentence "Vietnam has many beaches and enjoys lots of beach weather."
https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2016/02/beaches-of-vietnam-another-hack-writing.html
Post specifically about women aging well:
https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2016/10/my-mother-is-beautiful.html
Me:
salolianigodagewi@yahoo.com
twitter.com/5PriscillaKing
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