The Cat Days of August

     I have been busy with yardwork and housework ... I can only ignore the clutter so long before I have the urge to drop everything and clean! (And no, I don't want to come over to YOUR house and clean ... you know who you are). I'm still working on the pseudo-wicker socks, and the Kroy yarn socks ... finished a skein of alpaca (still looks like chocolate raspberry!) and started a new WIP, an October birthday gift for a friend. I knit most of the new WIP while at the vet's office this morning, for this little twerp ...

...who had her second vet visit this morning. She had a rabies shot, which made her cranky, and some more de-worming medicine, because her stomach is distended a bit. She is sleeping it all off now under the bird cages, giving me and the other animals a welcome relief from all of her normal kitteny energy.  She looks stoned, doesn't she?

     I didn't want a third cat. I didn't really want any cats, but I had mice -- a lot of them, sauntering around as if they owned the place --  and the combined efforts of the Orkin Man and I were not enough to keep them out. It's a rowhouse, and they run free through the walls. I plugged every hole I could find ... still had mice, still saw droppings, still heard skittering noises in the walls.

     Now I have handled vermin before. I've had to deal with the snakes that got into my last apartment after heavy rains. In this neighborhood, I have to deal with mean dogs behind insufficient fences while I'm out walking my dog. I can show you pictures I've taken of alligators in Louisiana, from close range. I can gap a spark plug, drive a 2 1/2 ton stake truck, change the oil in my car ... but when it comes to mice, I am no different than the girliest of sissy girls. I scream and jump in the air and run for a chair to stand on (I do the same with evil cockroaches).

    So, I got a cat. A mellow, laid back, what's-the-big-deal-man sort of cat. Imagine patchouli oil and love beads. That's this cat (Edgar). The mice practically shared food with him. A few more months of mice running free in the house, and I got a younger cat. She was not quite a year old, and frisky. The morning after I got her, there was a dead mouse in my living room, and that was the last mouse I ever saw. It was like something out of a gangster movie, a warning to the other mice. Find a new place to live, capisce? 

     The kitten Petunia came from a litter of kittens a stray cat had on my porch back in April. Three found homes, she stayed with me (long story short--the people I gave her to were not feeding or caring for her, and she got off to a bad start), and one other kitten and momma cat, now spayed, live in my yard. I also watch over a stray who was abandoned by the nasty trashy people that used to live next door a few years ago. I feel trapped by cats. I have to hire someone to come over and take care of them if I want to go anywhere. I don't like it, but the shelters in this area are stuffed with abandoned cats -- when people are evicted, they just toss them out and go. And since they're never fixed, they reproduce exactly as you'd expect. I really think those people should be fixed. It's just callous to toss a pet aside and expect it to survive a Baltimore winter. Some people are able to look the other way when a starving or injured cat turns up, but I just can't. So I wind up taking them in, and setting up warm boxes for them in the winter, and ***ch and gripe about it.

     So that's my cat story. Here is my garden story ....

Clematis ... 

A second round of lavender blooming ... Lavender is my absolute most favorite fragrance. I love it more than vanilla, and the smell of cookies baking. I planted two small 4 x 4 containers here two years ago, and now it's a hedge. It comes back bigger and better every year, and blooms in May and again in August. If my bedroom window got any sun, I'd grow it inside.

     Tiny green oranges, just in time .... they might actually mature before it gets frosty! I don't eat these, as they are bitter, but my friends appreciate sour fruit, so I give them away. The oranges are about the size of a golf ball, or smaller, when they're ready. And the blossoms smell just heavenly!







      And, the five-for-ten-dollars-from-Weis mums. I know I should plant them, but I just don't have any more groundspace. If I get around to it, they'll go in big planters. I have a very special feeling about mums, as it was the last Mother's Day present my mom received from my dad and I ... a pot of purple-and-white mums. 

     There isn't much knitting in this post, though I have been knitting, just not as much. I had homework that got in the way, and I have to mow the lawn in the brief spells between thunderstorms, and cook dinner, and all that stuff that gets in the way! I'm in a spinning mood now, anyway, so I think I'll get back on the Kromski and spin up the rest of the chocolate-brown alpaca ...