A Birthday Present

One of my best friends and I exchange birthday presents each year. A few years back I didn't get her present sent due to procrastination. I sent her a present for my birthday instead. She loved receiving it at a time when she wasn't expecting it. That's what I'm doing this year. Last April was her birthday and I'm sending her this on Monday:

It's a prayer shawl that I knitted. It's full of prayers I prayed for her while I knitted. She's Catholic and volunteers by praying for the church and people. We always have fun getting presents for each other, because we like the same things. We often run across that perfect gift in a thrift store. This is the first time I made something.

The Cat Dilemma

I have a real cat dilemma, and I need help making a decision. About five years ago, I started volunteering for the local humane society. At the time,  I told them I would foster animals, but I only wanted to foster cats, because I felt I was less likely to adopt every cat that came into my home. (I've been more of a dog person all of my life; probably because I never had a cat as a kid.) Three or four months ago I took in four foster cats but one of them stayed for only a week.  The owner showed up looking for him. The other three are still with me due to overcrowding at the shelter. Since they've been here for so long, I made the mistake of letting them bond with me. Meet Napolean;

Napolean's owners dropped him off at the shelter saying they were moving. He's a sweet cat and likes to ride in the car. When I take him to the vet, he goes in one of those cardboard cat carriers. I put it in the front seat and open the top. Napolean stays in the carrier and sight sees while I drive. He's had a number of health problems.. The vet at the humane society got nowhere with a diagnoses, so I took him to my own vet and paid for it. When I first got him, he scratched the outside of his ears until they bled. We finally got that cleared up, but he throws up his food all the time. The vet has narrowed it down to either allergies or a blockage somewhere. She's going to test him for allergies.

Meet Josephine:

She came to me with the name of Ami, but I decided Napolean needed a Josephine. She's the smartest and most affectionate cat I've ever met. I decided I would adopt Josephine.

Meet Bella:

Bella was afraid of everyone until a couple of weeks ago. She suddenly started cuddling up to me, and she isn't afraid of the dogs anymore.

You might as well meet Shiloh:

I adopted Shiloh when I first started volunteering.

So here's my dilemma: I don't have the heart to take them back to the shelter now that they're settled, happy and think we're their forever family. Nobody will adopt Napolean, because he's black and has health issues. I want to move back to California next summer, but how am I going to transport four cats, four dogs and an elderly mother who won't fly? 

If you have a solution for me, I'll give you a cat and a dog. I'll even throw in the elderly mother.

Goodby Fall -- Hello Winter

Yesterday the weatherman promised the warm weather is over in Louisville, so I took my camera along on my daily two mile walk. I wanted to capture the flowers before a freeze beat me to it. But first, I want to show you the shot of my morning glories. I took this picture about a month ago in the early morning. What a surprise when I loaded the photos on my computer. The sun lit them from behind giving them an ethereal appearance:

Here are some of the flowers in my front yard:

My carpet roses decided to start thriving at the end of the season. Next year, I'm going to water them more. I keep forgetting that roses need a lot of water.

My geraniums: It's time to bring them in the house. Most people don't realize that geraniums are perennials. If you over winter them indoors, you can put them back in the garden when spring returns.

I ran into these petunias on my walk. I didn't plant petunias this year. I decided to plant perennials only.

I think I'll dress my mailbox up with verbena next year.

The neighbor's flower bed.

I ran into this lady in distress on a front lawn. I tried to help her, but it was too late. She's a goner.

Every dog owner knows that dogs love you unconditionally. Every cat owner knows that cats love you until you make them mad. Then, they get even .

My brother, Kenneth, and I weren't allowed to have a cat when we were growing up. Our mentally ill  mother thought cats were nasty. We were occasionally allowed to have a dog, but once we fell in love with it, Mom would give it away. This happened enough times to eventually impact my brother's relationships with humans.

Once we became adults, I adopted a cat, but Kenneth decided he didn't like cats. 

He had many failed relationships with women over the years.  As soon as things started getting serious, he ended it. After observing this for many years, I suggested that maybe a correlation existed between our mother getting rid of our dogs, just when we had formed an attachment and him sabotaging his relationships. He avoided the risk of getting hurt by ending it before things started getting serious. Kenneth agreed with me. So even though he didn't particularly like cats, he decided to adopt a couple of cats to cure himself of this intimacy syndrome.

There were a bunch of practical jokers on our father's side of the family, and evidently, my brother inherited the practical joker gene. He thought nothing funnier than chasing his cats around the house with the vacuum cleaner while doing household chores. One morning, before going to work, he decided his apartment needed vacuuming, and the cats needed a round of terrorizing with the vacuum cleaner. He chased those cats around the house threatening to suck them up into oblivion until he finally had to leave for work.

Had he been an experienced cat owner, Kenneth would have known better than to mess with those cats, but that lesson was yet to come. He didn't have to wait very long. That day, he arrived home from work to an unpleasant odor in the house. After a few minutes of investigating, he discovered the source of the noxious smell. The cats had defecated on the vacuum cleaner.

Some of us learn our lesson the first time we err. My brother requires a little more karmic intervention. To this day, he won't tell me what practical joke he pulled on those felines next, but it must have been something big, because they decided that defecating on his personal possessions wasn't severe enough.

Kenneth lived in Venice, California at the time and worked as a civilian at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard. He drove to work on his motorcycle every day. Motorcyclists were required to wear helmets onto the base or else they weren't allowed to enter. One day he was running late for work. He flew out the door, hopped on his motorcycle and plopped the helmet on his head. Surprise! A cat had sprayed inside the helmet.
That was the beginning of my brother's new found respect for cats.

Amazingly, he's now an incurable cat lover and had to take a week off of work recently to mourn the unexpected death of his 13 year-old cat, Esmeralda. He got married for the first time, six years ago, at the age of forty-nine, and he no longer plays practical jokes on cats.

CATS

I tend to see the funny side of life. I can find humor in situations where others don't see it. Everytime I tell my friend, Linda, about a funny incident she tells me I've got to write it down. I better start doing it, because the mind isn't what it used to be. This story is about a cat named Whiskey. He belonged to my daughter but lived with me at the time.

About 10 years ago, I lived in a mobile home park with Whiskey and my two dogs. One night I decided to sit down at the dining room table and pay some bills. To the right of where I sat, built into the wall, stood a buffet. At the top of the buffet, there were glass cabinets, below the glass cabinets; a mirror on the wall, below the mirror were wood cabinets. I lit a scented candle and placed it in the center of the table, poured a cup of tea and started writing. Pretty soon, Whiskey jumped up and plopped down on the table in front of me. It was a pleasant scene. I scratched Whiskey's head, he purred and I went back to writing.

After a while, I  happened to look up to my right in the buffet mirror. I saw smoke billowing up in the living room. I jerked my head to the left but saw nothing. I jerked it straight ahead to check the candle.  There lay Whiskey as contented as could be waving his smoking tail back and forth. The smoke made large squiggles up to the ceiling.

"Oh my God! Whiskey is on fire and this is a mobile home! It'll go up in flames in seconds!" I jumped up, grabbed Whiskey and started beating him to put out the fire. Of course, Whiskey had no idea why I had suddenly turned on him trying to beat him to death. He scratched my arm fiercely, and I had to let him go. Whiskey started running and I started chasing.

 "He's going to set everything in the house on fire!" Whiskey ran into the bedroom and hid under the bed. I got down on the floor and began tugging on him. Although he sunk his nails into the carpet for dear life, I finally got him out, stood up and started beating him again. At that point, he scratched me up and down the other arm, escaped from my clutches and ran and hid again. I noticed I had a hand full of soot. Success! I had beaten the smoldering fire into submission.

Whiskey hid under the bed for a week before he decided to forgive me.

I wore the battle scars for many months.

I no longer light candles when a cat is in the house.

Speaking of Red Shoes

One boring day in 1958 my older brother, Ronnie and I were hanging out in the garage talking. Mama was taking a nap. We found a bottle of red shoe polish. America hadn't become a throw-away society yet. In the fifties, shoes were resoled and polished regularly. The applicator to the shoe polish had a wire stem with a fuzzy ball at the end that soaked up the polish. Ronnie pulled out the applicator and smeared a dab of the red liquid on the palm of his hand. All of a sudden, we read each others minds: Wouldn't it be funny to smear the polish all over his hand, and go running into the house screaming that he cut himself? We'd scare Mama good!

We had forgotten in our excitement that Mama didn't have a sense of humor.

A screen door lead from the garage into the house. Ronnie ripped open the screen, ran in and jumped in the air screaming as he headed down the hallway. The picture is still etched in my mind today. Mama came running out of the bedroom screaming, her hair standing up on her head and her eyes bulging out the size of tennis balls.. By the time she reached Ronnie, she realized she'd been hoaxed and began screaming epithets while slapping him mercilessly. Ronnie cried, and I felt terrible that he got into trouble.

"Are you alright Ronnie?"

"Leave me alone!" he snapped back.

My 88 year-old mother brings that incident up now and then, and each time we laugh till we cry.

On August 22nd of that year, 13 year-old Ronnie and my father were killed in an airplane accident. The plane crashed in the ocean near San Quentin Prison in California. It was one day after my brother, Kenneth's fourth birthday and the day before my ninth birthday. 

The Color Red

I fell in love with the color red when I was four years old, and Mama gave me a red toothbrush. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. When I dropped it in the toilet, I cried pathetically thinking I would never have a beautiful red toothbrush again. Since there was only water in the toilet, Mama saved the day by fetching it out and sterilizing it.

I'm still in love with red. It also happens to be a color I look good in thanks to the dark eyes and dark hair my father passed along from our Native American heritage. I get just as ecstatic over a pair of red shoes as I do over red toothbrushes. Does any girl not like a pair of red shoes?

Of course, every cute pair of red shoes deserves a cute red purse.

There's nothing more beautiful than a red dress in my eyes.

Unless it's red glassware.

or a red teapot.