Rainy Weekend

Words cannot describe how good it feels to sit on my front porch on this rainy Saturday.  Clarice the cat and I have been listening to the mourning dove and other birds. I did a little bit of yardwork before it began to rain. New plants, new planters, new opportunities. I can't wait for the hibiscus to bloom. 

Pottery by Jim Bob Salazar 

Don't tell Barry that Clarice was out here with me. 

She enjoyed exploring new areas. 

Pum-Kin in a Tree

There once was a beautiful cat named Pum-Kin. He was mostly orange with white spots on his little face, like backwards sports player eye black. His orange fur was fluffy – so very fluffy – and had white spots accentuating his body in just the right places. He pranced around on white tufts of furry feet and a glance from his lovely visage would cause an average human's heart to melt into butter.

He lived in the back yard of two kindly men who made sure that there was food in a dish for him. While he appreciated the food, he wasn't quite sure that he trusted people enough to actually snuggle with them. Sometimes he'd let one of them scratch his head, because this is the price you have to pay to keep a food supply. But, for the most part he kept himself at arm's length.

One time one of the kindly men put his food on a nice table about two feet from where it usually sat on the back porch. This was very confusing for a pretty cat named Pum-Kin, who wasn't the most intelligent thing ever to walk on four feet. But, he was very pretty. Another time he had to share his food with a skunk named Trevor, because even though he wasn't the brightest star in the galaxy, Pum-Kin knew better than to go to battle with a omnivorous black-and-white New World mammal of the weasel family.

One day, in the middle of Central Texas' excuse for a winter – meaning that the temperatures had recently gotten as far down as 35° before returning to the 50's – Pum-Kin decided to climb a tree. He wasn't quite sure why; there is just a need inside every cat to be on top of something they see. You may have noticed this tendency in your own cats, especially if you've left a piece of paper laying about. It's just something that cats have to do, a mysterious call of nature. So, one afternoon, after having seen this strange short tree for years, he finally decided that food wasn't going to be served any time soon so he may as well have a climb. This didn't go so well for poor little Pum-Kin. He got stuck and tangled and didn't quite know what to do with himself. Fortunately, one of the kindly men wandered by. Unfortunately, the kindly man had a camera.

Poor Pum-Kin

Perhaps now you understand why pretty little Pum-Kin is reluctant to trust humans, even kindly ones with food.