the moon and the kitties

For sure, I thought, it would be cloudy and maybe even raining Saturday evening. Because I wanted to see the lunar eclipse, you see. But the skies cleared up in time to see totality. So we grabbed the dog and our jackets and the camera and went next door, headed behind the school so I could get a shot of the moon without the floodlights washing everything out.

Isn’t a great shot, and, of course, the moon looked much, much larger. The optical illusion that Stanley has explained to me more than once but I keep forgetting what he calls it. But it was a blood-red moon, very spooky looking and I loved it. This is about five or ten minutes past totality and I tried to get more but the battery died. (Of course.)

lunar eclipse, March 3, 2007, about 6:40 pm

To see good photos of the eclipse, go to the Eclipse Gallery at SpaceWeather.com. I’d like to learn how to do that. But I think we’ll have to get a good telescope first.

THE KITTIES
One cold day. Towels on the floor in the bathroom, being gathered for the laundry. A very soft, cozy rug. A radiator. It’s called “Heaven” in felineish. I think Twitch was telling Stanley to just go away when Stanley took this shot. And the best part of all for Twitch: no Slink to bug him. (click image to see a bigger version)

Twitch all cozy in the towels

Slink is a bad kitty. A very bad kitty. Almost every morning we discover how bad he is. It wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t make such a mess. Huge messes for such a little cat—he’s only about 9 months only, weighs just 8.5 pounds. The photo below just gives a small view of the mess he made. These pots contain (contained) plants from the garden that I was trying to overwinter—we keep them on the floor near the back door. Slink dug out the plant that was in this pot and turned it into his bed. I don’t know how he managed to get the dirt so far away from the pot, but what a mess. The floor underneath those pots is not black with white specks—no. That’s all potting soil. That pot went outside. Then, a few days later, he dug up the Christmas cactus that you see here (click to enlarge).

Slink digs himself a new cat bed

Saturday, when I finally dragged myself out of bed, Stanley said: “Go look at your bathroom.” The little shit dug out yet another pot—which I THOUGHT was safe because it was pretty full of plants (vinca and lavender). A horrible mess. Stanley cleaned it up for me. I covered what was left of the vinca with a piece of aluminum foil, which is supposed to deter cats. They don’t like it, allegedly. Which goes to show, cats are aliens because don’t you use aluminum foil to keep aliens away? (Or is that just out of your brain?)

RAIN
If our new roof was going to leak at all, Friday would’ve been the day for it. We got 3.4 inches of rain by 2:00 pm. No leaks! How wonderful to have a sound roof at last! Now if we could just figure out how to keep the cellar from flooding, that would be good. Not sure how much water was down there, but Stanley was quite a while getting rid of it. Helene’s street (Richmondville, in Westport) flooded again—so much it made the evening news! She said the water was starting to seep through the car door when she drove (very slowly) home from the doctor’s office. It got into the mid 50s on Friday and Saturday! And Monday night, it’s supposed to get down into the lower teens, and even colder the next two nights. Bet we get some dandy potholes—potchasms.

STATUS
For those of you to whom I owe email replies, I’m sorry. I will answer you, I promise—just had a pretty intense week. Month. I’ve caught up somewhat with things, so now I’m only about two or three weeks behind for the non-urgent stuff.

Starting tomorrow, a great deal of my spare time will be spent catching up the bookkeeping so I can do the taxes next month. My annual bout of insanity. I always resolve to enter everything as soon as I get the statements, but I rarely do. So I’m paying for my procrastination, as usual.

When I’m finished with the taxes in April, then I can start paying attention to politics again and even start using my cameras again—which I miss a lot. Politics—I hope I’m ready paying more attention by then. Right now, I still get too enraged about things ... I feel a rant starting so will stop now and just go to bed. (Though it’s a lot of fun watching Slink try to figure out the safest way to get past the dog, which is what he’s doing now! Ginger is just watching him, snickering in her head, I think.)

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