Penny's First Rain

Penny's First Rain......
















My daughter and her roomate decided to populate their college apartment, illegally of course, with felines. They each got a cat. During the weekend and holiday visits, Ema Lee (AKA Penny) comes to visit us. She's a beautiful cat but has not been well accepted by one of our own cats, Ms. Juniper....in fact she gets her ass kicked on a daily basis....but she appears to be ok with that.

This is her first summer with the "grandparents" and loves visiting the "big house". She's been here long enough, since school let out, that she's pretty much taken over the house. She still gets whooped daily but she has expanded her territory from one room downstairs to the entire house.

Over the past several weeks she has decided that outside is quite an adventure and she greets me at the door each morning to be let out. Now I have to admit, I'm the one that first introduced her to the outdoors.......there was an unexpected 2-week visit (the girls suspected that their apartment was going to be inspected and they didn't want to get busted). I let her outside, downstairs, and she thoroughly enjoyed her adventure under my unusually large hosta gardens. And she remembered this adventure!

Fast forward to summer. She's been here since early May and goes out daily now. Yesterday we had our first "good" rain in quite a while. I let her out and she stayed in the covered carport area for a while. There was thunder and lightning but the rain was pretty light at this point. She seemed a little freaked-out at the thunder but stayed put in the carport......and then she decided to venture out in the front yard as the rain started to fall.

This was quite a shock to Penny! She continously looked up each time a drop would hit her and looked quite confused that she was not in control. I tried to bring her inside, as the storm intensified, but she would have nothing to do with this.....this was yet another outdoor experience and she intended to wallow in all its glory.

Another experience, another day, in the life of a cat.

Mother Raven, Baby Raven

I was outside this morning enjoying my usual morning bad habit. It was foggy and noisy. A congregation of Oak Ridge's finest ravens had decided my gardens would a nice place to set up camp. There was one particular individual that was making all the noise. As I sat on the back of my pickup I noticed that the noise maker was a "baby". I say baby but this bird was as big as Mom. It followed Mom all over the yard with its beak wide open and cawing (if that is a word). This went on for what seemed like hours...although I was only out for one bad habit intake.

I got to thinking that ol' Mom needs to put her foot...errr....claw.....well whatever a bird's foot is called.....and set that baby straight. In the first place if your baby is as big as you then you have obviously babied it long enough. Now I don't know much about birds, other than they eat a lot and poop on everything....but don't you think this mama needs to do a little life training and teach that critter to learn how to survive on its own?

I guess I can equate this to my daughter's recent graduation from college. We let go years ago and she survived to adulthood. And she doesn't go around cawing for attention.......or pooping everywhere. At least I don't think she does anyway.

I think I need another cup of coffee.