- Mouser wins prize for lousy judgement
The cat you see above came to me as a loaner 13-or-so years ago. A litter mate to Hydrox, the jellical cat I’d established an actual contract with for the remainder of one of our lifetimes. Mehitabel, an adult in the household, hated Hydrox and I thought he needed some company, so I borrowed Naiad on an indefinite loan, no contract involved.
Turned out she’s probably the best mouser I’ve ever enjoyed spending a piece of my life with, a survivor. She went through Y2K with me, has braved every available kind of predator stalking cats from dogs to coyotes, an eagle, hawks, bobcats and probably others she’s never had the courage to divulge, even to me, a liberal and open-minded sort of guy.
She generally trusts me but there’s always been that no-contract thing hanging over her head, and the guy loaned her to me got murdered a few years ago. She’s acutely aware if I hold strictly to our original agreement I have no option other than to return her to Socorro, New Mexico sometime. So she’s careful not to cross me.
But I’ve digressed.
When Gale, Kay and I encounter one another we almost always exchange news about which predators are currently threatening our chicken-herds, particularly predators that might commute from mine to theirs, or vicee versee. Yesterday Gale sprung one me:
“There’s a cat working up here you might want to keep an eye open for. Kay took a shot at it, but she missed. Black cat hanging around down by the hen house.”
“Black cat? Stalking your chickens?”
“Stalking something down by the hen house. Lots of rats down there because of the chicken feed.”
“Black cat? You sure it wasn’t Naiad? She’s been around chickens on and off forever. Never bothered a chicken.”
“You have a black cat down there?”
“Yeah. I’ll email you a picture. I’d be obliged if you don’t shoot her. She won’t bother your chickens.”
Toyota Goes Communist
Thursday I needed to go to town, so I packed the ice-chest with ersatz ice, a shopping list, and went to roll the 4Runner downhill to start it so’s to get up to Gales and borrow a truck to go to town. The 4Runner did okay rolling down but I suppose just half-mile trips back and 4th to Gale’s place hasn’t kept the battery charged. I’m thinking it spang went completely dead.
So, 100 degrees out there and me all dressed up for town I pulled up my galluses and hiked my young-ass over the hills and through the woods, picked up Little Red, the loaner truck, bumped my young-ass back down here, picked up the list and ice-chest, then off to town, where I happened to notice L’il Red’s license tag and Safety Inspection Sticker had both expired back in June.
Sweated blood and bullets all the way to town, various thrift stores, feed store, grocery store, all without getting into a gunfight with the law over the expired civilization indicated on the windshield. And not entirely the result of me being unarmed. Every time I saw a police vehicle I kicked into my ‘invisible’ mindset mode, which works a lot more frequently than a person might be led to expect if the person isn’t into such esoterics.
NEWS ITEM #3
The Terlingua blogsman
Posted a piece this morning I love and I think you might love too. Popular Science Magazine archives going back to before the invention of life as we know it. Going back so far there weren’t even any human beings running around to publish and read it, at least no human beings as we’re currently prone to indulge in believing humans are.
Stay tuned. Likely something else will happen here sometime.
Old Jules
Johnny Horton – Old Slewfoot
So Far From Heaven 
Okay, very funny. I had to look up the word erzatz (sic). Imagine my surpise when you had a Johnny Horton video posted. I have been listening to this one all week.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnJL4ErQK8k&feature=fvwrel
Ps. Thanks for your kind comment this morning.
michael
I subscribe to the cloak of invisibility theory as well. I do believe it works. After all, it’s just a crazy old dream, so we might as well start having some fun with it.
Had several chuckles here and some nods of understanding. I had cats galore when I was a kid and for many years after. They are entertaining, despite their occasional lapse in judgment.
Johnny Horton: “Dancing on a Hardwood Floor,” among others. Grew up to his music. Still like it.
Hi Michael Ultra and Teresa Evangeline: Always nice coming across other Horton fans and music tips. Thanks to both of you for stopping in.
I think my two all-time favorites by Johnny Horton are:
Miss Marcy
Whispering Pines
None I can think of by him I dn’t like, though.
Gracias, J
reminiscent of some follies i have made eluding the cal highway patrol with nmex tagsand licenses during the late90″s. still got the 96 discovery but lmbk kicked it or me out the door so it’s in process of selling. 161,000 miles and detailed looks and drives like new. what a shame to “give away for a few thousand, but alas, so be it.
Hidee Mr. K. Been so long since I’ve seen you I’ve forgotten what a discovery is. It it that Rolls Royce-priced thing you insisted on driving up and down the muddy insides of Pelona we weren’t supposed to be trying to slide off cliffs with? If so I hope you get a good price for it. If it still has paint it ought to be a good advertisement for how much abuse a paintjob can take if you pay enough for it.
Thanks for coming by. J
You have an interesting way of looking at things. It’s seldom flat out wrong, but almost always has a curve to it, so there’s little clue as to where the cow patty came from.
BANG! Right upside the head. Makes a reader jumpy.
I can deal with a good bit of jumpy. Jumpy is good. What is not so good is the indeterminate size of this pile of….er… opus.
I’d like to read the whole blog, a little at a time to allow for chewing, but the one thing that keeps me from it is the lack of a list of entries. I could just go back post by post, but at some point I’m gonna want to have some sense of the size of what I’ve set out to do, or all this ambition may run out into the cracks and disappear. How’s a fella to know what sort of job is ahead, or mark his progress? Or even find where he left off last Thursday?
It’s discouraging.
I suspect you’ve got some good stuff back there towards the beginning, wherever that is. But it’s hard to even know where to look, or how long the road is between here and there. Could be the whole thing abruptly falls off a cliff only a month or two ago, or it could be your devoted fans are obliged to give wide berth to dinosaurs along the way. Maybe if my middle name was Methuselah….
I know for a fact that most of these blog things come with an automatically generated list of posts. A menu list of months, anyhow. Sure wish you’d activate that option.
Throw in a flare, willya? It’s dark down here. And there’s things that go bump, and skitter by.
Bob, scared he’ll miss something.
Thanks so much for the time you took to bring up this issue. I’ll look into it. When we started a month or so ago, it didn’t seem that it would be that hard to find things using the “categories” and the tabs on the navigation bar. But of course, you are right, and I will try and make that addition this weekend.
Mandala56 (Admin)
Morning Bob. Thanks for coming over here and looking at some of this stuff. I hadn’t ever thought about what you said, so it is the kind of thing a person would want to go ahead and do as a matter of courtesy in case anyone ever wants to look at the early entries. The blog’s only been going a month, six weeks and doesn’t get a lot of readers. The ones that do come hadn’t ever mentioned it being a problem for them, but I’d guess they aren’t referring backward to old ones for the most part.
I don’t know anything about how to do what has to be done to get it doing what you’re suggesting, but the lady who administers it for me, an old friend living up in Kansas, is learning and doing a bangup job putting this stuff up, in my opinion. If I had to do it I’d never have started the blog in the first place. WordPress takes as long to load through this dialup as a YouTube video that has a song in it.
I see she already answered saying she’ll do it, so all I’m saying is thanks for coming by and reading, but thanks a lot more for making the observation I’d never thought of.
Gracias, J
Just me being OCD I guess. Must have got it from my Grandma. Thing is, it was hard to know if I’d read everything without a complete list. There was no way of telling if everything had been categorized.
Sequence ain’t so important in your case. It’s clear you’ve got a pile of tales stored up in no particular order. But I’d hate to miss one.
Looks good up there now. Thanks for the virtual campfire, and all the smores. Say hello to the cats for me.
Bob