Sunday, April 18, 2010, 06:15
New Babies
I am not sure if there is some significance to this, but for the second year in a row, our barn cat, Little Sister, had her kittens on April 15 -- tax day.
Thursday morning Little Sister did not come out for kitty food, but as I fed Kajun and moved around the barn, I could hear her "chirping" softly from somewhere in the hay. I wondered at the time if she was in the process of giving birth to her kittens or had already had them.
Thursday evening when I went out to feed the horses, Little Sister came out of the hay and hopped up on the kitty food shelf for kitty food. And as she did, I could hear tiny, faint meows coming from the hay. So I knew, then, that Little Sister did indeed have kittens.
I suppose the soft "chirping" I heard from her in the morning was her way of greeting her babies as they came into the world.
I don't know how many kittens she has. Usually Little Sister has four, although one year she only had three.
And now that the kittens are born, the old tom cat, Squeak is on the prowl. The other kitties do not dare come down to the barn because if they do, Squeak will be right after them to chase them out. And none too gently, either.
Actually, Squeak patrols the yard as well. He is always on the look-out for the other kitties to chase them and let them know that he knows they are around.
It's a funny thing, too, because many of the kitties around here are Squeak's kids. And yet, he thinks they are a threat to the new babies in the barn. And that it is his duty to protect the new babies in the barn.
Little Sister will chase the other kitties, too, if she gets a chance, with menace in her step and murder in her eyes. And that's another funny thing. She will fight to protect them when they are babies. But when they get to be big kitties -- she wants to kill them.
Saturday evening, while Little Sister was out of the nest, munching on kitty food, I had to get a bale of hay down for the horses. Since I was *right there* I could not resist pulling back the bale over the nest. I did not want to make too much "commotion" by the babies because I did not want Little Sister to become anxious or alarmed.
My brief glimpse into the nest revealed at least four kittens -- several of them were light-colored (Little Sister is black) and may turn out to be tortoiseshells. Several others appeared to be black and white.
And so, the cycle of life begins again with a new batch of kittens in the barn. I still don't know what significance there might be to them being born on tax day, though.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Thursday, April 15, 2010, 07:23
Perfect Rain
Is there such a thing as perfect rain?
Early Tuesday morning the sky was dark to the west, and as Randy got ready to leave for work, we heard the the rumble of thunder.
"I'd better get out and feed the horses before it starts to storm," I said.
I just made it back into the house when it began to pour.
Do you know how long it has been since I have had to worry about lightning while taking a shower? It has been years. But Tuesday morning, I hurried through my shower, listening to the rumble of thunder of overhead.
Periodically throughout the morning Tuesday, it would rain hard for 10 minutes or so and then back off for a while before raining hard again. Just before I left for the newspaper office, I was wondering if I should take my raincoat with me. The only problem is, it has been so long -- years -- since I have needed a raincoat that I'm not sure I can locate it right off.
In all on Tuesday, we ended up with about an inch of rain. An inch. One whole inch.
I thought the rain was over, but on Wednesday it turned warmer and much more humid.
Do you know how long it's been since we've had humidity? Just last week, I hung clothes outside at night and by morning they were dry. Usually when clothes are hung outside overnight they are wetter in the morning than they were when they were hung out. But the air was so dry there was no dew, and the clothes dried overnight. Even the rugs that I had washed dried overnight.
Wednesday afternoon, the air grew even more humid, and by 5:30, it was raining again. In the same pattern -- hard showers for a few minutes, then a break, and a while later, hard showers again. It rained that way all Wednesday evening and was still raining like that at midnight.
This is the perfect rain, it seems to me. The ground has time to soak up the moisture before the next hard shower comes along.
I have no way of knowing if the rain will continue from here on out, but at least we are getting some rain that has a chance to soak in.
Also, with the inch of rain on Tuesday, the spring peeper frogs have emerged in the marsh down the road. Amazing.
LeAnn R. Ralph