Monday, July 04, 2005, 19:00
Kitty Cats and Cutting Hay
"Would you help me get through the gates?" Randy asked.
We are finally getting around to cutting our hay today. The weather forecast is saying "no rain" from now until Friday . That doesn't it mean it won't rain, of course, but we're hoping that it won't.
Before Randy started cutting the hayfield, though, he wanted to knock down the tall grass in Kajun's pasture. The horse only goes out in his pasture from November through April. Then I shut him out of there. Otherwise, he would eat green grass until he made himself sick -- literally. To cut the pasture, Randy needed to thread the tractor and cutter through two sets of gates.
"You can't start cutting yet!" I said.
"Why not?"
"Kitty cats," I said. "I want to make sure all of the cats are in before you start."
My husband sighed. "Okay," he said.
We found Rocky and Juliette right away. The two young black cats always stay up around the yard, close to the house.
The red tabby tom named Gilligan was different story.
Or rather, *today* Gilligan was a different story. On any other day, if I go outside to do something, Gilligan is right there to "help" -- even if helping means that while I am pulling weeds in the garden, he is rolling around in front of my hand, snapping off plants.
I walked around the place for 10 minutes yelling for Gilligan -- but the orange tom was nowhere to be seen.
"Well, I want to start cutting," Randy said. "If he's down in the pasture, he will hear the tractor and cutter coming, and he will get out of the way."
"Unless he's so frightened that he's too scared to move," I said.
"Uh. . .oh. . .right. I guess there is that, isn't there," Randy said.
And so the search resumed. Ever since one of our kitty cats got his foot cut off by the hay cutter when I was a kid, I have this morbid fear about hay cutters and cats and other critters in the tall hay. The cat lived to tell about it, by the way. He was gone for four days, and just when I thought that surely he must have died from his injury, he showed up on the doorstep, with nothing but a stump where his hind foot should have been. He must have been in hiding somewhere, tending to his wound. We took him to the vet, who said there was nothing he could do for him since the wound was scabbed over except give him some antibiotic. The injury healed, and the cat was fine.
Anyway, that's why I have this fear about cats and hay cutters, and I was about to take a walk through shoulder high grass to see if I could find the cat when Randy walked around behind the barn to the gate. As Randy walked around one side of the barn, Gilligan came running around the other side of the barn.
"You found him!" I said.
"Well, it wasn't so much that I found him," Randy said modestly. "I think he was under the tractor, and when I rattled gate to open it, he ran out."
Didn't matter. Randy had found Gilligan! I picked up the cat and put him in our walk-out basement where he would be safe.
"Okay, now I can start" Randy said. "I know you. If we didn't find the cat, you wouldn't be able to get a thing else done because you'd be worrying about him."
Well, maybe so. But I know something, too -- if we didn't find the cat, Randy wouldn't be able to bring himself to start cutting because *he* would be worried about Gilligan.
And that, of course, is why I married him. (But don't tell Randy that. He thinks it's because he is intelligent and capable and tall and handsome and because he can make me laugh.)
LeAnn R. Ralph
Sunday, July 03, 2005, 06:05
World War Three
Just after sunset Saturday evening, as I was walking with my dogs along the road and admiring the few fireflies that are still around, World War Three started.
That's what it sounded like, anyway.
KA-POW! Boooooooooommmmmmm! PSSSSST! WHAM! KA-POW! Boooooooooommmmmmm! PSSSSST! WHAM! BOOM-BOOM! KA-POW! Boom-boom-boom!
All the way back for three-quarters of a mile, I listened to the fireworks from four or five locations. Couldn't see a thing. But I could hear it. Except that it wasn't fireworks. Not the big, grand kind of fireworks from the cities and villages around here. It was firecrackers at private residences. On the Fourth of July, from our backyard, we can see fireworks from a half a dozen municipalities 10 to 20 miles away. The fireworks are so far away that we can see them but we can't hear anything, except a few faint pops. What I was hearing was "firecrackers" in backyards a few miles away.
Randy did not go for a walk with me because he had a sinus headache. When the dogs and I got back to the house, he was lying on the couch.
"World War Three has started," I said.
"I know," Randy replied in a muffled voice. "I've been listening to it." His voice was muffled because he had the sinus mask over his face. The mask is a cloth device filled with beads that you can warm up in the microwave.
"Is it coming from where we saw them the other night?" he asked.
"No," I said. "It's coming from four or five locations, but not from there. I couldn't see anything."
The other night, from our house, we could see the fireworks being shot off a mile away.
A few minutes later, I walked outside and around the house to put Charlie into his kennel in our walkout basement. While I was downstairs, more firecrackers went off.
KA-POW! Boooooooooommmmmmm! PSSSSST! WHAM! KA-POW! Boooooooooommmmmmm! PSSSSST! WHAM! BOOM-BOOM! KA-POW!
The concussion from them was enough to make our garage door rattle. When I got back upstairs, a couple of my kitty cats were acting like they thought a thunderstorm was approaching.
This is a far cry from the little firecrackers and sparklers I remember when I was a kid.
Maybe I'm not very "with it," but these things sound loud enough to be dangerous. They sound more like mortar rounds rather than something that people are lighting off in their backyards to celebrate the Fourth of July. And I know what mortars sound like, believe it or not. Many years ago when we lived in the southern part of the state, one Fourth of July, my husband's brother came to visit us. We were sitting outside and all of a sudden we heard loud BOOM-BOOMs that kept right on coming. "That sounds like mortar simulator rounds," my brother-in-law said. He was in ROTC in college, and I figured he ought to know what he was talking about. And sure enough. That's what it turned out to be. Someone had stolen them from the ROTC munitions storage on the nearby college campus and thought it would be fun to fire them off for the Fourth of July.
Okay. Goody. Now I can be grumpy for the rest of the Fourth of July weekend. It's bad enough that it sounds like World War Three around here during deer hunting season in November. Even the most dedicated and die-hard deer hunters in this area don't fire mortars when they go out hunting, though.
It's not that I'm not a patriotic person, but does "patriotic" have to sound like we are fighting the Revolution all over again? A few little cracks and booms are one thing. But when it's loud enough to rattle my garage door and to frighten my cats into thinking a thunderstorm is approaching, that's a different story all together.
LeAnn R. Ralph