But Call Me Betsy

For those of you who have been paying attention, today was to be the day that the mama kitty would go to the vet and have her reproductive organs removed so that she wouldn't continue to give us more and more kittens. This morning, Mr. D. and I attempted to get her from the big dog cage into the little cat cage. I did about five things wrong, beginning with freaking her out by putting the little cat cage inside the bigger one, thinking she would just run into the safety of the smaller one and I could shut it. Instead, she got out and jumped on the windowsill to wedge herself between the screen and the window. Mr. D, with towels swaddling his hands, tried to grab her, but it was like trying to catch hold of a live wire or a firecracker with claws and teeth. He got bit but soldiered on. She fought and flattened herself further against the screen, like, she appeared to change forms into something more like liquid than cat form. Finally, she pressed so hard against the screen that it p...

Remember that book by V.C. Andrews? She wrote these ghastly horror stories like that and My Sweet Audrina and If There Be Thorns (a sequel to FITA) and a bunch of other pulp-ish paperback novels that had those "reveal" covers...The book covers with the hole cut in the middle so you just see someone's face but then you open it up and an entire scene appears, often a family portrait where everyone looks like the undead, spooky and doused in velvet and lace. I didn't read too many of her books growing up, except for Flowers in the Attic. I remember being stunned and slightly titillated to read how the brother and sister end up having sex after having been trapped in the attic for five years. Of course, in this attic, they had things like a ballet bar and tights and leotards (hence, the inevitable seduction) and perhaps dollhouses and china tea sets; I can't remember now. I just remember that I felt slightly sick to my stomach while reading it (my first visceral reac...

Have not mentioned the litter of stray feral kitties in awhile, but they did return. The mama kitty decided they were best suited to live in the rough and tumble chaos of the abandoned yard next to mine. I woke up one day to discover that they had taken up residence there and have spent the last two weeks feeling like I should rescue them, but hesitating too, since they were still too young to separate from the mom. So, I checked every day, often more than once a day, to be sure they hadn't been slaughtered or fallen down into the cracks in the backyard or been otherwise hurt. And the nine year old who lives next door to me (Avis) has been pestering me to save them. She kept volunteering to climb over and save them, but I wasn't sure what that meant--what we would do with them if we had them, but not the mommy. Today, I was out with Carrie and Padhraig and Carrie seemed determined to rescue them too, so we climbed over into the adjacent back yard and I caught them, one by one...