House Biscuit

I have yet to find the person who hauled the big outside cat, Biscuit, off to SPCA and had him neutered. I think that person probably thinks Biscuit is their cat, and did this to make him an acceptable house cat.

The truth is, Biscuit belongs to no one. He goes where he wants, when he wants. Sometimes he's at my house every day for a week, and then I won't see him for a week. When he comes back, he isn't thin or stressed. The cat knows what he's doing.

The truth also is that even when he was a tom cat, Biscuit had better manners than any cat inside my house. That would be the destructive Wesley and the opinionated Gollum who leaves poop bombs on my mousepad when something offends her. Wesley is usually what offends her.

Last week we had some unseasonably cool weather and Biscuit showed up, looking for his eggnog. I make him a concoction of two small bantam eggs and some evaporated milk. He loves it.

This time when I checked on him an hour later, he stood at the door and let me know he'd come in, if asked. He's never been interested before. Now that he's not a tom and I figured he might not rip Wesley's throat out, I asked the big guy in.

He went right to my chair and snuggled in, so I sat next to him.

He's a very well mannered fellow. He would have been fine except for Wes and Gollie. Wesley sat and stared at him for a long, long time. Then when Biscuit turned his back, Wes snuck up, his eyes spinning madly in his head, and grabbed the end of Biscuit's tail. (Any experienced hunter would probably know what a stupid move this is.)

Sweet Biscuit didn't bat a sleepy eye, he just jerked his tail away and left Wesley with a mouth full of fur. For half an hour, Biscuit napped at my feet while Wesley kept his creepy watch from afar.

Then tiny Gollie showed up to see what was going on. She wasn't happy.

I was pretty sure Biscuit and I were both going to be shredded. He must have thought so, too. He went to the door and asked to go out.

The next morning, though, he was at the door again and came right in. He slept for 23 hours. Most of the day he was in my chair, but he came into the bedroom late at night and found a place to snuggle. At about 3 a.m. my feet felt cold. I have neuropathy, it's unusual for my feet to feel anything. They seemed to still be under the covers, so I turned on the light to investigate.

Wesley must have sucked up every drop of water he could find in the house, like a helicopter taking it up to drop on a fire. Where he'd been sleeping, he'd peed it out in a huge puddle. He obviously doesn't understand the subtlety involved in "marking" one's territory. Biscuit, still asleep on the other side of the bed, was aghast when he woke up to hear me snarling and throwing things at Wesley. He ran for the door and wanted out. He's been gone a week. It has taken me about that long to thoroughly wash all the bedding.

I don't think Biscuit's too interested in moving into this asylum. It may seem much safer to him to be outside with the raccoons and coyotes. In his other house, he probably has a bed with his name on it and no moron house cats to make life uncomfortable.

50 Years

When you graduated from high school (or its equivalent in some foreign country), did you ever think you'd be attending a 50th class reunion? I didn't. My dad died when he was 36, my mom when she was 58. I'm always amazed when I realize how long I've managed to live.

I know there were other reunions along the way. My brother has faithfully attended his. I'm not that sociable. Also, I attended high school up in El Dorado county and only lived there for 4 years, after my mother married my stepdad who had property there. My true home and the people I grew up with have always been here in Sloughhouse.

But I went to the 50th because it seemed like it is the final chapter in a book that started long ago, and I'm always curious to see how things and people turn out.

The reunion was well attended, I think at least half the original class was there. Even our foreign exchange student, Peter (from Germany) came. This is Peter with Dale, the organizer of the event. Peter did not travel the longest distance, though, that prize went to Maggie, who flew in from New Zealand.

It's so interesting to walk into a room where you're surrounded by old people and realize that you're one of them. I admit that some mornings I'm stiff enough to remind myself I'm old, and sometimes my memory lags, but I really don't feel much different as a person than when I graduated 50 years ago. Other people, including one classmate with white hair and a long, white beard, said the same thing. You never feel like you've grown up, or that you're finally qualified to be the adult in charge.

How did you make friends in high school? Like I said, I wasn't very sociable. We lived quite a ways from the school and I did not drive, there was no public transportation other than the school bus, so after school sports and activities were not an option. I didn't go to dances or go on dates, the only parties I went to were slumber parties with a few friends. I spent most of my spare time at a nearby Tennessee Walking Horse stable (I could walk there) that was owned by a classmate's family. I have kept in touch with her and a couple of others over the years because of the horses.

This is a picture with two people who were my friends during high school. We became friends because our last names were in close alphabetical order. I spent a lot of time in the middle, between Pete and Diane. Pete says he got through our science classes by copying my notes. I confess, I was good at taking notes.

I don't think I've ever been to a party where there were so many hugs, and where everyone seemed really happy to be there and to see everyone else. I'm sure if I'd heard all the stories, I'd find that some of us had accomplished a lot (by society's standards) and others had barely squeaked through. Those things that might matter at a 15 or 20 year reunion (where everyone would be noticing what kind of car you drive) really don't matter at this point.

This is a picture that says it all for me. These two, Diane and Steve, were boyfriend and girlfriend in high school (when "dated" was not a euphemism for other things). They went off and married other people. Diane has been married to her husband, Frank, for 48 years. Here are Diane and Steve, together again. At least for a dance and a picture.

Steve and I competed all the way through high school for the best grades. He ended up being class valedictorian by a point or two, I was salutatorian. Steve was (and is) intelligent. I was mostly just clever.

Well. So that book is finished. A great ending, I smiled all the way home.

Heirloom Expo Year 2

Last year one of my bantam Dominique hens won Best of Show at the Heirloom Expo in Santa Rosa.

This year another of my birds won. This is #47. What a great way to start the show season!

This year my friend Katherine also entered birds and she made the trip to Santa Rosa with me. Twice. This show is not the same as other poultry shows, which are held on weekends. The birds are cooped in on Monday... which was Labor Day ... and are picked up on Thursday evening later in the week.

We took the back roads to get to Santa Rosa on Monday (thank you Julie Kroger) and made it in 3 hours. We stayed that night because judging was the next day. There were not a lot of birds, so the judge took a long lunch.

John Monaco, Katherine Plumer, Walt Leonard

It was fun to spend time with two great judges and officers of the American Poultry Association (John and Walt), and a renowned illustrator of the Standard of Perfection (Katherine). Or, more accurately, 3 other goofy folks. This is why I love poultry shows, the friends are the best.

This was Kevin's first show. Despite a few errant feathers in his tail, he won a blue ribbon for Anna.

He turned out to be a nice show bird, and attracted a lot of attention. I can't say that for all the birds I took. My large fowl Dominique pullet was totally overwhelmed, this is how she spent the show.

She wasn't ill, she just curled up and slept to escape it all. My bantams aren't like this, they are show offs. I don't know what to do with this girl, she's going to take some work. I hope that won't involve keeping her in a cage in the house for a while.

Our trip back down to Santa Rosa on Thursday was much easier, we could actually use the freeways. Katherine drove on the way home, I was grateful for that.

Anna was thrilled to get her ribbons.

We consulted a Cochin expert and found out Kevin's wild tail feathers are probably a result of too much protein in his food. This is so, I was trying to get some meat on his bones. The expert says to pull the twisted feathers and let them grow back, and that it takes a couple of years for a large fowl Cochin to get its full growth, you just have to be patient. Sigh. I could fit 4 bantams in his pen.

Fires in California

Everyone knew this could be a really bad year for fires in parched California, and it has evidently come to pass.

I only want to make an observation on one aspect of the "Butte" fire that is about 30 miles up the highway from where I live, in Amador and Calaveras counties.

The residents of these counties have not sat around waiting for the government to take care of them. While the government firefighters do their jobs, the residents have been rescuing each other. They set up a new Facebook page to coordinate rescue activities. For example, one person might post that coming home from work, he was stopped and prohibited from driving through a fire area to get home. "I have 2 horses and 2 dogs. They're all human-friendly."

Within a half hour, someone on the other side of the fire line has gone to the person's house, loaded the animals in a trailer, and posted about it on their way to an evacuation site. In many cases, horses have been turned loose with their owners' phone numbers written on them when people were given a quick evacuation order. Most all of these have been rescued.

There are people who have been driving their trucks and trailers on the back roads for the past two days. Others are contributing gas money, or providing animal feed and caging at rescue sites.

Libby is my cousin. I have quite a few relatives up in the fire area, all of them appear to be safe so far, though the number of destroyed houses last night went up from 8 to 84. I'm sure when this is all sorted out, there will be people I know who need help.

I'm so proud of the folks "up the hill." Most people in that area are not wealthy, they are having to take time off their jobs to jump in and do what needs to be done. What a great example they are.

Technology in a Profit-Driven World

One of the reasons I haven't posted many blog entries this year is I haven't been able to email pictures from my iPhone to my computer. Don't know where they go, the phone does the "sent" sound, but the pictures never show up. I can still upload photos directly from my big camera, but I don't take it with me all the time.

I was trying to remedy the problem today. I'm not totally inept in the computer world. I was a typesetter first on a paper tape system, then used code on a mainframe system, and finally in the early days of Macs, I bought my own computer and printer and have had one ever since. I used to be able to keep my software compatible and my computers in good running order.

Right now I have this 5 year old iMac that I'm using, a 4 year old MacBook Pro, a year-old iPad, and my old iPhone 3GS. All of them have software that is supposedly old and no longer supported. And except for the iPad, none of them will run the latest operating systems so I could actually download the newest version of Safari, or Firefox, or whatever.

In the Mac world, that never used to be a problem. Obsolete software was always a Microsoft tactic. Or maybe it was just a result of them not caring enough about the quality of their product to make it compatible, or even more likely, they didn't have the skill to accomplish that.

I don't do Microsoft, though. Never have, never will. So I'm not accustomed to putting up with shit like this. And guess what? I don't intend to trash the computers I already own and go out and buy a bunch more junk just so I can read email or transfer photos, or suffer the annoyances of Facebook. The software I use for real work still works fine on my computers, it's just the useless, social media junk that doesn't.

Every device I own is in perfect working order. Nothing is broken, I take good care of my stuff. I've had Macs for more than 30 years, and each one was working great when I moved up to a bigger or better model. I did that because I wanted to, usually because the new computer was better or faster and I needed it to run graphics programs that I could use for actual work. Not because some moneygrubber decided that making software obsolete every 6 months was a path to bigger profits.