Crash Retrieval Site, Milltown, WA

 

            Nobody saw a flash of light in the sky as far as I know. There were no strange unearthly noises. Little short humanish manikins didn’t run amok over the misty landscape of barely spring. Outside of this house, as far as I know, things have been rumbling along perfectly normally.
            Inside the house is a different matter.
            There have been crashes. There was a planter, one of those long ones on a window ledge on the inside back porch. It went down, baby! It went down hard. That was the first crash retrieval.
            Two little souls ran from the site, spurred on by the sheer glory of their accomplishment.
            Papers have been shoved off of tables. A pizza box was nosed open by Booker. You can’t really blame him.
            Anything that dangles has been climbed, including garments, while being worn. Many needle sharp toenails made short work of it, human flesh be darned. I didn’t really need that leg.
            Then there was the matter of the small pot of tulips placed strategically on the top of dad’s old piano. Mr. Baby was a natural suspect as he likes to hang out on the piano. But, no one actually saw him shove the tulips off. It’s a little hard to feature those two shorties getting up there, but I’m not absolutely sure they didn’t.
            We have a lot to look forward to. They’re just going to get bigger and sleeker, and brighter and wider, and altogether better!

🐈🐈

February 27, 2026. Open Thread

 🤍Introducing Methyl Ethyl Ketone.🤍

"Ethyl"

            She was a good old girl. 

            Ethyl came to us as a second choice. I had brought a gray female cat home from the local very fancy animal shelter. That kitty went under a piece of furniture and stayed there for three days. She did not want to be here. So, I scooped her up and took her back to the shelter. While I was there I met Ethyl, who wanted to come with me in the worst way.

            Whoever had her before had her declawed. You know, declawed cats are kind of crazy. She did not disappoint.

            Even without claws, she hunted. I saw her dispatch a mouse once. She had a way of pouncing them until they were done for.

            The photo was made by my Navigator. She took many many photos of all of the cats!

            She was a bonified nut, but we loved her.

😻

Found and Lost, and a Little Blue

 

 
            Ralph doesn’t really get the blues. But he did miss the big Amigo hat. It had come to him in such a magical way, and had been dismissed a little reluctantly. He knew it just wouldn't do for the lord of the Great Forest to be swanning around in a big old cowboy hat, no matter how much fun it was. He sighed.
            Ramona saw him gazing into the fire, then looking up to the sky, as if he was not in his usual glad place. She knew that his spirit of fun was a little crushed.
            “You did the right thing, Baby,” she said.
            “I know. Thank Birdie for her sharp eye,” said Ralph. “She didn’t even have to say anything.”
            “It’s probably a good thing. In some strange way, It worked,” said Ramona. “You looked good! I wouldn’t have been able to say, ‘get rid of it.’ Why don’t you take a walk? You always find something to be happy about when you move around the forest!”
            “I’ll do that!” said Himself.
            And he did! He gathered himself up and strolled up to the Gifting Stump meadow to take another fond look at how well the alder trees were gathering together. There was new growth everywhere and soon he would coax blackberry vines to climb the Alder Tree House to add to its richness.
            He walked inside, glancing approvingly at the nice flat black slate floor. He was so pleased with all that he saw that he forgot about the big cream colored Amigo hat
            Then he wandered on up to Uncle Bob’s place and sat with him and Suzy by their fire. Having a second breakfast didn’t bother him at all! That accomplished, Ralph decided to visit the river on up the other way.
            The early spring sunshine warmed his head. It felt good just to be out and about walking in his forest.
            To get to the rive he had to go through the Home Clearing. While there he kissed Ramona and Cherry. The cats were lounging around the fire, so Ralph asked them if they would like to come with him, that he was going up to the river.
            “You don’t need to catch fish today, Baby,” said Ramona. “I’m already working on something else!” She winked at him over Cherry’s head. “Feeling better?”
            “Mhm!” he said.
            The river ran like an endless silver being. “Run forever, Silver River,” murmured Ralph softly when he saw it there. Some things are really beyond expression, but sometimes he tried anyhow. He took a seat on his favorite boulder. The cats crouched on either side of him and watched the river run too.
            Finally, Bob, looking closely at the familiar rocks and pebbles, said, “Forest Lord, I have never seen that one before. The round one. What do you think it is?”
            Ralph stood up, seeing the strange round rock for  himself. Then he waded out into the edge of the moving water. He picked it up. It was a perfectly spherical ball of granite with little shining specks in its surface. It was about the size of a basketball. He looked around some more. Hidden under the surface of the water he found two more, just about the same as the first one. Dark and wet, sparkly in little spots, and mysterious they were.
            He held them in a row upon his crossed arms.
            “Brothers,” Ralph said, “Let’s take these home and show Ramona.”
            As he and the cats walked back up the riverbank and into the forest he thought that maybe he could hear a harmonic ringing sound, but couldn’t determine its direction. It wasn’t very loud.
            “I hear something,” said Bob.
            “So do I,” said Ralph.
            Back at home he showed Ramona and Cherry the strange granite balls, saying, “Look what the Silver River gave me today, Mona!”
            “A mystery for sure,” said she. “I wonder what they are, besides round rocks?”
            Ralph laid one at each third position around the fire circle. He noticed that the light harmonic ringing became inaudible when he did that. It gave him an idea.
            He moved them together so that they were touching each other in a row. The ringing came back and was louder. “So,” he realized, somehow the ringing tone was coming from the round stones.
            Then he moved one away from the other two, and the tone changed. It became deeper. So, he put it back into position and moved the other one away. The tone changed again, becoming so high that their ears almost couldn’t catch it.
            “Let me try something,” said Ramona.
            She placed them in a triangle position, but touching each other as they lay on the forest floor. “Hm,” she said. The harmonic tone was more complicated. Three sounds at once and louder than any other arrangement. “Well, then,” said Ramona.
            So then, she kept them in the triangle position but further apart. We would say that each was about four feet from its fellows.
            All at once the Home Clearing was full of a multitude of voices, shouting a song in impossibly glorious tones. The song filled the forest clear up to the meadows, over to the stone cabin of Ooog and Thaga, and even up to the Silver River. Every soul heard it.
            “I’m not sure I can bear it,” cried Ramona! She rolled the rocks together again, where they hummed harmoniously.
            “Put them back, Mama!” said Cherry, “I want to hear it again!”
            Ralph, the pumas and the wolf watched open mouthed.
            “It is the voice of Heaven, Mona! Put them back!” said Ralph.
            So, she did. Once more the forest was filled with the Heavenly Praise song. They couldn’t distinguish the words, but it didn’t matter.
            “That’s enough,” said Ralph after a long while. Then he picked up one of the stones and laid it beside the door of the cave. He picked up a second one and placed it by the fire circle. At last, he took the third stone inside the cave for safe keeping. The singing ring died down to a subliminal whisper.
            “That is a real miracle,” he said to his family and their familiar beasts.
            “When Twigg and Leely and the young one get home, we must let them hear it,” Ralph said.
            “Of course,” agreed Ramona. “It won’t be long now, will it?”
            “Not long,” said Ralph and he wasn’t thinking of his absent Amigo hat at all. His mind was full of the song of the Singing Stones only.
            The family ate their evening meal of potato, onion, and mushroom soup in awe and reverent silence.

🤍

"I Could Have Told You That!"

 

🧡🧡

            Suzy doesn’t spend as much time as she did B.T. (before them) hanging out at my desk debating with me. She’s usually in seclusion somewhere avoiding Them.
            Ah, but here she is. They must be asleep again.
            “Look. I’m an old lady cat,” she said. “I’ve been around a little bit.”
            “In a sense, that’s true,” I said. “You’ve been around for a little while. In this house, Suzy.”
            “I’ve had enough time to observe a few things, while being stuck in the house here,” she said from her perch on the arm of my chair.
            “You know it’s because we love you and don’t want you to get eaten by that raccoon out there. Right?” I said. “You’re in protective custody.”
            “Yeah, I know. But do you really think I couldn’t beat a raccoon?” she wondered.
            “No. I’m pretty sure the raccoon would beat you!” said I.
            “Well, be that as it may, you messed up today with that little beast, Sweetie. If you has asked me, as a Cautious™ Cat, I could have told you how to go about it. Especially since these are not normal cats, P!” sighed Suzy.
            “Well, what would you suggest, oh wise and Cautious™ old lady cat?” I said.
            “Toots and I have two possible suggestions. Both involve letting the wild little beast get used to the concept of water on his own time.”
            “Well, what?” I urged.
            “Numero Uno, you could just leave a trickle of water running in either sink and let them discover it, and that it’s not dangerous. You know how we feel about dangerous, right?
The other thing you could do is leave a shallow pan, like a rectangular plastic box of some kind with some warm water in it in the bottom of the shower. They already like to romp in there. They’d probably start playing in the water,” said Suzy.
            “Hm. Sounds easy, but the transition to me bathing them could still be tricky,” I said.
            “You have to understand, P, that you are dealing here with the whole Wild Kingdom, Cat Style, concentrated down into that tiny body. You need to ease up on them! Good grief. You don’t just walk up to the sink and turn on the water like he’s a dog or something! *shudder*
I could have told you!” she said.
            “But you didn’t!” I protested.
            “You didn’t ask,” she said, with a bit of gotcha in her tone.
            “I didn’t even intend to give him a bath. I just wanted to know that I could, in case he got fleas or something. Besides, it was the smallest stream the faucet would make.”
            “Doesn’t matter. You shocked him,” she said.
            “OK. OK. Tell Toots that I’ll try it your way. We’ll see what happens then!” I said.
            “Just check with me next time you get any great ideas. Harrumph,” she said.
            “Alright. I’ll check with you first,” I called to her retreating tail. I suppose she was going back into seclusion, since I could hear rustling and mewing somewhere nearby.

🐾🐈🐾

"It's OK, Amigo!"

 

            Maybe if they could have been watching like a sort of Matriarchal Greek Chorus, Ralph’s mom, Wren, and her sisters, Poppy and Robin might have shaken their heads in motherly dismay. But what could they say or do as he usually came out on top, and he  had that virtual silver star in his forehead.
            Aunt Poppy might have counseled her sisters to watch and wait. She might have said, ‘You never know.’ I’m pretty sure that Wren could have said, ‘That’s for sure with that one. He is my first, and the one with all the wild notions.’
            ‘We know, Wren,’ Poppy and Robin could have said with indulgent smiles at their sister. Mothers are not above humble/bragging.
            Oh, you wonder what has these Motherly Souls taking some alarm? We’ll get there, but first some ground needs to be laid…
            Now, Ralph had enlisted Uncle Bob’s help in laying the slate floor in the Alder Tree House. It took them one whole day until nearly dark. First they had set up a kind of barrier, using pieces of slate all around inside of the circle of trunks. Then they spread the sand out and they walked it nice and even. Then, since Uncle Bob had kind of an artist’s eye for how things should go, he made the final decisions about how the slate pieces should fit together. When they were done it was a nice even slate floor. They walked around on it some more to make sure everything was packed in nice and tight. They were very pleased with their work, and rightly so. Ralph and Uncle Bob hoped that Leely would like it, that Twigg would approve.
            Looking upward, they could see that every day the branches were growing closer and tighter together. Very pleased, they wandered on back to the fire circle, where Ramona and Aunt Suzy had been making dinner for them.
            While Ooog thought up plans for finishing the house, Ralph and Uncle Bob had a few days off from the project. Ralph is a man of action, mostly, so with nothing to be done on the project, he was sort of at loose ends.
            Sometime previously to all of this, a western style hat company had opened in Milltown. Not only did the Amigo Hat Company sell hats, they also made them in an obscure metal building out by Payne Field, where many other things are also manufactured, quite near to the biggest building the world and all of that, if you go by footprints.
            As a lark, and a bit of advertising, Amigo made an extra super large cream colored “cowboy” hat. To build up a little interest in their hat company, Arnold, the boss, decided to call Millicent Price at the paper and offer the super duper sized hat to this mythical character she was always writing about in columns for the paper.
            OK. This is where things get a little far-fetched. Millicent told Arnold to bring his big hat on over to her office at the paper and she would make it, and Amigo Hat Company famous. So, Arold brought the very large hat to Millicent in person and she was suitably impressed. But her big window was also open because she was expecting Maeve to drop in that morning. Then she had to leave the room to talk to her own boss.
            Well, the wind was blowing pretty hard that morning and was feeling mischievous. The wind popped into Millicent’s window and nipped the hat off of her desk and blew it right out of her open window.
            It landed in the back of a Dodge pickup which was driven by a man who lived in Darrington and was heading home from some business in Milltown. The wind followed along, still feeling a frolic coming on. The wind is an agent of change, as we know.
            At just the right spot between Milltown and downtown Darrington, the wind whipped that big old hat so pristine and fine right out the back of the Dodge pickup, with the driver being totally unaware. It landed right smack on the edge of the Great Forest proper, caught about twelve feet up in the branches of a magnificent Douglas Fir.
            In the serendipitous fashion of Fairytales everywhere, Ralph found the hat! To say that he was pleased is to miss the point entirely. Ralph saw it there in the branches of the big tree and brought it down for inspection. He noted its size and its fine construction. He admired it greatly. He put it on his own big head. The stars aligned, it fit. Suddenly, Ralph was filled with that manly elation a man feels when he is wearing a great hat.
            He had just settled it on his head, correctly as it happened, and had turned to go show Ramona at home, when a kid of 8years, Toby, who had an iPhone, saw him from the backseat window of his mother’s SUV as she drove down the highway. Toby snapped one photo of Ralph just as he merged back into the forest. Toby showed his mother the photo when they got home. Mom was so excited about the photo that she in turn sent it to Millicent at the paper, since she was always writing about this Ralph character. But mom was cagey enough not to say where the photo was taken, and you can bet Millicent wouldn’t have either though she obviously knew.
            Honestly, Ralph looked just great in the hat. Can’t you just see him? 9feet tall, sable brown hair, clean and shiny, with the white streaks in either side of his beard, twinkly brown eyes full of amusement, all topped by the wonderful cream colored cowboy hat, which by some miracle fit him exactly. It was so perfect.
            Cherry saw him coming home from a long way off since she was up in the air a bit.
            “Mama, look,” Cherry said, pointing at Ralph as he approached.
            “Look, Mona! I found the hat,” Ralph called out happily.
            Ramona forgot what she had been doing and just watched him walk. She had to admit that there was something strangely glamorous in the whole effect.
            “Oh, Baby, it’s perfect,” said star struck Ramona.
            He didn’t wear the hat every day. But he did visit Ooog and Thaga to show it off.
            He wore it early one morning to show Rick and Dexter at the Ranger Station. It had a similar effect on all of these human people. They had to admit that he looked great in it, but were also sort of dumbstruck.
            After a couple of days Maeve spoke.
            “Boss,” said Maeve, trying to find the right words, but not finding them for once.
            “Oh, I know, Birdy,” said Ralph. “I can’t really keep it. But it was sure fun for a while.”
            “Do you want me to do something with it, Boss?” said Maeve.
            “Why don’t you take it to Milly! I bet she could write something about it!” said Ralph.
            “Seems like a good idea,” said Maeve. So the very next morning, a nice dry day with cloud cover, Maeve picked up the big hat by the back of its brim and took off, looking very strange up in the air. If anyone saw her, they probably thought they were tripping, and just let it go. Hopefully.
            Maeve flew the hat back into Millicent’s office window, but Millicent was out of the room. So after waiting around for five minutes, Maeve flew off again without talking to her.
            When Millicent got back to her desk and saw the hat, she just sat and looked at it for a while. It looked slightly worn. There was a sort of pinched area at the back of the brim, and it smelled like it had been in a forest.
            Then she went through her business emails and found the photo shot by Toby with his iPhone. It all started to make some kind of sense, but she could only guess about how it happened.
            Milly wrote up a heck of a story, illustrated with a large photo of the big hat and a smaller photo of Ralph’s backside disappearing into the forest. It was a great hit with both believers and amused skeptics, who wondered how she had faked the photo.
            So, back at the Matriarchal Greek Chorus, Wren, Ralph's doting mother might have said, “See, Poppy, see Robin! I knew my boy would be just fine! He always is!” And the other two would have to agree. Ralph always comes out just fine in the end.

🍀

Wild Things!

             I’m a believer now. I watched several videos about pet Bengal cats and all they said was true. These are the wildest, fastest, loudest small kittens I have ever lived with, and they’re just tiny yet!

            I don’t think they are even all Bengal either. Even a half-breed Bengal cat is a wild thing.

            But, in addition to that they are utterly sweet and I believe that local hillbilly I bought them from, and his family socialized them very nicely. Thank you, William and family!

            So, I promise not to write about Booker and Sweetie every day for the rest of time, but I must say that I have fallen completely in love with the little infant predators.

            My beloved Granddaughter, who made the connection for me, tells me that the guy does in fact breed real Bengals. So, maybe they are Bengals! Time will tell!

🤎

Ha Ha, Suzy!

 

It's very hard to get Suzy to sit for photo!

🧡

            As you know, Suzy took a rather ambivalent attitude towards Booker and Sweetie. She did not run to them with licks, purrs, or open arms, so to speak, when they first came into her world. If anything, she wasn’t sure what they were, apparently.
            So, anyhow, I was supposed to be asleep yesterday, but I wasn’t. I was silently watching because there had been some noise in the area. And what I saw was Suzy playing with one of the kittens. I’m not sure which one because he was behind the door. He kept sticking his paw out from under the door or around its out edge. I saw Suzy swatting at it in a playful, friendly manner.
            Later, when she strolled by my desk, I said, “You don’t fool me, Suzy. I saw you!”
            “Hm?” she said. “Saw me what?”
            “You were playing with one of the kittens!” I said. “Behind the door!”
            “Oh, was that a kitten?” she said, evasively.
            “The only thing around here with furry paws, beside you or Mr. Baby is a kitten!” I crowed.
            “Oh, p’shaw. Pfft! I thought it was a snake,” said Suzy, continuing her stroll.
            “That’s really nice, Suzy! I’m glad to see you warming up to them,” I said.
            “I don’t know what came over me. All of a sudden I just felt like playing!” she said. As she walked off, tail high, she seemed a bit surprised at herself.
            It seems as if she has fallen right into her natural role as a lady cat!

😹