Kitty Duty

I couldn't get a picture of them together as each of them has her own 'apartment' separated by temporary folding gates. This is necessitated by the fact that each one is on a separate kind of special food. Delilah lives in Jim's office and everybody that Jim works with has gotten to know her. She is 20 years old and fairly decrepit, but she still purrs, devours her tinned mackerel with gusto (as much gusto as she can muster) and enjoys a little attention. Her toileting facilities are a bit complex as she doesn't always make it to her litter box, but I'll spare the graphic details.

Today's picture is of Sassy, the three legged cat, who is adept at weaving in figure eights around one's feet and legs making it almost impossible to walk. Her 'facilities' are in Will's closet but she otherwise has the run of the house. She has special dry food because of a kidney problem or an allergy, I forget which. 

I took the morning shift and was over there by 7:30. This is not an optimum time for me to be doing much of anything except making coffee and reading the paper, and I was further reminded of this fact by the two flights of stairs...eight up to the front door and a total of twenty with a landing in the middle inside.  And yes, I counted each and every one as I stumbled up (and down) them...more than once as I forgot that Delilah's food is in the the kitchen and her dish needs to be rinsed out after she eats because her food, even the remaining bits smell vile.  

This all proved to be a fairly good warm-up for PIlates-on-the-floor with Maggie, which further helped take out all the kinks. At some point, I looked out the kitchen door and three more large turkeys had joined Henrietta in the trees. 

Speaking of trees, a silver leafed eucalyptus, which is more a weed than a proper tree has sprung up in our neighbor's yard right in the middle of our view of what we call the canyon. I'm contemplating negotiating its removal with Dorrie, who owns the property but chose not to rebuild after her house burned down. It really isn't a tree but an unruly collection of branches growing straight up from the ground. They must be about twenty feet tall or more by now and seem to grow a foot or two every week.

 It's a pity that we are are fighting what I think is a losing battle to save a tree outside the other end of our house in our other neighbor's field....