On a recent morning, one where the sun was actually shining, I gave the wifey a scare via a text message.
I went out to get in my truck, which was parked across the street, to wait to drive my daughter to school.
Finn, the cat, came outside with me. He proceeded to pose like he was in a photo shoot for Playcat Magazine in the middle of the driveway. Instead of showing off his naughty bits, he lounged and cleaned himself.
After that, he sat up and stared at me.
But then on a beautiful, quiet morning, he decided to walk over to me. Finn stopped right in the middle of the road, lay down and rolled in some maple keys.
I’m telling him to get his butt off the road, and he’s just looking up at me.
But he listens. Instead of heading back home, he comes right up to the truck and proceeds to roll around some more, all while eyeballing me.
So far, our quiet street had remained quiet. But I worried for his safety. So I texted Mary, figuring if she just opened the door, he’d go running off to her. But I sent her a message with a typo.
“Can you call the vat? He’s lying in the middle of the road.”
It should have read “cat.” She read it as “vet.”
Naturally, she panicked and the door flew open.
Finn responded as I thought, and flew over to her. She gave me a rather incredulous look and explained her concern about the text. Ooops.
Big thumbs, bad texting.
But the cat is fine and dandy, if not a bit of a moron. Perhaps he’s better at texting than yours truly.
He’s certainly better at getting people up in the middle of the night. This guy earlier in the spring would pester to go outside as the sun set, and didn’t want in until the next morning.
But something may have spooked him. He now is a daytime outdoor cat – mostly.
When I wake up in the recliner in the middle of the night, he’s usually in my lap or on my chest. As I head to bed, I offer him the chance to head outdoors. Typically, he’ll turn me down.
But as the birds start chirping, he gets brave. Lately, at 4:30 a.m. or so, he starts meowing loudly for attention, waking us up in the process. Out he goes.
We’ve tried to wait him out, but that doesn’t work, unless we don’t want anymore sleep at all, as he’ll keep up with his meows until we respond.
Overnight Sunday to Monday, he was at it again. I went from recliner to bed about 2 a.m. and he did not want out.
But at 4:30 a.m., he changed his tune.
And an hour or so later, I could hear him asking to come in.
Nope. I wasn’t getting up yet again, pal. You can wait until 6:45 when my alarm goes off.
Well, I didn’t wait that long. Thanks to him, I was up earlier than planned.
Any training suggestions? We keep him well fed and watered. And he loves to sleep in our laps while we are reading or watching TV. But we don’t generally let him into the bedroom as he fidgets and plays.
Reunited and it tastes so good
All this wet weather is not good for my barbecuing. I went out on a recent damp day, however, and fired up the Big Green Egg, despite the fact it was raining. But I had to heat that sucker up a bit before putting on our dinner.
It’s been so long since I had last barbecued and so wet that there was a bit of mold around the lid. I wiped off what I could and heated the Egg up to torch the rest.
The grill got an extra cleaning as well before the chicken went on.
Even the barbecue table I built for the Egg is impacted by the weather. It actually had moss growing on the wood tabletop!
I’m going to have to suck it up and cook more regardless of the weather (OK, no downpours).
The chicken breasts were awesome, with some Montreal Smoked Chicken glaze applied.
We enjoyed them with grilled peppers, broccoli, rice pilaf and a yummy spinach salad with strawberries, goat cheese, pine nuts and raspberry vinaigrette.
My sister-in-law and her son were over. He’s a competitive swimmer with a huge appetite, but we all got our fill and there were still leftovers.
I cheated and ate my salad last, treating it as a dessert.
