Old riddle, revisited.

If Two’s company, and Three’s a crowd, what are Four and Five?

The classic answer, of course, is “Nine.” I have an alternate answer, though.

“Four” is the number of cats I currently have. “Five” is the number of cats I’m about to have.

When kittens went to their new homes last year and the year before that, I always offered the owner a “money-back guarantee”: that if, for any reason, they had to give up the kitten (or the cat it grew into), they could (and should) bring it back to me instead of taking the kitty to the pound.

And oops, one of those kitties is coming back to me. One from the Class of 2005, so he’s now two years old. The owner changed jobs about six months ago, and the new job requires a lot more travel. As a result, the kitty is left at home alone for days or a week at a time, and he’s not happy about that. The owner feels bad about the situation, and has offered the kitty back to me – “at least, until my situation changes.” (And with the understanding that I’ll be looking for a new home for the cat, not that I’m expecting to have much luck finding one: how many folks want a two-year old cat, when they can go to the SPCA and get a cute little kitten instead?)

So, starting sometime this weekend, I’ll have five cats.

Anybody want a two-year-old neutered male kitty?

Alumni photo from the Class of 2005.

Here are Ladybug and Flower, mother and child from the previous year’s visitors. Flower has clearly been well fed, as he’s much, much bigger than Ladybug. And yet, Ladybug gets away with maternal behavior – putting him into a headlock so she can lick his head.

Feline roommate update.

Most of the kittens from the Class of 2006 have gone to their new homes. And it would appear that I’ve run out of kittenless friends. Just as well, then, that John’s Home for Wayward Cats is closing its doors to new wards. Again.

One kitten – current temporary name “Rebel” – doesn’t have a new home yet. She’s certainly made herself at home here, but four cats is at least one too many.

The mother – Mosby – doesn’t have a new home yet, either. Well, she probably thinks she does. But I’m still looking to place her with someone else, so I can get back down to two cats. Of course, since I’m looking to place Mosby and Rebel together, it seems that they’re going to stay here for a while.

Here is the Class of 2006:

Jill
The first to go to her new home. The smartest of the kittens: she’d figure out how to do something (climb out of the box, get onto the furniture, escape from the kittens’ room) first, and two days later, the other kittens would learn it from her. While she was still here, I called her “Harriet” after Harry Potter, as the white streak up her nose and forehead reminded me of Harry’s scar. And because she was always the one getting herself and the others into trouble.

Tux
The only male of the group. Of all the kittens, he was the one that O Henry seemed to take the most pleasure in bopping on the head (possibly because he looked the most like her). His owner reports that Tux has grown huge.








Frick and Frack. Thing 1 and Thing 2.
The solid gray kitten. And the other solid gray kitten. If they were together, you could discern just the slightest difference in the shades of their fur – but such a small difference that I could no longer tell which was which when they were apart. They went to the same house, where the new owner hadn’t yet given them new names the last time I heard from him, about two months after he had taken them home.

Rebel.
Still waiting to go to her new home. Her first temporary name was “Scooter” for no reason other than it seemed to fit. Her current temporary name is “Rebel” – she likes being somewhat contrary to my wishes, and the name is a good thematic match with “Mosby.” The most mischievous of the litter, she enjoys climbing the curtains and screens, pouncing on the adult cats’ tails, and chewing on my big toe. She has made friends with Sami and O Henry – quite an accomplishment with the latter. I had hoped that she would go to the same home that took Jill, as they were thinking of taking her in the hope that the sisters would play together and allow the owners uninterrupted sleep. Well, that was the theory, and I didn’t disabuse them of it, but they seemed to have wised up anyway.

Mosby.
The mother. She still has the Call of the Wild in her, and she wants to get outside whenever she can. She has snuck out twice this spring - once for 24 hours - and always returns when she realizes that the bowls of food are inside the house, not outside.

Out of sound, out of mind.

For no apparent reason, my land-line phone isn't working. (Yes, I've paid my phone bill. Through the wonders of on-line banking.) And since none of the outlets inside the house works, I'm blaming the line outside. Somewhere, there's a tree limb on the line. Or possibly it's an ice storm, although that seems unlikely as it got up to 95 degrees today.

Still, if you've tried to call me and I didn't answer, it's because of the equipment. It's not that I'm ignoring you.

Unemployed layabout, again.

The two-week project that I’ve been working on – for seventeen weeks – came to an end on Friday. A somewhat inglorious end, as it just stopped. The underlying case didn’t settle, and we certainly didn’t finish all of our work that needed to be done. They just pulled the plug. For the best of reasons, though: the client wasn’t paying the law firm’s invoices.

And yet – somehow – the client still seems to think that the law firm will do a bang-up job of representing them at trial later this year. So perhaps we’re not completely done with this case, after all.

In any case, they’re going to be transferring us to another ongoing project starting Monday. So I’m going to be an unemployed layabout only for the weekend.

Long time, no write.

Wish I could say there was a good reason for my absence from these pages. There hasn't been, though, so I'll just claim that it's that I've been abandoned by my muse.

So what has been going on with me? Let's see:

There's work. I'm in the fifteenth week of my two-week contract attorney gig, although the Death Knell clock has been ticking loudly of late. I'm expecting this project to end fairly soon: possibly this week, possibly next. But those of us working on this project have been assured by the law firm that we'll be moved over onto another project when this one ends, so I won't have an unexpected and unpaid vacation.

There's springtime. Well, there was springtime. They're calling for tomorrow to hit 100 degrees, so I guess it isn't springtime anymore.

There's yardwork. I now find myself hoping for droughts, as when there's no rain, the grass doesn't grow and I thus don't have to go out and mow it. Sadly, the remains of Tropical Storm Barry passed through here last Sunday, dropping a couple of inches of rain, so there's mowing in my future.

There have been wine festivals. Spring wine festival season arrived a month ago. I poured wine at a festival here in Richmond, for Cardinal Point Winery. And I arranged for other contract attorneys to help me, so that our tent was the only winery tent staffed entirely by lawyers. (For all the excitement that particular claim generates ....)

There's baseball. Well, there's watching baseball. Rice is back in NCAA post-season play, hosting the hated Aggies this weekend in a Super-Regional. And then the College World Series next week.

There are movies. Well, movies on DVD, which is much the same thing. The last movie I saw in a theater was V for Vendetta, about 16 months ago. I don't really miss the theater all that much. Of late, I've enjoyed watching The Stranger, Hollywoodland, and Duel.

There are cats. Still four of them. Thankfully, only four of them. More on them later, I'm sure. Rebel celebrated her first birthday last month, by climbing the curtains in my bedroom and then jumping from the curtain rod onto my bed. (Strictly speaking, that's how she celebrates every morning.)

So I guess there's been plenty going on; just nothing especially worth sitting down to write about.