Frog and Goat

This is a picture of the orange tree in my sister’s backyard. We grilled steaks last night and I snapped some pictures.

The tree produces pretty well, but the fruit is a blend of sweet and tart. My sister made up a vodka martini recipe that includes the juice from her oranges. I have to say the drink is quite tasty–orangey but not overly sweet.

We decided to break up our trip and stayed the night in Savannah. We walked through the tourist area and saw every sort of touristy doodad and an assortment of freaks. Dinner at the Sapphire Grill.

Every road trip should begin with provisions:

You’ll notice that’s a container of 60 pieces of gum because good lord the breath from the provisions! It should be noted that in the cooler we have several bottles of water and a 10lb ham. Porky goodness is hard to come by where we’re headed and the folks we’re going to see have requested some good old Virginia ham.

Other photos may follow depending on how well I can make the phone’s various apps work.

I may have pulled a muscle from the happiest of Happy Dances.

As you may know, we’ve been trying to catch some of the stray/feral cats that have moved into our backyard. We got serious at the beginning of the year when the females started to go into heat because they are freaking confused about the weather/time of year. No kidding. The maple tree has budded up and I predict that it will have new leaves in early March. Never mind all the daffodils around town. Ours are close but haven’t bloomed yet.

Anyway back to the cats. We took two males to the SPCA around the time Lucy bit a worker there. They kept one who was more tame and neutered the other. The neutered one lives on our back porch, but I have news for him: this spring we take back what’s ours. I’m sick of not being able to sit out there because it’s overrun by whiny cats. So there.

We’ve caught two females–a mother/daughter duo and one of them I haven’t seen since I released her back into the yard. The other is slowly growing back her hair and her wound looks good. The SPCA shaves a significant portion of a female’s side instead of her belly. I guess there’s less room for infection with a side incision on cats who predominately sit in dirt all day. All of this has been very good news. We’ve had our sights set on another one of the females for a few weeks, but she’s been wily. Her days are numbered because we are determined.

And, of course, there’s the Mama cat. The evil, mean, unfriendly, hateful bane of our existence. The one that is trapped in a cage and is cooling her heels in the garage right now. She showed up around 2:15 this afternoon. Hissing and smacking anyone who came near her. We haven’t seen her much this year and based on her behavior I was sure she was very hungry. It took about 5 minutes to trap her from the time I set up the “resting” station in the garage to baiting the trap.

The resting station consists of a series of 2X4s covered in a plastic tarp which is then covered in newspapers. The 2X4s are equally spaced and the paper/tarp is to collect what the cat expels. We have a small space heater that points in the direction of the cage because I can’t stand the thought of a cat freezing in the garage. Even mean hateful cats deserve some comfort while confined. The cage is covered by an old t-shirt. Covering the cage goes a long way into chilling a cat the frack down. I spooned extra bait food into the cage so she has moist food to tide her over.

She’ll go to the SPCA first thing tomorrow morning and then spend tomorrow night in the garage to get over the surgery/anesthesia. I’m sure she won’t be back for weeks. She also won’t be bringing another litter to our house.