DK Died

15 or maybe 20 years ago a scrawny cat had the gall to invade our cat adverse homestead. When Mom was a little girl, a cat had kittens on her bed and from that time on, every family member was indoctrinated as to why we don't like cats. We were a dog family.

The most liberal family members endured a cat that crossed the property line.  Most of us just chased them off with yelling, hooping, hollering, loud noises, and waving arms.  But the scrawny cat crossed the line and hung around.  Soon he was tolerated by Dad (who was starting to exhibit signs of Alzheimer's).  DK got her name from a less charitable family member who referred to her frequently as Dumb Kitty. That sounded a bit harsh, however, so the initials "DK" became the name. DK became Dad's "dog" and would walk with him up and down the street to do his visiting with the neighbors.  "There goes Huff and his dog" we would hear the neighbors say.

Mom gave up and bought cat food but DK knew her limits.  She could sleep on the porch furniture but wouldn't/couldn't come in the house.  She would hop to the window sill early in the morning and howl to wake us for breakfast.  I think at some point Mom even softened to DK.  During the winters, she would leave a heating pad, turned on, on the porch couch for DK.

As Dad took a turn for the worse, he and DK quit walking but sat together on the porch and dad would pet his "dog".  Then, as his health declined, those times became fewer and further between.

Dad died on Memorial Day 8 years ago.  DK hung around and continued to rule the porch couch and howl at the window sill.  How she lasted for so long, I'll never know.  Two weeks ago as I talked with Mom she said that DK had lost all her teeth and she only drinking milk.  Always a finicky eater DK didn't want to be watched so mom would pour the milk and then spy on her from inside the house to make sure that she was getting the food and not some other feline interloper. Mom said that she even told DK that she needed to go check up on Huff.

Early this week mom saw DK sleeping partially under a car.  It seemed strange to her so she went out to check on her.  Mom found that DK was sleeping the sleep for the ages.  DK is gone to look after Huff, but her nickname continues.  Now it's just Dead Kitty. Sleep well.

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Camping Practice

We went camping in our pop-up trailer for the first time in over three years.  We were sure we had everything when we left.

But when we got to the camp, I couldn't find the keys.  Oops.   Notice the ball on the front of the hitch.  We had to pull out the hitch from the back of the Tahoe.  I thought of that after destroying the padlock and still not freeing it from the hitch.

And then we found that the key to the trailer door was left home too.  Oops.  We had to climb over this half door every time we wanted into the trailer.  Friday morning, Ben put the door down to make the trailer look secure.  Then he slipped out from the front tent cover.  He reversed the path when we came back.

I thought maybe we should load the propane into the Tahoe just in case.  But then I thought that would be a waste of time.  Here Spencer is cooking bacon over briquettes instead of propane.  Everyone had plenty to eat and the briquettes made sure that we had plenty of time between courses of bacon and blueberry pancakes.

Vicki planned our menu's and we had roasted hot dogs on Thursday and tin foil dinners for Friday night.  You know, I really like hot dogs in tinfoil dinners because they cook faster that hamburgers anyway.  We can have hamburgers tonight because they were safe in the freezer.

Ben didn't forget his homework.  IB will keep him going everyday until June 9th.  Even Spring break is not a break for him.

We had a great hike where we couldn't find the trail to this peak so we went down first and then up.  Toasty found a little mountain goat blood hidden inside of him. and made a lot of the hike himself. 

After the hike and the climb and the campout, we headed home and found that we were all tired out.  Including Toasty the red dirt covered dog.

The Leonids

I read that a meteor shower would be happening in the early morning in the east sky tomorrow morning (Nov 18).  Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which it appears that the shower originates. Word has it that you may see 10 or more an hour if you have a dark sky and look east early in the morning in Leo.

On a similar morning, ten or eleven years ago, I was up early one morning to walk around our neighborhood in Kingman, AZ for a little exercise. I looked up and saw several shooting stars in just a few minutes.

I immediately headed home and wanting to share it with someone and recognizing that Vicki valued sleep more than shooting stars, I woke Katherine and asked her if she wanted to she some meteors.  She said "sure" so I pulled out the Levi quilt, laid it out on the ground like a sleeping bag and we crawled in to stay warm and count shooting stars.

In less than 20 minutes we counted over 100.  We saw most of them at the same time but I missed one that Katherine didn't.  I had glanced down at the quilt when suddenly the sky lit up.  I could easily see the ties on the quilt. "Oooo" Katherine exclaimed.  I looked up, but all I could see was the smoke left from the meteor.

What a pleasant memory that was.