Astronomy Cats

Last night when I was stargazing on the back deck, one of the feral cats got brave and came up to eat from the cat food bowl by the telescope. "Midnite" is very wild. I can't leave food out for the cats all night because it attracts raccoons and possums. They attract Beau, who keeps vigil at the sliding door. He goes berserk and wakes me up in the middle of the night.

When I lived in a little town, I went out at night in the snow with my new telescope. I had to rig up a poncho on the clotheslines there to block out some of the many stray lights. It didn't, however, block out stray cats. I had a lawn chair to sit on and found it occupied a lot by Wild Thing, the first of the feral family I called The Wilds.

They lived in an abandoned barn about a block away. The mama cat, Sweetie,  brought me two kittens to feed the following spring, Funny Face and Oreo. Oreo was still young when she encountered something that got hold of her tail. The vet said it was probably an engine belt. It was an expensive operation, and she had to be kept in the garage while she recovered from her tailectomy. Returning from work in the late evening, I would take a book out there and sit with her so she would tame down.

Later, I introduced her to the house cats. Little Mittens was accidentally hit  by Lissa one night. She thought he was dead and took him in her truck to bury him. He revived on the way home and surprised her by being extremely wild. She recovered from her injuries, tamed him down, got him neutered, then brought him to me.

Stormy was a tiny kitten I found in the front yard after a big rain.

When I got to move to the country, I loaded all six fixed cats into carriers and drove them here. Sweetie managed to get out on the long drive and spent the trip on my shoulder, complaining loudly. They all took to the place at once and lived in the playhouse that had a cat door. Sadly, all but Oreo died or went missing in the years that followed. She has always been the most wary, which has kept her alive. Also, sleeping in bed with me, Iris and Bogie is not too dangerous and she is fairly safe from predators on the couch.

Fluffy was even more of a miserable specimen when I first glimpsed her. It's hard for a long-haired cat to live in the wild. Several times, Beau chased her up trees. She did look like a raccoon. This spring, she shed her mat of fur and got much better looking, but hasn't been seen in a while. This was one of her rare daytime visits.

So, my advice for taming wild cats is take up astronomy. Cats trust fellow nocturnal creatures.

Across the River and Around the Bend

All the heat has turned me into a lizard-like creature.  I come out in the early morning and then hide from the sun until evening.

The grandkids came for a few days and we all waded across the river.  I regret to say that I was not leading the pack, being a wimp where deep water is concerned.  I can swim, but only well enough to not drown immediately.

Carolyn, age fifteen, led the way and coaxed me and her mom, Izzy, to cross the Grand River.  Jason and Molly are good little swimmers. We all wore shoes for the rocky beach, which turned to lovely sand halfway across.

It was never deeper than my waist, and I am a short Grammie. Whale rock doesn't look so much like a whale when the water is this low.

The water was warm, with refreshing cool currents toward the far side, where it was shady.  Izzy and I walked upriver on the sandy shore, going around the bend. The kids appeared to be swimming in the deep middle of the river.

However, when we told them to stand on the bottom, to allay our fears that it was quite dangerous, we had to laugh.

It was getting dusk by then, so we took our sandy selves up to the house and had BBQ'd hamburgers.

When it got dark, I got out the telescope and showed them Saturn and M7, a beautiful open cluster of stars, above the Cat's Eyes in Scorpio.  They loved the Butterfly Cluster, M6. Now they can understand when I mention that I was stargazing until two in the morning.  Once some of the sky goodies are found, we stargazers want more and more.  They could see individual stars in the Milky Way, which was a big surprise for them.  Saturn's rings are a huge draw for getting people hooked on astronomy. People can only resist it until they look in a telescope, and then they are goners.

At the very least, I now have others who know what I'm talking about when I say M7.