A Fruitful Day

 Today was a lazy day. As John Gray phrased it, a mooching day. 

Tim was going to watch his football games for the day. I had spareribs in the crockpot for supper. There were kittens to take care of, and so I hopped into the car and headed to the new house to feed them. 

Because I had nothing on the agenda, I had the opportunity to seat myself on the garage floor, and take my time with them. One thing that I have learned to do is to call them as soon as I arrive. I want them to know that I am there and to meet me in front of the garage, and they are getting pretty consistent about that. 

Once I see them waiting for me, I gather up the stuff and head down to the garage. I take my time unlocking the door and getting myself and their meal inside. I sit on the concrete floor and I pour the dry in, and take my good old time adding the milk and stirring it up. I talk to them quietly as I'm doing it. Once that is done, I open a couple cans of cat food and dump that it. I stir it some more. Today, Possum could not wait. He was right there eating while I was still stirring. I could have reached out and petted him, but I didn't. (Andrew had it right when he said, "Slowly, slowly, catchy monkey.") 

Possum is the bravest. He's always the first one out front waiting for me. He's always first to the food dish. He seems interested when I talk. I think if I can convince him that I'm no threat, the others will quickly follow suit, hopefully.

In any case, once Possum started eating, Sigh was right there too. Mini and Tiger watched from the back ground, and I felt sorry enough for them that I eventually I moved the dish a couple of feet further away from me. Soon all four of them were eating. 

The thing that I noticed is that they are not quite so wary. In fact, today, a couple of the kittens were eating with their backs to me, something new because generally speaking, they keep a very close eye on me even as they eat. I even sneezed once, and they paid me no mind. 

After they fill up on food, they always have a leisurely face wash. Today, I pulled out a laser, which is something new. We played 'catch the red dot' for a while, and all of them seemed to enjoy that. 

I haven't seen Gaza for a couple of weeks now. 

After a half hour of playing with kittens, I unloaded some tile from the back of the car. Last night, I'd seen someone advertising boxes of 4 1/4 in glazed tile to give away. They'd bought a house, and the boxes were left behind in the garage. They wanted to clear it out. They live 5 minutes from our house, and so we headed right out. 

They pulled a plain white tile out to show us and said, "I'm betting these are from the 80s." Now, they probably weren't wrong, but it was a plain white tile, with no design or pattern to date it, so age did not really matter. We took it all. They were glad to be rid of it, and we were glad to have it. It matches with some plain white tile we have in our garage. 

Once I finished putting the 'new' tile in the basement, I headed to Albert's. He had no peppers or onions today, but is going to the auction tomorrow. He will pick me up a half bushel of peppers, if he can get them. We blabbed for a while in the cool breeze. His tomatoes looked so nice that I picked up a couple pecks for $5. Look at the size of these:

"This is probably the last auction I'm going to," he informed me. "It's getting late in the season."

I said, "Where has summer gone?" 

I had a bit of a nosey around and saw this: 

I figured that it would be the perfect thing to store bacon grease in, so I snapped that up for $2. Turns out it is a butter dish that Westinghouse gave away as a premium to people who bought an appliance from them. I saw prices ranging from $13.99 to $117. I felt so guilty that I texted Albert and Becky to tell them what it was and ask if they wanted it back. 

Driving home with my tomatoes, I was a little sad to see the trees starting to show a bit of autumn color. 

I stopped in to the grocery store and was amazed to see this: 

It was the ridiculous price of $3.99, but, you know what? I bought it anyway. 

I processed another large pot of tomatoes just to keep myself busy while Tim was watching his football.