Tough cat

Sol Duc is quite a cat. The other morning I let her into the fenced back yard. I went back in to get my tea.

There is a knock at the front door. I open it and there is Sol Duc. “Meow!” which I hear as “Mom, I’m not supposed to be in front of the house without you.”

She comes in and I take my tea to the back. Oh.

Yes, I see the problem. She went into the neighbor’s yard and then around to the front. But she didn’t run off, she knocked. Apparently the storm was pretty hard on the fence.

This morning, after two days of rain, there were lots of small frogs singing to the sunrise in the man made run off space across the street. There is about a foot of water in it and the small frogs were all singing to their true loves. They continued to sing as the sun rose. Guess they better make hay while the pond is present, or something like that.

Sol Duc is a tough cat and smart. I think she still misses Elwha too, especially when I am at work, but she is careful not to run off.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: tough.

Cool

I am still wearing sweaters to work.

It is high desert here. One morning it was really pretty cold when I walked Sol Duc in her harness. Really she walks me. Cats are like that. But I wished for mittens. The temperature was 38. The last few days the low is in the high 40s or low 50s. Two days ago it was 90 driving home from work.

The consequence is air conditioning. I do not have air conditioning on the Olympic Peninsula. My house is from 1930 and well designed to stay cool in the summer and we rarely hit 90 anyhow. Two summers ago my heat pump switched to cooling when we had one hot week, startling me. We did hit 100 one day in Port Townsend, but it still dropped thirty degrees at night because of the cool Salish Sea surrounding us. My patients would complain of the awful heat when we got to 80 degrees. It’s all relative, right?

Here in Grand Junction, we are just starting to heat up. The hottest time appears to be around 4 or 5 pm.

I was cold at work all day two days ago. I wore a linen shirt over another shirt and it was not enough. I went outside at lunch and heated up nicely in the sun. Yesterday I took a wool jacket with me. Air conditioning is very strange.

This morning it is 51 now and projected to reach 85. The high desert temperature change of 30 to 40 degrees is not that different from home, but the air conditioning is different.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: ambivalent.

Elwha awake

Elwha wide awake.

The cats differ on when they want to go outside with harness and leash. Elwha would prefer 5 am, dark, because there are a lot less cars and it’s less scary. Garbage and recycling trucks are the worst. Sol Duc wants to wait until it is light so she can continue her careful study of bird habits and plan how to catch one. Elwha will bug me in the morning by about 5, while Sol Duc will refuse to come allow her harness to be put on. I add a headlamp around Elwha’s body, clipped to the harness. Sol Duc gets a small LED flashlight that hangs off her harness. Today they both went out early and wanted back in pretty quickly. I may take them out again later.

This is from yesterday, when Sol Duc went out after the sun rose.