Photo Friday: 2000th Post


Can you believe this is my 2000th post? Considering I have been blogging for over 14 years, that’s not many, but it’s still a number worth celebrating.

Here is Floki and Franki, together but separate, which is what I was going to name this post until I realized what it was.

Watching the Lawn Guy and New Bird Feeder


A few minutes ago, I heard a loud noise from outside and soon realized it was the lawn guy. He must have hit something solid with his weed whacker. I looked onto the catio to see if Frankie wanted to come inside but instead, he was more interested in watching the lawn guy. He did, of course, turn to look at me when I opened the door to take his picture.

You may notice from the photo that we added another bird feeder. That is another story. Those Nanday Conures I had mentioned in a previous post had been visiting our neighbor and Rose wanted them to visit our house but we were using the wrong bird seed because of a previous issue with a rat. Since we hadn’t seen the rat, we thought we would throw caution to the wind and try to lure the birds to our house.

I ordered seed from Amazon but the bird feeder from Home Depot. It arrived without the plexiglass sides, so it had no way to hold the seeds. To speed things along, I went to our local Home Depot, which does not sell bird feeders, and bough a sheet of plexiglass which I cut to size. I then learned that the seed I ordered had been delayed so I went to Pet Supermarket the next day and bought conure seed.

At some point in the middle of all this I ran into my neighbor who mentioned that the Nandays stopped coming to his feeder. I don’t think they are migratory birds but what are the odds they stop coming around at the very moment I am putting something together to attract them.

Anyway, the new feeder has been up since Tuesday, but no new birds have shown up yet.

Our Manipulative Cat


Frankie has known for a long time how to get me to do what he wants me to do. He goes to Rose.

Usually, it is about food. I will look at his bowl and see there is still wet food in it. He will look at his bowl and see the same food he ate an hour ago. This time, though, it wasn’t about food.

I usually take him for a walk between 7:00 and 8:00 in the morning. Yesterday I was working on editing my latest book and let the time get away from me. At around 8:04, he went into the bedroom where Rose was getting ready. He hopped onto the bed and meowed at her several times.

She got up and said, “What? What is it?”

Frankie jumped off the bed and when he reached the door turned to see if Rose was following. She was so he led her through the house to where I was sitting.

What bothers me is he didn’t come to me first. He went right over my head to the top.