Here is a photo from this day in 2009. It is young Chris on top of Tigger with Abbey in the background.
I know the quality of this photo is bad, but I thought the content was good. I have about twenty potentially great photos from this day, but I obviously had a setting wrong on my camera. Worse, I didn’t shoot them in the RAW format, so they are hard to fix.
As some of you know, we do a lot of moving. I have lived in at least twenty-three homes in my lifetime, soon to be twenty-four. Rose and I have lived in nine places together. Chris lived in seven of those homes. Rose insists this will be the last house we ever buy.
We currently live in a fifty-plus mobile home community in Florida and have a large historic home in West Virginia that we haven’t been to in three years but plan on spending half a year there starting next June. After surviving two hurricanes this year, we decided we should look for a real house.
We found one south of Tampa in Sun City Center. It is about a hundred square feet smaller than our current home, but it is in great condition.
It is an unusual setup, with the sidewalk on one side and the street and driveway on the other. We plan on screening this area for the cats and us, too.
Coincidentally, my mother moved to Sun City, Arizona, a couple of years ago. I didn’t realize they were connected, but there are several Sun Cities throughout the states. I heard Arizona was the first, and this one was second. I was hoping to find something not in an old folks’ community, but I have learned there are many things to do here so maybe it won’t be bad.
In other news, my books, Bad Cat Chris and Saving Apollo, will be free today only on Amazon. I need reviews on all my books, especially Saving Apollo, so I hope you will help me with that. Also, my books The Last Healer and Falling Star are free on Smashwords throughout December. I recommend The Last Healer since I am now working on book four, and I think you will want to read more when you finish it. Speaking of that, the other two books in the series, Last Rites and Last Chance, as well as my first novel, Identity Crisis, are seventy-five percent off. Of course, these are eBooks. I wish I could offer print books for free, but they are expensive to produce.
My wife bought me a new camera for Christmas back in 2009 and let me open it ten days early. I took several photos of our cats to test it out. All except the last photo were taken on December 15, 2009, between 9:12 and 9:24 p.m.
First up is Chris. He’s a little out of focus, but it’s the very first photo taken with a new camera.
Here’s Abbey, who is near Chris on the bed.
Here is Chris again.
Alex and Tigger.
Finally, Chris again.
I was disappointed that I had so few photos of Flash from that time period, but I found one taken the following day. Here is Tigger and his brother Flash.
We lost Flash the following April. Unfortunately, he died young, like our other black cat, Puck.
Frankie and I ended up at the clubhouse again the other day. This time, something was going on inside.
A man spotted Frankie peeking in and came out to greet him.
After the door was open, Frankie stuck his head inside, getting a lot of ooos and ahhhs from the people inside. I didn’t get a picture of that but you can imagine the scene.
I hope all our American friends had a nice Thanksgiving. We had a few friends over. Frankie and Floki did greet our guests but spent much of their time napping on our bed. I disturbed Floki when I thought I would get a photo of two sleeping cats.
If Chris was still with us there would not be a separation like there is here.