AN APRIL STROLL

                 Blue and Geordie and I went for a walk today on our property.  Spring is slow this year.

                                       
 We stopped to investigate what's left of the old log barn.

                                                             
We saw some buttercups.

And some grass widows, of the iris family.

Blue stopped for a drink at the spring.

We saw our first butterfly, a mourning cloak

.

Geordie posed impatiently on the foundation of the old root cellar.

And rested on one of the benches we've placed about.

An hour and a half later we came down to the house and took a nap.

Pussy Willows and Cats

The pussy willows are kittening out near the creek.  Pussy willows remind me that a favorite book I read to my son Donovan when he was small was Pussy Willow by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. 

 The the cat in the storybook looks somewhat like our cat Geordie. 

Geordie was my birthday present when he was 5 months old – that was six and a half  years ago in Laramie.  It’s taken him a long time to come into his own.  He was a lousy mouser as a youngster.  Now, up here in Idaho he has a mouse de jour  - the pasture surrounding the house is full of them.  He eats the entire mouse, from ears to tip of tail, on the porch where he’ll be seen and appreciated.  I suppose his rationale is, “I catch it . . . I eat it.”

Now old Blue (part lavender point Siamese, with blue eyes), who was one of my mom’s cats here on the place and once was a famous hunter in these parts, still catches a mouse occasionally.  He also brings it up on the porch, but eviscerates it, eating everything but the lungs, heart, stomach, pancreas, kidneys, guts and bladder, neatly spitting them out on the porch.  I don’t ask why.  No doubt, his reply would be,  “I’m a gourmet . . . not a gourmand.  It’s how I’ve always eaten a mouse . . . and other small game.”  For many years (he’s about 15)  he was top cat on this place. Whenever another young cat adopted Mom (and she had 8 when we moved up here to care for her), Blue would beat it up just once  to gain its respect.  Otherwise, he was a peaceable cat.  He is still a grand cat and always accompanies us on our walks on these 66 wooded acres, but the hills have become steeper for him and he’s slowing down.  He has diabetes and needs an insulin shot twice a day and gets glucosamine for arthritis mixed in with his food every morning. One of his front legs has a slight tremor in it.

And that brings me back to Geordie, the young gun, who doesn’t know about Blue’s reputation, and who wants to be top cat here now.  He swaggers; he bullies old Blue, reaching out to smack him when he comes into the house; getting a clawful of white fur off him; taking over his favorite spot on the couch, or in the sunshine on the porch swing.  Blue hunkers down – not really cowering – but making it plain that he’s retired his “guns”and isn’t looking for trouble.  But I say to Geordie, “Don’t push him too far . . . you don’t remember him when he was young and fast . . . but I do.”  

More Snow Coming

We're expecting 5-9" of snow starting at 10 tonight. After lunch, I filled up the gas tank of the ATV, figuring I'll be doing a lot of plowing tomorrow. Kerry and I took Blue, our white Siamese cat, for his first walk in more than a week. Warm weather had finally melted the ice from the long gravel driveway, and footing seemed reasonable. It was, though the loggers' trail down the upper meadow was muddy, with puddles. We cut across through the woods where the deer had eaten the beautiful orange fungus last fall, and up the hillside past the rusted engine part that now serves as an object d'art, displayed on an old tree stump. That's probably the most interesting piece of woods junk we've found since the two-man saw blade that had been abandoned on an upper hill. Blue has gotten chunky this winter, spending most of his time on the living room sofa, soaking up heat from the propane fireplace. But, he should round into shape quickly. He did a few easy sprints on today's walk, but stopped now and again to shake water and mud from a paw.

One of the doors to the shed, where I store the gas cans,has pulled loose from the frame at the hinge. I pounded three longer nails through the hinge, scaring the hell out of the feral tabby who lives in our woodpile. Donovan and I are going to have to re-build the shed this spring. Kerry thought we wouldn't be getting much use out of it, but it's so fragile - 50 years on - that even mild use has taken its toll.

Waiting to hear whether my insurance company will pay for an insulin pump this year. My diabetes has been under control - pretty much - with the exception of a day or two following a mild fever. Then, the blood sugar went up into the 300s, and didn't come down until yesterday. Working out on a stationary bike brought it down to the 120s before lunch. Right in the target zone.

False Spring

A false spring has come to Shenanigan Valley. The snow has mostly melted, probably too quickly to really impact the water table. Cable Creek is running high and fast. The deer and turkeys have stayed up in the hills, no longer needing to forage on downed willow leaves in the front yard.

Our cats have celebrated "spring" by catching their first mouse of the season. Ricky, a big orange tabby, with no front claws, corralled the mouse on the concrete front porch, driving it toward Harry - a seasoned old mouser - who killed it and ate its head, leaving the rest of it for us.

The snowshoes are going back into the garage for a while. I'll use walks up our long driveway to complement workouts at the gym. I had some trepidation today, wearing to the gym for the first time my try-out continuous glucose monitor. My diabetes educator installed it Friday afternoon, and, while it's provided some interesting information, it's also provided a lot of frustration in the form of low sugar alerts (a function, I think, of my educator setting the low sugar parameter too high) that have woken me twice in the early hours of the morning, and readings 4-50 points different from contemporaneous finger sticks. Anyway, I thought the transmitter needle might hurt when doing crunches (it didn't), and that the monitor might be in the way for other exercises (it wasn't). Surprisingly, the glucose readings after 2 sets of 13 weight stations dropped only 20 points, and then went back up again. The Gatorade I drank during exercise might have had a small impact, but not much. Way different from a long bike ride.