Imposter! I shall scratch your eyes out!

I wonder if my mentor, Stephen King, would have been proud of my flash fiction yesterday……….

Zoey the Cool Cat’s new home has mirrored closet doors everywhere. Even though the Queen is nine years old, she has never seen her reflection in a mirror….

UNTIL NOW!

She’s not too happy about the imposter invading her new home.

Zoey the Cool Cat sees her reflection for the first time

(The video will open in a new window from YouTube. Rather than embedding the video, since you’re already here at my blog, giving me monetary credit here, I’m sending you to YouTube to watch the video so I’ll get monetary credit there.)

Just a few seconds after Jim recorded his video above, I got a video of Zoey the Cool Cat going after that imposter. The imposter has not been seen since.

Zoey the Cool Cat going after the imposter

 

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Zoey the Cool Cat—Gone, long gone

Jim and Russel have moved several times since they met 21 years ago.

They celebrated their 21st anniversary May 26, but they were off the grid so they actually had to celebrate it by doing things together, like moving boxes!

In all of those moves, they never had a pet to move with them. This time they had Zoey the Cool Cat.

Zoey the Cool Cat was nine years old. She had spent the past eight years with Jim and Russel in their home. Now she was moving with Jim and Russel to a new home, and they were concerned about how she would adapt.

The first night in the new home was strenuous for Zoey the Cool Cat. Upon arrival this past Tuesday, she promptly crawled under one of the beds, meowed six or seven times, and stayed there for several hours.

As day turned to dusk, she peeked out from under the bed, meowed, and crawled right back under the middle. After doing that for a couple of hours, she bravely but timidly came out, explored the master bedroom, made her way down the hallway, explored the hall bathroom, and then continued to slowly explore the other bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, dining area, and living room.

Then she discovered the sliding glass door to the balcony. Zoey the Cool Cat has been an indoor cat but since the new home is on the third floor of a three-story building, Jim and Russel had decided that she would have the privilege of being able to go outside to the balcony, giving her an additional sixty square feet to explore.

Russel opened the sliding glass door and Zoey the Cool Cat made her way outside, cautiously. It was all so new and strange.

Wednesday, day two, came and went with nothing interesting to report other than Zoey the Cool Cat had picked out several spots to call her own. She was becoming acclimated to her new home.

Jim and Russel had decided to install a special pet door at the side of the sliding glass door so that Zoey the Cool Cat could go to the balcony any time she pleased. Although she thinks she is queen of the jungle, she isn’t, so her jumping from one balcony to the next, or up to the roof, or down to the ground, is out of the question. She’s smart enough to know how far she can jump.

It was about noon on Thursday when things began to go wrong. Jim had gone to work and Russel was getting back from the storage locker where some things had been stored prior to the move.

Russel had a strange feeling while traipsing up the stairs. No explanation. Just a strange shudder.

In the old home, Zoey the Cool Cat could hear the car coming about thirty seconds before it arrived and would always meet Jim and Russel at the door. In the new home, forty feet up in the air, she doesn’t have that warning.

As Russel opened the door to the new home, no Zoey the Cool Cat to greet him with her tail up in the air. No worries. Zoey the Cool Cat had plenty of places to hide and was probably asleep in one of them.

Russel walked around the new home, calling out “Zoey? Oh, Zoey?” while opening windows, looking under beds and furniture, in cabinets and drawers….

No Zoey the Cool Cat.

Russel reached the master bedroom last, opened the window, and saw a cat crossing the street. It looked like Zoey the Cool Cat, but of course it couldn’t be. No way for Zoey the Cool Cat to get down to the ground. But that saunter as the cat crossed the street. Only Zoey the Cool Cat had a saunter like that.

Russel called out the open window: “Zoey!”

The cat stopped on the sidewalk, looked back and up at Russel, and took off through the field. Although Russel can’t be sure that the cat crossing the road was Zoey the Cool Cat, the evidence is overwhelming:

There is no cat in the new home.

The cat crossing the street looked like Zoey the Cool Cat and even seemed to respond to Russel calling out “Zoey!”

Jim was devastated when he came home, only to learn that Zoey the Cool Cat was not a member of the family anymore. Gone, long gone.

Jim and Russel are heartbroken.

There are stories of dogs and cats leaving new homes and making their way back to their old homes, the homes of familiarity and love. Since the two homes are only 3.3 miles apart, Jim and Russel decided to check the old home daily, as well as putting up “HAVE YOU SEEN HER?” signs in both neighborhoods. They are hopeful that even though she has always been an indoor cat, she knows how to find her way back to either one of the two homes.

There’s my flash fiction for the year. What do you think?

Zoey the Cool Cat in the old home:

Zoey the Cool Cat in the new home:

I think she has adjusted.

 

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Gratuitous pictures of the Queen

THE BIG MOVE is occurring today and tomorrow.

Beds, desks, computers, and all the small stuff is moving today.

Unfortunately, though, it appears that one cannot get appropriate Internet assistance from the company that provides Internet connection to the 24/7 Internet world.

That just doesn’t make sense to me…….smh.

Thus, as soon as I disconnect the computers I won’t have Internet access until sometime tomorrow, and you know how those windows work with companies in today’s world….

“You should be re-connected between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.”

Well that’s of great help…..smh…….again.

Fortunately, to help get us through this time off the grid, we have WordPress to let us schedule a post in the future, so this post is being scheduled for tonight at one minute past midnight.

Of course, we also have Zoey the Cool Cat to entertain us during this downtime when we’re not being entertained by the news stories about the Republicans….

So here are some gratuitous pictures of the Queen during her seven years here:

 

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….fires….sinkings….things like that

I have always wanted to go on a cruise, until recently when so many problems have been happening on cruise ships…. losing power out in the ocean and having to be towed to San Diego by the Coast Guard…. weird sicknesses affecting hundreds of passengers…. fires…. sinkings…. things like that.

The cruise ship industry in San Diego certainly seems to have picked up this year. There are times when I have seen two cruise ships in port at the same time! That’s rare.

One ship, the Star Princess, was in port recently. When I see a ship in port, I always stop to take pictures, note the name, and then go home to find out more about the ship via Wikipedia and Google. Here is the picture, a panorama created in Photoshop from four pictures:

Star Princess was built in 2002. It is a little over 950 feet long

On March 23, 2006, a fire broke out in the passenger compartments. The fire was probably caused by a cigarette left burning….

….cigarette left burning and unattended…
How often has that been a source of fires throughout history?

….on a balcony, which had become hot enough to melt the balcony divides made from plastic polycarbonate, a material that had been approved by international cruise line safety rules. The fire caused scorching damage in about 150 cabins and smoke damage in another 100 more. One passenger, Richard Liffidge, 72, of Georgia, died from “asphyxia secondary to inhalation of smoke and irrespirable gases.” Thirteen other passengers suffered significant smoke inhalation.

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As rare as a good hair day for Donald Trump

San Diego has a 59-mile Scenic Drive that, at 60 miles per hour, would take you 59 minutes to do.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zqUtnMrmT2xE.kQ5v6XZFhdHM

Ha!

After accounting for city street speeds and all of the stopping at vista points, it probably will take you at least a day, possible two.

Part of the drive takes you through La Jolla, California, home of the rich and famous, the 1%, the people who simply don’t live like the rest of us.

The drive will take you through the residential neighborhoods where you can view some of the magnificent homes. Here’s one of my favorites:

The many outdoor decks, the rooftop deck, and the large windows on that home tells those in the know (like me!) that this house has a panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean.

I also got excited about this home because the whole first floor exterior is stone. Most houses around here are stucco. And those that are not stucco, are stucco. If you visit a lot of neighborhoods, you might also find some homes with stucco.

Stone probably is the second most common exterior, although it is expensive, which is why you only find it in rich neighborhoods.

Brick and wood exteriors here are about as rare as a good hair day for Donald Trump….

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Where’s my mommy?

It’s been a record-breaking year for SeaWorld, but sometimes you don’t want to see records broken. As is the case here.

It’s been a record-breaking year for the SeaWorld Rescue Teams rescuing stranded, abandoned, sick, injured, and disoriented baby sea lions and seals.

Here’s one that I saw on March 3 during an ultra-low tide at the Tide Pools in La Jolla, California:

 

There were a lot of people watching that little one. As I was leaving, a SeaWorld rescue van pulled up in the parking lot. I had a pretty good idea of why they were there. I had to go teach chess to some rugrats at La Jolla Elementary School so I didn’t get to stay and record the rescue.

SeaWorld’s Rescue Team is on call 24/7, 365 days a year, and always ready to help an animal in need.

In other words, SeaWorld rocks!

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The beauty comes right after the ugly

And on the eighth day, God created Photoshop.

I have never owned a fish-eye lens. There’s just something about the distorted pictures they produce that I don’t like. I do realize that they have their place in the world, such as when one can’t get far enough away from something to take a complete picture of that something.

Photoshop let me create this:

That’s a panorama created using four individual pictures. Because of the slippery rocks and the ocean behind me, I couldn’t get far enough away to take one all-encompassing picture. So I took four pictures, each of a different area but overlapping some, and then had Photoshop stitch them together to create the monster panorama you see (click on the image to get a monsterer image). The panorama, I believe, better shows just how massive those sandstone bluffs are.

The pictures were taken during an ultra-low, low tide in La Jolla, California, about 20 miles north of San Diego, on March 2, 2015. Just 24 hours earlier we had overcast skies with heavy rain and hail! Hail in San Diego? Yeppers.

As I discovered while growing up in Kingsville, Texas, with my wise old grandmother, sometimes Mother & Fathers Nature are at their most beautiful right after being at their ugliest.

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Folks in the boondocks do things differently

I did a home inspection yesterday for some buyers from Temecula, about 58 miles due north of where I live.

However, the property they were buying was in Ranchita, about 67 miles northeast of me….

….and in the boondocks….

….way out in the boondocks….

It was so far out in the boondocks that I was afraid the boondocks might swallow me while I was out there and that you would never see me again.

I did make it back, but it took hours and hours and hours….

….because I had to stop and take pictures here and there……………

One thing I did notice about the boondocks is that people like to name their properties:

Imagine if we city slickers decided to name our properties. We’d have so many signs that I’m sure the politicians would be passing laws making it illegal to install a sign showing the name of your property….

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For wise old grandmothers everywhere

My wise old grandmother had the most beautiful yard and gardens, although I have to give myself a little credit because I’m the one who mowed the yard and trimmed the trees and bushes. THAT is why I have never had a grass yard that needed mowing and never had trees and bushes that needed trimming. Whatever is in my yard and gardens gets to grow until it can grow no more.

One of my wise old grandmother’s hanging baskets had a plant in it that I really didn’t like. The plant had no leaves, and its stems and branches were flat. It just looked weird to this 12-year-old, one who was not weird himself, yet.

However, it didn’t need water, fertilizer, or pruning. It simply existed in its hanging basket. So THAT was a plus.

Then one day it bloomed.

I was a fan forever.

The plant is more on the expensive side, so I have never had one. However, when my employee, Julian, and his mom moved last summer, his mom asked me if I wanted any of the plants. ANY? Does ALL count as ANY?

Two of the plants she had were the odd-looking plant that my wise old grandmother had. Yesterday, one of them bloomed. Looks like this:

That is the flower of an epiphyllum, common name orchid cactus. The flower is about nine inches in diameter. It’s huge! And it’s purple, which was my wise old grandmother’s favorite color.

My wise old grandmother died in June 2003, but I do believe she has come to visit me in my garden. I shall name my epiphyllum Mary since that was my wise old grandmother’s name. You thought her name was “my wise old grandmother,” didn’t you? Nope.

Mary Agnes Hartmann Kirk, this epiphyllum is for you, and for wise old grandmothers everywhere!

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Is there enough room?

Quite often when I’m out and about I’ll find something of beauty that seems to be ruined by the reality around it.

Something like this:

Or this:

I don’t know anyone who condones trash and litter, but sometimes that trash and litter makes one stop and think about the world around us and what’s happening.

Such a juxtaposition in that picture.

So what do we do with the trash that results from the activities of 7½ billion people? Is there enough room on Earth for all those people and all their trash?

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