Animal Issues. Yeah, I know, no surprises there.

There are certain things that will wake me from a sound sleep.  One of them is the sound of a baby crying, and, apparently, it doesn't seem to matter what species of baby.  Two weeks ago when I went to bed my tiny cat was hugely pregnant.  The poor thing would follow us around the house and then collapse to lie on the floor... until we moved to another room when she would have to get up and move with us and collapse again.  On this particular Sunday night she jumped (with some difficulty, I might add) up on my bed and went to sleep at my feet.

Shortly after midnight I was awakened by the tiniest little mew.  I sat bolt upright knowing exactly what it was, but was very surprised to see it was on the end of my bed!!  Then, of course, I was bummed because she was having her kittens on my bed for Pete's sake!  I got a towel and carefully put it under Stella Louise and her new kitten to save my quilt as best I could.  For the next few hours I read and watched as Stella produced four tiny kittens in all.  Here's a picture of them this morning, two weeks later.  They are the sweetest little fluffy creatures.

Whit looked over the side of their box this morning and said, "Huh.  It's going to be awhile before there's any good eatin' there."  Nice.  Look at them all lined up, snoozing.  It's been a really long time since we've had kittens (and will be a really long time before we have more) so we're enjoying these.  Especially since they're all spoken for already.

Another noise that will wake me from a sound sleep is the sound of hooves thundering down our road and across my yard.  I know exactly what that noise belongs to too.  I will awaken to the sound of one set of hooves (ah, that would be Scooby) walking across my yard, even if he's tiptoeing, which he doesn't because everyone knows a Belgian couldn't tiptoe if his life depended on it.  However, the sound of thundering hooves coming down the road always makes me sit bolt upright and cringe because that means the whole trio is out and terrorizing the traffic, or heavens to Murgatroyd, the walkers!  Okay, I really doubt they're terrorizing anyone because they tend to go on their walk-abouts pretty early, before my friend-who-doesn't-like-animals is out walking.  Furthermore, there isn't much traffic on our road, especially not at that hour on a Saturday morning.

So on this particular Saturday morning, the sound of hooves thundering back up the road at 6am once again made me leap for my shorts and shoes from a sound sleep.  (I guess Scooby had knocked enough of the fence down that Pat followed him this time.)  Shortly after the two goons went past my window I realized that all three horses were out when poor old Magnum came wheezing up the road. It's tough keeping up with buddies who are running when you have asthma.

My garden is nothing to brag about, but yesterday TBear and I spent about 4 hours reclaiming it from the weeds that had sprouted with all the rain we've had lately.  We discovered that someone might have planted the beans a little too deep because there is a serious lack of plants in the first two rows.  So I had TBear try again with some more beans.  Pat and Scooby ran around my garden when they came galloping back into the yard, but, um, someone forgot to give Magnum the memo...

Ah well, he did a nice job patting them down into the soil.  I guess.

It took a few more minutes to get the bad dogs back into their field.  I managed to take hold of Wheezy there on the left (aka Magnum) and lead him back to their pen, whinnying in distress because he felt left behind again.  Little did the lunk realize he was actually leading the herd at that point. :)  After racing around the field behind my garden there, Scooby (on the far right) finally stood still long enough for Whit to put a lead on him.  I took him back to the field while Whit chased Pat around a little more.  Pat is naughty, no two ways about it.  He didn't want to be led.  I opened the gate for him so he could "escape" inside to his buddies without having to suffer the indignity of being caught.  Here they are.  Busted.

I hear a few cars going by on the road now.  Look at them standing there waiting for their breakfast like nothing ever happened.

I'm going to go have another cup of coffee.