It Only Hurts When I Blog

Greetings, gentle readers.

It's Bloggy-well Monday again.

Maybe you don't believe that after 112 days of freedom I still don't like Mondays. (Insert shrug here.)

Well, I don't. A little less griping and wingeing, please, Karen.

How come my conscience always shows up while I'm writing my blog? It's a mystery.

Condolences to my daughter and son-in-law over the loss of their big white cat, Fred. I posted a picture of him at Eastertime. He was a beautiful cat and very smart.

It is very traumatic to lose a pet, and over the years we have lost many. I guess we all have. We've lost a whole menagerie of pets - mice, hamsters, a snake, fish, dogs, cats, baby birds - you name it, we've had it.

I think fish have the shortest lives, though I managed to keep my beta fish alive for a couple of years, worrying about it every day.

When the kids were younger, I was heading to work one day. I thought I saw our family cat Poncho, dead on the side of the road. I turned the car around and came into the house, already working up a good cry over it. I broke the news to the kids, bawling away. They interrupted me and pointed to our cat who was right there in the house, safe and sound. Oops.

This particular cat had her kittens right IN my son's bed, right by his side. That is trust for you. I heard yells that morning for sure - 'Mom! Mom! The cat had her kittens in my bed!'

Poncho was named after another cat we had with the same name when we lived in Providence, RI. He was such a small kitten when we got him (we found him in a tree) you could hold him in the palm of your hand.

We had a dog that had NINE puppies. They took over the entire kitchen for a couple of months.

We had several stray dogs that adopted us at various times. We found homes for them, but the kids wanted to keep them all. The chief of police in our town ended up with one of them.

Charlie and I had a stray puppy adopt us just a couple years ago. Until I found a home for him, Charlie made him a nice home with a bed of straw in the chicken coop next to the barn. I would go lay in the straw with him like Fern of Charlottes Web. He cried when I left for the house, so I took off my socks and left them with him to keep him company. That was good enough. What is it about dogs and socks, anyway?

Luckily I found a home for him right at the same time he learned how to dig himself out underneath the chicken coop.

I think I mentioned my favorite dog in another blog entry. I named him 'Scrambled Brains', because he would wag his entire body instead of just his tail. He was a VERY well-behaved dog, very mild tempered, and he slept on our front doorstep. He had abandoned the neighbor next door and came to live with us, until the neighbors on the OTHER side of us asked to keep him. He was a great dog.

Well, I hope this blog entry wasn't too sad, but TRY and have a good Monday!

I'm going to go swim and run errands as usual. TTFN!