Tic died May 11, 2010

Tic died May 11, 2010.

The night before, he wouldn't eat dinner when I brought it out to him and his sisters. He didn't look like he was feeling well, so I brought him inside and slept downstairs with him.

In the middle of the night, he started having labored breathing.

Before we could take him to the vet, he came into the garage, panted into my face, lay down between me and Toe sleeping on a cushion, and died.

Phil and I looked online, and it appears he had some sort of lung or heart problem.

I'd noticed a week before he died that he was losing weight, but he didn't mind when I poked and pawed at his body, so I didn't think he'd eaten poison - I once saw a rat running around our backyard, screaming, before it dropped dead. According to the literature online, Tic didn't seem to have a hairball problem, either, as he wasn't dry heaving.

We're going to miss him. He was only about fourteen months old.

These photographs are of him at happier times. One is of him when he was still a feral kitten, doing his best impersonation of Bigfoot caught on camera striding through the woods. Another is of him and Toe during one of the first times they came to me to eat. Another is of him trying to take a nap when Tac lay practically on top of him and decided it was time to take a bath. Another is of him rolling around one winter day when his winter coat was very full. And the last is of him a few weeks before he died. I thought he was posing for the camera. A moment later, he leapt at a hummingbird flitting around the lemon tree.

I took the below video only a few days after I'd discovered him and his sisters living with their mom, Bert, in a neighbor's yard. He is the kitten who collapses while playing with his feet, runs away, then struts back into frame like he's the king of the world.

1005 - Sweet Peas and Cabbage Poppies

I can never decide which flowers are my favorites. It seems it is usually whatever I am looking at, but I have recently decided once and for all sweet peas are my favorite.

Here you can see I succeeded in growing the sweet peas up the side of the house and nearly into the windows of the front room.

It has been an especially rainy, cool and sunny spring, and I think this is exactly what the flowers needed to thrive.

The cabbage poppies are about five feet tall, their flowers a little smaller than your hands cupped together to catch water.

100518 - Cactus in Bloom

Almost overnight, this cactus went into bloom.

At about fourteen inches tall, it doesn't seem to have grown much in the year or so that we've owned it, but now there are many more flowers than the two or three that typically bloomed at any one time.

The flowers last only a few days and are somewhat larger than teacups.