A Cat-astrophe!

This morning, Steven and I nearly missed church due to feline intervention.

Karen left early to church for bell choir practice. After a 45 minute nap, Steven woke up. I changed him, fed him, and checked his diaper to see if it needed to be changed (it didn’t). With only 15 minutes until church started, and a ten minute trip ahead of us, I then picked Steven up and picked up the diaper bag, and opened the door to the garage. As I tried to step out into the garage, I nearly stepped on a cat.

Knute has been taking advantage of the open garage door lately when we are distracted by Steven.

“Great. Just great,” I said as a turned on the garage light. There, running into the third stall, was a gray tabby. I opted not to open the garage door to keep him in the garage, but left the door to the house open so he could (hopefully) run back inside. I loaded Steven into his car seat, and carefully arranged his toys while I mentally prepared to go wrangle the cat.

Once done, I checked the vehicle, and made sure there was no cat inside. Then I checked underneath, and no cat there, either. I scanned the garage quickly, and again, no cat. So I scoured the garage. No cat.

Thinking I was mighty lucky that the cat chose to come inside by himself, I went into the house. Good idea.

Rounding the corner into the kitchen I could see two nearly identical cats, face-to-face in the family room (I wish I had a picture). One was obviously Knute, and the other I will refer to as Canute.

Canute hissed at Knute, then ran into the sun room under the futon. Knute, curious as ever, followed. Canute then starting hissing again, so I grabbed Knute, who had stopped short of the futon and locked him in the half-bath. I went back to the futon, and Canute was still there. As I went to grab him, he raced past me, through the kitchen and into the dining room. I quickly followed, then ran after him into the living room. We rounded the coffee table and a chair, then into the foyer. Finally, he ran through the mud room into the garage, with me close on his tail.

Will the real Knute please stand up?

I closed the door to the house and opened the garage door, through which Canute finally made his escape. I went back into the house, freed the sequestered cat, and gave him a handful of food to draw him to me. I then checked him over stem to stern, reasonable certain it was truly Knute.

I went back into the garage, where Steven had been sitting in the car the entire time, and saw Canute slowly walking across the street into the neighbor’s yard. After triple checking the garage and driveway for other creatures, we set out for church, barely arriving before the opening hymn.

After church, the cat was lazily lying in his second favorite perch. He has been checked over carefully again by both Karen and me, and we are reasonably certain it is Knute, and not Canute.

Now it's fall

Summer's over, 
Now it's fall;
Just the nicest
Time of all.

- Lois Lenski

One of the benefits to moving to tropical Michigan, is that we are barely further north than we were in Iowa City. In fact, if we had moved to Kalamazoo, we would be pretty much at the same latitude. Instead, we are close to the latitude of Waterloo.

As such, autumn comes later, and stays longer, and spring some earlier, and also stays longer. I can't speak for Karen or Knute, but these are my two favorite seasons (followed closely by winter and summer). I don't like Smarch at all. (Look it up.)

Several weeks ago, when my parents were here, we took a walk and came upon a Wooly Bear caterpillar with a long brown (middle) stripe. Tradition holds that this augurs a long winter. This guy's stripe was the length of a dime's diameter (17.91 mm according to Wikipedia).

And while the family in Minnesota is preparing for winter (and the family in northern Minnesota is starting to experience it), we are enjoying what I recognize as mid-October in mid-November. Today, we took a walk through the school woods near our house.

The woods are a curious mix, with an area that was clearly a plantation red pine (Minnesota's state tree!)¹ with a large area of white oak (Illinois, Connecticut, and Maryland)² and some red oak (New Jersey) and aspen (I'm not sure if it is is Populus tremuloides or Populus grandidentata; neither is a state tree). Then there are areas of sumac and other stands of wild raspberries. Local kids have built a number of lean-tos and tree forts in the woods, and I assume Steven will play in those woods as well some day.³

1. The state tree of North Carolina is just the "pine," without reference to species
2. The state tree of Iowa is just the "oak," without reference to species.
3. As I know I will catch it from certain quarters unless I add it, the state tree of California is the "sequoia," AGAIN without reference to species. What an uninspiring trio of states.

Steven's first Halloween

I had originally planned for Steven to be Charlie Brown for Halloween, since he's still practically bald. I bought a bright yellow short-sleeved onesie and some black felt to make a zig-zag. Then two things happened:

1. I found out the forecast called for a high of only 40 degrees on Halloween.

2. My cousin Laurie crocheted the most ridiculously cute Viking hat.

Thus...


Unfortunately the Uff Da bib that we got from Grandma Linda was a casualty in a massive spit-up incident earlier today before I could get a picture, but here's a shot from a couple of weeks ago when he was first trying out the hat...