This cat thing

The cat thing is not working out so well. I think the cat needs more human contact and affection. Human-feline quality time, as it were. That's difficult when you have an excitable dog, one that is used to chasing cats. Up trees, when possible. That's the most fun.

Bertie sat on our next-door neighbor's doorstep yesterday
afternoon, watching us sitting on our own front porch with Callie.

But Bertie can't go to our neighbors — at least not the ones we know best. They are anti-cat, it turns out. Now we understand why the two sets of neighbors over the road don't have anything to do with each other. One household keeps several cats. The other neighbors, we now know, complain mightily that the cats do their business in their flower beds. They don't like the crottes. We were never aware of the problem until we told them we had inherited a cat from a departing Englishwoman.

He looked lonely, don't you think?

Sigh. We heard those neighbors shooing Bertie away yesterday when he was walking down to road, looking for a friend. Or une caresse, as they say in French. They clapped their hands loudly and hooted him away.

On a happier note: the lilacs are in bloom all around.

I had forgotten how divided the world is when it comes to dogs and cats. Most people who love one animal have very little use for, if not outright antipathy toward, the other. Now it feels like we are squabbling with neighbors who have been good friends to us for seven years.

Getting the garden going

Nobody said it would be as easy as pie. If you want or need to do the work yourself, getting a vegetable garden ready for planting in the spring is hard work. Of course, if you don't otherwise work for a living, preparing the garden is the kind of work that is pretty satisfying.

Having a rototiller helps a lot. At my age, digging in the soil with a shovel and sheer muscle power would limit the size of my garden severely. Even with a machine, tilling the local soil — ours is heavy clay — is hard work. But you only have to do it once a year... make that twice. It takes two good passes with to get the soil right, but only the first one each spring is really hard to do. The second one is a piece of cake...

Here's what my gardening shoes look like
after I've tilled up a garden plot or two.

...until a wheel falls off the rototiller. That's what happened yesterday. It's not a wheel, really — it's a thin, sharp metal disk that cuts an edge where you want one. And the disks on each side really do stabilize the machine, the way wheels would. Anyway, Walt found a nut and bolt and we quickly had the tiller repaired.

Three vegetable garden plots are tilled and ready.

Rhubarb has come up, and winter collards are finishing up.

Planting for the year has already started, and winter crops are finishing up. Walt has radishes growing in planter boxes, and he plans to plant more out in the garden this coming week. I planted potatoes (thanks, J & N) a week or more ago. I'm waiting for them to come up. Walt also has tomatoes, peppers, marigolds, and eggplants growing in flats, getting ready to be set out.

Those are collard greens on the left, with yellow flowers.
I'm going to gather the seeds soon and pull up the plants.

It took a while for the weather to get nice this year, but it's gorgeous these days. A good week is forecast. I'm hoping for good weather in May, June... and so on until October. We plan to grow a good amount of sweet corn this year, if the weather allows.

The new view

Yesterday one of the Vélux windows was installed. I assume the other one will be done today. The windows are a little higher up on the wall than I had thought they would be, but if you get up close, the picture below shows what you see.

Click on the pictures to see them at full size.

If you are less than say 5'9" tall (1,75 m), you might have to stand on your tiptoes. Still, the main point of the windows is to let light into the room. The view is a bonus. As you can see, we had another beautiful day yesterday. You can also see the ornamental plum tree in pink flower.

Here are some pictures I took while the window was being put in and after it was done yesterday afternoon. The interior finishing has yet to be done.

The window installer saved for us as many of the roof tiles as he could. They'll come in handy if any tile blow off the next time we have a big windstorm.

There were three heavy glass tiles in the back section of roof that were there to let light into the attic. We especially wanted to save those, as souvenirs.

Callie the collie

The focus has been off Callie for a while, and on Bertie. Bertie the brawler, I should call him. Cats really are wild animals — even a cat as affectionate and intelligent as Bertie. Or maybe it's just tomcats.

Meanwhile, Callie is just sweet. Even when she sees Bertie and gets all excited, barking and whimpering, she is just that — excited. Wanting to play. Have a game of chase. She isn't aggressive or really fierce about it.

Callie the collie

Bertie the brawler is much more ferocious, hissing and taking wide swipes with his paw at Callie's face, claws extended. He hasn't scored a direct hit yet, I'm glad to say.

Enjoying an afternoon walk

But direct hits there have been — on Bertie. Yesterday started off normally enough. I took a bowl of cat food down to the garage and there he was, purring and rubbing against my legs. Being a French cat, he eats packets of food called Marinades (pronounce it with a French accent, s'il vous plaît) — today it was chicken in a brown sauce, tomorrow it will be duck.

Callie soaking up the sun

Then I opened the garage window so that Bertie could come and go as he pleased during the day. That was that.

At noontime, I went down to the garage to see if he was there. He was, and he had a big bleeding wound on the top of his head. He was in a daze, I could tell. He was sitting in the window, as if surprised to have actually arrived at his new home again after his brawling or mauling.

Duck en sauce for the cat

I went and got a clean cloth, wet it with warm water, and bathed the wound as best I could. Walt came downstairs to hold Bertie and I spritzed some Bactine on his head. He didn't like that, but he didn't scratch. He spent much of the afternoon hiding among the boxes and odd pieces of furniture we have stored in the garage right now.

By evening, he was back up on his soft bed (which he soiled, but not badly, twice — he probably lacked the energy or was too confused to go to the litter box). He was quiet. I left him closed in all afternoon and evening.

Here's a plum tree that blew down in the February wind storm.
Some men came by with a tractor, set the tree
upright, and propped it up with posts.

This morning he was up and around, and obviously pleased to see me when I took his bowl of poulet down to him. His wound still looks oozy, so we'll have to go try to clean it up again this morning, and disinfect it. There's no way to know whether it was a brawl with another cat, or an attack by some other creature, that laid him low.