Never give up! it is wiser and better Always to hope, than once to despair. ~ Martin Farquhar Tupper ~

And Hope is her name. A 4 week old, stumbling, manic kitten who loves her ostrich meat and sleeps a lot. It's been a while since I had new life in my world, the unicorn meat eating cats are 11, and I love it. She is Hope itself. A friend who is 18 spent the night to play with kitten self, and she is hope as well. As ancient as I am at 47, I barely remember being that young. Although I imagine Grandma Moses would think the same about me.

And there is something worse than lying in the dark, listening to the cat heave, and knowing you can't get there in time...having the cat become frantic and seek to outrun it's nausea.

Chicken and collards and cornbread for dinner and scored some squash and cukes when I took the friend home. How Southern can ya get?

Hope

Did you know that a group of Jewish librarians hold the largest collection of anti-Semitic works in the world?  Freedom of Speech is only secondary to Freedom of Thought.

Meanwhile, I am moving on and fostering a 4 week old kitten I have named Hope, for the SPCA. The dog loves the kitten, the unicorn meat-eating cats hate her. After all, they think unicorn meat is hard to come by. I am breaking her into the world of catness easy, by starting her off on ostrich meat. Unicorn meat is an acquired taste. But she should start by knowing the privileged rank she is born to.

Unicorns are Territorial

The unicorn meat eating cats have finally adopted the new dog. He's a corgi mix, and very territorial; at first, everyone had conflicting interests. But he stuck his nose in Echo's butt and that did it. The orphans are just too used to having a dog raise them to reject that kind of advance.

I was kissing Eddie's nose one time, and my mother said, "Don't do that, dogs lick their butts." I replied, "Eddie's too fat to lick his butt." And he promptly leaned over and licked the cat's butt. O, the irony of animals...

The new dog's name is Maxwell, Max for short. Although he is called, depending on the circumstances, Maxi-pad, Maximum, Max-a-Million, etc. I thought about Peanut Butter for a name, he's that color, but rejected it as frivolous. He doesn't have too much more dignity than that, but he has some. The funny thing about corgi's is, they have full sized beagle bodies and the legs of a dachshund. I think Maximum is mixed with beagle, so he missed out on having all that hair, thank God. What he does have, he is quite willing to shed.

Stinkbugs

There is a plague overwhelming the South. The South USA, I mean. We call them Stinkbugs, and they really reek. It makes skunk smell seem friendly somehow. At least one can get rid of it by lighting a match. Sulfur really doesn't smell that bad compared to stinkbugs.

I have been reading David Sedaris, any David Sedaris, and know that all of his stories of Raleigh, North Carolina, are true. No matter what he says, they are all true. My relatives on my mother's side live in Raleigh, and I can believe any story put out. I had a great-Uncle in Raleigh we called "Uncle Frogface." That is the epitome of life in Raleigh.

I remember walking into Aunt Ella's house on a summer afternoon and hearing nothing but a ticking clock. I remember my Grandfather sinking a watermelon in the local spring and pulling it out, cold and dewy, for dinner. I remember Mr. Honeycutt's peacocks and trying to pull plums off of a tree, whilst dodging bulls and our great-uncle Mortimer. And the chickens. And the donkeys. And the horses...