home again, home again

These urban, San Francisco-born children have driven ATVs (wearing safety helmets and being chauffeured by either their cousin Ashley or Aunt Robin), driven a tractor with their Uncle Dick, ridden horses with a neighbor of my cousin's(who didn't ask my permission before putting my children up onto the horses), gathered eggs, petted cows, raked blueberries, dug for new potatoes, and done no end of rural things. They are fully prepared to move to rural Maine at this point, and the Sober Husband (who loved lobsters and fresh blueberries) is feeling the charms of New England as well. "You don't know what it's like in the winter," I observed acerbically. "It's not this much fun in the winter."

We came home to a message that our cat, Rachel, had been reported as being a stray, and the Sober Husband retrieved her while the children and I were at our "Family Clay Day" sculpture class. The rescuer pointed out that Rachel had been at her house for a full week and we "didn't notice", and that Rachel was lacking a collar. The Sober Husband argued that we'd been gone for two weeks, our teenaged petsitters couldn't be expected to be on top of everything, and that she had a collar when we left. While he was having this discussion, Rachel wandered out of the self-styled rescuer's house and towards a neighbor's house. When the Sober Husband went to retrieve her, this neighbor protested, "That's MY cat!" Evidently while we were gone, Rachel acquired not one but two new homes. Clearly she doesn't need us at all (whereas all the other cats were hanging about the premises and appeared excited to see us again). The Sober Husband thanked this second person for feeding our cat. Incidentally one of these kindly braintrusts had taken Rachel to a vet out of concern that she was pregnant and had learned that no, she's long-neutered and just fat, and I note that maybe if all these people STOPPED FEEDING HER CANNED FOOD she'd reach a more reasonable weight for her petite stature. Now returned to her home, Rachel is reclining on the floor, bloated, and refusing to eat any dry kibble, screeching emphatically whenever anyone walks towards the canned food. (Rachel is a middle-aged cat we got off of Craigslist five years ago who was homeless at one point and who has clearly mastered the art of scoring canned cat food).

We've already picked up four foster kittens, as one of the other fosterers has a wife in the hospital and some kind of crisis at work and was accordingly thrilled to drive over and drop off his four charges. "They have trouble using the litterbox" was his parting shot.

Broke, tired, a wee bit on the cranky side, but rich in cats: we're home.