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November Banter Southeast Style

Cold Rain

By Cold Rain,
in Southeastern States

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Shack

Shack

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Posted

I wonder if I could start a GoFundMe page to help cover my 55% increase in healthcare premiums? Probably not. I'd have to report that as income, and then I'd lose the subsidy.

Haven't you heard?

If you like your GoFundMe you can keep your GoFundMe.

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Snowless in Carrollton

Snowless in Carrollton

Posted
Posted

I've lived in GA my entire life and i've NEVER seen such a long period of cloudy weather in the fall. And this is like the 2nd time this fall we've had an extended period of cloudy weather. If we can go 10 days in the fall with little to no sun i can't imagine what the winter will be like. We may go an entire month without seeing sunshine.

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Solak

Solak

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Ode to the Brown Cat...

 

The brown cat apparently has crossed the rainbow bridge... we haven't seen him since last Saturday, when he was sunning himself on our walkway in the late afternoon, the last time we actually had some sunshine.

 

The brown cat was really an orange tabby. Why I started calling him the brown cat, I don't even know, but that's what we called him. We never gave him a real 'name'. He was never 'our' cat. He was a neighborhood stray.

He first showed up almost 10 years ago, always in the woods, walking the paths, and never coming into the yard. Every time we went outside to work, and he would see us, he would take off running back towards where we assumed he was raised a few houses, but several acres away, always to return the next day, but never entering the yard.

 

Another 2 years passed, and he got bolder, and would sun himself on the concrete well cover lid - but still back in the woods, well away from us and the yard. He would still run off when he saw us. Later that summer, the year we had the back deck covered and screened in, he came out of the woods and onto the landing of the porch stairs. Well, Lynne saw how thin he was, and just had to feed him 'a little bit'. He kept coming back to the back landing, and, well, he kept getting fed.

 

We weren't the only one feeding him. He roamed the neighborhood, and our friend Jean down the road 4 houses away also gave into his needs. The brown cat was certainly a spoiled stray.

 

The brown cat was never friendly. Well, almost never. He would sometimes allow me to pet him 3-4 times, then it was a loud hiss, an attempted nip, or a swipe with his claws. I still have scars from his 'affection'. Yet, if I was sitting on the side stairs, or we were sitting in the back yard around the firepit, he would be perfectly content to curl up between our feet. Often.

 

By then, he was getting fed daily - outside. We already had 3 other semi-inside cats, and didn't really need or want another 'responsibility'. The brown cat kept critters --- squirrels and possums, out of our garage. Sometimes in the past, I've referred to him as our 'barn cat', for that reason. He was probably responsible for several lizards missing tails over the years.

At the same time, he would sometimes get into scraps with our resident cats. Mostly it was a lot of 'cat noise', and non-contact fighting, under the car, or between the yard chairs. It finally seemed like the cats figured out their own mutual respect over time, and figured out what their safe distance was.

 

Things changed, though. It's like the brown cat knew something was up. All those months that Lynne was in the hospital, or at the Physical Therapy facility in 2013, he was a little more accomodating. He would allow a few more head or chin scratches, and even an occasional body stroke. He still wandered the neighborhood, though, going down to Jeans for a snack, or for his daily roam.

 

About 3 months ago, things changed with the brown cat. When he would curl up between my feet while I was sitting on the steps, he would nudge me to be petted. head, cheeks, body... he liked it all.

Then about 2 weeks ago, he started ignoring his daily dry food. He would even sit on the porch, 2 feet away from his food dish, while the current stray 'possum nibbled away at a free food offering. He only cared for soft food.

 

Also, about 2 weeks ago, he got unusually brave enough to come inside the house when the screen door didn't close fast enough. Sometimes, he went right to Noelle's soft food bowl, sometimes, he would just be checking things out. This happened 5 times in a week. He had no problem with me picking him up and putting him back on the porch, where he got his soft food. Then, he never came back for his last serving...

 

No, the 'brown cat', who was really an orange tabby, was never 'ours'. My thought process was if you don't give a pet a name, then it's not really a pet. That's why he was always just called 'the brown cat'. Nope, not ours. Just a neighborhood stray who got well taken care of when he would visit our property.

 

This non-pet, not named cat, though, gave me so much comfort during Lynne's rough days even with his claw swipes and mouth nips..... in a way that our 2 house cats Skittles and Noelle couldn't/didn't.

I guess you'd have to be me to understand that. You would have to have been sitting there to hear the silent conversations that I had with that brown cat when there was no one else to listen while Lynne was in intensive care, or rehab, or even back home.

 

No, we never named him. He was just the brown cat. The stray orange Tabby that somehow infiltrated our life.

 

Brown Cat, you will be missed. Thank you for just being the feisty, intimidating, understanding fluff of fur that met me on the porch for so many mornings.

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Twixter

Twixter

Posted
Posted

Enjoyed that tribute to the brown cat Solak, and very sorry for your loss.    I know all to well about the conversations although silent were very therapeutic and never did I worry about my spoken words becoming next days FB gossip. Animals are good for the soul and I really can't vision a world without them.   

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Jon

Jon

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Posted

Aren't they all? Or they would not even be discussed! :)

If there was a '73 redux storm, there would be like 1 or 2 posts an hour, and they would be from Buckeye and Shawn, maybe GaWx

We need South Carolina so storms can trend North and east with time. SC does have purpose, believe it or not!

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