Home from the hospital, I pose with Jim - but it is Chicago who appears in the photo

Having spent an additional six hours under the knife of the good and skilled orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Duddy (for a total of ten hours), plus an additional four nights in the hospital (for a total of seven nights), I have returned home.

Two weeks have now passed since I photographed Jumper, the Tuxedo cat, and his black, short haired younger brother, Watson (who is as clever and observant as can be), in Barrow, Alaska. Ever since, I have been promising to post the photos and stories of these two notable and worthy felines, but so far have failed to do so.

I understand that this failure of mine so angered a group of loyal Kracker Cat fans in Reykjavik, Iceland, that they rioted, overturned and set fire to three "good humor" ice cream trucks, that a gust of wind then caught the flames and that the whole city is now ablaze.

I feel terribly about this, and ask all of you to  please calm down.

I promise - I will start working on this entry today. I will move very slowly, as I still must type with only my left hand and it hurts. Plus, I grow weary swiftly and so can only stay at it for short bursts. This is how it is going to be for awhile, Doc says.

Still, I will get it done. And I will tell you the whole story of how I got hurt and what it was like to ride in a jet ambulance from Barrow to Anchorage and then to go through two surgeries and how the cats played into every moment of it.

I will tell it all.

I have many thank-you's to give,   - to all those who emailed me, called me on the phone, bought and picked flowers for me, baked oatmeal cookies and brought Moose Tooth Pizza to me, plus Pepsi, and to you, from India to various places in California and the Rocky Mountains, Minneapolis and the searing Arizona desert who left posts of good will, right here, on this blog.

As to the posted photo, it happened last night. Immediately after entering the house, I sat down down upon the brown couch. Jimmy, the black cat, leaped up and then carefully sniffed and looked about, apparently trying to determine where he could safely rest. He chose my lap and there curled up. 

After about 20 minutes, I instructed Rye to get my camera so that he could photograph Jimmy and me together, but by the time he got the camera and I had taken him through the various, necessary, ISO and shutter speed changes, Chicago had moved in and Jimmy had moved on.