INTERMISSION III: I promise, Romeo's story will be up next; in the meantime, here are a few pix that I shot yesterday

Martigny made no attempt to escape again. She did, however, use the Anchorage Daily News as a launch pad to her dreams.

As usual, I took a walk. Soon, I came across a cat named Varmit. Varmit is painfully shy, and always dashes away before I can get too close. Now, Varmit was hiding underneath the back of a chair. I did not want to scare him so, bending slightly but not enough for him to see my body or face, I lowered my camera down below the edge of the seat and shot blindly. I got him, all right.

I shot the Varmit!

Shot him with my pocket-sized Canon PowerShot G9, point-and-shoot, digital camera.

Varmit...

...the dragonfly...

...Varmit and the dragonfly. 

Dan, Varmit's camera-shy human, told me that this little cat often stalks and kills dragon flies. Varmit has a buddy named Jesse James. Jesse must be somewhere nearby, but where?

Why, it's Jesse James! Where's your gun, Jesse? 

Please, watch out for that coward, Bob Ford! Don't ever turn your back on him!

There goes Jesse!

I come home to find little Pistol-Yero, still resting where the two of us spent the night. These pillows are stacked like this because, I, a man who never slept on his back, now must sleep only on my back until I heal much more than I have already. But I cannot sleep flat on my back. It hurts too much. I must sleep at an incline. One of those hospital beds that adjust up and down would sure be nice, but since I cannot afford one I try to create the same effect with pillows.

Once I get settled down, Pistol curls up on my lap and there spends the night - unless Jimmy beats him to that spot or tricks him out of it. If that happens, then Pistol tends to sleep right here, where you see him now, or alongside my feet.

Sometimes, I wake up, reach out to wherever he happens to be and then gentle bring my left hand down upon his soft, warm fur. Always, he answers with a contented purr.

Poor Sunflower! Until I heal, she now sleeps in a single bed at the foot of this, our big bed.

Poor Sunflower? Poor me! How I long to once again experience that sweet feeling as she snuggles up next to me, tucks her head  into my shoulder and falls asleep, breathing softly, even as Jim and Pistol settle down upon my lap, my tummy, my legs, or any place they feel like and doze off themselves.

All week long, Sunflower and I had planned to go to town to see "The Dark Knight," - the latest Batman movie. This would only be the second time we had tried something like this since I got hurt. The last time, exactly one week before, I fell asleep in the middle of the movie.

I was ready to go before Sunflower (mostly, because she had to spend so much time helping me to get ready), so I stepped outside and climbed into the car to wait for her. You can see that my sling is on the passenger door side, so I left that door open for her to close when she came out.

As I waited, Royce, always searching for love, climbed into the car to join me.

As you can see, Royce does not just search for love, he dishes it out, too. Sunflower soon stepped out of the house. Before she could close the door, Jimmy shot past her legs into the outdoors. 

So I had to push Royce off my lap and chase Jimmy around the house. As usual, his escape took him straight to the back door. By then, Sunflower had reached it from the other side. She opened it and, with his tail held high and me proudly scolding, "you little rascal, you!" Jimmy pranced happily through the door and back into the house from which he had so boldly escaped just moments before.

Sound familiar?

Oh, the games these cats play!

Those who read comments will know about Standtall, how she took a male and two female cats into her home in Nigeria and they multiplied and now she has eleven. All along, she has wanted to get the females spayed, but it would cost her about $250 - a huge sum for her in Nigeria.

I learned about a woman in Mexico who ran up a $300 vet bill that she could not pay, so she put a PayPal donation button on her site with that sum as a target. She raised the entire amount. So I suggested to Standtall that she put a PayPal donation button on her blog, but she informed me that PayPal does not allow donation buttons on Nigerian sites.

To read Standtall's own account of how she came to have 11 cats, see:

http://genderandme.blogspot.com/2008/08/house-of-cats.html

So I got a button from PayPal for her, with a target of $250 - enough to neuter the females. Here it is:

Amazingly, it appears that we have a donor for the full $250!

I have completed the PayPal transaction. As soon as the funds show up in my account, I will transfer them to Standtall and she can get those cats neutered.

The donors wish to be identified only as "two little blond girls in Colorado wanting to make sure that Standtall can sleep better knowing that one more kitty will be 'fixed'."

Thank you, two little blond girls! And know that it will be two cats that will get "fixed" - thanks to your generosity! "Little" though you may be, I expect the two of you to make a big difference in this world.