Dear Friends,
It has been a busy week, what with the holiday, my male person’s mom around, and the new sailboat.
Some highlights of my recent activities…
Alex and I continue birdwatching. Since the successful fledging of the House Wrens, we’ve heard the little guys around a bit, trying out their new voices, but we haven’t seen them. Their parents come and scold us from time to time, just so we don’t miss them too much. We have seen our backyard resident American Robin’s new fledgling quite a bit. We’re surprised there was only one, but the young one looks healthy and happy.
The Tufted Titmice are out, and there must be fledglings, but we never see them. Same with the Chipping Sparrows. Most interesting, though, is the fact that the flickers are about again. Are there kids flying about? We think we’ve seen one.
We’ve been most entertained by Chippie. An eastern chipmunk who has a very nice burrow in
the back yard just outside my female person’s office. He is getting used to us so we see each other in the yard from time to time. Mostly, we watch Chippie from the office windows…here’s a poor photo.
Oh, and Alex has a bunny…I mean rabbit, eastern cottontail. Bunny comes out every late afternoon from under the holly tree and hops around foraging for greens and clover. Alex is particularly fond of rabbits, having helped to raise a few in Wisconsin last summer.
All this critter observation makes me want to get out and experience the world. So, I’ve decided to get back into serious tree-climbing. As a youngster, I occasionally scrambled up a tree for fun, but these days I’m considering it an athletic pastime and a way to broaden my outlook on the world.
So, at least every week, I’m planning a major climbing event. I’ve scoped out the Copper Beach, the King Maple, and the White Cedar in the backyard. In the front yard, I’ve already conquered the easy slope of the Black Cherry…the far right branch here.
Usually, I take a 10 foot run at this kind of situation…then I just zoom right up. Sometimes, I stop at the first crotch, but I’ve been all the way past the second crotch in this photo.
Kittens, don’t try this at home! You need proper training, good equipment, a reliable spotter, and a fine attitude. If you are going to climb up a tree – as my person says – you gotta be willing to climb down. Me, I just go down head first.
With the Black Cherry, the ascent was gratifying and swift. Descent was pretty easy, given the slope.
In my most recent exploit, captured here by my person, I scaled the Sugar Maple. This one is tough at first as there are no branches for about 7 feet and the trunk is a pure vertical. You gotta haul up the last foot or two – I recommend some upper body training and a lot of rest to prepare. Once in the branches, a cat can really display some paw work using the tree canopy to its fullest. The catbirds were really impressed.
Descent took some real thought. Finally, I had to opt for “the running fall.” One simply goes down head first, as if all four paws are going to stick to the trunk. You give up and jump when you realize that’s a myth.
After all that work, I had to help inspect the new sail boat. “Skimmy,” proper name Skimmer – named after
Rynchops niger, the Black Skimmer - is a 20 foot Racing Swampscott Dory built on a George Chaisson design. She’s here, on the hard, with me, Rob, her illustrious builder and a very nice man, and my male person.
After I issued her catificate of reliability, my people put her on a mooring and they’re trying to live up to her design. She’s fast and tender, but I think they are getting the hang of it. Next boat is going to have full cat bunks on it so we can all sail together (yes, cats can swim).
So, as you can see, it has been busy. Then it went and got hot and, as I am a snowcat, my primary occupation for the past few days is best captured here.
