Aren’t they adorable?  The kids just love them. 

Rosie loves them too.  We took this picture a couple of days ago, but today I caught her sitting in the brooder with them. 

Chicks are fun!  And so far, really easy.  We just got the four, two rhode island reds and two black australorps.  They all should be layers of brown eggs.  That is if one isn’t a rooster… We can’t keep a rooster where we live, and I don’t know what we’ll do if one ends up a boy (we have 90% odds of all females).  I told Charming, I couldn’t eat one of my own chickens.  They are my babies! 

The first thing I noticed this morning was Engineer’s big, chappy lips.  They really looked puffy, red and well, chapped. 

Maybe his lack of lip hydration is what spurred him to push our cat Rosie, out the second storywindow this afternoon. 

Because I don’t know why else he would do such a thing.

Yep.  The cat is GONE and the fiver year old dunnit.  I sure hope she comes back, because if she is not in tonight, I really think she’s gonna get eaten. 

And my lips are starting to feel like Engineer’s look.  Raw.  I can see how the raw lips could push one over the edge… to want to push someone else over the edge.

I’m trying to make humor, but I really do hope my cat comes back soon. 

We are in our new house.  And for a just a few hundred thousand dollars we have acquired this:

This is what I see every single morning.  We have named him Mr. Boogs.  I have not fed him, I have not touched him, I have not encouraged him in any way to stay.  And yet he never leaves.  He tries to come inside.  Probably to pee everywhere like the previous owner’s cat did.

I am an animal lover.  Mr. Boogs is starting to grow on me.  I have in no way a death wish for him and so I refuse to call animal control.  I already have a cat, so I don’t want to adopt him either. 

And today, I just wanted to go out and pet him, but I couldn’t do it.  He looked so sad and in need of my loving touches.  And I couldn’t help but think of this line in the book The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle.  It happens when the talking cat is explaining why he won’t let the Lady Amalthea (aka, the unicorn)touch him.  I can’t quote it exactly because my book is on a truck somewhere between here and Vegas, but basically he says he won’t let her touch him because then he would belong to her and would no longer belong to himself. 

And that is why I couldn’t touch Boogs today.  Because if I touched him then he would be mine.  And I have a cat.  Besides, Kathryn said she’s going to spare me the guilt and call animal control for me on some random day without telling me.  So he will be gone eventually anyway.

And I might actually miss him.  And I still really want to give him a love.

Sometimes we feel bad for Rosie…

…but come on.  I wish my biggest challenge was trying to avoid  little people who just want to love me (and pinch me and pull my tail) and that the rest of the time I could just lie around and sleep on blankets in the warm sun.

Charming said that this might not be very fulfilling to which I replied, "I don’t see Rosie complaining."

… my new kitty Rosie and my new digital camera!