Cairo is One Year Old

Cairo is, as far as we know, one year old now. Of course, being an adopted cat who we found in West Virginia while on vacation, we can't know exactly when she was born. We only know that the vet told us that she was approximately four weeks old when we found her abandoned in a county park near Cairo, West Virginia. So we assume that she's one year old roughly this week.

Andy and Cairo within minutes of Andy having seen her for the first time. She was immediately a curious and affectionate kitten with no fear at all of people.

We were suckered at first sight. We decided then and there to adopt her and bring her home.

Cairo on one of her early trips to the veterinarian.

Cairo's Checkup

Cairo went back to the vet last week. She weighs a bit less than four pounds and is just as healthy as can be.

Too busy to post more about hiking, writing, waterfalls. This is a six-day work week for me, plus I'm consumed by the task of writing my new book for Tor.

"What the HELL is this??!!"

Attacks at Will!

The Little Meany.

Cairo under my computer desk with her squeaking mouse toy! Her current favorite toy. She's growing fast, now! Still small, but not the tiny palm-sized fur bundle we brought home from West Virginia. Still the cutest kitten I've ever seen. Loads of fun! (No, you can't have her.)

Cairo Kitty

I continue to be exhausted. I feel like that guy in the Tennessee Ernie Ford song, "Sixteen Tons". I've slept ten+ hours the last few nights. And still I'm bushed. On the good side, I've been losing weight.

The cats have been keeping me amused. Cairo continues to be the funniest and most fun kitten I've ever been around. She's always good for a laugh. Often, when she's tired, she curls up in my lap or on my chest and falls right to sleep.

What you mean, "Dis your bed?"

What? What??

The Day We Found Cairo

These are photos that I took the day we found Cairo.

The morning that we found Cairo we got up to discover this early morning rainbow hanging over the park. Soon after it began to rain buckets.

Deciding to go for a drive, we stopped in the tiny village of Cairo. There's only a very small downtown area with a few stores and this building, which was once a bank for dealing with the large amounts of cash from the now-depleted oil fields that once lay beneath this area.

This is the visitors center in a County Park. This has to be one of the nicest county parks I've ever seen. It's huge and straddles the thousands of acres that was once the city of Volcano and the oil fields there. Now it's forests and canyons and streams. It was in this building where we met the woman who had found the abandoned kittens outside in the rain.

The geese were warning me not to go in. "Quack! Honk! Don't go in! Kittens inside! Warning!" I didn't listen.

Argh! Suckered by the cutie pie!

Little Cairo

Little Cairo is really settling in. I don't know when I've enjoyed the company of a kitten more. She has more personality and energy than anything I've seen! She's just a great kitten!

Today while I was working on a novel and sending some material to my agent, she came into my office and climbed up my leg and into my lap and then onto my computer desk. She promptly curled up next to my computer and went directly to sleep.

"Hey! What dat bright light? You waked me up!"

"Dat jus' a warnin'. Don't make me get up again. I weigh a whole pound, now."

Cairo Comes to Town

We're back.

We found an abandoned kitten.

We adopted it.

She bumped into us in Cairo, West Virginia. Thus, we've named her Cairo.

She is lovely and sweet.


Andy: "Dad. Look what I found! An abandoned kitten. The lady here at the store says someone dumped her out and she found her this morning soaking wet in a pouring rain. Isn't she cute?"

Carole: "Oh, gosh! She's adorable! How sweeeeeeet!"

The Old Man: "Oh, HELL NO! No more cats! I don't care if she's only four weeks old! No way!"

Four-week-old abandoned kitten: "Gosh, Mr. Smith. You're gonna put me back out in those cold, wet woods??!!"

Old Man Smith: "Goddamn it!"

Cairo (now named kitten): "Gee whiz! This sure is a nice truck! Matthews, you say? How long does it take to get to this North Carolina? We're gonna have fun! I'm hungry!"

And so it goes...

Cute Kitten

Pictures of Lilly. Just because.

Climbing on everything

Curious kitten

Sleepy Lilly

What're you wakin' me up for?

The Lilly Effect

Kittens make you feel quite silly.

I eat your glasses!

New Family Member

This is Lilly, our newest family member.

The best animal companion we ever had was a cat named Cinnamon. She lived with us for twenty years--pretty much from the time my wife and I were married until Cinnamon died of old age two full decades later. Cinnamon was a very affectionate and extremely intelligent cat, and we always wanted to have another Siamese cat if we could afford one.

Six months ago we met a woman who sold Siamese kittens from time to time, so we put in our "order" for a female kitten. Yesterday we picked up Lilly, a six-week old Siamese. So far, she's been a lot of fun!

Kittens.

"Kittens"By
James Robert Smith

When I first became a letter carrier, I never knew where I'd be delivering mail. That's the curse and the blessing of being a new Part Time Flexible employee of the USPS. The Part Time label is misleading. There's no "part time" about it. I’d do fifty plus hours a week. But the flexible: ah, there was the rub. Until I walked through the door in the morning and went to the desk of my supervisor, I didn't know precisely where I’d deliver the mail. It might’ve been to a neighborhood where the houses all cost over half a million bucks apiece and the streets are fifty feet wide and lined with hundred-year-old oaks. Or it could’ve been a public housing war zone with not a tree in sight and stray dogs roaming about looking for a mailman to bite, and crackheads trying to figure out a way to fool me into thinking they live in a unit where I'm about to deliver a welfare check they can steal. I never knew.

One day I had the best of both worlds. I delivered to a war zone, and I dropped mail among the jillionaires.

In the low income area I tromped about in the sun, the temperature as usual was well into the nineties and approaching one hundred. Sweat poured off of my head and into my eyes and soaked my clothes from shoulder to ankle. But I didn't mind. I only had to think of merely one of the minimum wage jobs I’d had before the Postal Service rescued me and I was resuscitated. So I moved along, went from house to house and watched for mean doggies in this strange place.
Along one of the streets I happened upon a yard in which a rather large Rotweiler strained against chain and collar to get at my flesh. I gave the big doggie perhaps a wider berth than was necessary. And there came a young voice from behind me. "Hey," it said. I turned my head as I continued to pound the steaming pavement and noticed a group of kids following me. About seven or eight kids, one of them a white boy who glided silently along with the others on his bike.

"Hey," I returned.

"Are you scared of that dog?" The speaker was the kid in front, bigger than the rest of them and I figured he was their leader.

"Heck, yes, I'm scared of that dog."

There was a moment of silence from the kid. None of the others said anything. I got the distinct impression that they'd never heard a grown man admit that he was afraid of something. Finally, he spoke up as I approached my next stop.

"I'm scared of him, too," the kid said.

"I'm scared of all dogs," I told them. "They can all bite."

The kid considered that for a second as I put the mail in the box on the front porch of the house and turned toward the next one. "You're scared of all dogs," he asked.

"Yep." I moved efficiently along and the kids followed me, silently.

"Are you scared of cats?"

I smiled. "Nope. Cats don't weigh one hundred pounds and bite your ass," I told him. He laughed.

"Well, goodbye," the kid said. And he and his partners peeled quietly away and vanished down a side street. I walked on.

At the next house in this "bad" neighborhood, as I walked up to the front porch, I noticed that the stairs and the porch itself were covered in kittens. Yes, kittens. Little, furry, delightful kittens. They all turned my way and mewed oh so faintly and made me want to take them home with me. As I stooped to pat a particularly friendly little tabby on its tiny head, the front door opened and out came a young black man.

He smiled at me, said "hi" and I returned the greeting and handed him his mail. He was dressed in a uniform and obviously works for a big landscaping company here in town. I asked him about the kittens. "What are you going to do with all of these kittens," I said. "Are you giving them away," I added before he can answer.

"Yeah," he told me. "You're welcome to one. Me and my wife are buying a house. Moving to a much better neighborhood," he added. "She feeds these cats and they take up here and start having kittens, and I don't want them at the new house so we're giving them all away."

"Wow. Did one cat have all these kittens? They all look the same age." I indicated the dozen or so baby cats lying about.

"No. Two cats." He pointed to a calico. "That one had all the colorful ones." And he showed me a yellow cat lying under a chair. "And she had all the dark ones. About a day apart."

"Well, I can't take one right now. I just started the day and a kitten would die in my jeep on a day like this. But can I come back some time and get one?"

"Yeah. Sure. Just come by after work and you can have one. We're moving soon. To a nice neighborhood," he reminded me.

I waved at him and said goodbye, left. As he drove off I mentally kicked my own ass for not introducing myself.

And this dumb little poem comes to me.

Kittens here and kittens there.
Kittens, kittens everywhere.
Kittens on the porch
and kittens on the lawn.
Kitten siblings and kittens' mom.
Now I don't know if this is bad,
but there was no sign of kittens' dad.

We all have our ways of staying sane. So, there. There was my day. Another typical day in the life of this mailman.