Gracie, the black Brown Rat Killer and additional things happening

So last night Tommy was at the wood pile last night and as usual, Gracie was at his side, investigating the wood pile as he removed pieces to bring inside. Just as a back note on this story, Gracie and Henry have been investigating the pile recently. When I would let them out in the morning to pee, they would loiter at the wood pile, be we thought that there were assorted critters there, mice, voles and whatnot. So anyway, Tommy is out at the woodpile and Gracie is investigating, here and there. All of a sudden, Tommy hears a shrieking noise and a large creature bounces off his foot. Gracie, the lightning fast creature that she is, lunges for the what's-it. Tommy looks down and there is a HUGE BROWN RRRRRAAAATTTT. Holy Shit! And the best part, it was D E A D!! Just the way I like rats. Stone cold DEAD.

Tommy arrives back on the porch and declared that we have a ratter, Miss. Gracie and described the scene and the triumphant kill. How tremendous. Apparently there is a house down the road that keeps cat food outside for neighborhood cats, and any other kind of outside thing that wants to eat freekin cat food. So of course, this cat food will become RAT FOOD and where there are rats, there are baby rats. So Gracie will have to become more diligent to keep the rats out of the wood pile. We don't keep any food outside, hopefully there will be no reason for the rats to stay around our house.

We got another cat. Neener disappeared and we fear that he is in cat heaven, departed at the fangs of a Red Fox. We saw a Red Fox last night and that thing was pretty large. Gorgeous and huge and wonderfully red with a huge tail. We stopped and got the spotlight out. He stopped about 50 yards off the road in a field and his eyes reflected in the spotlight. We just looked at each other for a few minutes. As we drove off, I yelled to him "be careful buddy!"

Back to Neener; he disappeared on November 11th. The evening before we had a moment, he and I. I picked him up, he let me cuddle him for longer than the standard 10 seconds, he pushed away from me as I stood in the bedroom, holding him. I looked in his eyes, and he looked in my eyes; something told me that this was the last time I would see him, and hold him. He pushed off me and ran down the steps and sat at the door. As I opened the door he shoved himself through, as he did in his zeal to be in the great outdoors, and as I watched his 17 pound fuzzy ass disappear into the darkness, I asked Frank to look after him, as I did every evening. The next morning, when Hobbes was the only one at the door, I had a bad feeling about his whereabouts. I knew that he was gone and departed. I miss him, but I know that he went down swinging, hunting and fighting like the scrapper that he was.

Seamus is our new kitty and he is very sweet and funny. He's definitely not like Neener, but I did that intentionally. There was a huge Mane Coon Cat at the Animal Rescue League that looked like Neener with long hair. But Shay spoke to me, he said 'I'm the one, take me home and love me.' He has a cauliflower ear and is definitely underweight, but we are getting his ear all cleaned out and getting some weight on him. He sleeps with us and we think he's hard of hearing because his ears are partly closed due to old hematomas. He's great and beginning to explore the house, and getting used to the house and the dogs, who just want to sniff his ass, but Shay wants to hiss and spit at Gracie.

The Mustang is sitting still in the driveway, and that's exactly where it belongs right now. Snow, sleet, freezing rain and general winter awfulness. When I drove it last weekend, I totally got checked out by a middle aged man and his two teen aged sons in the Target parking lot. When I say 'I' got checked out, I actually mean the car got checked out and I just happened to be walking up to the car.

ok, I'm done! Thanks for reading and happy driving!