I took Louise, The Cat, to the vet this morning

One of our cats, a member of the "kitten sisters in Christ", Louise, has developed a lesion under her left ear. And it's grown bigger over the week until I was able to schedule an appointment with the vet. Because I don't have to be at the hospital until noon today, I was able to get a morning slot. So I brought the kitten in. She mewed all the way, her plaintive mew, constant as a homing beacon. When we arrived at the vet and I took her to the examining room, she purred so much that the intern had difficulty obtaining a pulse. Finally the doctor came in and looked at her. Louise apparently loves being the one cat in a room full of people: none of her crabby instincts kicked in: instead she was happy to be poked and prodded and given a shot. The doctor asked me if we had fleas or if she was on any flea regime, but I didn't know. I called Jami, I suppose in the middle of convocation at Duke, and the call was dropped. So I couldn't give an answer. The vet said that she could also be allergic to air borne things as well. "Cats," he said. I said that yes, Louise is definitely allergic to cats, at least three other cats. Suddenly it all made sense. The other cats cause her to break out.
While writing the doctor's comments above I wanted to concoct a good Tom Swifty, but none occurred to me. As I thought that I thought: "If only Louise were a dog, " the vet concurred. Perfection.

At Keats' house

Here we are, in separate photographs, at Keats' House. Jami, beautiful and witty, looks directly into the camera; I, pensive, my scarf draped along my belly, gaze across the yard. Jami wrote about salad and bird poo recently; I don't have any material like that - but it doesn't sound very Keatsian: salad and poo - saladpoo might be an organic hair product. There is a Seinfeld where Kramer prepares a salad while taking a shower. He tells Elaine just as she's biting into some lettuce. Wonderful moment.
Keats' house is a wonderful place, right across from the Heath. Inside artifacts remain from the famous poet. Among the papers I saw, a bad debt from betting at the track, a certain amount owed on Melancholy, a horse that had not done so well.
I love you honey.

Of course the kitten is getting bigger

I took this two weeks ago when we first began caring for the kitten, MouseyTongue. At the time Mousey was .8 lbs. In a few days he was up to .9 lbs. And now, he must be over a pound. In a few weeks we'll take him for his final test, and he'll no longer need to be quarantined from other cats. Then the cat will be free to live with a wonderful new owner. Mousey will make a wonderful child or adult a boon companion. This little kitten is playful and frisky. But of course, we can't keep him: the gang of four, Thelma, Louise, Cleo and Catalina wouldn't allow that.

Beaiutiful woman with kitten

On Saturday a chain of circumstances saw us with a kitten: a small bundle of spunk. At first he was lethargic and in need of medical attention, but now he's getting better. He runs very vast, scampering on tiny legs. And he mews a high piercing mew, like some bird of prey - a very tiny condor. He's named Mousey Tongue (pronounced Mao Tze Dung). Our other four cats, Thelma, Louise, Catelina and Cleo, are the gang of four - they stand at the screen door to the screened porch and take turns hissing: it's their motherly instincts - or else territorialism. Jami loves little creatures and she cares for this little fellow. She was gone for a couple of days this week and I took care of the kitten, but I'm not very motherly. This kitten will make some lucky person a wonderful feline companion one day soon. I know it in my bones.
Jami is very lovely. And never so lovely as when I get a double word score and 50 points for "horsier" : the quality of being more horsey.

I've just told a very bad pun

Jami is trying to ignore what was a very bad pun, but as you can see her smile is about to erupt in breathless guffaws. Here we are at the auction for the Solarium last evening and my birdhouse is coming up for auction [photo forthcoming]. I can't remember what I said, but instead I'll use an old stand by: we have birds in our chimney, Chimney Swallows, and they're the most amazing birds. They're very tiny and sometimes they fly into the house and Jami gently apprehends them and releases them back into nature. She'll say, " a chimney swallow just got in." and I'll crow, "How a bird that small can swallow a whole chimney I'll never know." It's Gold! and the best part it never gets old. Each telling is just as fresh as the first time.
The woman holding back gales of laughter in the photos above is the most beautiful woman around.

A washed out shot of a New Mexico painting

This photo was taken by a photographer for the AJC using a very expensive camera, and it doesn't show the richness of the color or texture of the paint I'd gotten here. Photography of artwork is a tricky thing, and I'm not anal about it myself, except when faced with the limitations of what is possible. A painting is superior to a photograph exactly for those elements of surface manipulation and image integration that a photo, when done by a professional art photographer, provides a metaphor for what is seen. A photo of a painting is a double metaphor, the painting being the first metaphor.
Now I know that I said "superiority of painting to photography" and that's bound to cause a stir, but photos have their own surface manipulations and image integrations: perhaps I should have said that the vocabulary of painting doesn't translate well into the vocabulary of photography and vice versa. That is: it's asking a lot of a photograph to reproduce a painting.
Well that was unnecessarily complicated.
What I painted here was a spot near the middle of nowhere. Those from New Mexico know just where this is: near nowhere, insight of the mountains, covered with scrub, the road indistinguishable from the surrounding dust and rock. Overhead is a cloud that appears to be raining, but the rain is evaporating high in the air. Or else there is a cloud 100s of times bigger than the mountains it looms behind. At your feet there is a bit of bone, and in the blue shadows of the thistle a small creature rustles away, out of sight.
A map says that there is a watercourse around here, but you don't see one: but not being one to argue, you call it a draw.