There is much cute happening here tonight. Including Obi chasing his tail. Why? Because it was following him.
But! I promised the story of my potentially homicidal pumpkins so here it goes:
In high school, I desperately wanted to be a botanist. So, of course, I took all the science classes I could. One had a semester project where we could do independent study. I chose a great project. I don’t remember what it was. I do remember that it required growing pine tree seedlings. And that mine never sprouted.
Lucky for me, I’d taken advantage of my access to the greenhouse to plant pumpkin seeds. In January. Awesome. So I changed my project to…something else. I don’t remember. I passed the class mostly because my teacher loved me – I’d taken seven or eight classes from him since Junior High – and I was tutoring most of his college students during my work study hour.
This is as good a time as any to tell you that I’m in public relations. When I went to university I discovered that I am good at science theory but completely incapable of passing the labs. I had to drop BOTANY lab because I was flunking yet another plant experiment. Sigh. Luckily I was already on the communications path.
Anywho, summer came and I took my pumpkins – giant pumpkin plants – home with me. We planted them in the back yard where I could find two empty spaces. And this is where it starts to get weird. In a matter of days the pumpkins started growing toward each other.
They didn’t grow up.
They didn’t get bushy.
They didn’t grow flowers.
Both pumpkin plants grew one stem, directly toward the other, with only a few leaves. And they grew this stem at an amazing speed. In about two weeks the plant stems were long enough to touch even though the pumpkin plants were forty feet apart.
The issue was that these pumpkins were smart enough to reach in a straight line across the lawn. My dad, though, is a sweet man. He would carefully separate the pumpkins, which were now twisting around each other in a weird, stemmy embrace. He’d move the arms of each pumpkin off the lawn, mow, and return them to their place. He’d even twist their little stemmy hands back together.
It wasn’t all about being nice, though. There was definitely a sense that if you tried to separate them or hurt one of them….my parent’s bedroom window was just another five feet of determined growing…
Back to cats on Saturday. Bye!
But wait! I almost forgot it is Thunder Thursday!
- “Maddy wants a cracker. With tuna.”
This is Madison, one of three grey kittens that owns The Boy’s father. When we went to visit at Christmas I barely saw the other two, but Madison is very social. Because he’s always on the lookout for a sucker who will let him ride on their shoulders. He thinks The Boy’s shoulders are perfect. Mine did okay in a pinch.
The first day was hard for me because the house was like an Oliver Fun House. The three cats looks like Oli – only skinnier, or smaller or fatter. It was like when you go to your home town and you keep getting whiplash because you see your home plates on a car. Which is usually noteworthy, but here it’s every car.
Kitten Thunder: Life lessons and cat tales 