Last night he dreamed that he went into his home office and this little half-starved black cat, clearly a street cat, was in there. He said, “How in the world did you manage to get in here?” then added, “You would have to be a black cat, wouldn’t you? Oh, all right—come on, let’s get you fed.”

He opened the office door and the cat shot downstairs towards the kitchen as he wondered how he was going to explain to me that we once again have five cats. As he was telling me this I reflexively shed a couple of tears and replied that while we’re not going to go out looking for one, if a black cat or kitten walks up to us at some point and goes “Mew!” we would of course take it home.

“That’s going to screw up our estate planning, since it’ll probably outlive us,” he pointed out.

“I’m pretty sure I could talk my nephew into taking it,” I replied, “especially if the cat comes with a trust fund to pay for its upkeep. In the meantime, let’s just enjoy the interval of having only four cats.”

He said that made sense. So there you go.

Oh, and a raptor of some sort (we have hawks, vultures, and owls here) must have hit a dove or pigeon because a good ten square feet of our back yard were littered liberally with feathers (the longest ones were dark about halfway down the shafts then turned white, and the down was white). I just raked them up—didn’t find any body parts so I’m guessing those were eaten by the raptor.

The only reason I saw this was that Someone had piddled a bit right at the entrance to the breakfast nook litter box, requiring me to take up the litter-catching mat and bring it outside to hose it down, whereupon I found the murder scene. Floor has been swept and mopped, broom has been hosed down and is drying with the mat outside, and feathers have been deposited in the trash bin.

Happy Easter, everybody!