Kitty Transport Day

So today I set the alarm and hauled off to my vet to be there by 8:30 to pick up Tubbs from the off-site adoption cage, since they are not open on Sundays and he needed to come home.

Then it was off to Appalchin with Olivia (going home) and Thomas (going to his new home) by way of the Blue Dolphin, a landmark any local or frequent visitor knows well.



I love diners. I love the architecture, I love the waitresses, I love the coffee, I love the absolutely average food, and I especially love the prices. Today, however, Cary--Thomas's adopter--insisted on picking up the tab.

Here he is, headed to to PA!



Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of Olivia before she headed back to her home turf. She was very good about being transferred from one crate to another inside of my car. I'm always quite paranoid about losing a cat in a parking lot. Olivia is friendly but has a bit of an attitude. She certainly did not want to go into the new crate head first after just coming out of mine, but she was tolerant of being backed in.

So was have two less cats, right? Wrong! The Waverly folks had a successful trapping day and brought two more cats to be fixed this week, (thankfully it appears they are males so they won't have to stay long to recuperate), and they arrive when the place was a total mess between morning and evening cleanings--kittens running amuck upstairs, and while the cages had been cleaned for the evening downstairs, the floor had yet to be swept and nothing had been put back for the night. Sorry guys!

So I came in for dinner (Mark cooked....mmmmmmm alfredo....) and now I'm headed back out to clean.

I seldom get out of my own cage, it seems, except to go to Ithaca for cat related things, so on the way home from Apalachin I took 17C, which is a lovely, quaint county highway that runs along the Susquehanna River. The ice was magnificent so I stopped for a photo. As I hopped the guardrail and stepped over the railroad tracks, I realized I would probably break an ankle sliding down the railroad clinkers to the river, so I had to take photos from the rails:



One of the things I find most charming about 17C are the old telegraph lines with the old glass insulators





Also on 17C (Danger! Danger!) is Tioga Gardens.



Come on, wouldn't you stop?



I love greenhouses. I used to manage greenhouses in one of my three jobs at Ithaca College over the 17 years I was there. The job was animal and plant care; I guess they assumed it was better to hire an animal person and risk the plants, than hire a plant person and risk the animals.

However in my own home, plants risk their lives because I am bad about regular watering. We have one plant right now...just one...a gift plant from our friends Martha and Hilary. So I made the daring decision to purchase two cheap bomb-proof plants, a spider plant and a small pothos (commonly called a philodendron, which it isn't). Let's see if I can keep them alive.

So that was my afternoon of freedom. I told Mark I'd be home by one, and of course it was 3pm before I rolled in.