Anyway, they’re making huge holes in the yard, digging trenches and filling them back in. Fortunately, they haven’t forgotten to put the pipe in the dirt for the new heat pump and there are fewer coils sitting around in the yard. This is excellent news, but has some interesting side effects.

1. The cats haven’t been outside and it’s nice out. The whining has been pretty irritating, but they’d hate it out there with all the machines and men. Not to mention all the gates are wide open.
2. The meadow is toast. That’s where they’re putting the “slinkeys”, so it’s all been pulled up and covered over again. This means lots of rocks on top of the soil, and more grass seed. Ah well, it will be worth it in the long run.
3. I will soon be able to start planting the peas. Once the big work is done, I can get peas and beans in the ground. The irrigation work will come later, but it’s not strictly required until May. Lets just pretend that’s more than 2 weeks away, ok?

There she was minding her own business in the yard, when the deer appeared on the ridge. This deer was so curious about the little white cat (is it the color that attracts them?) that she wandered down to the edge of the fence. Of course the cat understands the fence and doesn’t panic, but goes on eating grass instead.* Eventually she was bored with that patch of ground and wandered away. This is where it gets weird. The deer followed her, around the corner of the fence and kept following until she got too far away to be interesting.

But by that point, the poor deer had attracted the other cat. He’s big and dumb, so he went into stalker/predator mode. I swear he thought he could catch and kill that deer despite the fence. And for a second the deer bought it too.** It panicked and started running away, at least until the cat got close and she realized the cat was tiny and no threat. Then of course she returned to the fence line to check him out.

And started playing with him.

See, when he got bored and tried to walk away the deer charged the fence, scaring him and making him get ready to fight. Then when she had the cats attention, she went into a classic dog play bow posture.*** I’ve never seen anything like it, and I certainly wouldn’t expect that from a deer. This little pattern repeated until the cat finally got fed up and wandered off for good. But it was a heck of a thing to watch play out. Predator and prey, playing together.

*Yes, she eats grass. Every day. No, I can’t stop her. It’s easier on all of us, houseplants included, if I don’t even try.
** This is probably related to the cougars around these parts.
*** I can’t even express how sad I am that I didn’t get any pictures of this. However, the rest of the shots start here.

The worst of it is that it’s not a constant that they get to go out. If it’s dark or raining, they’re not going out. I don’t want to have to go collect cats that aren’t ready to go back in when it’s time to go to bed. And I certainly don’t want to deal with the massive quantities of mud that would come in with them on rainy days. As you can see, some cats come in less white than they go out. But they love it, and they’re very good about cleaning up no matter how thoroughly they’ve rolled in the dirt.

The funniest part is that the Mister has decided that the whole yard is a catbox. He gets outside and instantly must use this new, clean toilet space. Before the fence, we had to watch for piles of elk poo. Now we have to watch for cat poo (he doesn’t cover anything, never has the lazy sot).

My main concern at the moment is that the yard is full of clover and the bees are loving it. Supervising for bee stings is going to be an interesting way to spend the summer.

It all started out innocently enough. Wednesday, I stopped at the end of the driveway on my way home from work to pick up the mail. This time of year it’s dark when I leave for work and dark when I come home, so pulling into the driveway and walking along the semi-slimy side of the gravel driveway is always a challenge. There’s no sidewalk and the grassy/muddy edge along the driveway is full of potholes and giant rocks. Normally I don’t drive far enough down the driveway for this to be a problem; pop out of the car, walk 10 steps, grab the mail, and jump back in. A minute tops.

However, this Wednesday was special. I was stomping around in the dark, trying to avoid the puddles and the big ankle-twisting rocks when I stepped in something squishy. At the time I assumed I’d hit a nasty mud puddle, but since I didn’t slide too much or twist any ankles, I didn’t worry about it. I just grabbed the mail and got back in the car. I arrived at the house in the dark and climbed the stairs to take off my shoes and crash for a bit. I paid no attention to the weird sticking of my right foot on the carpeted stairs, I saw nothing unusual. Not until the next morning.

On my way out Thursday morning, my husband noted that there was a weird stain on the carpet. I vaguely remembered stepping in something odd and figured that I should check my shoes. Why yes, the arch under my foot had trapped some foreign substance that required removing. And man was there a lot of it. I cleaned off my shoe with about a dozen tissues, washed my hands and trundled off to work.

When I got home that night, my husband told me that he’d discovered the cause of the problem. He was cleaning up the stains on the stairs and the smell got him thinking. So he went down to the street and discovered that his hunch was right. The trash collectors had managed to drop a bag of one of the neighbors cat litter cleaning out of their trash can, and just left it where it fell. This sat in the rain for a day before I stepped in it, thus the slimy texture. So I’d been tracking some other cats pee around the house.

At this point, I’m just thankful that our cats haven’t decided that this is cause for a pee-war on the stairs.