Black Cats & Friday the 13th

Chester

Friday the 13th and visits from our neighborhood black cats. We have two of them. One is bigger with a leonine walk, cocky and acts like he owns the world. The other is smaller, takes her daily strolls, looking in all our front windows and examining all the flowers in my flower pots. I assume that one is a female, only because she's inquisitive, like I am, and we share a love of flowers. My husband is not a cat person, so we don't have any of our own, but I love cats of all shapes and sizes.

My Mom and Brother have three cats. "Chester," the newest addition, is a two year old pure Maine Coon, 20+ lbs. in size and has the loudest purr I've ever heard. He likes to put his cheek up next to mine and "sing" to me. It's definitely a love song. "Larry" is a Seal-Point mix, a contented fat cat who only "talks" to my Brother. "Sabrina" is a senior lady, a tortoiseshell who becomes a contortionist when she's getting petted. She has a deep mellow purr that won't quit. Well, as for my neighborhood Black Cats, I've never heard a sound from the bigger (male?) one. The smaller one will wind around your legs and say demurely, "Mew, mew."

As far as this Friday the 13th goes, it started out cloudy, gloomy and humid. Now this afternoon we have bright cerulean-blue skies, still humid, but with a light ocean breeze. Before I end today's blog, I want to mention that I was delighted this morning to find that the Slideshow feature, that I installed yesterday and wasn't working then, is working fine today. So in explanation of the current slideshow photos, these were taken in '65 to '67 in southern California where I was born and raised, before I moved to Florida. Some were taken at Catalina Island and one even shows the Casino at Avalon Harbor on Catalina. That's a place that will always hold special memories in my heart. Two of the photos show me at 15 learning to tandem surf at Doheny Beach, in So-Cal. The one shows me at 14 in Huntington Beach with my very first boyfriend, who moved away to northern California not long after the photo was taken. We wrote letters back and forth for a while and then that was pretty much the end of it. But that's another story, not a Friday the 13th story.

One of the photos is of my old dog, "Mr. Binks." Now "Binky," as he was commonly known, was a connoisseur of beaches. He preferred the ones with rocks he could climb on, like the photo of him at Laguna Beach. But he also loved the beaches on Catalina Island because he could swim in the crystal-blue waters and watch the bright orange Garibaldis and gray-and-white Sheepshead swim underneath him. I'm sure "Binky" would have been a scuba diver if he could have figured out how to wear the gear. However, he was rather fond of colorful bandannas and sunglasses. He was also partial to seafood, particularly lobster, and once ate two whole lobsters, shells, antennas and all, when our cat "D.C." knocked them off the counter onto the kitchen floor so "Binky" could help himself to the feast. "D.C." on the other hand was more into fresh fish and once ate a hole in the side of a marlin that my Dad caught and brought home.

My Dad had a sports fishing boat so I grew up eating seafood: swordfish steaks, yellowtail tuna, calico bass, lobster tails, fried abalone. In fact, I ate seafood so often that I was prone to groan, "Not again!" Ah, but now I'm older and wiser and would love to have some of that great seafood every now and then, particularly the lobster and abalone. Well, this lets you know a little more about me, that I was a California "beach girl" who later moved to Florida and am still a "beach girl."