Road Trip!

The missus and I decided to air out her new ride yesterday.  We set out for Christopher Creek where we used to have a trailer, 110 miles in distance and a mile in elevation away.  Came home the long way, along Roosevelt, through Globe.  Always a fun, twisty turny drive, this time was great.  The 306 ponies under the hood had to demonstrate to two or three miscreants who really was King of the Road.  Didn't get to the advertised top end of 142, but came close - smoooooth as buttah, eerie quiet, eager to accelerate.  Even driven enthusiastically, occasionally quite so, we got a bit more than 26 mpg. 

Devilcat Follow-up

Call it karma, kismet or the universe's way of squaring the books, but the devilcat got hisself runned over last week. 

Entertaining The Livestock

My office has a sliding glass door out onto an 18 x 24 deck that looks out over the preserve.  A sylvan serene setting on most days.  Today, not so much.

Our two cats are housebound.  Said preserve and its coyotes have swallowed up so many of our pets over the years that we don't let these guys out; the only reason they're still here.  Other cats in the 'hood thus have free reign to not only stroll unconcernedly through our yard, but to approach the windows, neener neenering our cats who go freaking nuts, careening headlong into the windows and sliders and yowling like Bob Dylan being disemboweled.

Today, the most dispicable cat in the world, at least in my cats' view, sauntered up the steps to my deck and stretched out there in the sun, langorously rolling back and forth just a couple feet from the enraged Mr SnapDog, our enormous orange cat.  Snapper yowls to me "Can't you see what this guy is doing to us? Can't you do something?"  It's a beautiful day, I open the slider, the devilcat slinks, stupidly, to the far edge of the deck. 

Hah!  Got your fuzzbucket ass cornered!  Catlike myself, I skulk toward him, he's panicing, casting back and forth for a way past me to the stairs.  No way.  I close the gap between us, cutting him off, closer, closer yet, crouching tiger hidden water buffalo.

That little black sumbitch was quick!  Shot past me in a flash.  I lunged to cut him off, reeling backward.  That's when I encroached on the table which altered my trajectory minimally, but just enough to upset the delicate balance of one so nimble footed as myself.  Flailing now, like a man beset by an angry hive of wasps, I struggled against the raging gravity storm threatening to evertake me. 

That's when I met the chair, which offered no resistance at all, meekly overturning in my path and throwing a leg up to catch me in the thigh.  That really hurt, so now I'm hopping, on my bad leg, still hoping against hope that I'll somehow remain upright, or nearly so. 

Sadly, it was not to be.  On what turned out to be my last hop, my foot caught the edge of the indoor/outdoor carpet, and that was the last straw.  Like the defensive line of the Bears I rammed helmetless into the wood railing, which shuddered, swayed, creaked and made a horrifying lean, as if to drop me the fifteen feet to the ground, but it held.  Damaged but not completely undone, I looked over to see the devilcat meander down the stairs, pausing once to look back at me, as if wanting to confirm a couple details of the stories he'll be telling the other neighborhood cats.

Limping, battered, beaten, I dragged myself back across the threshold into my office, only to espy the disgusted SnapDog slinking out of the room.  Ungrateful wretch.