It's a rainy day so cats get new umbrella

Woke up to a rainy day with actual raindrops hitting the ground.  It's been wet for a few days but it was mostly fog or a fine mist, and finally today we have rain.  Since it's finally raining and one of our cats, Warty, put a hole in the top of the umbrella covering his food, it was time to change it and put a new one up.  We buy several beach umbrellas at a time, so that we always have one to put up if the wind should carry it off or it gets a hole in it.  The umbrellas are hard to find cheap so when we find some we buy a bunch.  When we first started buying them at Big Lots they cost $5 each and now they are up to $15 a piece.

The Sycamore Tree still has lots of leaves

Jimmy out in the rain putting new blue umbrella on
cats feeding table

So that the wind doesn't blow the umbrella off the table Jimmy ties each wire down to the table leaving openings in each section just big enough for the cats to squeeze through to get up to their food.  This keeps their dry cat food dry and it also serves to feed all the cats of the neighborhood, a practice that we are about to put an end to because it's getting too expensive feeding every stray that come to our feeders.  We will probably wait until Spring before we stop the free food, because it doesn't seem quite right to take away the food supply now with cold weather and winter approaching.
    

stir crazy

Jimmy & I are both going stir crazy and need to get out of the house again today. It's another rainy day and rainy days aren't good for the mood when they come day after day after day. And besides that we have been in quarantine for two days short of 2 weeks and it's time for us to make a break for it. It feels like we've been in prison.

We went to Big Lots yesterday and bought 8 or 9 beach umbrellas for the cats table (picture at left). For those of you who don't know how they work or how we use these umbrellas here's a brief explanation: We open the umbrella out and lower it down level with the table top and then tie it down so the wind doesn't blow it away. Under the canopy of the umbrella are the cat feeders filled with dry cat food and a couple of garden knee pads for the cats to lay on. The umbrellas keep the cat food dry and the birds out, thus only the cats can get to their food plus one squirrel who doesn't eat much.

Today we've agreed that we're going somewhere again, but we don't know where nor do we care where we go just as long as we go. We tried to buy some decorative garden pebbles yesterday for our water garden but they were too wet to carry in the trunk of our car, and I suppose that today we'll have the same problem since it's raining today too. We can't go visiting until tomorrow so maybe we'll just go walking in the rain and do some window shopping. There are lots of things that we need but they're big costly items so a little price comparison shopping might be something we can do today.

When I woke up this morning I heard slight snoring sounds, and when I called out Jimmy answered. It was 5:30 a.m. and he said he was on the couch. He said that he couldn't stand the futon any longer, so he spread a sheet over the couch and laid down during the wee hours of the morning. He has never laid down on the couch before and said that it was VERY comfortable. Maybe just for his last night of sleeping alone he can sleep on it again tonight...maybe.

So now I feel better and I'm not so excited about going anywhere. It's amazing how writing things down really helps.