ROAD BLOG AHEAD

I’ve been staying with the lovely and energetic Winna in Bolinas (California) for the past few days, resting after the long drive from Oregon. It seems to have gotten longer this year, but it’s probably only that I’ve gotten older and can’t drive 10-12 hours straight through the way I could when I was 21. Pity because there are a lot of places I would like to go for a day or two here and there that would only work if I drove like a maniac there and back again. I fear my days of maniacal driving are behind me.

So Bolinas is lovely and, if the sun ever comes out again, I will take pictures of Winna’s astonishing flower garden. The picture above was taken on another visit, from the window of the room we stay in. I love laying in bed at night listening to the waves of the Pacific Ocean crashing against the shore in the silent dark. I sleep better to that lullaby than any other place! But it’s been dreary and overcast while I’ve been there and I haven’t been able to get any decent floral pictures in the dim and sullen light. She has created a jungle of colour, roses tangled with lillies, wrapped around by wisteria and all sorts of vibrant blooms whose names I don’t know. It’s not a tame flower garden with neat paths and artfully sculpted hedges. Winna’s flowers grow their own way, following their own muse of beauty in blossom. I hope to get back on a sunny day before it’s past its peak.

Right now I’m in Berkeley, writing from a futon on the floor of my friend, Michelle (who is, among other things, a genius chiroprator. If you are anywhere in the Bay Area and need a chiropractor, e-mail me for her number, she really is superb and has patched me up and got me walking straight more times than I can count.) I’m here (in the East Bay) doing tarot readings and astrology charts for clients, new and old. A rather absurd number of them (readings, not clients) in one day, more than I really should do and then expect to be able to type, much less make sense. Tomorrow is more of the same - a very full day. Looks like I’ll stay through next weekend as my calendar is filling fast. It’s reassuring to know that my work is still wanted and appreciated even though I don’t live here anymore. I like what I do. I like many of the people I’ve been working with for many years, so it’s both nice to know they feel the same and great to continue the associations. I may be a touch maudlin and sentimental tonight, like a drunk who drapes his arm around your shoulders and slobbers in your ear while gushing “yer ma besht friend ya know zat?” I haven’t been drinking or anything. Maybe I’m just high on the people fumes. Or, more cynically, maybe I need a good night’s sleep.

No, it’s not chocolate or liquor or drugs. Not a substance or sexual fetish or a foodstuff. My secret vice is one I can’t indulge in too often and one that, by its very nature, I can’t share with anybody else. It takes a long time to acquire and lasts all too short a time. When I tell you what it is, you’ll either understand it or you won’t, depending on your own nature. Wait, here’s a clue - does this picture help?

Didn’t think so, even though it’s a picture (albeit not a particularly good one) of me indulging in my secret vice.

Okay. It’s this: One of my greatest pleasures is to stop on the road during a long, solitary driving trip and check into a motel, all by myself! To have an entire night to myself in a clean, quiet room (relatively anyway) where nobody knows me, nobody interrupts me, nobody needs me to answer phones, to hold the baby or solve a problem or look at this or that. I can hole up with a book or my knitting or my computer or something and spend a few hours doing my own projects at my own pace my own way. It’s postively sensual to have time alone, by myself; time I don’t owe anybody an explanation for, an excuse for. It’s time off the books, off the map, off the radar. Time alone, the greatest luxury.

You see - you either got it or you didn’t. If you’re a person who enjoys time by yourself and you rarely get any, you’ll understand perfectly. If you’re someone who is uncomfortable without voices around or people to talk to, this is clearly not your vice. I love it though and have been known to go to some trouble to get it. I’ll rise before dawn to leave somewhere early enough that, when I can justify stopping for the “night” there’s still plenty of waking hours left. I’ll eat granola bars and water for supper to offset the extra expense of a room with wireless internet. I’ll scheme and prevaricate and do all sorts of things to get a solitary night in a hotel all alone.

I’m basking in that luxury tonight, here in Yreka, California. Driving from Oregon back to San Francisco by myself, it’s really too long a trip to safely make it in one long drive. I get too sleepy behind the wheel. So I break the journey up and stay overnight in one of the countless little motels that line I-5. This one had slightly bolluxed up my reservation so I ended up getting a much nicer room for the price than what I’d actually asked for. One of the advantages of traveling mid-week is that there’s usually vacancies. So I’m in this huge room with a refrigerator, two beds, a patio near the river and the makings for a decent pot of tea. Bliss. Utter bliss. And I arrived by 5 p.m. so I actually had hours to luxuriate in the wonderful nothingness of a room to myself.

Actually though, I haven’t done nothing. I took a short nap. I read people’s blogs (yup, it’s Wednesday - everyone posted to their blogs today. What’s up with the Tuesday blog moratorium anyway?) I ate a sandwich. I made and drank a cup of tea. And I spun.

I don’t think I mentioned that, in the middle of all my wandering around, I bought myself this Ashford Joy spinning wheel. Long story (aren’t they all) but I needed to be spinning - my circulation has been really bad since getting back to the States and spinning is the one thing that is guaranteed to help improve that. My Journey Wheel is in India and the Traditional wheel I have stashed in Pat and Bob’s basement in Berkeley just is so not portable. So I bit the bullet, costwise, found a store that sold wheels near Veronica’s house in Dallas, and, after trying a bunch of different wheels, settled on the Joy as the best candidate for my particular needs. I may talk more about that in a later post, about the whys and wherefores and comparisons. There’s a lot of nice wheels out there. I hadn’t actually expected to choose a Joy and was surprised that it was what came home with me. But I don’t regret it - in the week since I bought it, I’ve had much less pain and swelling in my legs than at any time since landing back in the U.S. Worth it already!

I spent part of the evening sitting, listening to the sound of the wheel going whoosh whoosh and nothing else (ah blissful silence! How long it has been since I last met ye?) and spinning some lovely merino wool top in a colourway called Rose Quartz.

In the fibre, it’s rosier than in this picture, but the picture is relatively true to how the singles are coming out. I think I will pair it with some mauve sliver I bought in the same wool to bring up the pinky shades and downplay the lavenders when I ply. Or I’ll knit it with some solid mauve yarn, we’ll see. Anyway, it’s nice stuff and I’ve got one bobbin full and am making good progress on the second. Spinning is so soothing, especially uninterrupted spinning. I could go all night, but I need to be up and back on the road in the morning so, regretfully, I think I’m done for the moment.

Oh and I remembering now that being alone in a car on a long drive is almost as good as being alone in a hotel. If it weren’t for the price of gas. Ooooh, don’t get me started on *that* tonight!

I checked out most of my favourite blogs tonight and nobody had posted. Maybe it’s something about Tuesdays. In my experience, not a whole lot happens on Tuesdays. Anyway, by the time I hit send on this, it will be after midnight and, thus, technically Wednesday but, trust me, I’m writing this on Tuesday.

Don’t know when I’ll next get a moment to post. I leave in the morning to drive down to the Bay Area for a week or two to try and do some of my “other” work (readings, charts, ceremonies.) I miss this aspect of myself and the chance to use those skills when too much time passes wearing other hats. And, from the look of it, some of my longstanding clients are missing me as well. It will be good to see them. I’ll stay part of the time in Bolinas with Winna and part of the time with a friend in Berkeley and I have no idea what kind of internet access I can count on. It’s a 2 day drive for one person. Oh, I could really push myself and do it in one day, but that’s really hard on my eyes. I don’t seem to have the stamina I did at 20 where I could drive for 18 hours and not fall asleep behind the wheel. So I’ll stop for the night halfway and finish the drive on Thursday. It should get me to San Francisco before the worst of the Memorial Day weekend traffic. I hope.

Have to post at least one cute grandbaby picture. The hardest part of going down to SF is leaving the kids. I am really really attached to them now and they to me. Danika cries when I leave the room sometimes and lights up when I walk in. How can you not love that?  ANyway, last night she pulled a good one on me and her dad. Daughter Veronica was out working last evening and Kurtis and I were getting the kids ready for bed. I’d diapered Dani and put her in night clothes while he popped almost 3 year old Alaric in the tub. Danika toddled in to see Daddy and spotten the bright coloured plastic bath fishies I’d given her for her birthday party on Sunday. She kept reaching for them and Kurtis would catch her. I was putting diapers away when I heard Kurtis yell “Hey!” and then there was a very indignant screech from the baby followed by a momentary caterwalling. Then a giggle and Kurtis began to laugh. Apparently she managed, with him sitting right there, to slip under his arm and climb into the bathtub after the fishies, pajamas, diaper and all. Of course, not accustomed to tubs, she ended up very surprised as she went underwater. The baby reflexes are good though, because she did the hold her breath thing they do when teaching babies to swim. After the momentary indignation, she thought it was all quite a hoot. So, with Daddy sitting right there to watch, he removed the soggy sleeper and nappie and she had her first *real* tub bath with her brother. You’d have thought she’d been doing it all her little life! Loved it and the two of them played happily while I, of course, ran for my camera.

It’s funny because, as if she knew somehow that she’d passed a milestone with her first birthday, she’s begun to act much more like a toddler and less like a baby - running and climbing and manipulating things more, talking and exclaiming and generally being more of a kid. Very cute.

One more picture - of Veronica and Lama Wangdor and Lama Lena when they were all together last week. Just because I have a blog and a camera and I’m not afraid to use them!

A year ago today I was sitting on a rooftop in Kathmandu, smelling gunpowder in the air and listening to the sounds of a revolution happening in that small, Himalayan country. In the midst of it all I also listened to the sounds of my first granddaughter being born on the other side of the planet.

I’m not sure exactly where I was two years ago - I think it was either Mexico or Puna or points in between, but it was a long ways away from where I am today, on Danika’s first birthday. Today I had the unparalleled pleasure of celebrating my little darling’s first year on this planet with my family! For once I didn’t have to check in by phone or internet and hear rather than see with my own eyes.

Don’t get me wrong, I love this crazy life I’ve landed in where I spend so much of my time wandering around strange places doing things that my mother never dreamed of for me. I don’t believe I’d trade places with anybody else. Well, except maybe someone with a strong, athletic body and really good knees! I do love my life. But it’s hard missing firsts with my grandchildren. So this is great, being here for Dani’s birthday, getting to be a part of something that she’ll never experience again.

She looked charming in the dress I got her for the occasion. The little hippos on the skirt amused her mother and I no end!

We had a party at a kid-oriented pizza place with games and other families my daughter invited. The big kids had fun with games of chance. The little kids had fun with balloons and making terrible messes with impunity. And I got to watch Dani experience her first cupcake, which she did with an odd mixture of grace, enthusiasm and bemusement.

Not as dramatic as a revolution, nor as exotic as the mountains of Mexico is it? Still, it’s one other aspect of what has turned out to be a damned good life.

I’m in between trips for a few days which is nice. I’m NOT in between projects though - I’m simply so buried in them that I can’t even see exactly what they are! Mostly I just keep slogging away at the to-do pile, figuring that, if I can keep it from being bigger at the end of the week than it was at the beginning, I’m doing well. These past few days I’ve actually watched the heap shrink a little and that is a very satisfying sensation!

Mother’s Day was lovely, though briefer than we wanted it to be. I spent most of Sunday driving from Salem, OR down to Mt. Shasta, CA where the lamas were teaching for the weekend. I spent the night in Shasta and then picked them up and drove them back up here so they could spend a little time with me and daughter Veronica. Roni and I had time to go to breakfast Sunday morning before I left. Just the two of us while Kurtis watched the kids. This was a sweet and poignant thing to do since she and I used to have a standing date when she was little where the two of us would go and have breakfast on Sunday mornings. It was our time together. Doing it for Mother’s Day, now that we are both mothers, was… lovely. I look for all sorts of descriptive words and fall short; it was just such a lovely thing to do and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I not only really love my daughter, I *like* her too, she is someone whose companionship and perspective I value immensely.

Knowing I had to spend most of Sunday on the road, she surprised me on Saturday by celebrating a day early. She and the kids marched in where I was working away and each handed me something - even the baby was clutching a card in her cute little hand (a card which had tooth marks on the corner.) Flowers, utterly gorgeous ones - Roni knows my favourites and these were particularly stunning. Very indulgent chocolate truffles, loving cards and, because she really really knows me, a card for credit at the nearest coffee shop AND a double vanilla latte which she handed me with the truffles.

I got her a gift certificate, knowing that she’ll pick best what she really needs, but I wish I’d been able to surprise her with as much sweetness and love as she shows me. I am a very lucky mom!

The ride to Mt. Shasta went really fast on a beautiful spring morning. With not a lot of traffic due to Mother’s Day, I flew down I5. Mt. Shasta never fails to take my breath away when I come around the curves in the road and spot it for the first time:

The upland desert terrain around it only highlights the mountain’s austere beauty, particularly when there is still snow on the peaks. I5 runs through open country in the very North of California, averaging about 3000 or more feet up through the Oregon border. It’s good grazing land and good for horses as well. The area north of Shasta up past Yreka and up to the area outlying Mt. Ashland in Oregon is both bleak and dramatic; there is a wildness that hasn’t yet been tamed by civilization. One drives for miles through start mountains and dry expanses dotted with sagebrush and scanty grasses, land that people have not yet found a way to settle and turn into subdivisions. Here, Nature triumphs. As we drove back up through this high desert terrain on Monday morning, Lama Wangdor said that, of all the places he’s seen in the Western hemisphere, the area north of Shasta reminds him the most of Tibet, specifically the area of Kham in Eastern Tibet where his family has lived for generations. I’ve seen pictures and he’s right, there is a strong similarity. Tibet’s altitude is higher, but the kind of landscape is very similar and the volcanic mountains, often weirdly regular and cone-shaped, look very much like parts of the HImalayas.

I don’t feel actually caught up yet, but I’m feeling better about not being caught up, if that makes any sense. I’ll keep running and coming back with more until my plate is clean. Yeah, right and if you believe the line about my plate *ever* being clear, get in touch with me, I’ve a bridge or two I’d like to offer you a good deal on.

That’s about how long I estimate that I’ve been feeling sick on some level. It’s also about how long since we left Tso Pema and started our trek towards the U.S. I haven’t so much been getting sicker this whole time as never quite getting well before I start sniffling and coughing again. It’s gotten to the point where I’m disgusted with the whole thing, whiny about it and disgusted with my own whiny-ness as well as constantly aching and a little bit dizzy. I’m not keeping up with all I have to do, including maintaining a blog that is in any wise worth reading by people not my immediate family. I’ve been blaming everything from culture shock to too much MSG in American food to it being spring and there being too much pollen in the air.

So yesterday I talked to Lena who is in the Bay Area for a day or two and who talked to our good friend and physician Ellen G. who listened and said that it sounded to her like I’ve got the mycoplasm thingie that’s been going around that gives one a kind of walking pneumonia. Which is exactly what this feels like except I’d already TAKEN the danged antibiotics that should work on pneumonia and they didn’t. This particular buggie, however, appears not to be vulnerable to the stuff I’d already taken. So I’m on zithromax, one of those super new generation antibiotics that you take one every day for five days and that’s it. It’s supposed to do the trick. I’ve already gone 24 hours without a fever and my goop level is distinctly improved. Yay!!!

I had really hoped to write about the U.S. with the same eye and openness I’ve had during my travels in other countries and cultures. It’s a huge place after all and each region has differences as big as those between say France and North India. And yet, when you’ve grown up someplace or lived there a long time, it’s a real challenge to see things from a fresh perspective, to allow onesself to be surprised and delighted. It’s a lot easier to be alarmed or disgusted or saddened by changes I see happening in the land of my birth. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that some of this attitude has to do with feeling ill and that, as my health picks up, so will both my attitude and my curiousity about the world around me. My natural tendency is to be a woman of vast enthusiasms; I’d like to keep that aspect of my personality as I get older.

For the moment, I’m relying on the enthusiasm of those around me. My daughter is marvelous in that regard. She loves the countryside she’s living in, even though she finds the culture in her particular neighborhood a little bit… um… lacking.  I’m being discrete here. She’s gotta live around here in the world of strip malls and happy meals. And farms. That’s the part she really likes - the fields full of sheep and goats, the vast expanses of cropland, the mountains covered with pine trees. “The green,” she says, her eyes - with green flecks of their own against gold - lighting up, “Oregon is so very very green. Always!”

And it is, the variation of shades, the coolness of the pines and brightness of new deciduous leaves and the strong grasses are delightful to look at. Here where the rainfall is more than plentiful and the rivers run strongly, it’s always green:

There is something so very alive about the countryside. I hope to get out and actually take pictures driving through Salem and surrounding areas this week while everything is still in bloom. I don’t know the names for all the bushes - honestly, I didn’t know there were so many kinds of flowering bushes and shrubs in existance! They are all bursting right now and utterly glorious. Yeah, they are exploding pollen like mad and making people sneeze, but that seems a small price to pay for the incredible beauty of those pollen-heavy blossoms. Lilacs!  I had almost forgotten how much I love lilacs - you rarely see them in Northern California and, when you do, they’re puny compared to the heavily laden, densely leaved lilac bushes of my Midwestern childhood. As a kid I used to hide in the center of a grove of purple flowered bushes and just sit there, inhaling their clean, sweet scent. Purple lilacs, along with yellow roses, have always been my most favourite of flowers. I’m frankly a bit shaken that I had forgotten that until I saw them again this week in their full glory.  For much of my life, their appearance meant spring had arrived.

Spring is the coming to life, the resurgence of green, of new little lives leaping forth. There are lambs in the fields now. I saw a whole bunch of absolutely adorable little black critters nursing on their black-faced, white-coated mums in the past few weeks. Wish I could tell the breeds better from a distance, but that’s not one of my existing skills. Around me, little things that have come into being are growing every day. Here’s Molly’s kitten as she looks tonight:

Eyes open, ears still folded close to her head. She is marked and coloured so much like her mother that I jokingly refered to her as Mini-Me and now one of the names we’re contemplating for her is Minnie. The other is Screech. She looks like a Minnie, sounds like a Screech - which one will last?

And I must post at least one picture of the adorable granddaughter for family to see. I take at least a dozen pictures of her every day - she’s a source of such endless fascination and delight to me, so very much like her mother was at that age - full of life and smiles and giggles and the joy of exploration. I teared up tonight in happiness when she ran towards me with her arms flung out to be hugged. Call me a sap.

My sweet, adorable grandson modeling the fine hat his Aunt Jaye crocheted for him. He is very proud of his hat.

The remnants of the lace scarf I began this afternoon after my sweet, adorable grandson leaped upon it, broke the yarn and pulled it off the needles. Arggghhhhhh!!!

He got his comeuppance though - the cat peed on his hat tonight! So there!

Back to cast on the scarf again…

I’m trying not to get too far behind in my chronicles of life on the road. It’s easy to do, however, when you ARE on the road so much and spend a lot of time driving, waiting in line for airplanes, cruising around trying to find someplace to plug into and all the other things that make make being a vagabond different from being a homebody.

Last Saturday morning I got up, tossed a suitcase or two into the car and drove North to Whidbey Island, Washington where Rimpoche and Lena were teaching for the weekend. Whidbey is one of the islands scattered off the Pacific Northwest Coast, in Puget Sound. Like other places we’ve lived in the past few years (such as Bolinas and Montara) Whidbey Island is one of those places that was “discovered” in the 60’s and 70’s by hippies who wanted someplace where they could have some land, support themselves on it and maybe create art and culture. They moved to the densely wooded island and created a community that flourishes until today. Of course now, much like Bolinas and Montara, it’s become a desireable, upscale place to live and the property values have gone through the roof. So it’s become a weird blend of mellow, creative longtime residents and  new monied people who don’t know the area’s history. There are a lot of Volvos and BMWs on the streets in addition to older cars and pickups and wineries and antique shops vie for space with art galleries and coffee houses. Still, it’s a great place with great people. One of it’s excellent features is that it’s relatively hard to get to. You reach it by ferry - the kind you drive onto and get carried across the sound.

I love ferries. You get to sit and see the water and the scenery

and get where you’re going without having to drive it yourself. You can read or knit as you go. I got almost the entire toe of the first of the Irving Park socks completed on the ride back. They are taking forever. Turning out well, but taking forever.

The Buddhist sangha (community) where Rimpoche and Lena have frequently come to teach is centered on a core of about a dozen fantastic women. For many years I heard about them and corresponded with them on the arranging aspect of people and, through that, came to feel like I knew them even though we’d never met in person. Circumstances always had me otherwise committed when the teachings were happening there, preventing me from joining them. I’d been to the island before though with other friends and found it a gorgeous place and wanted to return. Last year I finally got my wish and went with Lena when she taught in this community and finally got to meet the women of Whidbey Island and many of their friends. This year was even better - I had some time to actually hang out and really get to know people like Lynn and Nan who hosted us.

I arrived in the middle of the teachings which began on Saturday. Lynn and Nan’s house is spacious, comfortable and full of art from many hands in many lands (though a whole lot of it is local to them.) For whatever reason this trip, driving makes me really really tired and sleepy so I crawled in, up the stairs and fell over for a couple of hours. Sunday there were more teachings in a local space that clearly functions as a temple and celebrates the elements. My lamas (yes I feel a bit possessive about them both - wanna make something out of it ;-P) were splendid as always, explaining meditation and the nature of Mind with clarity, compassion and humor.

Monday morning they flew back to the Bay Area where there are events over the next couple of weeks. I stayed on Whidbey Island through Wednesday as many people in the community had made appointments with me for readings and astrology charts. Because I had limited time, I stacked the days rather fuller than my usual and saw quite a large number of people. After using my psychic muscles and talking for 7 hours straight each day, I fear I was pretty incoherent in the evenings. Lynn and Nan probably think I’m a simpleton - I said “huh?” and “Errr” a lot over dinner. However I do think I did right by most of my clients and was able to give them the attention and information they needed and deserved, so I feel satisfied with my work.

Yesterday I drove back to Oregon to Veronica’s house. It hailed on the way through central Washington State. How it hailed!  I’ve never seen anything quite so intense - a hard wind driving piles of white pellets at the ground until it was covered and the little bits of ice jumped and danced as more hit, making the earth writhe and shimmy. They bounced off the hood and windshield, right in through the car window and into my lap. Visibility was non-existant and traffic crawled so I didn’t get back here until supper time. Everyone has colds and/or ear infections so it’s kleenex city here today. Only one of the kids made it in to school. I think I’m doing fairly well writing coherent sentences with screaming babies, cartoons and toy xylophones all around me. At least the little ones are being affectionate despite their sniffles; I keep ending up with a lapful of baby and toddler vying for hugs and tickles.

I wanted to share a couple of nice things with y’all, just because I can.

First, something beautiful. We had our Dharma friends, Murray and Mindy, bring down the suitcase with our altar things that we’d stored in Vancouver. We need the setup for various teachings and ceremonies and, sadly, it turned out that I won’t be going up to Canada myself during this trip to the West. It seems very weird as BC had become so much a home to me over the last few years, but that’s the way things have gone and I don’t have the flexibility either practically or energetically to alter that particular flow right now. So we asked Murray to grab a few needed items on his way down from Vancouver to the Whidbey Island gathering. Among the relics, books and other objects was this:

It’s a quilt about 28″ square, made for me a few years ago by my British friend Freyalynn. Freyalynn is an artist. Obviously. Boy am I good at understatements! Freyalynn has a way with fibre - everything from spinning and knitting to the quilter’s arts. She sent us this gorgeous piece and I use it as an altar cloth. It’s been packed away since we lost the house in Oakland and I missed it. It goes back to India with me so I can continue to enjoy it’s colours and symmetry. Believe me, the photo doesn’t really do it justice! Things created by people’s hands are not things I can easily part with, particularly when they are truly beautiful. This quilt, the tiny bead basket made for me by Sylvia, Lena’s mom’s hand forged silver chains… these are the real treasures of our lives.

Although my space is limited, I do have a new treasure from this past weekend that will come home with me:

Once again, the photo is inadequate. You can see the huge central piece, an assemblage of stone, glass and silverwork in proportion to the nearby penny. The beads are a variety of cut stones from turquoise to coral to aquamarine and clear quarts and make a frame for the center piece created by a glass artist on Whidbey. Each of those tiny squares that pave the silver cylinder are individual glass tiles made by hand. The piece itself was a gift from Lynn and totally blew me away. I’d seen it and secretly admired it and then, on Sunday, she handed it to me saying that it was “me” - that she and her friends had realized that I was the right person to have this piece. On me it’s in proportion whereas, on someone of average height/size it’s overwhelming. I am so thrilled and honored and excited. This is exactly the kind of unique weable art that I love the most!

And finally, something sweet. This is Molly, the stray that adopted Veronica and family last fall. When I first got here in April, Molly was pregnant and we were all excited - Roni because she loves cats (was apprenticed at one time to a woman who breeds Abyssinians) and me because I would get to watch kittens grow up and I was missing that experience with our own Chime’s babies back in India while we’re here. Then, the day I left for the East Coast last month, Molly gave birth to 2 premature kittens. They didn’t live even a day and we were all really heartbroken. Except… Except the vet thought there was still one more kitten in Molly’s womb. Usually, when this happens the vet has to go in and spay the cat and remove the (usually) dead kitten before the mother is harmed. In this case however, Molly acted perfectly fine and normal after the other kittens died so the vet said to just keep and eye on her and see, that maybe there wasn’t another kitten or maybe something else, but no need for intervention if the cat wasn’t acting sick. So they watched and waited and, 5 days ago, Molly gave birth - on the sofa in the middle of the household chaos - to a perfectly healthy kittne that looks just like her! It’s nursing and growing and seems to be a fine little girl kitty. So we’re getting our wish after all. And the cat population of the world isn’t being increased by more than this household can accomodate.

No name for miss kitten yet, but aren’t they sweet? Can’t wait until she gets to what Nyondo calls the “furry bullet” stage where they’re into everything. Right. I’ll probably regret saying that one of these days…