We dared to go out tonight to friends’ house for dinner, so Group 2 was locked up in our bedroom for several hours. Now we’re back home and they’re roaming around, having been sprung, getting in each others’ way and hissing their heads off. But at one point a rather spectacular hissfest between Luigi and Rosie (Luigi having cornered her, not such a good idea) was so loud and scary that both Missoni and Tabitha jumped up on the buffet in the dining room either to escape or to watch the show. They were completely concerned with what was going on down on the floor between the other two and didn’t realize that they were only three feet apart from each other. Is this progress?

Missoni finally jumped down when she realized, with a start, how close she was to Tabitha. Tab has been chasing after Missoni, and started after her once again, but I scooped her up and stopped her. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. Maybe in a few more weeks our life will return to normal, the four kitties being more adjusted to one another, and we can resume our worrying about being kidnapped and beheaded instead of breaking up catfights. You just never know in life. Who would have ever thought we would have four cats? And my mother is now so far past being able to even be grateful that we’ve turned our lives upside down to give them a home here, or even to be aware that the cats are gone from her house, that it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter, but I look at her two cats, who are actually settling in here quite well (it’s our original two who are crazed) and think “I just really couldn’t have put them up for adoption, we will all – animals and humans – make it work somehow.”

Today it’s one year since my father died — his yahrzeit – and I remember on the day he died noting that had been a particularly spectacular day here – big puffy clouds, blue skies, the perfect temperature outside, just a hint of a breeze, flowers and birds everywhere. It was like that today too, particularly gorgeous. Once the rains start every June, things do get better.