So I’m sitting in the half-dark working at the computer.  It’s early, it’s cold, but the woodstove is starting to heat the room up.

Go-Go-Girl has found a 1″ wooden ball somewhere (where do these cat toys appear from??) and it is careening wildly across the wood floor.  She loves soccer, so across the room like a shot it goes with Go-Go-GO!-Girl right behind it.  Back and forth with pauses to lick some part that needs it.  Into the kitchen.  Back into the dining room.  Background music as I compute.

Suddenly as the ball flies by under my feet, out of the darkness by the bookshelf comes “Hisssssssssss!”  It’s F-Cat, lashing out as Go-Go-Girl flashes past.  I had no idea F-Cat was there, and I jumped.

Meanwhile Go-Go loses the ball behind the woodpile next to the stove.  So I retrieve it, and send it back out into the playing field.  But this time F-Cat tackles the ball on the fly and starts her more gentle and controlled dribbling, moving the ball in careful slalom around the rocking chair, a perfect practice drill.  Go-Go watches from the sidelines.  F-Cat tires of this quickly though, and mews to leave the room into quieter colder parts of the house.  I wait a bit, then let her go.

Go-Go collects the ball again, pauses, and she’s off again, into her fictional World Cup championship game against imaginary also-rans.  Then a pause (paws?) in the noise behind me.  My body tenses.  Waiting… waiting… suddenly it’s a full speed sprint across the floor and … but there’s no ball.  Go-Go changes fantasies and leaps instead for the bay windowsill to watch the early birds arriving at the bird feeder outside.  Active playtime turns to passive Cat TV time.  Sigh.  Mornings with cats.  Time for another cup of coffee. Then it’ll be time for morning with chickens.

It was inevitable, following my reprehensible actions. Late last week I expressed dismay (? well, at least disbelief) that I had not once this winter shoveled our driveway. It was very shortly thereafter that the first inklings of the latest (last night’s) snowstorm started to hit the weather predictions. Then over the weekend I found opportunity again, and repeated my proclamation, thus sealing today’s “snow day” for schools all over the midwest, and adding another X inches of in the east and northeast today. To all who feel inconvenienced by my actions, I apologize. To those who get out and enjoy this snow, You’re Welcome!

I was up last night around 2am, helping Mandy get out the door and on the road, in the middle of the snowfall. Actually, near the end. We already had 8-10″ on the ground and only a couple more inches fell after that. It was beautiful outside, and the snow was perfect powder, light and fluffy… a joy to shovel, or even to sweep.

my winter friend Tippy

This morning though, it was worktime. After coffee and some early emails, I headed outside with water and feed for the chickens. First I shoveled out to the west flock (not so far) and shoveled out a circular path for them in their yard. Then I invited them out and sprinkled scratch grains all along the circular drive… half of them joined me. Changed water, collected eggs, added feed, chatted up the peeps (6 little ones, three months old, have their own little corral in the coop) and headed back to restock.

Tippy joined me then, stretching as he came out of the garage… the other cats (Caprica 6, Georgina and Sassy - our three polydactyls) had been across at the east flock last night, so I hadn’t expected to see anyone this morning here. Tippy rides my shoulder all winter long whenever he’s around, and he mewed to jump up.

As we trudged across to the east flock through the drifts (not quite knee high), I found I was following Tippy’s footpath. Obviously it was the footpath we use every day, but the 6″ of snow that had fallen since yesterday’s trip to close up the east flock and the blowing powder should have obliterated the path… but here it was, freshly marked by Tippyprints only partially reclaimed by the drifts.

Tippy's trackway, 10" powder

O Intrepid Cat! O Noisome Traveler! (I could say noisy, but sometimes this field cat is more noisome than noisy). After following his path, I could see that he went from the east coop barn overnight, over to the nearby garage, then back to the usual path and over to find me. He had leapt through the deepest snow in several places, but mostly trudged through the powder dragging his belly. I was proud of him then. He is a fine companion cat for the out of doors.

The chickens are all fine this morning. I used my boots to scuffle out a smaller circlepath for the east flock and scattered their scratch grains outside too. The roosters deigned to join the hens this morning, as seems their fair-weather prerogative. But everyone seemed happy. And I was too.

Caprica 6, our polydactyl (”Hemingway”) cat, had two kittens about 3 1/2 weeks ago. She moved them five times. They were born outdoors somewhere, then moved into the garage at 5 days, then moved outdoors outside the garage, then far away in another outdoor location, then back into the garage again last night.

Caprica shows off her extra digits

Caprica is an enigma. We don’t know where she came from. She appeared early this spring as a pregnant seemingly-teenage mother, completely feral but apparently starved enough to approach humans. We fed her well, but she lost her litter, probably not able to make milk or care for them in the condition she was in. Slowly, over the summer, she gained weight, warmed to us, and finally allowed us to begin to pet her a little bit. She never loses her nervousness entirely. On the day that we were first able to really pet her while she was lying down, we noticed that on each front paw, one of her extra toes had grown a terrifically long and horrible claw that curved around and pierced the skin between her toes, because it doesn’t wear normally. Her own claws were growing into her foot. We wrapped her up in a towel and trimmed them. We noticed the next day, and ever since, that she meowed differently - she used to yowl with each meow, and now she doesn’t so much.

Wild creature of the forest

Polydactyl cats have extra toes! Ernest Hemingway’s house grounds was, and continues to be, home to polydactyl cats, thus the nickname Hemingway Cats. It’s a genetic propensity that Caprica has passed to her two kittens. In fact, one of them has more toes than she does!

“I have HOW many extra toes on my feet??!”

You can find out more about polydactyls here. And at this informative site, too.