Dirty Rice on Fat Tuesday

It's Mardi Gras, so, yes, it's actually Fat Tuesday in the blog. We had decadent pastries for breakfast (4 for a dollar at Jewel), and we're having New Orleans-style dirty rice tonight. This is a summer picture with Mardi Gras beads, not on us. But I'm not so festive after hearing on NPR about the Carnival-related deaths in Haiti. Sigh... So, since I can't dance with my brothers and sisters, I won't dance at all.

Instead, I will tell you about the fat cats--well, not so much fat as large, wild, healthy-looking--probably feral cats hunting in my back yard this afternoon in the sunshine. They worked as a pair. First there was some digging in the ground, rolling in the sun against the roots of the sweetgum tree, and eating of dried catmint. I think they might have been getting high in my back yard. It made them all the more alert and attentive...to the birds! The cardinals that nest in the mugo pine. They stalked these birds. They retraced the steps of the flocks of juncos and winter starlings that graze seeds in my back yard. I did not see them kill anything, but I did think of the eternal conflict between Lavinia (cats) and Emily (birds) Dickinson.

One (cat, not Dickinson sister) was striped and blotched as if a big, beautiful gray tabby had mated with a giant diamond-backed slug. The other (cat) was also a gray tabby mix, but with a red fox. This is impossible, but appeared true. They were gorgeous cats who took over the yard on Fat Tuesday, looking for things to eat. (Or get high on.) Here are more of the 3 generations of women (sisters, daughters, moms) who met in Michigan this past summer. And here are some Presidents we met on the beach. On Presidents Day. On Facebook. Feral Presidents. Of the mind.