Kitty Proofing the Homestead in Everyday Ramblings

Yesterday morning I went to the farmers market up on the Portland State campus and discovered that the fall market starts at 9 AM, instead of the half hour earlier start in spring and summer. Luckily I had my camera with me. I just wandered around and watched the heavy fog burn off and looked for sweet potatoes.

Convolvulacae is the Latin name for the Morning Glory family (the genus is Ipomoea), and sweet potatoes are apparently the only member of said family that has any commercial value as an edible plant. (We had a long discussion on Pictionary night about the nutritional value of sweet potatoes vs yams.)

Apparently there are two different kinds of sweet potato, those traditionally classified as firm (or dry) and those referred to as soft (or moist). These descriptions refer to the flesh once it has been cooked. The firm types were the first grown in the U.S., so when the soft ones were introduced growers decided to use the word yam to distinguish them. Real yams are not sweet.

Interesting obscure fact… a key ingredient in many birth control pills comes from yams. The real ones, not the colorful orange moist sweet potatoes sold here in North America as yams.

Okay, okay, I know you didn’t start reading this post because you were looking for a disquisition on sweet potatoes. It is just I looked all over the market yesterday for them and all I could find were some grown on a sustainable farm but not an organic one.

It is raining now but yesterday it turned into a gorgeous day and I was out and about in it quite a bit.

In the afternoon, filled out application in hand I went to the Pixie Project here to visit cats available for adoption. The truth is, I was a gonner before I ever went. I looked at the cats available online beforehand and couldn’t stop thinking about Chuckie and Diego. (You may have to scroll down to see their pictures.)

I wasn’t allowed to have pets as a kid so when I first lived away from home I had a boy kitten, a big sweet gray tabby. This was all happening at a subconscious level though. When I walked into the place, which does not look like a pet adoption place in the least, they were the first two cats I saw.

I spent time alone with all the cats, the adorable kittens, the older cats and these two. They let me pick them up and hold them on my shoulder, both of them. They are two-year-old brothers and come from a sad disruptive unhealthy home where the boy who loved them had to be removed to foster care.

Diego has a crooked short tail too but otherwise is very healthy. Chuckie has the softest fur. They are rowdy and playful and do not bite!

The plan is that I bring them home next Friday.

Eek!

After some good-natured back and forth with Kes, I have decided to change Chuckie’s name to Carlo. I can speak Italian to him… (I am still reading Dante) and Spanish to Diego, which I still need to learn for my yoga teaching.

Diego has to go back the following week for some surgery on that bad eye and although it will be a hassle I can deal.

What a change this will be after a couple of years with two older sick cats to have such vital vibrant playful rowdiness in the place. But I figure I better do it now as I am not getting any younger.

It all may not happen, but my guess is, it will. The staff at the rescue place loves these guys. They get a lot of attention.

Wish us all luck through this transition.

Last updated November 09, 2018