This was an Ipomoea removal day. Actually, the garden could use an Ipomoea removal month. I had a gorgeous blue one, but I took it out because it was threatening to eat the entire garden. I still have runners running in every direction for what seems like miles.

In the meantime, my worst nightmare is coming true: The feral kittens are getting romantic. I facetiously remarked at the start that I hoped the boys wouldn't impregnate the girls before they were all tame enough to undergo alterations. I thought I was joking at the time, but these tiny little kittens are already getting frisky with each other. There are five females in the bunch. What a potential disaster!

Luckily, four of them (two boys, two girls) are already tame enough to put into carriers for the vet. She's my house-call vet, so she comes to the house to pick them up, takes them to a veterinary hospital to perform the surgery, and then brings them back home "flat." That means they're still under the effects of anaesthesia and they wake up at home instead of at the vet's. It's much less stressful for them this way, except for the part where I grab them and lock them up in a cage, of course.

Zuzu, the mathematics of kitty reproduction are "exponential" -- good thing you're being proactive!

FUNNY cartoon! Nova is our first female cat, and both of our males came to us already altered (both of them adopted us). At what age does a female cat start experiencing heat? I had expected it by now from Nova, but so far, no signs at all. We plan on getting her spayed, but since she's an exclusively indoor cat, we haven't worried too much yet.

Evey - 7 months is when females can go into heat, then every 4 (?) weeks after that. Males flux a little.. sometimes younger (I had a boy who went through the change at 5 months, I have another boy who's nearly 8 months & still hasn't figured out that he's a boy).

Zuzu - Here, we do have a problem with bindweed and the Colorado Dept of Ag is trying a new way of controlling it. They've brought in a specific little moth that eats only bindweed from Asia, which seems to work because the bindweed we have here is from Asia. However, with as many different types of moths there are, how can we be assured that, once the bindweed is gone, the moths (rather the caterpillars) don't go for something else?

Toni, was that 7 a typo or are you talking about female cats who go to finishing school? The less civilized (i.e., more slutty) cats in my neighborhood start doing that at 4 months, so if I were to wait until a female was 7 months old before spaying her, she'd already be close to weaning her first litter.

It must be another case of climatic differences -- no dormancy period here.

I love the cartoon, Mike.

Zuzu - no, here, cats don't go into heat until they're about 7 months old. That's why I usually get 'em fixed at 6 months of age.. old enough to be "mature", but still young enough not to have the cancer problems & stuff. Not to mention the yodelling would drive me INSANE!!!!!!! & My Odin still haven't hit "puberty" and he's about 8 months old. Of course, this has been a miserably cold winter this year.. more like a winter in upstate NY than CO.

The shelters here don't go by age. They spay and neuter kittens when they reach 2 pounds. There must be something to that because Magnolia, the smallest of my females, is still quite virginal, although her littermates are chasing each other from one room to another.

No yodeling here -- more like trilling. Quite sweet, actually.

Okay... Nova is older than that and doesn't seem to have had her first heat... at least not that I've noticed. Guess it's time to go to the vet.

Very creepy item in the Press Democrat today. Luckily, I live in such a small town that the chief of police actually saw the incident in progress on his way to work.

http://www.sonomawest.com/arti...

Can you imagine being attacked by clippers (and bitten!) when you catch someone stealing your plants?

Wow, that's just nuts.

Wow explains that pretty well. I just wish they would have mentioned what kind of ornamental shrubs. MJ perhaps? LOL!

No, Toni. We hide those among the Texas Star hibiscus plants here and no one knows the difference.

Well, here, we just brag about having 150+ plants in your basement on the local nightly news, then complain and whine when the DEA busts you & throws you in jail.

http://www.9news.com/news/loca...

Yep; there are some really strange people out there and one showed up in my courtroom yesterday morning, claiming that he was not the defendant named in the lawsuit, that the defendant named was a corporate fiction and he would only answer questions if the judge assured him it was an admiral (not admiralty) court. And his wife, the other defendant, is a Russian immigrant who would need an interpreter to testify, but she was home with their three young children. Wonder if she needed an interpreter for that? They live among us, they drive and they breed! Scary.

My take on this scenario is that he bought himself a foreign wife off the internet, which is even scarier.

Down South the news media usually opts to interview a person in bib overalls with few teeth who looks and sounds like Gomer Pyle on the Andy Griffith show.

Angie, the gang in the Public Defender's Office in San Francisco used to describe their clients of that ilk as "felony stupid."

just popping in to say hello... looks like you have a lot going on over here.. nice job!

Thanks, Allison. We have a great bunch of people here.

Ok, just got home and wanted to add a couple of pics of that little plant I got on the trail Zuzu before I go sit in front of the TV with my laptop (that I can't seem to get connected to the desktop for some reason.

Here's some of the wooded trail.

Here's the plant. Need to find the name, do you know?

The spots are so cool