To Cat Owners

Jones is not only the world's most boring cat, she also has another distinction: the cleanest ears that I have ever seen. When I took her to the vet for the first time, one of the things he did was stick a magnifying scope in her ear and show me the yucky mites crawling around in there. She just loved that I'm sure, the mites and the scope. He then cleaned her ears out. Jones: Feline Water Torture! Why???? What looked like a quart of gunk was gently washed from her poor infested ear canals. He sent me home with a treatment regimen which involved more cleaning, medication, a wait period, then more medication. Poor kitty. But that was a couple of years ago and her ears are still perfectly clean and she never scratches at them with her hind claws or shakes her head. I always thought that cats just had ear wax, but that dark goop seems to be exclusively a symptom of ear mites. I recommend exercising your totalitarian authority over your cats and treating them for ear mites. I wish I had done it for all my cats.

November is planting time! Garden rambling.

Do you ever feel like you've flipped through all the channels and there's nothing on the internet? It's ridiculous, I know. But here I am, creating content instead. Last year I planted annual seeds in November for the first time and now it's that time again, full circle. The Agrostemma/Corn Cockles did well last year, but I can't see any sign they reseeded like they were supposed to. With only one year's experience, I can't recognize the sprouts like I can with other things. Another no-show that's more worrisome: I pulled out all my Bloody William a few months ago, confident that there would be lots of babies, but where are they? I've only spotted one so far. The California poppies have a number of seed pods, yay! Maybe my CA poppy fail is over, and the honeywort has definitely made lots of babies. I'm determined to try again with the ladybird poppies. I think slugs ate all the seedlings before New Year's last year. More bait might offer a different outcome. All in all, it was a good garden year and it's exciting to think that spring and a new garden season is half a year away Jeepers, woman, it's not even Winter yet just around the corner.