The Last of the Kitty Porn (For Now)
I’m kind of a freak for gardening and stuff. I never cared much for it as a kid, but when I got a yard of my own…well, I haven’t been the same since. I guess I was just born to hoe. (Oh, the homonymic irony.)
Anyway, I’ve been going at it for a month now, pruning, planting, digging up stuff that didn’t survive the storm, and so on. And among my biggest problems has been the snail vine that’s taken over my neighbor’s yard. Under normal growing conditions, I’m sure it’d be manageable, but between our subtropical climate and the effects of global warming, it’s about as invasive as cat’s claw (a New Orleans nightmare) or kudzu (a real pain in Mississippi, but which thankfully doesn’t like the soil south of Lake Pontchartrain). The stuff started out at the very back of his yard; it’s now traveled halfway down the dog-trot, taking over the fence in the process:
Obviously, something had to be done before the vine colonized my yard, too, and my neighbor–who, from his waxed eyebrows, I’d guess is a drag queen, but what do I know?–wasn’t the man to do it. So yesterday, I gave up the last precious hours of my spring vacation and tackled the problem.
It was rough work. The weather was humid, and the vines were huge and ropy and kinda slimy. Half an hour into the project, I had to sit down.
So there I was, leaning against an air conditioner, slugging Diet Coke like a Phi Mu slugs tequila, and I heard–you guessed it–a tiny meow. I looked down, and there she was: the kitten, hanging out with a couple of her brothers and sisters. I scrambled for my cameraphone, and in the process, scared off the others, but she stayed put, just long enough for a photo:
I don’t really miss bottle-feeding her, but I kinda hope she’ll pay us a visit when she learns how to jump the fence….
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