Saturday excitement

Hi there!

Last Saturday, Blondie and I went for our morning 1,5 km (mile) stroll. The main purpose for the “stroll” is to have Blondie (our golden Labrador, almost 2 years old) get some exercise (me too!), and take care of necessary business. Since I’ve been back from my Bulgarian trip, the composition of the stroll group has changed. Now, instead of just Blondie and me, the group has grown to four: Delta, our 10-year-old large (6kg = 13lb) grey cat (whom we brought with us from France) and Prada (a new kitten “orphaned” with her mother on the steps of our shop while I was in Belgium buying beer in June – “Prada” as in “The Devil Wears Prada” – about 3 months old) have joined us on a daily basis! This does slow us down some, because four are always interested in more things than two!

The morning crew at Tenuta Collicello

Saturday morning, Delta was feeling aggressive even before we left. Along the way, we met up with David, our 7-year-old Siamese-style cat, also from France. Delta was unhappy about this, which he decided to take out on David. David, being a good middle-level manager, passed the grief on to Prada. Prada went up a handy oak tree to escape the heat, but David was also forced up the same tree by Delta! David stopped at about 3m (10ft), but Prada made it up to about 10m (33ft)! David, being an experienced tree-climber, made it back down under his own power after about 30 minutes “cool-off time.” Prada was never up a tree before (as far as I know), and didn’t have the foggiest idea how to come back down. After trying to climb the tree myself (branches too small) and to coax her down for another 15-20 minutes, I gave up. I went back to the Tenuta (about 300m = 330yards) to get an extension ladder and bring it in the van because (1) it’s heavy, and (2) since we had a thunderstorm Friday afternoon, it was still quite muddy. I managed to organise this all and got the little one down without additional serious problems. That shot about 70-80 minutes of my day, but created conversation and blog material!

Unfortunately, Blondie missed some of her stroll, but the back-and-forth probably made up for that.

This morning (Monday), it was just Blondie and me again. The end of an “era?”

Ciao for now…

Craig