Memo and flowers

Warning: No poker content. If that's going to bother you, you could just stop reading now, rather than complain later.

I'm up in Salt Lake City, of course. Visited Mom in the nursing home today. I'm staying with Dad and one of my nieces, who has moved in here since the last time I came. Her cat also moved in. His name is Memo.

Why Memo? I asked her. She very helpfully told me, "It's short for 'Memorandum.'" Can you tell that I come from a family of smartasses?

I've been playing with Memo a lot today. He's an excellent cat and fun to watch.

That's his bird-watching perch. The finches come to the bird feeders a few feet outside this window, and he gets all predatory--crouching, stalking, sometime standing up on his hind legs.

That's my very red rental car in the background.

But his favorite thing to do is chase his butterfly toy. It has something inside that makes an apparently pleasing-to-cats noise when he bats or bites at it. So he does:

He also seems to enjoy swatting it under the stove where he can't get at it, then mewling pitiably until somebody takes mercy on him and fetches it out with a yardstick. Within a few minutes, it's stuffed under there again. It's a strange game, but at least the rules are simple.

As for flowers, well, here are the two that my dad mounted to the top of his car to make it easy to spot his car in a parking lot:




And here, in the rosebushes that line one end of the front yard, is one of the last roses of the season. It made me think of somebody I'm missing very much.

That's all from Utah. Heading back to Vegas tomorrow.