Why Cats Look At You That Way

Don't even THINK about messing with this keyboard, human!

I've noticed that our cat Mike has a habit of looking at his human servants as if we were completely fricking insane As if lobsters were crawling out of our ears and dancing jigs. A reasonable enough thing to do, I suppose, but how does he KNOW? I've thought about it a bit, and I've come up with a theory.

Whenever any of us eat anything, Mike has to know what it is. He'll walk right over to you and carefully sniff it. We are eating it, so it must be meat, right? But all to frequently, it is not meat. It is popcorn or bread or a cookie, or a vegetable of some kind. He sniffs whatever we drink to see if it's edible as well. It never is, but he has to know.

Being a carnivore, I'm sure that the smells Mike smells tells him pretty much the same thing that the smell of cardboard, wooden planks, paper or plastic forks tells us: "This is inedible. Eating it will do you no good whatever. Do not bite!"

But Mike, being a cat, has no idea about carnivores and omnivores, symbiotic bacteria in digestive systems and whatnot. He only knows that his humans, although they regularly eat good, wholesome meat (giving far too little of it to him) also eat things that are clearly inedible.

And of course, there's your insanity. We chew on things that are clearly not meant to be eaten, and eat it, and show every sign of enjoying eating it. We are clearly crazy. Case closed!

"Rocky Road!" I Scream

I-75 in the northern Tennessee/Kentucky areas is not a place where you want to go careening off the road.

Just about every time we drive north on I-75 for some trip or other, I whip out the camera and take some pics of the rocky roadside cliffs. They look almost man-made, but of course, they're not, well, not totally. The rocks are laid down in almost perfectly horizontal strata, and then when the road crews blast the rocks away and trim a bit, you get this ... horizontal strata lines with some vertical lines probably made in the blasting/clearing process. Even knowing what it is, it's still cool to see. I mean, come on! The horizontal lines are straighter than the stone barbecue pit (PRESUMABLY made by humans) pictured further down in the blog.

Which reminds me of a funny story about my parents. A few years ago we were walking about in the north Georgia farm where my father grew up. We walked up to "the holler," a mountain hollow above the valley that most of the farm is in located in. We came across a low stone wall less than a foot high. My father said, "Well you went to college, what do you think of that wall?"

I looked carefully at the wall. It was clearly a retaining wall that my grandfather, my father and my uncles (I have about five of them from my dad's side of the family alone) built so they could farm in the Holler. And I knew what Dad was up to at that moment. So I said, after examining the wall, "Well the workmanship is too crude to have been built recently. I think Indians may have built it! In fact ..." I looked at the wall again. "In fact, that workmanship is too crude for Indians. I don't think human beings built this wall at all. It must have been built by Neanderthals."

If you could have seen the grins on my parents' faces when I came up with that lulu ... ah, life is good sometimes.

What Are YOU Looking At?

Can you guess what you're looking at here? It's a cropped but otherwise unaltered photo. Answer in comments.

Don't Let The Warm Autumn Lull You!

A picture of our backyard barbecue grill under tons of snow last year, when six actual inches of snow landed in Roswell, bringing the town to a standstill. Fortunately, we had the basics of survival ... potato chips, soft drinks and cable television!

Do It Again! Do It Again! Do It Again!

Nothing keeps your cats light and fluffy like a ride in the washer, and our cat Mike loves it!

Where Are the Fast, Easy, Reasonably Priced Restaurants With Wi-Fi?

that serve dinner? We're looking for a place where we can have a light, fast meal after working out at the gym, and it's suprisingly hard to do. We want a place where you can go in, quickly order a meal and get served fast and visit a few websites and play Words With Friends via wifi while we eat. And hopefully something other than fried burgers and fried potatoes. (Nothing wrong with burger & fries but they are NOT health foods.)

So far what we got is Shane's Rib Shack up in Alpharetta and Barberito's and Your Pie in Roswell, all of which fill the bill nicely. The big problem is that fast, nice, fun places that have wifi generally serve lunch only. (There's also Moe's in Roswell, very near Your Pie, but it's Tex-Mex like Barberito''s and we like Barberito's better.)

Anyone got a recommendation on some similar restaurants not too far from the Roswell Historic District area? (Restaurants IN the Roswell Historic District tend to be expensive, not have wifi, and hard to get into ... but we would love to hear of an exception).