Rocky here, with the whole staff to greet all our dear friends! Please forgive us for dropping out of sight ... but I want you to know it wasn't we cats' fault ... the human artists were the problem! We faithful felines would never abandon you like this for a whole month!There are so-o-o-o many things to tell you -- both sad and happy -- but rather than wear out my big pink paws and give you all eyestrain, I'll start with one thing today and continue the sorry saga tomorrow.
Sad stuff first ... The humans disrupted everything for two weeks with their dillydallying around about the gigantic toppling catalpa tree in our backyard. (Since they insist on calling me "RockyBlocky", I've renamed Sharolyn and Suzanne "Dilly" and "Dally".)
Finally I put down my paw and hissed, "Hey, Dilly & Dally, stop sitting around wringing your hands over the $2,000 estimates, bite the bullet and down the darned tree before it wipes us all out and we'll NEVER blog again!!" So finally on Aug. 12 they did ... and for two terrible days we had a thundering yard full of bucket trucks and dump trucks and cranes and chippers and chain saws.
After the tree was gone, the humans went into a depression because the tree was over 100 years old and their mama loved that tree and now there's no shade in the yard and the lawn is fried. And without the tree we can't sleep because the streetlights blind us in bed at night and the sun scorches us during the day.
It really is sad ... look at all the shade in our yard in May, before that second bolt of lightning hit our tree ...
And at the end of the catalpa's demise, we were left with this .... 
And at the end of the catalpa's demise, we were left with this .... Now that I have everyone thoroughly depressed, including myself, I'll wait until tomorrow to tell you about all the fleas and the ferals and the calf that went over the Bridge ... then it's on to the good, happy news .... I promise!
YUM! I think I'd give up Temptations for a platter of that seafood stinky goodness!!
That dark streak down the middle of the trunk is where lightning struck the first time. The lighter streaks on the sides and the stripped bark is where lightning struck yesterday. The streak goes from the top of the tree to the ground, and this tree is at least 5 stories high!
No doubt it would take out our neighbor's house, too, and probably half the neighborhood:
Well, the humans have been on the phone all day, calling tree services, calling arborists to see if the tree can be saved, calling insurance companies, calling, calling, calling. I say, JUST DO IT! More storms are coming even as I type, so I'm going out there to topple the thing myself -- before I end up with a tree trunk up my tuchas while I'm trying to nap!! I mean, a CAT can handle a CATalpa, right?
As you can see, they haven't had much success so far in taming this poor, horrified thing. I think they should let me go down there and have a talk with it. As a former feral myself, I think I'd have much better luck taming those kittens than somehuman who spends her time immersed in the laws of physics! She's probably reasoning with the poor babies by explaining kinetic and potential energy to them! 
