“See it, smell it, taste, it, and forget the time of day or year. Autumn needs no clock or calendar,”

I'm taking a wild guess and saying that Peacock wakes up at 5 AM, maybe goes to work at 6-6:30 AM. Every single morning we've had Turtle 🐶, she's woken me up at 5 AM. 
I glare at her, ignore her until 6:30 AM while she lies there, perfecting her tragic stare. 
At 6:30, we move to the living room, where she paces and paces and looks longingly at the door. 
I tell her to cool it. 
No one’s going outside until the sun shows up.

Once the sun starts peeping through the window, I grab her leash.
She heads to the door, doing that strange little dance she always does, and we head to the backyard.

I will say there are some advantages to being awake and outside at the crack of dawn.
This morning, the fog was heavy over Farmer’s Daughter’s field -eerie but beautiful.
And the old rusty basketball goal was full of purple morning glories climbing to the top.

There’s a quiet kind of beauty in waiting on a geriatric dog to finish her business.

Fall has crept up on us. 
I need a jacket now when I go out early.

Then we come inside, and by 1 PM we’ve gone out at least a dozen more times.
Turtle’s an old gal-they just estimate her age using Peacock’s daughter as the measuring stick.
Gealach is 11, which puts Turtle somewhere between 12 and 14.
She was a stray found on the streets, so the vet guessed and said he was going with the higher number.

Peacock suspects someone mistreated her.
Her tongue is split, almost serpentine on one side.
If that’s true, it might’ve aged her faster, or made it harder to tell how old she really is.
But she’s still a gentle giant-as long as you’re not a groundhog.

The day moved along as it normally does.

I had a grumpy Cowboy move the front door camera over.
I gripe about his scraggly old angel trumpet bush, but if it hadn’t covered up the camera on that side, I never would have discovered a better way to record.
With how I’ve got the front door camera now, I actually get people coming in the door.
Before -and we’d had it like that for a good five years -all you got was people’s noses.

Then Cowboy disappeared for a good long while and came home with hay.
He either went to the Co-Op or one of his buddies who has hay.
It’s that time of year -the chickens need a warmer bed.

This starts a stretch where Badger’s mostly out of commission.
She’s stayed in her room, quiet and curled up with a heating pad.
Luckily, her doctor appointment is next week, and we’re hoping to finally get some answers to whatever’s been going on.

Cowboy headed to the kitchen for his dinner, popped open the lid, and exclaimed, “What is this?!” in a startled tone.
I was less than thrilled.
I reminded him that Badger is out of commission, and he has me cooking: and that was Sloppy Joe’s, thank you very much.
Badger has spoiled him with her gourmet cooking.

He ate his dinner, survived it just fine-and headed to work.

The day slowed to almost a stop.

Badger popped into the living room and we watched movies together.

Suppertime came, and I looked outside -it was very stormy-looking.
So I rushed down to Heron’s RV to make sure his door was propped open, and the cats could get inside if they needed to.
His little white cat still wasn’t out.
That was highly unusual -she has a chair she rarely leaves.
I went inside and realized the white cat and the tortie cat were missing.
Badger had come down around 10 AM to feed and water them, so I was terrified she might have let them out.
Heron never, ever allows his cats out of the RV: I got on Badger to always count heads before she shut the RV up.

I was in the RV calling “kitty, kitty, kitty.” 
Two cats were missing, but I could have sworn one was on the RV roof.

I made a dash for the house and told Badger I didn’t care how badly she felt-I needed help now.

We walked down to the she-shed and heard a tiny, terrified mew.
I looked up- sure enough, the white cat was perched on top of the RV.

Badger had to climb onto a kayak and brace her foot against the wooden support to reach up to the cat. She was still too short, so she coaxed Hank closer and grabbed the cat’s scruff to help maneuver her off the roof.

We hustled Hank, Po, and Gigi inside, shut the door, flipped the air on, and tore the RV apart looking for Muppet.
Muppet was nowhere to be found-not in the RV, not outside.

That was an “uh-oh — we were really in trouble” moment.

I went outside and found Muppet blinking sleepily from a spot Badger and I had checked a good ten times.
I'd have bet she'd been on the roof too, probably tucked behind whatever gear was up there.

Badger looked around and saw the wiring had pulled away from the wood just enough for a slinky cat to slip onto the roof.
Hank probably had been outside all day-from 10 AM until just after 6.

I called Heron, gave him a heads-up, and told him all four were inside and safe.
He would need to find time to fix that area.
Until he did, his cats would have to stay locked in the RV.

It was a good thing I did go down to check, and we found Hanky-Panky when we did. 
As we walked back up to the house, the skies opened and the rain poured down.

We ate our slightly cold supper -we watched a lot of movies, or Badger flipped through a few and couldn’t settle on one.

The evening unfolded slowly, calm and unhurried.

This will be a rest-up type of week, although I have enough laundry to catch up on to bury a small army.

Badger has headed to bed. 
The medication she’s on makes her sleep at night.
That is so weird-Badger hasn’t slept at night since she emerged into the world.
Her settings are programmed for vampire.

I’m going to start the dishwasher, on its sanitize cycle.
We scraped the supper dishes out, left the bowls on the sink, and went to the living room.
Heard a rattle-rattle in the kitchen, turned the camera-and Lucifer was licking my dirty bowls.
Yeah, they’re going through two heat cycles.

Then I’ll head to bed.