We've had a busy day. Fred got an appointment for our cat, Woody, early this morning. That went very well - apparently he had a wound on his leg that developed an abscess and that was what was causing the pain. It broke in his cat carrier on the way to the vet's, so it was easy for Dr. Seachrist to figure out what was wrong. She gave him some shots - antibiotics and something for pain, and we were back home in no time. Woody felt better almost immediately, and has been pretty normal all day. Tonight we're sensing the pain meds may be wearing off a bit because he's favoring that right leg a little again.

Dr. Seachrist is new to the area and turns out she's our neighbor, living on McQueeny Rd. She's very young, but we liked her immediately and so did Woody. I told her we suspect Jamie's cat, Rico, the street fighter who weighs in at about half of what Woody does, is responsible for Woody's woes, and she laughed and said Rico probably has a "Napoleon complex." Whatever it is, he sure beats the stuffing out of our gentle giant on a regular basis. I doubt that Woody will ever learn how to fight back effectively, but you'd think by now he'd be smart enough to stay away from Rico when he comes looking for a fight - after all, in no time at all he learned to knock on the door when he wants to come in. I guess it's a male thing, needing to stay and fight, no matter the odds.

We stopped at Hastings Store on our way home from St. J. Jenny was working today, baking up a storm of goodies. She told me she and James will be moving to W. Danville shortly and James is going to work at the store, too. That will give Garey and Jane a bit of a break - maybe they can even take a vacation together instead of one of them always having to be on hand at the store! Jenny will still work as a nurse, but she said she's looking forward to living in W. Danville again.
Looks like a fifth generation of the family will grow up at the store - I think Jenny and her brother Curtis are fourth generation of the Hastings clan, and their children will be seasoned store keepers by the time they are in high school.

I have to report that none of my tomatoes made it. A few of the green ones I laid out in a box may be salvageable, but the nearly ripe ones, the ones with pink on them, turned to mush and I threw them out today. I had them in a box lined with brown wrapping paper I thought would be a close substitute for paper bags, but it didn't work. I think they had already been touched by frost when I brought them in. Even the last ripe ones I brought in only lasted a day or so before turning black. At least we had nice fruit for several weeks, and that was much better luck than we've ever had in the past. We'll try again next year.