Here is a picture from mid-October. I was driving home from work; the moon was coming up, very big, and the slight clouds were a rich rose color. Everything else was kind of gold. It was all much bigger and better than this:

Water, water everywhere!

What can be more delightful than to speak the phrase: "It rained!"?
Well, rain it did, first thing this morning, and the day remained cloudy, even threatening to rain again as the trick-or-treaters began their yearly pillaging. The best part of the downpour was the smell; I drove home after dark with the car windows just barely cracked open, for the night was rather chilly. Before long, I had to roll the windows down further, just to get more of the damp air. I wish I could transport the smell of a good rain in Tehachapi and post it like a picture so you all would know exactly what I'm talking about, but that failing, I can only say, it is an awake sort of smell, as something that had drowsed away a long, hot summer was again alert and tense for action. I think it is mostly the tang of rabbit bushes, which can only be described as a very vaguely piney scent, but wilder, if such a thing is possible. There is also a strong, woody tinge of oak, and of last year's grass, that dried early in the spring, and dust slipping off the pavement at last--all in all, it is a thankful sort of smell.

Merely going through a phrase

A customer was in the shop the other day talking about a slide guitar she'd recently acquired. There was something about the resonator, I think it was, that she wasn't crazy about, but she liked the rest of the instrument well enough that she declared she would jury rig a replacement. Jury rig. There's a rare one! It is a nautical term--my 1948 copy of Knight's Modern Seamanship (I knew it would come in handy someday!) uses "jury" as an adjective in several entries. A jury mast, for example, is "a temporary mast. . ." a jury anchor is "a heavy weight used as an anchor". A jury rig (a noun in Knight's) is "a makeshift rig". Nicholl's Seamanship and Nautical Knowledge has a very intriguing paragraph on jury rudders, which are pretty much anything you can come up with, if you should have the misfortune to loose the original rudder. When I can't think of a real blog entry, I have to jury rig one.

Prey Tell

Here are a few snapshots from the end of August. There was a creature on the screen door:
A preying mantis, it was, to be exact. (No scientific name, sorry; I'm supposed to be cramming for a tutoring session. . .No, I'm tutoring, not being tutored, but I put it off as expertly as any student ever did.)

Well, you don't get to take a picture of a preying mantis every day, so might as well get all you can while you can, eh?

If it ain't broke. . .

Well, I fixed it anyway. I hadn't really thought through the original blog title, as far as checking to see if anybody was using anything similar. . .turns out, there is "The Piper's Cave," an online piping supply store that has been there much longer than this manifestation, and it really did seem presumptuous to take a title with only an article's difference. . .especially when there is so little to do with piping that has been sifting through, from the very moment of this blog's initiation.

So, I have resorted to Chesterton, who was a man of many original phrases; the new blog title comes from the quote at the top of the page which, in turn, appears in the novel "The Napoleon of Notting Hill." If I keep on here long enough we may, at any rate, get to see the thousandth bug, eh?

[Edit: October 27: Weeeel, it seems that despite thorough (?) searching, I missed an existing "The Thousandth Time". . .and a blog, at that! But temporarily, anyway, I shall leave both the address and the title as they stand. Suggestions for a permanent title would be greatly welcomed.]

Sunday Photographer

I like Sundays. After Mass and the weekly adjusting of the world back into its proper place, there is plenty of time for piping and for fooling around with the camera (and, apropos to nothing, I had a lovely cup of coffee this afternoon too). About 4:00 I noticed the leaves of the birch tree in the front yard were well on their way to changing, so I tried to get a few pictures with the sun behind them. Never did get it quite right. . .so today the subject is birch trees, and the manner is quantity rather than quality.
Here is a birch leaf: And here is a tree. They tend to have a lot of leaves:

And, lo! we get a closer look at the branch on the tree, and the tree in the ground (and the green grass grew all around, all around, and the green grass grew all around. . .)

The sun, and the contrast it made, lighting up the edges of the leaves was much more in evidence than the forgoing pictures suggest; below, I managed to sneak a piece of setting sun in, but it ungratefully made a blue spot appear on the finished picture:

And, finally, some leaves which had turned, and which looked mighty nice against the white trunk of the tree:

Back to the July Trip

The Monterey Maritime Museum isn't vast, but it is nicely arranged with more than enough intrigue to fill a couple of hours. Though it is titled a maritime museum, and has some very informative exhibits in that area of interest, it is also generous with landbound history. Below is a 17th century Spanish sword (the helmet is also from the same era, but I don't know if the two artifacts belonged to the same owner). Along the blade it says: "No me sacques sin rason; no me envaiñes sin honor", that is "Do not take me out without reason; do not sheath me without honor."

If you like bagpipe music, there is a lovely monthly radio program at The College of Piping Radio. September's program included a few highlights from this year's World Pipe Band Championships. This is a bit of a kick because this year SFU won their 5th world championship. The program--I don't know how much longer September's will stay up, but as of this evening, it is still there--includes an interview with Terry Lee, SFU's pipe major.

Getting away from the band aspect of piping, the show also included a lovely piece performed by Margaret Stewart and Allan MacDonald. They have recorded some wonderful combinations of traditional Gaelic singing and pipe tunes; in this case, the singer presents a Gaelic hymn and the piper weaves a piobaireachd variation into it. I read a short article the other day (the one I give the link to, I believe) which stated that Mr. MacDonald's Master's thesis explored the ties between the Gaelic language and piobaireachd; if that doesn't sound like a thoroughly absorbing scholarly work, I don't know what does. (But I am admittedly prejudiced!)

Not Quite Rain

We did get about 30 seconds of serious rain this past Tuesday, and ever since then, the weather has been promising to do better--with no results, as yet. The here-and-now contrast of clouds and sun is almost as lovely as the hinted notion of a real downpour. When I was going out to the post office on Wednesday, the southeastern end of the Tehachapi Valley was alive with rays of light, falling through the clouds almost as thick as grass on a hillside. It was one of those sights that seems a bit clearer if you look at it out of the corner of your eye, but I had a shot at it with the camera anyway.

Envelopes

Thinking to try something new, and get a bit of practice, I signed up for a calligraphy group's envelope exchange. The theme was leaf prints--a lovely idea in theory, very messy in practice. I was out of envelopes, so I started from scratch. That is why the envelope below looks odd--it hasn't been glued together yet. The flaps sticking out at the sides are to be glued behind to hold everything together. Sorry, no pictures of the finished product; I didn't think it would be a good idea to put the ladies' names and addresses up on web.





I found out several interesting facts in the course of this project, the main one being the sharp contrast between the leaves of the Valley Oak (Quercus lobata) and the Blue Oak (Quercus douglasii). Even when the leaves are closer in size than those pictured below, the shapes are quite distinctive.


Also, while hunting for the scientific names, I ran across the trivia that the Valley Oak is the largest kind of oak found in North America. And, though it does not seem to be as widely known, Blue Oak leaves tend to make very smudgy prints indeed!

A definition

Overkill Noun. Braving the mind-bending wilderness of Home Depot to buy a roll of Teflon tape and two rubber corks.

Some Four-Legged Critters

Here's one last round of pictures from Pleasanton. I was having trouble all day with getting the camera to focus, so attempting pictures of the sheepdog trials was a bit of a hit-or-miss. So here are some. . .impressions of the dog trials. Here, the sheep are pretty obvious. The black-and-white splatter in the background is the dog.
Below, the dog is working carefully, trying to coax the four sheep up a ramp.

And here. . .patience is a virtue.

For my money, dog trials are one of the most beautiful events in the world. The herding is mostly done by border collies, who move like sunlight moves in and out of the shadows on a river. They're terribly clever too, and they look like they are enjoying the outfigure-the-sheep bits as much as they are the running. The interaction between the dogs and their handlers is fascinating; it is teamwork, rather than a show of a dog running through a handful of tricks. Though the basic rules of getting a small herd of sheep through an obstacle course are easy to follow, I don't know the finer points of the art--I just love watching those dogs work. You yourself can find out some finer points here. Of the few dogs I watched, most were trained to voice as per the chart in the link, but at least one was trained to a whistle, and that was the most fascinating. It was eerily quiet in the arena; you could just hear the occasional thud of the sheeps' hooves, and floating on top of the silence was the weird, thin warble of the handler's whistle. The dog, in all its grace, was fairly dancing to the sound, turning for one phrase, dropping soundlessly to the ground for another. The whistle might have suggested music, but the careful motion of the dog just plain was music.

Well, did you really think I didn't get any bug pictures at the Pleasanton Games?

Just A Bit of Advice

Do not go to this website, and, if you do, do not push the button that plays samples from the CD. Because if you do, there is a pretty good chance you will feel the price of that CD leaping from your pocket and hurrying itself over to Scotland. (Says I.)

Explanation for those of you who are wise and do not follow the link: it takes you to the website of Julie Fowlis, a Gaelic singer from North Uist in the Hebrides. I heard a mention of her last week and was curious enought to buy a track from her previous CD off of iTunes. Then, of course, I had to just sample her new CD, and at present, the price of that CD has leapt from my pocket and is hurrying itself over to Scotland. At present, I'm most looking forward to hearing "Ille Dhuinn, ’S Toigh Leam Thu" in its entirety (I just liked it. That's why.), but the whole thing sounds like quite a treat. Perhaps it was just a phase, or, more likely, I was just running across the wrong artists, but for a while there, it seemed like Gaelic singing carried with it an obligatory synthesizer humming in the background. The approach on this album may not be traditional in the strictest sense (Chris Thile, a very innovative American mandolinist has been included on a couple of tracks, for example), but it is all. . .well, real music, tasteful and pleasant in every way, and bursting at the seams with more talent than I can get my head around all at once.

More Pleasanton Pictures

The piobaireachd alone would have made the Pleasanton Games worth the drive, but even had there been no piping whatsoever, the drive would have been advisable, due to this group:



This is the Marine Band from San Diego. It would be redundant to say that they are perfect. They played several times during the day in front of the grandstand. Watching them march and countermarch through a piece was impressive enough, but listening to them play was one of the grandest things that has happened to me all year. They nailed all the standards, "Semper Fidelis," an exquisite set of American folk tunes, even "Scotland the Brave," then they added some unexpected icing to the cake: an amalgamation of the themes from "Ben-Hur". Perhaps because they were playing in the middle of the racetrack? Probably just because it sounded good. And it sounded very, very good. Still, there was something about the end, when they went marching off to the Marine's Hymn that might have topped it. That was perfection!
Later, I was able to have a few words with their drum major. I had hoped very much to lay my hands on a CD so I could give the folks back home some inkling of the wonders of the day, but he told me they can't make commercial CD's, something to do with them being run on Department of Defense money. So, for the rest of you, you'll just have to take my word for it. It was grand--and if you get a chance to see them, do!


. . .The band was marching through the tunnel under the racetrack prior to playing.

A Bit of Variety

Over Labor Day weekend, I was delighted to have the time off to drive up to Pleasanton (near San Francisco) to see the Highland Games there. My main intention in going was to watch the professional piobaireachd, which was held in a hotel in San Ramon. That was worth every inch of the drive. They had five competitors who had to deal with a very pervasive air-conditioning system, and who all did so. . .well, professionally. I didn't even think of getting pictures there, though to be honest, a picture would have hardly conveyed the music that was eddying about the room.
Therefore, aware that I am presenting you with something a good deal less than the full experience, I offer a few pictures of the Games on Saturday. It was by far the most varied Scottish festival I had ever seen. . .and, yes, I had haggis for lunch.
First of all, the reason I go to Scottish Games (beyond the piobaireachd):

Unless I am much mistaken, this is a Canadian band, Edmonton and District.
Quite a treat to listen to, and I hear they were in the top 2 of both events in the Grade III competition.

This is what many people refer to accurately as a "hairy hielan coo," or, in broader English, a Hairy Highland Cow. They had a pair of them there, ingeniously named Bonnie and Clyde. The presence of Scottish animals did not stop there; somebody had also brought a few Scottish Fold cats, and of course there were Clydesdale horses, which are a good deal more pleasant (in my opinion, which nobody asked for) than any cat, Scottish or otherwise.

Even though there were several million pipers (or at least it sounded like it) there were bands of other kinds too. It was certainly a first for me to see so many harpers in one place at once--there were probably a dozen harpers in this circle, playing different parts, as you would expect in any orchestra.

The wonders would not cease. They had soccer matches! It was five-a-side teams, on a field to match, and games limited to half an hour. I spent a very pleasant hour. . .how often do you get a pipe band practicing at the end of a soccer field? (It is hard to see in the picture, but that white pole in the background is supposedly holding up a very high net which would prevent overly ambitious goal kicks from braining pipers. No pipers, that I know of, suffered any injuries, but at least one kick missed the net.)

I had to watch this team--they're from San Jose, but they wear Celtic FC jerseys.

Well, that's a round of pictures. Now to tell you what you missed, as far as a comprehensive presentation goes:

• They had several shinty matches over the course of the day. I kept trying to make it over to watch, but every time I reached the field, there was a break in progress. I did run into a gentleman who mentioned he was writing this article, however, so you can get an idea of what went on.
• Highland dancing. I'm sure there was plenty of it, but, like the shinty, I was always somewhere else at the time. It is certainly a beautiful art, and I was sorry to miss it. I did catch a bit of the Scottish Country Dancing competition. (I should know something about Scottish Country Dancing, as I spent a semester with a club at school, but I was kept so busy trying to tell my right foot from my left foot that I missed all the finer points.) The set I saw competing was all children, none of them over twelve, I would guess, and the smallest boy was probably about six. They were being presided over by a judge with the most trim and impressive white beard and the most contagious smile I think I have ever seen. It would be very hard to find a soul anywhere who looked so delighted; the only people who might come close were the children who were doing the dancing.
• Heavy events. As hard as it is to miss the sight of a man tossing something that resembles a telephone pole, I did somehow manage to miss it here.
  

More on the Eccentricities of Big Black Ants

Last Sunday there was an odd swarm of black ants in the driveway. There was an anthill near there, but they weren't working in long, orderly lines as they usually do. At first glance, I thought it was two rival hills having a war, as I have seen in the past.

They weren't fighting at all. They were. . .talking. Well, communicating somehow, anyway. It was rather disappointing because all this committee work started just about sundown and,being black on a blacktop driveway, they were difficult to see in the dusk. Furthermore, if you shone a flashlight on them, they would move out of the light and back to their silent campaigning in the dark.

Whatever they were discussing must have been serious because quite a few of them were carrying young ants around the melee. Just a guess--perhaps a part of the hill's citizens were being evicted, but how they were chosen, I could not guess.

I was a little disappointed that the light (or lack of it) made it impossible to watch them properly. I could recall just enough time-misted references to studies which linguists have done on chimpanzees, and even chinchillas, to make me curious as to whether there might be patterns in ant behaviour that could translate into a sort of "language". At the very least, it would be very helpful to know the proper phrasing for, "Please stay off my toe."

These sandals were made for walkin'

"And someone raised the question 'twixt the coffee and the cakes:

'Does the Piper walk to get away from all the noise he makes?'"

--From "The Ballad of How MacPherson Held the Floor" by Robert W. Service

Pipers are noted for their ambulatory habits. Robert Service is not the only one who has commented on it. There is also the old supposition that they walk (or march) because moving targets are harder to hit. Competing pipers in Grade 3 and higher march, even among their own kind, because the judges expect them to.

I did some accidental research on the subject this afternoon and discovered that, even if you do not have a neighbor with a rifle trained on you, moving while you play is very beneficial. It is the time of year when you try to eke the last dregs of summer's benefit and wear sandals. Unfortunately, it is also the time of year when the big, black ants are whispering to each other that the weather is about to change and that they had better store up every edible they possibly can. It would appear that novice pipers are considered edible. I have been disturbed in mid-birl many a time by a very ambitious ant which attaches itself to my toe and will not let go. I have never been dragged by one more than a few feet, but it always pays to be cautious, so I have taken to strolling, even while I tune.

Ubiquitous Insects

Somebody finally had time to cover the truly important news:

"Mystery insect bugging experts at London museum"

On the same subject, more or less, here is another quote from O. Henry, which my sister sent me. No typos, I promise (read it carefully).

“May Martha’s father was a man hidden behind whiskers and spectacles. He lived
for bugs and butterflies and all insects that fly or crawl or buzz or get down
your back or in the butter. He was an etymologist, or words to that effect. He
spent his life seining the air for flying fish of the June-bug order, and then
sticking pins through ‘em and calling ‘em names."

--from "Buried Treasure"

Jellyfish! Live!

I've been sitting here for about ten minutes trying to decide on an original statement to start this entry. Perhaps the direct approach is best: I like jellyfish. My friend Cheyanne and I went over to the coast last week and (among other things) had a good look at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It's a fascinating place, with tanks focusing on sea life from various depths of California coastal waters, everything from kelp forests to tide pools to hammer-head sharks. Theoretically, it was heaven for anyone who likes to dabble in nature photography. . .but in practice, the glass of the tanks is rather interferesome. I rest content, however, because when my camera finally condescended to focus, it was in the jellyfish exhibit, which was what I most wanted to photograph anyway.

The animal below is, I believe, called a moon jelly:



And here are some spotted jellies. They are a South Pacific species. The brown tint is due to a type of algae which the spotted jellies cultivate on themselves and use to enhance their diet.



Spotted jellies up close:



Most of the jellyfish we saw seemed to be slowly tumbling through the water, with little regard for up or down, but the species below (aptly called an upside-down jelly) has a definite preference for the position in the picture. In fact, the jellies have a sort of suction cup on top (if top it is) that enables them to anchor on a stationary object.



The Mediterranean jelly moves like a slow-motion cascade of confetti:

Landscape, with bug

Milkweed seems to be one of the big happening places for the local insects, so when I spotted a few plants on my way home from work yesterday, I pulled over for a closer look. Mainly, I was hoping to find a monarch caterpillar, though I would have settled (with some trepidation), for a tarantula hawk, an immense black wasp which has a fondness for milkweed, though its main diet is. . .well, what it sounds like a tarantula hawk should eat. Whether I was too early or too late, or whether milkweed is just not "in" this year, there was little to see beyond the plant itself and a few languid representatives of Oncopeltus fasciatus. Oncopeltus fasciatus is a mouthful to say, and I have no idea what it means, but it is somewhat more original than "large milkweed bug" which is what they are in straightforward English.

Below: a large milkweed bug in its natural habitat.

Fun and Games

My sister introduced me to an interesting game this evening. You pick a random word and then set a time limit for writing about it, maybe 5-7 minutes. You write whatever you like, stream-of consciousness, stories, poetry, or whatever. Then, when the time is up, everyone has to read what they have written, making it, as my sister pointed out, an excellent exercise in creativity and humility.

Language Trivia

I've been perusing a book called Flutes of Fire by Leanne Hinton. It is a collection of essays and musings about California Indian languages. Some f'r instances which might be of interest:

• There were likely around 100 different native languages spoken in California ca. 1800.
• "The "pattern number" of European and European-American lore is three: fairy tales have three brothers, or three sisters. . .a hero makes three attempts before reaching his goal. . .But in most of Native California, the pattern number is four. It is the fourth try that succeeds; characters and episodes come in fours." -page 37
• "It is not in the basic vocabulary that native Californian languages have had any great impact on English. The only well-attested word I know of is "abalone," probably coming from the Rumsen language." -page 95
• The Wintun word buli, which means "hill," has left its mark on northern Californian geography. "At least twelve peaks in Shasta, Trinity, Tehama and Lake counties are designated by the name, usually spelled "Bally," "Bully," or "Bolly. . .Folk etymology has led to many other renditions of buli: Hayfork Bally is sometimes known as "Hayfork Baldy." Little Baldy and Indian Creek Baldy both come from buli." -page 99
• Many European methods of counting involve a decimal system (groups of ten). Some native Californian languages are based, instead, on five. This is a logical enough system to anyone who has ever counted on his fingers, but still other languages are quarternary, based on four. Hinton hypothesizes that this still has a straightforward basis; there are four spaces between your fingers, to which sticks can be added for increasingly higher calculations. (page 113-120)

For the jellyfish-inclined

My friend Maria (who is obviously a very, very bad influence, also responsible for me learning to play the bagpipes) sent me a link to a very comprehensive site about jellyfish. Did you ever suspect that jellyfish ended up in the news so much?

Blue Belly

I was sitting in the shop on a quiet morning when something started moving among the cellos over in the rental section. To my startled ears, it sounded as if it were probably the size of a mountain lion, and I wasn't too eager to go see what it was. However, if you look at the cello on the left in the picture below, you will see that it was somewhat smaller than a mountain lion.



We have a lot of these little lizards around here (but usually on rocks; this is the first time I've ever found one on a cello case). I've always known them as "blue bellies". You can find the scientific name and a nice picture of the reason for the common name here.



I wasn't sure I could catch it, and was pretty sure that customers would not be thrilled if it should happen to resurface later so I carried it outside, cello and all. If I had been thinking, I would have taken these pictures out in the sun instead of in the shade with a flash, because when he finally hopped down off the case and ran away, I noticed that some of those greyish spots on its back gleam bright blue in the sunlight--quite pretty, really.

Good advertising

Here is a dire warning! If you don't believe me, I'll post a picture of Mom's goat one of these days.



I found this one in a book at work and got a good laugh. This is just about how I feel when I practice new tunes too close to civilization, although my pipes are not medieval style, and I have yet to be abused by people with English accents.

Handy to have a camera

I try to keep my camera with me all the time, just in case I should happen to see something (by that, I mean an insect) worth shooting at. Today it came in handy, as I had a customer calling in from New Jersey about the wiring in an electric guitar; I snapped a few photos and emailed them to answer his question. I also wasted some time in the afternoon mixing up some mud on a plate (well, yeah, I was making mud pies, come to think of it), trying to get a butterfly or two to land out by the parking lot. (The plate was to keep the water from evaporating too fast.) There is another wave of Painted Ladies coming through, an even thicker wave than the one we had last month, and the more of them I see, the more I want to get my own picture of one. As far as I know, however, they did not appreciate my mud pie; they just went on flying north in a most determined fashion.
I finally got a chance to use the camera just before I went home. I don't have the best setup for photographing sunsets (and my hands were shaking) but you can get some idea of the colors that were up there.

One down. . .

The bluish flower in the pictures from last Wednesday was probably Phacelia distans.

Coreopsis. . .I mean, not Coreopsis

The predominant flower in the field was a variety of Coreopsis*. All I can get out of the book that I mentioned in my last post (no way I'm typing all that title again!) is that it is neither Coreopsis californicus nor Coreopsis bigelovii.These flowers tend to face towards the sun.
Anyway, there were quite a few of them.
In fact you might even say there were a lot of them.

Or more than a lot, however many that might be.

*After I had posted this, I showed the pictures to my Dad, and he was of the opinion that they were no kind of Coreopsis at all but probably some sort of Ranunculus. Stay tuned for breaking news on the subject. . .

Brodiaea

This morning I had a little time before work to stop by the field I was taking pictures of last Wednesday. It was much earlier in the day than my last visit and just chilly enough to keep the bees dormant. Besides one huge, fat bumblebee who looked wooly enough to withstand a much colder morning, the only trace of life was the absent chirping of a few crickets. I found a little patch of Dichelostemma pulchella, which I have always known as Brodiaea. A more accessible common name, which I found, along with the scientific one in A Flower Watcher's Guide to Spring Blooming Wildflowers of the Antelope Valley is "wild hyacinth".

(Taken Wednesday)

You've heard all about how a picture is worth a thousand words. Unfortunately, this one is just a temptation to write a thousand words to tell you that this is a poor imitation of what it really looked like. In real life there was none of the grey tinge of the picture; the sky was a clear, deep blue, the hill was vivid green. Yes, vivid, which comes from the Latin for "alive" was exactly what it was, moving with mild eddies of wind and bending under the feet of hundreds of contented creatures, bees and butterflies. My feet were not quite so graceful as those of the bees and butterflies, but I was mighty contented too. It was like falling into a picture a child had painted with the unmixed colors out of a dollar watercolor box. Where the hill was not green, it was an impossible yellow, and where it was not yellow or green, it was lavander.

This was the flower responsible for the lavander patches. I'm at the start of a busy weekend (following a busy week) and don't have time to ferret out what it is--but details will follow.

[EDITED 04/23/08] It appears to be a wild heliotrope, Phacelia distans, or something closely related to it.

Now that's what you call a good audience!

One of my co-workers plays folk music every few weeks for the shut-ins in the geriatric ward of the hospital. Many of these folks are not in the best of health physically or mentally, but Steve's entertainment is certainly appreciated. He was telling me today about one occasion when he looked around the room and saw that everyone was asleep except for one little old lady who was smiling and clapping her hands. She stayed attentive right to the end of the show, obviously enjoying herself. When Steve was packing to go home she confided, "I'll be so happy when I get my hearing aids back and I can hear you play!"

This looked like too good a photo opportunity to pass up. Semp was on a leash, which doesn't show in the picture, but he and the cat are pretty good pals, and the cat was there of his own free will.

Before I could get a really good shot, the cat had had enough.