Mrs. C.B.'s foot looks good. Well, okay, as good as a diabetic lady's foot is gonna look, but she had her stitches out today, she can wear normal shoes, and her responsible son is chomping at the bit for her to come down to North Carolina to spend the holidays with him.

I'm a little worried about how Mr. C.B. is going to take the travel. He enjoys riding in the car, but he is much more quiet now then when I first met him. Mrs. C.B. says he has lately started taking his clothes off ( he has alzhiemers, for anybody who is just tuning in) I'm worried that he won't adjust easily to his new surroundings, and Mrs. C.B.will just get upset and hot foot back up here to Maryland, upsetting her responsible son. ( Lets just call him RS, for short)

I think that she is going to be gone until at least the end of February, which would be the best thing for her and Mr.C.B, because then they would not have to contend with any cold weather problems by themselves. While she is gone, I'm going to look after her houseplants and get her mail and forward it down to her. The Hub and I are going to repaint her bedroom and stain the wood trim. And, when they are gone I am going to find out how that mouse is getting in, and how to stop him.

However, in an effort to get him "on the run" if not to actually get rid of him, I took Vio-kitty with me yesterday and today. It was harder than it looked. Vio-kitty does not like the car.

At first, I thought she just didn't like the cat carrier, which is perfectly understandable, since she has to go to the vet in it. In fact, I can even understand why she dislikes the car in general. There is nothing in about getting in a shiney metal box and hurtling through space at 60 mph that is appealing to a cat. I think she sees the scenery moving past her at a high rate of speed and is fairly freaked out.

The thing about cats, at least this cat, is that when she is afraid she tries to climb to higher ground for safety. She did this to The Hub when she was a kitten, and she will still, occassionally, crawl up his ams to drape herself as sort of a furry collar around his shoulders. Since she wasn't in the cat carrier this time, and was only partially mollified by sitting in my lap while I was driving, she lept up on my shoulder.

The next thing I knew I was trying to drive down Bachman Valley Rd. with a 15lb cat on my head, her tail swishing back and forth in front of me like a badly tuned windshield wiper. I am sure that there is some kind of statute against this. Maybe not specifically, "No driver shall have a cat on his / her head while operating a motor vehicle" but something like "driving while distracted." The only thing I can think of more dangerous than driving with a cat on your head, is trying to get the cat OFF your head while driving - since Bachman Valley Rd has no shoulder, there was no way I could pull off. I compromsised and took one hand off the wheel to keep the tail out of my eyes until I got to Bad Memory Lane ( Rt. 30) where I could get us resituated.

On the return trip, she did the exact same thing....only she waited until I was in town and a town cop pulled out in back of me! The whole way up Main St. I kept willing her to just be still. I mean, the police in this town are not known for being observant, but almost nobody has a hat with a tail that twitches!

Anyway, there was no spectacular capture scene. Yesterday the mouse ran back in behind the refrigerator while Vio was there. I'm hoping that the scent of the cat might be enough to make the mouse look for some other place to winter over. Mrs. C.B. just hates the thought of rodents, let alone being faced with them. Even in as bad of shape as Mr. C.B. is, he knows she doesn't like mice, and the last time they caught one in a trap, Mr. C.B. shuffled over on his walker, put a plastic bag over his hand, and picked it up for her and dropped it in the trash.

Anybody who doesn't think there is such a thing as true love, should just spend the day with those two. She told me that last night she couldn't sleep so she got up at 3:00 in the morning and made a cup of tea. After awhile Mr. C.B. got up and came into the dining room and sat down.

"What are you doing out of bed?" she asked.

"I just wanted to be with you." he said quietly. She said she started to cry, because she knew that this was one of those times, which are getting fewer and further between, when he knew who he was, who she was and what was going on. And that's how he wanted to spend it. So that's what they did. They sat there and held hands.

There's no amount of money in the world that can equal the privilege of helping them out so they can spend the most amount of time together, even if, in the end it's only one more day.