Hey folks! (Literally.)

My folks started reading my blog. Hey, Mom and Dad! I guess that brings my reader count up to two. I'm moving up in the world. :3

So they live in Colorado, and have a white cat named Shiro (it means white in Japanese). She's been living with us for.. oh, what, 14 or 15 years now? Anyway, she dislikes intruders into her space (her twin sister Dutton was a smidge more laid back about it, but still not buddy-buddy with the neighbor's "evil" cats), and recently a grey medium-haired cat has been hanging out around the yard. My parents were feeding her a bit and then she had a kitten!

So here's my dilemma. We need to come up with a name for this kitten. He's all black and was born at midnight on 8/2. Based on his mother, I'm assuming he'll also have medium-length hair, and I think he's going to be absolutely lovely. (For several months now, there's been a medium-haired black cat at Petco up for adoption by the Cat Adoption Team -- her name is Rosie and I just can't get a cat. We already have four where I'm staying, and they separate out into two even groups that don't intermingle. She's so beautiful. Aaauugh.)

Some names have popped into my head, including:

-Talon

-Mozart

-Bagheera (the panther from The Jungle Book)

-Scrabble

The problem is that he's too young yet to be able to tell what his personality is like. Once I get a picture I'll probably post it. My landlord suggested Shadow and called herself unoriginal, which is odd because she desperately wants to be a writer, and came up with those longer names for the cats.

Now, to the "chickens" part of this post (because it seems like every post has one):

For those of you thinking about getting into backyard chickens, urban homesteading, urban farming, and the like, a great place to start for chicken stuff is the Backyard Chickens forum. People there are incredibly helpful, and it's very educational just to peruse the threads.

For Oregonians, there's a Chickenstock (yes, they're really called that) on September 25th at Pass Creek, which is some kind of camping park or something like that. There will be local chicken experts there to answer questions and to showcase and trade their poultry, and one person is also bringing what looks (from the photo) to be a delicious, county-fair-award-winning cheesecake. The fun goes from 9:00 am to sunset and is a little less than 3 hours from Portland.