Sylvia left Friday after breakfast.  She went with family to Florida to attend a niece’s wedding.  I stayed home “to feed the livestock.”  At least that’s what I say.  And yes, Midnight is the only “livestock” we have.  (Or does he have us?)

By Sunday morning, I could tell that Midnight was missing his female staff member.  He kept rubbing against my ankle.  He nearly tripped me–several times.  Actually, it’s not that unusual.  Yesterday, it was more pronounced.  He’ll be glad to see Sylvia come through the door this afternoon.  They have a special thing going between them.

Midnight loves to help Sylvia do all kinds of things.  One of his favorite activities is sweeping the kitchen floor.  Last week she said to me, “Get your camera and see how he loves to help me.”  Let me show you what I saw.

See how he “guides” the broom.

Here he helps apply proper pressure to the broom.

As you can see, he gets actively involved in the job.

Midnight talks to Sylvia as he coaches and encourages her.

No job is too big or too small for Midnight.  Here he inspects the equipment for Sylvia.  See why we call him “The Inspector?”

And then he goes on to coach the proper technique, as he did with the broom.  It really is nice to have a helper like Midnight.

The light wasn’t very good in the kitchen when I captured these images.  At times the action was pretty fast.  The work crew is all about efficiency.  Neither one of them expects to have a career as a photographic model.  I think they’d both do well.  Don’t you?
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What is it about waste baskets that draws Midnight into their clutches?  He never seems to tire of tipping them over or, in the office diving right in.  Does he need to check them out?

As he stand on the paper shredder looking into the waste basket, Midnight loses traction, his feet slip and he goes in.  Light from the window makes this a high contrast shot.  At least we can see his unique tail, which was broken in four places before we brought him into the house.

Midnight seems to be asking, “Why does this waste basket keep shrinking?  I can remember when it was huge, but now it small.”  He then proceeded to check out the contents.  That kept him occupied, but only for a short while.

His work complete, the inspector stepped back out and onto the shredder.  It was time to see what his male attendant was doing and to swat the computer mouse around a bit.  But only to show it who is boss.

Somehow, despite his busy schedule of inspections and tests, Midnight finds time for a nap.

That look like a good idea to me . . .

Some months ago Dawn wrote about her cat, Bella, chewing stereo cable connectors off from the cables.  Naive fellow that I am, I thought about how glad I was that Midnight didn’t do that.  That’s right!  You guessed it.  I walked out of the office the other day and found not severed stereo cords but this:

Oh Dawn, I’m so sorry that I thought the Midnight was better than Bella.  I walked into the guest room and found this:

Someone had been busy.  I looked around a bit and:

I found the cords that had been severed.  Before we start blaming Midnight, please consider that I knew better.  It other rooms of the house, I had put the cords up where they are out of kitty’s reach.  I forgot the guest room.

A couple of months earlier he had chewed on the cords in the office.

I have no excuse.  Life can be difficult for folks like me.  Midnight doesn’t care.  He tolerates us anyway.  That is what cats do . . .  Isn’t it?
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We heard the noise.  We couldn’t not hear it.  The noise filled the house and we could feel the vibrations.  Farm machinery at work.

I opened the door on that end of the house.  The inspector seemed to materialize out of thin air.  He had to know what was happening.  (Okay, every time I open that door he’s there looking out.)

Midnight watched as the harvester cut, chopped and deposited corn, stalks and all, into a farm truck.  As we watched they went efficiently about their work.

That corn will feed the farmer’s cows.  The cows will produce milk for your breakfast cereal, butter for your bread and ice cream for dessert.

We enjoyed watching the farmer and his men harvest the corn.  That’s our neighbor Meghan’s house in the background.

Midnight watched this for an hour.  I didn’t last that long.

I’ve shown you how Midnight loves to hide on a chair underneath the table.

Is that scary or what?  He lurks, and he is ready to strike.  He may be under the table on a chair.  He may be lurking higher than you normally look.  So be careful!

Lately, as the day days grow shorter and dark arrives sooner, he hides Just past the doorway into the family room.  There in the dark, he is nearly invisible.

I caught him and surprised him with a camera flash.  Thereby I escaped a possible sneak attack from the ninja cat.

It was only fair.  More than once I’ve walked by his hiding place only to have him leap out and attack with paws around my ankles.  We do love to play.  Both of us.

Last December, Midnight moved out of the barn and into the house.  He was the only feral cat that was out there and his human staff didn’t think his chances for survival over the winter were very good without other cats to keep him warm.

He was such a cute little fur ball back then.  Today, he’s much bigger.  My sister Clara and blogger bud, Lin, had good ideas to share about caring for seven to eight-month-old Midnight.  One of the suggestions was to put him in the bath tub with a ping ball to bat around.

As you can see, he made that ball fly around the tub.  It was fun to watch him spin and chase the ball round and round.  That little cutie would keep us laughing.

Now that he’s grown–a lot–we play ball elsewhere.  He still fits in tub, but the tub seems to have shrunk.  For that reason, we start the play near the dining room table and family room (a large open area).  Soon he’ll be flying through most of the house in hot pursuit of the ball he just batted with his paw.

Midnight was lurking under the table when I neared with the camera in my right hand and a ping pong ball in the left.  I partially depressed the button to capture focus and settings on the camera and tossed the ball in front of the mighty hunter cat.

As you can see, he was only a blur as he went into full attack mode.  The game was on.  Oh what fun!
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Last month about this time, I showed you a couple of still pix of Midnight playing in the sink.  I wanted to capture some video for you and finally managed to do exactly that.  Thanks to my hand tremors, the camera shakes around a bit, but I hope you enjoy watching Midnight at play for all of 6 seconds.  No sound here, just the action.

I have another video, but it is long and doesn’t show the action as well.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we were as easily fascinated and amused?
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My little buddy has the ability to nod off for a nap.  Just about anytime.  Just about anywhere.

One of his favorite nap spots is my desk.  He usually chooses the other side, but this day he wanted to hang those rear paws over the mouse pad.

The best place is between my legs on the recliner.  I like that line across the top of his head, down between the eyes and then across that cute little nose.  Midnight is content to just sleep.

He tosses, turns and twitches in his sleep.

Once in a while he raises his head and looks at me.  Before I can capture an image of open eyes, those eyes close.  He relaxes, his head slides easily to the cushion and sweet dreams continue.

I wish I could sleep like that.  Don’t you?
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Last week, Sylvia was at Glen Lake with her family.  Midnight and I were home “batching it.”  We had a good time keeping one another entertained.

On Friday, I mowed the lawn in the afternoon.  I came back in the house, that’s when the phone rang.  It was neighbor and friend, Les.  He and Cheryl are growing some hot peppers this year.  (She doesn’t like the spicy stuff.)  Les asked if he could bring me a bag of those delicious treats.  The answer was, “Yes, please!”

About 20 minutes later Les came walking up the drive.  There was a black-haired girl with him.  Tiffany is his next door neighbor and the granddaughter of our next door neighbors, Hubert and Joyce.  They were ready to come in for a glass of ice water, a rest and a visit.

Soon Midnight was infatuated with the young lady that had just entered his life.  Tiffany has two cats at her house, so she knows how to win their feline hearts.  It didn’t take long.

While Les relaxed in the recliner, Tiffany took Midnight’s feather toy and began to play with him.

After a bit, the toy was forgotten and they began to get acquainted.

Midnight and Tifanny were soon good friends.

Shortly after that, he was in her arms.  He was loving it and chewing on her hair, which made her laugh–well, sort of laugh.

I saw Tiffany at church on Sunday.  She came over and asked, “How’s Midnight?”

As for the peppers, they were very good.  I had a couple of them with my supper (rice and pigeon peas–a Puerto Rican recipe).

Tiffany, Midnight says, “Hey.”
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