good and bad

 The good, first: The "Quilting Tiger" (the person who does quilting through Home a la Mode) is taking tops, and said to bring mine in. I bought fabric for backing for one while I was there:

This is the top, it's one I've had done for several years. At one point I thought I might hand quilt that but I seem to have really slowed down on getting any of that done

It's about 48" by 60", so less than a twin bed size. I think I want some kind of a butterfly or similar spring like pattern on it. (She has LOTS of patterns to pick from).

The second one, I am going to buy 108" backing fabric for from her. I couldn't pick one when I was down there without the quilt so when I go back I will just bring the top and pick the best one

this is a REALLY large quilt, it's like 80" by 80", which is why I wanted just to do wide backing - it's easier than the complicated geometry of a multi-seam top.

I also sewed more on the top ("Chandelier") I am currently piecing.

The bad? When I came back out to put my trash down to the curb, I found one of the local feral cats lying dead in my driveway. I am not totally sure what happened - no obvious external wounds other than what might be a few bruises - and I'm wondering if it got hit by a car and crawled back up into my drive to die. (It was not the little tortoiseshell cat that had behaved in a friendly way toward me, or I would really have been sad). 

I was concerned because it could be that it either had some kind of infectious illness, or it ate something poisoned (some people poison mice). I didn't want to risk other animals being exposed to either a pathogen or a toxin, and also, it lying right there in my drive....well, I have to go in to my office tomorrow. And it's gotten warm here, and there were already flies. So I had to move the body.

We supposedly have an animal control department, but the couple times I've called them - and the couple times neighbors have called them - they have been largely useless. And anyway, it's Sunday, no one's around. So I figured I was on my own here. (I am FREQUENTLY on my own for things like this, and it makes me tired). 

So I thought: I could put it in a trash bag and stick it in the bottom of the rollcart, even though we are technically not supposed to do that. (But what ARE we to do, if animal control won't help us?). But I did not like that; it seemed somewhat disrespectful and as I said, it was also breaking the rules. And no vets are open, and anyway - I didn't want to stick it in my car (in case diseased) and I extra did not want to pay for the cremation of a stray cat. 

So I sighed, and got my big snow shovel, and used it kind of like a travois to transport it to the back yard (I will bleach the shovel tomorrow, in the moment I had used up all my spoons) and took my garden shovel and dug a grave at the very back of my backyard, and put the cat in there. And covered it up, and laid some big pieces of log (I had a large branch come down in the fall, and someone cut it up for me, but didn't take all the wood) over the grave to deter digging animals.

And I said, because I didn't really have much in the way of words: "I'm sorry for you, poor old cat. I hope you get a shot at an afterlife, and that it's a nice one" and darn it but I teared up a little bit even though this was a stray cat I'd only seen a few times and that always ran away when it saw me. 

This is not the first dead cat I've had to deal with. The first one was back in 2003, and that was when I called Animal Control and was basically told "you are on your own here, figure it out." Then, I knew people who were cat lovers and had land and they came and got it and buried it on their land, but I've lost touch with them (and I think they moved) so this time I really was on my own.

 There are just a lot of cats in the neighborhood. I wish people would keep their pet cats indoors. I get that not all cats tolerate that but when they die they become someone else's problem some times - though I am pretty sure this one was feral, like I said, it always avoided people and I never saw it going to houses like a couple other cats in the neighborhood do.