An event and an advance

This afternoon's big event (from my perspective) was the "Junior Recital" at the university for clarinetist Dante Hoge, who was two years ahead of D. in high school and quite kind to him in the musical context. I got to sit with his accompanist, who had been D's accompanist, and conversed with her a bit. Altogether there were about 22 people in the audience, including members of Dante's extended family, and I think his boyfriend's family as well, based on physical appearance, as well as the clarinet professor and the other university clarinet students. Dante's original clarinet teacher, Cindi (who was also D's teacher) couldn't be there as she had to do something for one of her students in Salem. Anyway! Dante performed five pieces, over the course of an hour, in a variety of styles. My favorite was "Oblivion," which was quiet, mysterious, and a bit jazzy.

As for the day's advance... as I've mentioned many times, I've been feeding one particular feral cat family: Samantha, her littermate Theo, and her final litter of kittens, of whom three remain (I assume someone nabbed gorgeous Gabrielle back in January). The three are Blitzen (Siamese), Oberon (black with one white spot on his throat, like his mama), and Parker (significantly smaller than Oberon and almost fully black). All of them are extremely eager for wet cat food, and I usually give them a can or two of Fancy Feast grilled salmon every day, since Sorin and Ajani share two cans of the same daily. I also give them quite a lot of dry cat food, which they're less enthusiastic about unless they've been away for several days.

Anyway. Theo is my good friend; he flops in my path and wants me to pet him. I'm honored to be the only person in the world who gets to do this. (I wouldn't dare try to pick him up, though.) Samantha isn't afraid of me but doesn't like to be touched, so I respect that, mostly. She kept the kittens under Hiram's house until their window for socialization had pretty much passed, but we're working on it. Oberon is the most wary. Blitzen is rather hyper and somewhat skittish, but she comes up to me to ask for food and now more or less allows me to pet her when she's eating. Parker is fairly comfortable with me, at least by the standards of a young feral cat. He often wants to play a game where he bats at my hand while I poke at him (and in fact, the back of my right hand has quite a few claw marks at present), but he's gentle and also lets me pet him a bit.

So, this evening, they'd all had as much of the wet food as I was going to give them today, and Theo had gone off wherever, while Samantha and the kittens were hanging around my porch. I sat down with them, spoke with all of them, and let Parker play his game with my hand, while Blitzen ate a bit more of the dry food and Oberon climbed up the housing structure I'd created for them so he could watch me from above.

Then the most remarkable thing happened. Samantha, who was sitting nearby, abruptly started to play. She mugged a votive candle I'd taken to J's house during the power outage and hadn't brought back inside yet, and started to bat it about until it was over on the lawn. Then she batted at Parker a bit, then at a flap of a fertilizer bag, and then at Parker again, and then nuzzled up against the bag. In almost two years of feeding her, I had never seen Samantha play before!! Maybe this is a benefit of getting her spayed a month ago - maybe all this time she's been on a constant treadmill of pregnancies and maternal vigilance, and now she's free from that and can relax.

Meanwhile, D's team lost at League of Legends today; one more loss and their season is done, other than their trip to Idaho in two weeks. J. went to his coworker's house for their scheduled Rolemaster session but nobody else showed up so they went to see Captain Marvel instead. He rates it highly.