Friday, July 23, 2010

Blackie Detroit video!

My pal, Blackie Detroit, makes his video debut. He kept wanting to rub against my leg but who wants a wet cat to brush up on you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gmTq0naD8c

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Mag 24



"Sergeant, what do you suppose happened here?"

"G-g-g-god only knows, sir. The house was locked with a deadbolt. We had to b-b-b-break a bay window downstairs to get in."

"Sergeant, will you try to get yourself under control and stop shaking!"

"Y-y-y-yes s-s-s-sir."

The detective stared at the bed, rumpled with sheets and blankets tossed about, the impression of two heads still imposed on the pillows. There was no blood, no signs of any violence at all. But the occupants of the room, of the home, were missing.

He stared at the window above the bed, locked shut . . as were the windows along the wall. The house seemed to be an impenetrable fortress but Mr. and Mrs. ___________ were nowhere to be found. His men had searched from this room on the upper floor throughout the house, down to the basement. He, himself, had explored the walls, knocking to see if a hidden compartment existed. But there was nothing. No sign of the couple at all.

They were known throughout the village but no one knew them well. They had kept to themselves, made no friends. No one knew the source of their income or where they had come from before moving to the house barely seven months before. They had come in the night, at first creating gossip that they might be vampires. But when they were seen outside in the daylight, that rumor died.

Now they had disappeared.

The alarm had been sounded by a gardener at a nearby home, who had seen no sign of their existence for several days and notified the police. And now, having entered the home by force when no response came to the bell or to repeated knocks on the doors, the detective stood alone in the room, staring at the bed.

The only clue came from a night watchman at a nearby factory, who claimed he had seen a bright light in the sky, hovering over the house, a few nights previous. But he was the only one who had noticed anything at all out of the ordinary.

Now it was up to the detective to solve the mystery of the disappearance and, quite frankly, he didn’t have the vaguest idea about it.

Do you?

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Mysterious Willow has posted the photo prompt and invited others to write from their memories or their imaginations about it. My tale is totally imaginary. You can read others by clicking on Magpie Tales.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Jewels


Our strange cats

Jazz found a comfortable (?) place for a nap this morning, entwined with the vertical blinds. It's like she was intently going some place and suddenly dropped with exhaustion.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The poseur

Call me "Blackie Detroit"

Monday, July 19, 2010

A ghostly night

It is a night like tonight that makes a chill come over me. The sky mainly obscured by clouds, the moon sneaking some light through at times.

It makes me think of Sherlock Holmes adventures on the moors of the British Isles. For instance, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles". One expects to hear the mournful howl of a great hound echoing though the night and sending a tremor of fear through my body.

It is a night made for murder most foul. I can nearly feel the cold dampness penetrating my body under my greatcoat.

But then suddenly I realize I'm dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of shorts and it's nearly 80 degrees outside. So I give it up and go inside to the ballgame on t.v. and later to bed.

Blackie and the birds

I was sitting at my computer this morning when I heard a terrible racket outside being made by what sounded like a Hitchcock movie: The Birds.


In truth it was some apparently very angry birds. I had seen mockingbirds in this type of mood before and glanced around.

Aha! Sure enough. It was my friendly neighborhood cat - Blackie Detroit. (Explanation: When he first showed up, frightened and wary of me, I slowly befriended him and named him Blackie. Later one of our neighbors and I had a conversation about him and she said she called him "Detroit". Hence his strange compound name.)

At any rate, he was just making a slow reconnoiter of our backyard, seemingly unconcerned about the noisy birds who would occasionally dive-bomb him. But I suspect he was more cunning than he appeared.


Eventually, he went under the fence and disappeared. But still I heard the birds in "high dudgeon". I later looked over the fence and found Blackie Detroit casually reclining on another neighbor's picnic table, just waiting for one of those noisy birds to get within claws reach, I suspect.

At this point, he has moved on again, as have the birds. The outcome is yet to be decided.