Home Again

The Ashton Cats are home from Dairy Flat, and boy have things changed around here!

The most obvious difference is that Frank is gone! (archive photo at left) Frank's fish bowl was our equivalent of Bob's fish pond. It may have been a small, and sad comparison, but the lack of fresh fish flavored water will be greatly missed by all, especially after getting so spoiled at Bob and Lizzie's house. Oh, yeah, I guess we will miss Frank too.

The other big change is that the world seems all turned around. Freckles bookcases have been moved upstairs, and the whole living room arrangement has been flipped around. Freckles is very sad about all this. We, (cough), don't really, um, let her up in the master bedroom very often. So there are no more books for her to sit and stare at. She still has her blanket in the corner, but she looks pretty silly staring at the blank wall.

And! Would you believe the Ashton kids started school without me, their classroom kitty?! I couldn't believe it! It will be ok though. I am here now. Their pencils will not be allowed to move without my pouncing. The paper is safe with me on the job.

We all had a great time Bob and Lizzie! Thank you for inviting us! Next time you need to come visit us, we could show you the sights around Washington DC.

Something New

I happened on an interesting discovery during my afternoon nap today. I was snoozing in the sun on top of a rectangular, gray box in the classroom when I woke slightly from a dream, and rolled over. All of the sudden the strange box came to life! A light from somewhere deep inside it scanned back and forth, and a series of strange noises emanated from it. Before long a piece of paper started peeking its way out from under it, until it came to rest on a little shelf. Of course I attempted to show it who was boss, and batted at it repeatedly, but the paper persisted in exiting the box. I think I finally got the best of it though because when the paper finished coming out the box quieted down.

Lab Partner

The Ashton children have been keeping me very busy lately. As the official classroom kitty, I am an honorary lab partner. In this experiment they were observing the effects of hot air rising. As the heat from the candle rose into the air, the colorful cardboard thing spun around. I kept a close eye on things, and made sure that they followed correct scientific method.

A Busy Day

As if the Ocilympics haven't been keeping me busy enough these days, the Ashtons received a huge white board this week.

I, of course, took my role in the proceedings very seriously. The e-mail had said that on receipt of the package you must inspect it closely for any possible damages. I performed this check most thoroughly. I found the packaging particularly interesting, but they drug that outside rather more quickly than I would have wished. None of us had ever seen that much cardboard before, it was wonderful! But alas, it was quickly hustled out to the curb in hopes the recycling people would take it (they did).

Next, I was put in charge of making sure it didn't fall over while they moved desks and things out of the way in the classroom. They did give me a helper, the grey chair. It wasn't a very good helper though, because whenever I would jump up on it, it would rock, and that would make the white board wobble. It was a lot of fun, but I was clever enough to realize that if I wasn't careful, that chair was going to get me in trouble.


One of my other prime functions was to distract the Bearded One whenever possible.


I'm not in the next picture, but I suppose you should be able to see the result of all my hard work. This is the Ashton's home schooling classroom, complete with their nice new white board.