Lukie in the sun...Bela in the moonshine

I went into our bedroom this afternoon to put on jeans and a sweater because I was feeling a bit chilly from the 60-something temperature. There was sunlight shining on a little square of our bed and Lukie, our cat was sprawled out in the sun. Every bit of his rather large body was bathed in sunlight and the rest of the bed was in shadow.

Leave it to a cat to find pleasure wherever it shows up.

Life might not get better than that, finding a bit of sunshine on a September afternoon to take a snooze in. Really.

As soon as I quit typing this, I'm going to take Bela, our Puli dog, out for his last bathroom of the day. We most likely won't get out of the front yard before he pees. But I know we'll be bathed in moonlight because it an almost full moon tonight and it it clear and by 10:30 p.m. this time of year, the moon is above all the trees around our house and will light our way.

Bela is so BLACK that moonlight is necessary to see him. Often on the back porch and deck, I loose sight of him and he'll brush against me when I don't expect him to be there. I have a flashlight on the ready in the kitchen because if he goes down in the yard at night that's the only way I'll find him.

Light and darkness. Sun and moon. Warm days and cool nights. A cat and a dog.

What's better than all that except Maggie, our parakeet is singing along with the classical music on WSHU from the radio beside her cage and Bern is upstairs watching TV, probably getting ready to go to bed.

Simple things are all I need to give me joy. A yellow cat and 'black as midnight in a cypress swamp' dog and singing bird and the sun and the moon, Bach on the radio and Maggie singing, warmth and cool and the woman I love upstairs moving around.

That's all it takes to give me joy.

Lucky me. So blessed, really.

Most of the time I feel like a yellow Maine Coon Cat taking a nap in a patch of sun.

Just like that.