Yesterday was a busy day, with a lot of miles to cover. That means lots
of boring hours for the Roadcat, who did a fair amount of arm napping.
Since she was *such* a good girl, and since I'm looking at the
possibility of having to go on the road without her, I decided that last
night's kitten walk needed to be a really good one.

Fortunately I ran out of hours close to Phoenix, OR. The truck stop
there is right next to a couple of very good kitty walk fields. And when
I pulled in, our favorite parking stall on the edge closest the field
was available! It's rare to find empty parking slots at all after 8:00
PM on a Friday night, but we did.

I knew it was time for the walk, too. The sun sank low enough for it to
be truly dark about 8:00 PM while we were driving through Medford.
Instead of relaxing in my arms or on the dash, Harri sat with her behind
on my left leg and her front paws on the edge of the window. She sat
there looking out the window and talking to me. We would go past a long
stretch of empty field and she would sadly announce "Paw, look, over
there - a kitty field! And there's no kitties in it. And it's
darrrrrrrrrrk!" A minute or so later we passed a little park and again I
heard "Paw, a park! With birdies in it! I could catch those birdies!"

When we did finally reach the truck stop and I got in position to back
in, Harri got so excited that she paced from the window to the top of
the steering column to the dash and back. The first thing I did when I
parked was put Harri's kittying gear on her, then when I opened the door
she was out the door ahead of me.

We got onto the sidewalk that divides the two kittying fields, and to my
surprise she didn't veer off to either field. Instead she stuck to the
sidewalk, went ot the end of the street, and crossed to the other side.
This put us on a sidewalk on the edge of a residential neighborhood,
running along the back sides of some nice houses. We walked down the
sidewalk until we came to a retaining wall that varied from about waist
height to about shoulder height. I picked Harri up and put her on top of
the wall (on the other side of the wall was a little garden/tree strip).
Harri loved being up so high! She trotted along a couple feet ahead of
me, sniffing all the trees and flowers, and would occasionally look over
to reassure herself that she really was as high as her Paw's hips. At
one point she made a meow that sounded exactly like she was saying "wow!".

We explored down the sidewalk to the next street, then turned around. We
walked that same wall to the point where we originally joined it, then
kept going down to the next street, crossed the street again, and came
back down that sidewalk towards where we started. This sidewalk, though,
bordered the bigger of the two kittying fields. About halfway down the
field I saw Harri pounce on something, then swat it a few times, then
pounce again. She had found a cricket! She would swat at it until it
jumped, pounce on it, then swat it until it jumped again. After a few
rounds of this the nasty old cricket stopped playing with her (and was
looking kind of squashed). Harri trotted down the street a few paces,
spotted another smaller cricket, and MUNCH! Just grabbed it in her teeth
and had herself a cricket snack. Ewwww!

We then made our way into the field and played Hunting Zoomies for at
least half an hour. Over all we spent over an hour and a half on our
kitty walk. One of the best ones ever!

We're now in the Sacramento yard. If the drizzle lets up long enough I'm
sure we'll do a couple of kitty walks here, too.

Dan