It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.

This week I’m joining up with Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, Deb at Readerbuzz, and Kathyrn at The Book Date.

What’s Been Occurring

The leaves have almost all fallen off here in Pennsylvania which means it is time for leaf jumping for our youngest and maybe for our oldest too if the youngest can convince him to jump with her.

I don’t remember jumping in piles of leaves very often when I was younger but my kids have always loved it. Little Miss raked some leaves yesterday to get ready for more jumping today and as she raked, my parents’ cat, Molly, watched quietly from the porch. Looking at Molly I thought about how little I know about my parents’ current cats. My parents don’t seek out pets. Any cats my parents end up with were dropped off at the non-working barn on the property or wandered up from the neighbors who seem to refuse to spay or neuter.

Two cats, both now passed away, were mine/ours. When my parents first moved to my grandmother’s house when I was in college, our all-black at Zorro came with us. We had moved from my great-grandparent’s house across a little creek (over the creek and through the woods was how we got to grandma’s house) so I was worried Zorro would try to walk through the woods back to our old house, but, as far as I remember, he never did.

Between college and when I got married, I lived at that old house (built in the mid-1800s) and had a cat named Four that I rescued from my pet-hoarding mother-in-law’s house. The cat once belonged to my sister-in-law who adopted pets and got rid of them like she did old shoes. The cat was mostly gray but had a number 4 in orange in the gray for on the top of her head. When my sister-in-law had her, she peed on my ex-brother-in-law’s side of the bed because she hated him. I wish my sister-in-law had seen that as an omen since she didn’t see his drug use and abuse as one and remained with him for years until he cheated on her after baby number five.

My parents took Four in and when my aunt moved in she fell in love with Four.

Both Four and Zorro are gone now and I miss them terribly.

When I was in college someone dropped a cat off at my parents/grandmother’s house and I named the him before my parents and grandmother could even consider sending him to the shelter. I knew if I named him, it would be harder for them to get rid of him. I named him Leonardo after Leonardo DiCaprio because he was very popular at the time – Romeo and Juliet and Titanic had both come out that year.

Mom said there was no way she was going to go out on the back porch and yell “Leonardo!” but she did for the next several years, including one week when he went missing and we all thought he died somewhere. Instead, my dad went to the small granary where he stores lawn equipment and various other items and a skinny cat darted out and ran to the patio. Mom said, “Well, what cat is that? It’s not Leonardo. He’s too skinny.”

Poor fat Leonardo had been locked in the granary for almost a week and had lost a ton of weight.

I always wanted to pet Leonardo but he had no interest in letting me. In fact, the only one he would let pet him was my 88 year old grandmother who sat calmly in her chair on the deck to enjoy the sun. He would curl up next to her and she’d rub his head. She was not a animal person either. I never remember her ever having a pet when I grew up. Leonardo loved her though.

Anyhow, back to my parents’ current cats. They are Buzz, a gigantic, fluffy, orange beast who looks like a Main Coon, and Molly, a black and white polydactyl. I visit them once or twice a week but don’t know the cats well because they are usually hiding from Zooma The Wonder Dog when we visit which means I can’t sit and really learn about them. I’ve only managed to pet Molly once.

Buzz is almost feral, though, so I wouldn’t get to know him anyhow. My dad is the only one who can pet Buzz and the one Molly will come right up to. I think her tendency to run when we are there and her usual fear of us is why I was surprised she watched us in the yard yesterday. Zooma was even with us, which made it even more surprising. I think both Zooma’s smell and eyesight were broken because she never saw Molly or chased after her like she usually does.

By the way, none of the cats we’ve ever had have been able to be inside cats since my mom is actually very allergic to cats. They make her itch all over.

What I/we’ve been Reading

I am still reading The Case of the Innocent Husband by Deborah Sprinkle and Handcrafted Murder by Isabella Alan. I will finish The Case of the Innocent Husband this week.

I have put the Lilian Jackson Braun book on the backburner because I would really like to read The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood to see what it is like.

After that I would like to finish The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, which I recently started.

Little Miss is reading Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone at night (I’m trying to convince her to also read it during the day. Not going so well.). Some nights she and I are reading The Four Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright and during the school day we are reading Johnny Tremain which we are both enjoying. Last week we painted pumpkins while listening to it on Audible, but normally I read the book to her as part of our school day.

The Husband is reading Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.

The Boy and I will be starting The Hound of the Baskerville by Arthur Conan Doyle this week after suffering through Beowulf, which I actually just read the summary of. I’m not going to lie about that.

What We watched/are Watching

This past week I rewatched parts of Rear Window so I could write about it for my blog post and then I watched a lot of Murder She Wrote.

The Husband and I watched an episode of the new Frasier show as well. I started watching Only Murders in the Building now that we have a Hulu subscription and then made The Husband watch the first episode with me. We are hooked and I can’t promise I won’t watch more of the show without him since he often has night meetings and I am impatient to find out what happens.

I  hope to watch some more old movies this week in addition to Dial M for Murder that I am watching for the Comfy, Cozy Cinema.

What I’m Writing

Still working on Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree and having fun.

On the blog I shared:

• Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot! Come Link Up With Us
• Comfy, Cozy Cinema: Rear Window
• Book review/recommendation: Move Your Blooming Corpse by D.E. Ireland
• Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Was Assigned To Read In School

Photos from Last Week

Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.