Cats and Bats

Here's Moe, enjoying the view from the top of the hill. He has a great time outside, playing with Don, bounding from one bench to the next. They invented a fun game: swat the pepper. Don had picked a small red pepper from a bush beside the patio and dropped it on the patio. Moe was on it in a flash, batting it all over the tiled patio floor, which was additionally wet from the rain, so was extra slippery. Don had some really good laughs at the cat slipping and sliding across the floor in pursuit of the pepper. Don accidentally stepped on an ant hill and suffered several painful bites across his foot. The ants don't seem to bother Moe who sometimes jumps off one of the benches right onto an ant hill. Maybe they can't get through his fur. The other day when Don had gone up alone to visit Moe, he left the patio door open a bit, as Kaleen had told us that she often does so Moe can come and go as he pleases. While sitting outside on one of the benches with Moe, he looked up just in time to see another cat come strolling out of the house, a very pretty white cat with some yellowish-brownish spots and maybe some blackish spots. He decided that we probably shouldn't leave that door open. Moe might not like sharing his food with a strange cat.
This is what our house looks like from up the hill. I took this while we were outside with Moe. It shows off our curvy stairway very nicely. The ocean doesn't show up very well though due to the clouds.

Early this morning, while we were sitting out on our deck sipping coffee and listening to the tide coming in, we saw a bat fly by. We don't often see bats up here on the hill, but when we used to rent the house down on the beach, we often saw them in the pre-dawn hours while sitting on the deck having that first cup of coffee. The beach house has a huge sea grape tree growing in the yard and the bats apparently sleep inside a hollowed out section of the tree. Around 5 a.m., the bats return to the tree and disappear. They would sometimes fly right at you, only to veer off at the last moment. I guess they weren't expecting to encounter large obstacles in their path.

I don't know where the bats go up here on the hill. There are no sea grape trees this high up, no caves, and we have no attic. Maybe they go back down on the beach to that big old tree with the hollow.