Turned out to be a great Sunday. The weather was in the high 60’s and sunny, so I decided to let the cats out in the backyard to wander around. I used some boards and bricks to block the area under the back fence so they couldn’t squeeze through to the yard behind me. Not anything permanent, but just enough to keep them in the yard for now until they get more used to being outdoors.

Both of them seemed amazed when I opened the back door and left it open. They were a bit cautious heading out, but then realized they had this giant play yard and started exploring. Nate tried to push himself through the lattice fence almost immediately. He’s going to be hard to contain. The rest of their time out was uneventful and I brought them in after about 1/2 hour so that I could watch the Olympic hockey game and the Lakers game.

US lost, Lakers won. While I would have liked to have seen the US win, I think the closing ceremonies tonight would have been a lot more subdued and not as much of a party had Canada lost the hockey game. So it really wasn’t that bad. And after seeing the US lose, it was really nice to see the Lakers beat the Nuggets!

Since I still had a few hours of sunlight remaining after all that, I went out back and pulled the weeds in all my flowerbeds. Have a bit of trimming to do as well as cleanup along the sides of the house, but the backyard is ready to plant for spring! Hayes sat at the backdoor watching while I did this, so I decided to let him out when I finished. He wandered around and then got curious about the pool…and then took a step forward. It shocked the hell out of him when he started to sink! He steered clear of the pool from that point on, being very careful not to get too close to it.

All this time I thought Nate was asleep in the house since that was the last place I saw him when I went outside. I did think it was odd that he wasn’t at the backdoor trying to come out when I let Hayes out, but just figured he was tired. All of a sudden Nate appeared, coming around the side of the house! I later discovered he had pushed the screen out of the front window and went out on his own! And somehow he figured out how to get to the backyard from out front.

Then Nate decided to do LOTS of exploring! He checked out the pool and took a drink from it. He reminded me of Puto who used to do the same. Then he decided to climb one of the tangelo trees, but didn’t go up much higher than about 4-5 feet for his first climb. No doubt he’ll be the first of these two to get onto the roof once he figures out how to climb the tree in the front yard. And then it was time for them to go indoors for the night since I still needed to clean up all the weeds and leaves that I had cleared out of the flowerbeds.

Got everything cleaned up, started a load of laundry and gathered up the trash since tomorrow is trash day. At that point Nate decided he wasn’t done being outside, and squeezed out the front door as I headed out to put out the trash cans. Now this was happening at about 7 pm, and it was no longer light out. In fact, it was pitch black out! I decided it was pointless to try to find a black cat when it was that dark, so I figured I wouldn’t worry and that he would probably come back at some point. As I finished up with the trash he came back across the driveway and onto the porch. I scooped him up and took him inside, much to his dismay. I still don’t want the cats out at night, but feel a bit better since Nate didn’t go too far away this first time.

And now I’m watching the Olympics closing ceremonies and trying to type with two cats nestled in my arms on my desk between me and the keyboard. Glad to be heading off to bed at a normal time tonight!