As I begin to write this, an HTML document detailing my recent and nearly-completed visit to Texas, I am sitting in the municipal airport in Victoria, Texas. It has one gate. I had to drop off the rental car at 11:00 AM but my flight out of this particular armpit and into Houston doesn't depart until 3:30 PM. Thank god for laptops and unused electrical outlets. These seats are ungodly uncomfortable, though. I may have to adjourn to the floor eventually.

As is usually the case when I am enjoying myself on vacation, I didn't take nearly as many photos as I ought to've. But I'll share with you the photos I do have.

First, the whys and wherefores. Some months ago, my ol pal Carlos from high school in Texas invited me to attend his wedding, which was planned for October 31st. Yes, that's Halloween, Sherlock. Guests were instructed to come in costume, which was pretty neat. I had been thinking of driving my truck down to Texas, perhaps with a cabover camper and perhaps taking one or both siblings with me. As summer came to a close, however, it became apparant that Mike and Kelly would both be in school and working. The cost of the fuel it would take to get my truck and I from Seattle to Austin versus the price of one roundtrip plane ticket made it just alltogether more expedient to fly. Less time in transit, no old-truck-falling-apart issues to worry about. When Scot said that he'd like to go with me, it brought the airfare up to about equal to that of fuel, but the time it would take to drive down and back was not something that he could afford to take off work. So we bought the plane tickets and I sent an email to Grama in Rockport to see if she'd be around for us to visit while we were down there.

At the Seattle airport on the night of our departure, I was turned away at the security checkpoint due to two tiny pairs of jewler's pliers I had in my carry-on. I'd been intending to work on a necklace for my costume during the interminable flight to Texas. I was infuriated. There was a sign that said, "No tools, such as hammers and screwdrivers". But tiny snipe-nosed pliers are nothing like hammers and screwdrivers. I felt that the damn sign should have said, "No tools of any sort." I could actually hear my pulse. I hadn't been that angry in a long time. We were escorted back around to the other side of the security checkpoint and I was given my pliers back by a needlessly over-polite red-tape-weilding FAA bitch. I put the pliers in my hat box and checked it though to Victoria and we had another go at the security checkpoint, this time making it through.

We flew out of Seattle at about midnight, Wednesday night, September 29th and touched down in Houston at about 6:30 in the morning on Thursday the 30th - a four-hour flight across a couple of time zones. I managed to get about fifteen minutes of fitful doze near the tail-end of the flight and was awakened by the announcement of our imminent touchdown, followed immediately thereafter by the sudden and painful illumination of the cabin. Fifteen minutes was just enough sleep to ensure that i was thoroughly groggy and very cranky. After all our fellow human sardines were decanted into the terminal, Scot and I stumbled up the gangplank and officially arrived at the lovely (ha!) Houston airport. We had almost a three-hour layover in Houston before a little bitty plane took us (finally) to Victoria, Texas. Did I mention it only has one gate? We walked across the windswept and searingly-hot tarmak and to the terminal, where some guy with an orange vest held the door open for us.

The Hertz rental car counter was unstaffed. A sign on the counter apologized and pleaded personnel shortages. Customers with cars reserved would be greeted at the appropriate hour, but walk-ups would have to call some phone number and wait for someone to show up. Scot had reserved a car to be picked up at noon, thinking that - as in the past - we would be able to pick up the car early if we chose. We had not counted on the counter being unstaffed at ten in the morning. Tired, cranky and unwilling to wait, I called the posted phone number and about a half hour later we had our car.

We walked out of the terminal to get our car. On the way, I encountered the Victoria branch of the Official Texas Arachnaphobe Welcoming Comittee. "Howdy, pardner!" it seemed to say. Okay, not really. But, truly, it went a long way toward reminding me why I really would never willingly live here again. To give scale to the photo, I set a quarter down next to it as close as I dared. I think I got really close to it, considering how I feel about these repulsive creatures. I know it looks kind of dead, but it's not. I poked at it with my toe and it shambled around a little before settling back onto the sidewalk again. I guess that contorted posture was its idea of comfy. The spiders we have around my house "skitter". These horrible things are big and kind of shamblesome. They move each leg in a discrete, concise fashion that I find alarming.

We cranked up the air conditioning, got settled into the car (you know - put stuff in every compartment and pocket within reach) and tried to locate a highway. Ate at Whataburger for the first time in, like, six years. Scot's burger ended up being a disappointment but the onion rings were really good. Found a highway finally and then an H.E.B.!

The onion rings and 15 minutes of sleep the previous night joined forces and a scant thirty miles out of Victoria I was so groggy that I couldn't keep my eyelids apart any longer. Scot had already dozed off and I finally gave in and pulled into a gas station for a nap. I rolled the windows down a bit and went comatose for a couple of hours, waking only when the temperature outside had surpassed ninety and the car became an oven. Somewhat refreshed, we completed the drive to Austin and got checked into our hotel. There we finished up some of the bits of our costumes, shook out our clothes and I managed to tip the hot iron over onto the back of my hand, burning the crap out of it. We had a good local pizza and hit the hay a bit early.

The next day was Friday, October 31st; Halloween and the wedding. We did this and that and got out of the hotel a little bit late, hoping to make up time on the road. Alas, Austin's Friday afternoon traffic is every bit as bad as ours here in Seattle. It took us about an hour to get to the botanical gardens where the wedding was to be held, which was only about ten miles away. The ambient speed on the freeway fluxuated between 0.5 and 6 MPH. When we finally arrived (about forty-five minutes late), I was very surprised to see Carlos standing out by the parking lot with a cell phone against his ear.

Now I hadn't seen this guy since we graduated high school, about nine and a half years ago - but he still looks exactly the same and seeing him was just like walking into English IV. But without all the other jackass students and no teacher and no little torture devices disguised as desks... well, perhaps it wasn't much like English IV. But it was still Carlos and man was it good to see him again.

The ceremony was just lovely, as were the gardens. Holly looked exquisite and Carlos looked distinctly regal. I had a rotten view of the proceedings, though, and this fact is reflected in my rotten photos. I had to either view things over others' shoulders or from a three-quarters angle behind Holly. I ran around the perimeter of guests and tried to stick my head in far enough to get a nice photo but they all turned out lame. The three below were particularly frustrating because they had so much potential. The first one had someone's bloody (literally) shoulder in the way. The second one is a lovely photo of Carlos holding a mutant hand that projects from the side of some giant's wrist. And the third one is blurry because I was trying (unsuccessfully) to sidestep someone who backed into my photo.

I won't say a lot about the reception afterward because I drank a lot of margaritas out of a cow horn and didn't realize how terribly I'd underestimated their potency until it was far far far too late. I will forever rue the day I crossed paths with the Slow-Acting Margaritas of Doom. But I had a lot of fun (before the humiliation and vomiting) and would do it all again. If I had to.

The next morning (Saturday, November 1st) I made a lot of pathetic moaning sounds and tried to pack up my luggage while clutching my stomach with one hand and my head with the other. This resulted in getting out of the hotel room about an hour after the posted check-out time. I felt so rotten. What little I could recall was nothing to be proud of.

Here's an interesting thing we discovered about Texas: their Costcos can sell liquor! From the highway, I saw the words "LIQUOR SALES" on the side of a Costco in Austin and had to check it out. It was a wee liquor store tacked on the side of the building. You don't need a Costco membership to shop there and I don't know how their prices compared to other liquor stores in Texas but it sure was a damn lot less expensive than the state-run liquor stores here in Washington. I was so amused by this that I documented it in this photo of Scot. The "LIQUOR SALES" sign is small and on the left.

Our rental car from the Victoria Hertz was giving me lip. The brakes were worn down the metal, it pulled to the right and the only way to open the trunk with with the key. Utterly devoid of anything resembling forebearance or patience, I drove us queasily down to the Austin airport and traded in our defective Mazda something-or-other with all the options and power everything for a baseline barebones Mitsubishi that did what it was supposed to and little else.

I hadn't received any email from Grama before departing Seattle and Scot and I were unable to get our MSN dialup working there in Austin. I was worried that she might not even be home to have gotten my email. I called her after exchanging the renal car, however, and the conversation went like this:

Grama: "Hello?"
Me: "Hi... uh... Grama?"
Grama: "Well where are you?"
Me (hesitantly): "Uh... Austin...?"
Grama (disappointed): "Well, that's quite a long way away. I have dinner ready!"
Me: "So, uh, I can come visit then?"
Grama: "Well of course!"
Me: "Okay, well, we're headed that way now then."
Grama: "You'd better get on your horse and ride."
Me (apologetically): "We'll be there as soon as we can."

We headed south out of Austin and drove back down past Victoria, continuing on to Rockport. On the way, we saw some neat older historic buildings. The one pictured above right is the Gonzales County Courthouse, which impressed me. We rolled into Rockport at about eight in the evening. We had Grama's delicious King Ranch Chicken Cassarole and visited a little bit before calling it a night. The next day, Sunday, I rummaged in Grama's attic and dug up some stuff that's been stored up there since we moved out of Texas back in 1994. Mom had already mailed me the stuff I had stored in Grama's attic the last time she was down there for a visit. That photo, by the way, is only about half of the TMNT paraphrenalia that I have. Well, half if you don't count the comics and posters. But anyway.

Found some of Mike and Kelly's old stuffed animals and a box of nic-nacs that Kelly had lovingling and painstakingly wrapped in newspaper. Treasures of yore! We visited with Grama, Uncle Deryl, Aunt Elke, cousin Diana, her husband Stormy and her two daughters, Lindsey and Amber. Scot and I drove around Rockport a bit and took some photos of this and that. My siblings and I spent a fair amount of time in Rockport as kids, so with them in mind I took some photos of memorable things in Rockport.

The next morning was Monday. Scot and I had to get up quite early so I could drive him to Victoria for his 10:30 AM flight back to Seattle. He'd taken Thursday and Friday off work, which was quite bold of him, considering the singleminded determination and perfect attendance that is expected of persons working at Microsoft. I watched the little plane take off and then went back to the rental car to cry for a while. Scot and I are unused to separations of any length. They particularly traumatize me when planes are involved.

I then undertook the long lonely drive down to the Rio Grande Valley, where in my childhood I spent many a wretched fall and winter. I'm not entirely certain why I headed down there; it certainly isn't a pleasant region and I hadn't arranged to visit anyone down there. There were a couple of people I had considered visiting, but I didn't know if they'd be around. I guess it was just something to do.

The explosive growth in the last five years or so really surprised me. Edinburg hadn't changed a whole lot, but McAllen had about doubled in density. I drove around and took some photos of things that surprised me - either because they had changed or because they had stayed exactly the same. These photos will probably bore anyone who isn't Mike, Kelly or Mom.

First, some photos of Edinburg North Junior High. My sister and I both attended this school. When I was going there, ceiling tiles would occasionally fall down during class. They were probably solid asbestos. The place was later closed down. I thought that I had heard that they were going to bulldoze it, but when I visited this time, they'd entirely renovated the main building (they took the paint off all the windows, for one... what sick mind thought it would be a good idea to paint over all the windows so the students couldn't see the sun?) and boarded up all the peripheral buildings like the Science Building and the Band Hall. They'd cut down a lot of trees and sort of built some parking lots here and there. It looked rather desolate, I thought. Not that it was exactly welcoming before.

It has taken me a while to get this far in my HTML-ing. As I type this sentence, I am sitting on my living room sofa, looking back on the events I am about to relate with a wisdom and detatchment only attainable with a few weeks' distance. There was no way for me to know, driving north on the 281, that I was destined to fall hopelessly in love with someone I could not have.

The sound the tires made on the pavement, combined with the slightly sluggish handling made me think that the tires were perhaps a bit low. So at a gas station in Premont (north of Falfurias, south of Alice) I decided to stop and use their air compressor and gauge to check my tires. I pulled up to the air and water dispensing station at the outskirts of a rather large gas station but came up with no quarters for the machine. Went inside and bought a Starbucks Doubleshot and came out with some change. Plunked in my quarter and drew out an appropriate length of air hose only to discover that the nozzle had no integral gauge. The tire didn't look particularly low so I added a small resentful placebic burst of air and guided the hose back into its niche. That's when it happened.

I heard a noise that I thought sounded an awful lot like a "MEW!" I paused and looked around.

"MEW!"

It was definitely a cat-noise, but I couldn't see where it was coming from.

"MEW!"

Then I saw it: a tiny black little bundle zipping through the tall grass in the median and out onto the 281. A large pickup truck zoomed past it on the highway, missing it by not many inches. The little black kitten wheeled about and tore back in the direction it had just come, its cries, if possible, becoming more piteous. It bounded past me, mewing, ran under my car and out in front of another large truck barreling through the gas station parking lot. The truck, amazingly, honked and swerved (I don't know how the driver saw such a tiny thing in time... I probably would have taken it for a leaf blowing in the wind) and, again, the little thing missed death by inches and about-faced back toward the 281.

My jaw hung agape at the horriffic spectacle of this tiny panic-stricken thing's maddened dash between one certain doom to another. I glanced around me (in a sort of "is this really happening?" sort of way) and happened to meet the gaze of a fellow standing near his truck, which he was fueling, who shouted, "Sorry place for a kitten!" This had a sort of galvanizing effect on me and I snapped out of my appalled stupor and lunged to intercept the little thing as it headed for the highway. When it saw me, it veered off its intended flight path (thank the gods), ran under some small shrubs in a little landscaped area near one of the gas station's driveways and under a lamp post.

It's hard to describe the way the lamp post was up on four bolts and not exactly sitting on the concrete pad. Odd sort of design that I'm sure had a very specific purpose, but which happened to also serve as a hiding place for the little black kitten. Barely three inches of space was available under the lamp post but the scrap of fur had squeezed underneath it and continued to cry forlornly. Gathering my skirt, I knelt in the gravel beside the concrete pad in which the bolts were buried. I leaned over and peered under the lamp, making what I hoped was soothing noises. The kitten was not soothed. It hissed angrily at me, ran out from under the lamp in the opposite direction, and took refuge a few feet away under a bush. I approached more cautiously and held my hand out, speaking softly to it. When I got to within a foot of being able to touch the kitten it hissed again and darted under a big spikey plant.

This was not going well. The little beast was in dire straits and would soon end up flattened or worse if something was not done. It did not, however, seem to find any redeeming qualities in my kindly offers of assistance. If the kitten kept running from me and I kept pursuing it, there was a good chance that it would, in desperation, opt to take off toward the highway or the busy gas station parking lot. Fortunately, at this point, the fellow who was fueling his truck earlier in this story ambled over and said, "Scaird little thing, ain't it? I think it's under that bush there," and pointed at the spikey plant that was now mewing.

"It's pretty terrified," I said, moving around to interpose myself between the highway and the kitten's spikey lair. "It doesn't want anything to do with me. But if you get on the other side of this plant here and make some noises and move your hand around to distract it, I'll try to grab it." Famous last words. Hey, remember in Ghostbusters when our heroes encounter that librarian ghost early on in the movie? And they are sneaking up on her and Ray says, "...ready...ready... GET HER!" and the boys lunge for the librarian ghost and she turns into this horrible freaking nasty thing that goes "RRRAAAAGH!" and turns on them and they run away screaming like girls? Well this was kind of like that, but with a happy ending.

The truck guy made some sort of cooing, babbling sound and waggled his fingers down at the kitten's level. The kitten, who had been watching me warily from beneath the spikey plant whirled around to confront this new threat and I took the opportunity to dart in and grab it around the waist with one hand to prevent it from bolting. The kitten set up a teriffic wail and flailed wildly but I had a pretty good grip on it and brought it out from under the plant. It bawled and screeched, turning every head at the gas station, and did some pretty acrobatic writhing that nevertheless did not prevent me from acquiring a double-handed grip. Unfortunately, the beastie also got a grip on me. With its teeth. And proceeded to bite the OBSCENITY OBSCENITY OBSCENITY out of both of my index fingers.

I tried to extract my fingers from the kitten's mouth, who continued to scream around them. You know, it's hard to keep a really firm resolve on gripping something that is industriously gnawing away at your favorite fingers. But I knew that if I let go it would probably bolt right out into traffic again and I had no real hopes of a third miracle saving it from a tirey death so I gritted my teeth and thumb-wrestled the pint-sized pirhana. I finally got one and then the other finger under the kitten's chin. Perhaps recognizing defeat, perhaps biding its time, the kitten fell suddenly silent and still. The truck guy flapped his hands first with triumph and then with dismay as he saw the blood welling from more than a dozen little puncture wounds in my fingers.

I reassured him that they didn't hurt at all (a big lie) and that they were shallow (true) and that I would disinfect them as soon as possible (true). Then I directed him to rummage in my car and find one of my sarongs and make a sort of a bag out of it, into which I dumped the kitten. Using mostly my wrists and elbows, being careful not to get blood on my favorite sarong, I sort of wadded the kitten up and put it on the seat, relief flooding through me as I closed the door. Truck Guy got me one of those blue shop-towels-on-a-roll out of his truck to soak up the blood and to the tune of my many grateful and heartfelt thanks, beat a hasty retreat leaving me with...

A kitten. Ye gods - what had I gotten myself into?

I got into the drivers seat of my rental car and listened to my heart thump. My hand hurt like hell and I had mixed feelings about this whole thing. Where was Kitten's mom? Where was the rest of the litter? What in hell was I going to do now?

Well, for starters, how about unwrapping the little hellion before it smothers? I reached around to the back seat and brought the silent bundle up into my lap. I spoke softly at it but it neither moved nor made a sound. I gently unwraped it, one layer at a time, until finally a tiny dark head emerged with huge, bulging blue eyes. It blinked at me and gawked around a little as I talked to it. It rapidly became apparant that "it" was a "she". This little scrap of dark fur was actually a subtle black-and-dark-orange tortoiseshell. In case you didn't know, something like 99.9% of all calico and tortoiseshell cats are female. Weird, huh? If you ever come across a male calico or tortoiseshell, become his best friend because he's actually a minor deity!

After about a minute or so of my whispered and one-sided conversation, the tortoiseshell finally decided that she had something to say. She started to purr! The purr was three times the size of the kitten and had a sort of grappling-hook effect on my heart. If it hadn't already been love at first bite, she certainly had me now. She snuggled down further in my lap and I started up the car and headed on down the road. What else could I do? There were no houses nearby - just a Burger King, the gas station and the highway. No trees or scrub in which the rest of the family might be lurking. She was very skinny, with no baby fat whatsoever and very prominent ribs. She didn't look nearly old enough to have been weaned yet. "I don't know where you came from," I told her, "and I don't know what you're doing here in this terrible place but you're coming with me."

I made a couple of pit-stops on the way to Rockport and acquired a cardboard box, some antibiotic ointment, some cat litter, a styrofoam cup, a bottle of water and a couple of small tins of that smelly, squishy cat food that I detest. I started calling the kitten "little friend", which quickly became "little tejas" ("tejas" being the word for "friend" or "ally" in the language of one of the native folk of this region, back before it belonged to the U.S.), and finally "little Texas" (the name of the state, supposedly, having stemmed from that aboriginal word for "friend"... sounds suspiciously like something made up by the Texas Department of Suckering Tourists). Texas, for her part, tried continuously to find something to nurse on among the folds and wrinkles of the sarong. When presented with a tin of smelly food, she fell to with a gusto that was alarming and reminded me strongly of the way in which she savaged my fingers, which I treated and bandaged while she ate. I made her take digestive breaks between episodes of gorging, afraid that she would make herself sick. I cut the styrofoam cup down to about two inches in height and used it to present Texas with some water, which she drank gratefully. I emptied the litter into the cardboard box but although she seemed to understand what it was for (which she demonstrated to me by digging in it a bit and looking smug about it, as if to say, "Oh, I know all about this! I'm growed up!") she did not use it until the next day.

The rest of the trip to Rockport was relatively uneventful. Texas and I listened to music. I sang to her and she alternately napped and purred, snuggled all the while in my lap. When I got to Rockport (quite a bit later than I'd predicted I'd be), I wrapped my Sarong around my neck like a sling and bundled Texas into it. Knocked tentatively on Uncle Deryl and Aunt Elke's door and was invited in.

"What's in the scarf?" Aunt Elke said, warily and almost immediately.

"Well," I said, "I met someone at a gas station. She was in a lot of trouble, so I brought her with me." I unwrapped Texas and her little head lolled out. Her traumatic evening combined with her full belly had put her into a food-coma. She blinked and tried to focus on her new surroundings but quickly gave up on that and dozed off again.

Uncle Deryl and Aunt Elke were quite taken with her, naturally. Anyone with a heart softer than a cinder block wouldn't stand a chance against the little nipper. But they already have two grown-up calicos and mentioned several times how they didn't need another kitten. Now, mind you, I had no intention of scraping her off on them. What I truly wanted to do was take her home with me. I kinda felt like I had a responsibility toward her, having taken her into my care and all. Er, not to mention the fact that I was already very very attached. But, you see, at home we have a cat. Or, rather, a cat has us. And Coco has demonstrated time and again that as long as she is in charge, this is to be a one-cat household. No exceptions. She is very very loyal and devoted. She doesn't ask for a lot in return; just endless amounts of love no other cats for at least a fifty-foot radius. It would be cruel indeed to repay her years of devotion by bringing in competition for the love she has earned.

I was in agony. I tried to tell myself that Coco would understand; that she would learn to share her family with the kitten; that she would grow to be friendly toward little Texas. It was all self-delusion, however, and in some of my saner moments I knew this. It's just that there is something irrationally attractive about a kitten that decides you are a trustworth individual and falls asleep in your lap, purring love to you and contentment to herself.

It was late at night and everyone was tire. Aunt Elke rummaged up one of the pet carriers they use when transporting baby parrots and I tucked little Texas in for the night and put her on the coffee table next to the couch on which I bedded down. During the night, Texas woke up and began crying. I woke up and brought her out of the carrier and consoled her until she had regained her confidence in her safety. Unfortunately, however, she was now wide awake and wanted to explore whereas I just wanted some rest. Eventually I had to put her back in the carrier so I could go back to sleep. This angered and frustrated her greatly and she took up a great hue and cry at the injustice of it all. In desperation, I took her to the farthest unoccupied room of the house, covered the carrier with a blanket and closed the door. I could still hear her faintly and it made me feel terrifically monsterous to isolate her like that but for pity's sake! A body has to sleep! She carried on at length and took up her litany periodically through the night. My guilt made for a cold bedfellow and I slept little and shallowly.

In the morning I discovered the reason for her lengthy and vocal nocturnal distress. The rich cat food had been just too much for her deprived little digestive system and she had made a frightful mess of nearly the entire interior of the pet carrier, including her own silky baby fur. I gave her a bath, which baffled her, and dried her with a towel, which delighted her. Those two states seemed to comprise about 90% of her entire being: bafflement and delight. The other 10% was made up of equal parts abject terror and righteous indignation - a potent mix, as evidenced by the puncture wounds that were now making my index fingers throb mightily.

When given the opportunity, Texas did what all proper cats do with litter boxes: make them foul. She ate some more food and drank some more water so as to foul the box some more at a later date. The morning progressed for people, too, complete with coffee and lots of yawning and checking up on Texas. Eventually it became time to leave the house and go visit my cousin Robert at his place of business. I insisted on bringing Texas with me (I did mention earlier that I'd already become very very attached to her, yes? Good.), in her little sling. We visited for a bit, talked about this and that, including little Texas and the fact that Robert, also, did not need yet another cat.

I should tell you this: I had not shared the kitten's name with anyone else. It was entirely by accident that I had stumbled across her name during the drive to Rockport the night before and it was kind of embarassingly sappy. I mean, come on. "Texas"? How unoriginal. But that was her name and I didn't really have much to do with picking it out. After I realized that I was calling her "Texas" with regularity, I became alarmed and spent about an hour trying on other names: Diesel. Bella. Toulouse. Cleo. Delilah. Trinket. Emma. Maggie. Cinder. Freya. Rich and honorable names, all of them, but none of them would stick. Her name was Texas and that was that. So, in conversation, I just referred to her as "the kitten". But in my heart she was Little Texas and I wished fervently that she could be mine and live with me forever.

Alas, it was not to be. Finally, we could no longer in good conscience keep Robert from his work and said our goodbyes. We headed out to Aunt Elke's car and I was about to climb in when Aunt Elke suggested that perhaps the kitten should be given the opportunity to foul the sand bordering the parking lot, rather than take the risk of possibly fouling the car's interior. That was a good idea. Texas and I were investigating the grassy hinterlands of the parking lot when, from across the way, a woman called, "Is that your kitten or did you find her here just now?"

My heart lurched and I knew that I needed to pursue this opportunity without giving it any thought. I scooped up Texas and brought her to the woman in the mini-van who had spoken to me from across the lot. "I found her last night at a gas station out on the 281," I said. A lump began to form in my throat and I rushed on, trying to get this done and over with before I could change my mind. "I'm flying home to Seattle tomorrow afternoon, though, and I can't take her with me. Would you like to have her?"

I can't go into a lot of detail about the rest of the conversation. The only part of it that really stuck with me was that she had a kitten at home who was probably a couple of weeks older than Texas who was running her ragged. Her hope was that the two of them would run each other ragged and let the rest of the family have some peace. She took Texas from me, with my thanks (I hope she couldn't tell how insincere they were) and I turned quickly away and got into Aunt Elke's car and tried really hard not to cry - with about a 90% success rate.

So somewhere out there in a certain rusty little costal town in Texas, there's a nice lady who drives a shuttle for a nursing home. She has a young tortoiseshell cat and probably calls her something like Missy or Buttercup or maybe Spatula. But the cat's name is Texas and she's actually my cat and I miss her.

Later that afternoon, I left Rockport and headed up for Austin, hoping to visit Carlos and Holly a bit before flying home the next day. There had naturally been a lot of family and friends for them to tend to at the wedding, so Scot and I were careful not to be too greedy with their attentions. Now that things had settled down a bit, I had hopes that we might go have a bite to eat, yak a bit, do whatever it is that people do when they meet after several years' intermission.

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