Back from Minneapolis

I spent the weekend at a literary conference in Minneapolis. It's a city with a real sense of itself — the sort of identity a place has when it's the cultural center of the state. Beautiful parks, lots of agricultural and industrial history, everyone talking about the arts — and about religion, but not in a conservative sense. And you definitely get the feeling that people appreciate warm weather, which they were having.

It was good to get home — at an appalling hour — Sunday night. It had rained, so the tomatoes were doing well. Monday morning Garibaldi, the orange tom cat, was waiting on the back porch to be fed. He had a cut on his nose — always some new evidence of a fight.

After he ate, he came over and sniffed my hand, which I viewed as real progress. But I haven't seen him since then, and am now pretty sure that something out there (coyotes? a car? another cat?) got him. Or maybe someone captured him and took him to be neutered.

In a hour or so I'm picking up Smokey — my cat who lives with a neighbor seven blocks north — and taking him in for his annual vet visit. Another feline mystery.