This is a cat we took in for one night a couple of years ago, just after we'd moved into our second Knoxville apartment. Isabel found it wandering around outside, approaching people and mewling. So it came inside with her.

Spook staged a protest rather vociferously.

Isabel took several pictures of the cat, whom she dubbed Space Cadet as a placeholder, and made up some Found posters. Those posters helped her locate the cat's owners the next day. They lived in the same apartment complex, and the cat got out and wandered around.

We were both concerned about the cat, because our landlady had said several times that if Spook got out and was wandering around, she'd call the pound and have her hauled away.

So we were able to take this cat in and find her servants the next day. So that was all good.

I had Friday off yesterday, so Isabel and I went out to Watts Bar Lake with the specific aim of paddling out in the canoe and seeing if we could see any loons. We didn't see any loons on the canoeing trip, but we did startle several turtles. One of them, we managed to drift up this close to it before it noticed us and went plonk. I could have reached out and tapped it with my paddle. It was a flat-shelled lake turtle; I'm not sure of the species, but I know what it wasn't. It wasn't a box turtle or a snapper. And it wasn't alone. There were two or three more on the next deadfall over.

Then Isabel tried to teach me how to angle my oar so as to make a sharp turn; I must admit that I made a poor student. So we decided to go back and get Linda to show us. That required paddling against the wind, and that led to heated words, I'm afraid, and a worry that the osprey would defend its nest as we paddled past; but I don't think any eggs are laid quite yet, but they soon will be.

Linda saw the wood ducks courting, and there was a mallard pair that kept cruising past, in and out of the cove. All the Bradford Pears have blossomed at once, and there's a willow on my daily walk that's just come into pink flowers. I guess winter is over, maybe.

And then, when we left after supper, there was a deer on the gravel road down to the highway. We stopped the car, and we all looked at each other for a minute or two. The deer had big eyes and black rims on its ears. We humans decided that the deer would bolt if we got out of the car to go tell the others, and eventually we crept forward until the deer did turn and leap off, followed by two or three others we hadn't seen because they were down in the holler.

So we had a good Friday, indeed. I wish we had brought the camera.