In July my daughter and son-in-law took a trip to Japan and left us in charge of their two adorable cats. My son is allergic to cats so we have not had any cats in the house. He now lives in Portland, OR , so we gladly took the cats for the three week Japan trip. The cats were very shy at first but loved exploring everywhere they were allowed and a bit more. We kept them out of the one bedroom my son uses, and I kept them out of the train room until the last week.
They are indoor cats and were not suppose to be outside but through a sequence of errors, we managed to leave the front door open while we were gone for 4 hours and both cats escaped. We were worried sick and looked all around the neighborhood as it got dark. We found one but not the other.
For the next two days we walked the neighborhood several times a day, enlisting all the neghbors we met to help look for the small black male cat. We live in an area where coyotes are common and routinely feast on cats so we were very concerned. The cats had only been at our house for a week so I had visions of the cat trying to go home. At the end of the second full day (48 hours) we walked the neighborhood, calling the cat and shaking a container with dried cat food in it. No sign of the cat so after 8 blocks I headed for home while Andrea (my wife) tried one more short cul-de-sac. She returned home about ten minutes later with no luck. As she turned around to turn on the porch light, the black male ran inside. He was dirty and smelly, and very hungry but he was back!
It was too much of an adventure and stressed us out but it was still fun having them around. Here is a photo of the two cats looking out the screen door at some of the many birds in our back yard.
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The female had the most fun in the train room. Here is a photo of her walking the tracks just west of Goleta on the first level.
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About this same time I saw a deal on Factory Direct Trains' Inspection Car. It is powered and DCC equiped. I added an orange SP logo to each door and may add orange stripes later. It definitely needs some weathering. I took it over to Jon Cure's Inyo Subdivision [Here are some nice photos of Jon's layout http://www.pbase.com/rbarnes11/jcure ] this last Saturday and ran it from Mina to Cantil. It worked well. Here is a shot crossing a bridge just south of Owenyo and just north of Linnie.
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I have run it a couple of times on the Santa Barbara Subdivision but only in short stretches. Here is a photo passing the Giant Lemon stand.
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