beautiful rascal

we have sort of half adopted a stray cat here, who prowls at night, and then visits us during the day to nap in a fleece blanket and be fed liver pâté, duck breast, raw rabbit, roast chicken, and pork sausage by my husband who believes all creatures deserve to eat well. occasionally, like all cats, she loses her mind and sprints from one side of the house to the other, then stands still, and then acts as if a ghost has just whispered close in her ear. then she shreds our pant legs with her front claws. she is a beautiful white cat with gray-brown spots and an unlikely striped lemur tail. she is also a devil. the oats in this photo are wild oats, native to the mediterranean, but naturalized almost everywhere. they are beautiful. and they cause subtle but enormous damage in competition with cultivated grain crops. in french, the plant is called “folle avoine.” the english translation is “crazy oats.” we may have discovered a nickname for our new cat who is not technically our cat but whom we can’t quite convince of that fact so far.

wild oats in winter