Today is Valentine’s Day and I spent much of it on the road driving to my Mother-in-Law’s house.

She is dealing with a colony of feral cats and I came down to help. Working with Friends of Feral Felines we got an appointment to have four of the nine sterilized via a discount program. I borrowed four traps from CARE and took them, along with four carriers for post-op, down to Monroe.

It’s about a two and half hour trip from my house, and a part of it was along Hwy 49 between Asheboro and Charlotte. This was my commute home from UNC-Charlotte during my college days and I’ve always enjoyed the part I took today. It runs through the heart of the Piedmont region of North Carolina, which is full of rolling hills and old family farms. The bit of snow left over from this last storm was a nice touch. There was something appealing about driving the pickup through the country listening to Eric Bibb sing the blues.

I made it to Monroe without incident and Leona took me out for sushi. Yes, I spent Valentine’s Day with an older woman.

When we got back it was time to round up the cats. Since we wanted to make sure to get as many females as possible, I used a modified “snatch and grab” method. Even with my long sleeved jacket and my leather gloves I still got a few scratches, but we managed to get three females and one male ready for tomorrow.

So now we’re watching “Undercover Boss” and then I’m off to bed. Up early tomorrow to get the cats off to the vet.