"Just Don't Talk to the Cat"

I have found that if I do a little mowing in the backyard every day, it does not have to become an overwhelming chore.

Leo is very invested in my mowing

I can take lots of little breaks to smell the flowers.

The Asian dayflowers bloom early each day and then wilt

Leo and Brownie and Bow are all there to participate, each in his own way.

Bow watches me as  I mow from inside the outer pen

Sometimes I will take a break on the trampoline, and can view everything that is happening in the yard from a nice vantage point.

Of course,  I am not as high up as, say, a kitten on the roof, but that is okay.

Even though I have only mowed about half the yard today, I can take time off when lunch comes around. Later Bow suggests that I go out for a walk in the front yard. I ask him why, and he says because it is good. But he adds: "רק אל תדברי עם החתול". "Just don't talk to the cat."

I don't talk to the kitten, but there is no way I can keep it from talking to me, as it meows at me from the roof as I go out the front door for my walk.

In the pasture there are many new flowers I have not seen before.

Because the path through the pasture passes right by the barn, I have been avoiding it, thinking this would get the kitten to following me.

But now that I know that the kitten does not spend any time in the barn at all, and that it is on the roof all the time, I feel better about venturing into this unspoiled wilderness without an exotic carnivore at my heals.

I can observe the  bumblebee on the blossom without fear of disturbance from a feline follower.

"This blossom is occupied," said the beetle to the bumblebee.

On my way back down the path after completing a circuit of the pasture, I encounter a couple of turtles. They are going single file, one after the other.

Could it be mating season? Is this a male pursuing a female? (My turtle expert, Pam Keyes later confirms this.)

Just then I hear a meowing in the background.

The kitten suddenly appears and moves in to investigate.

Just let me check what it smells like!

This is a bit disturbing. What would a kitten do with a turtle, if left to its own devices? It backs away from the turtles when I am watching, but I do not trust it alone with them.

Eventually, as the kitten will not go far so long as  the turtles are still there and I am still there, and I am concerned about what might happen if I leave first, I pick up the kitten by the scruff of its neck  -- which it allows, as I am like a mother cat when I do this -- and I lock it momentarily in a storage building where we keep discarded toys.When I return moments later to check on the turtles, they are nowhere in sight. They move fast when you are not looking! So I go back and let the kitten out of storage. It follows me all the way home, and once I am inside it probably goes back up on the roof.

I meant to do as Bow asked and not talk to the cat, but  that is more easily said than done.