Coolest Neighbors Ever

Okay, Debi and Ronnie, our neighbors to the south, give them a run for their money, but no can deny that our "northern neighbors," the Flynns, are mighty cool. We watched their cats while they were out of town (the kids nominally were charged with this task), and when the Flynns returned, they left a sweet card on our doorstop, attached to this adorable cookie bouquet, with appropriate payment for both boys - cash for Connor and a stuffed Spider Man for superhero-obsessed Park.

Here is a shot of PJ eating a pretty darned good replica of the Flynns' cat, Keira. I should mention that everyone on our street has a black and white cat, most from the same source - a very fertile Myrtle who lives on the other side of the middle school. Some neighborhoods have a "Welcome Wagon" program; we requisition you a cat. Keira's littermate, Leni, lives on the other side of us. We, of course, have Max, who looked a little shaggier and bigger than his predecessors when he showed up in the yard one day, and, Maine Coon lovers that we are, we snatched him up in hopes that our suspicions were correct and he was cut from a different feline cloth. We were not disappointed - he is all Coon cat and twice as big as the other black and white kitties on the street (well, only half again as big if you take all of the fur out of the equation). No idea where he came from, but most assuredly it was divine providence that brought him - the third in a line of black and white Maine Coons in the Durham-McGlinchey family line - to our doorstep.



We consider ourselves lucky to live in a real, old school neighborhood - a front porch community, not a backyard-centric suburb - where the felines share bloodlines, people throw dog birthday parties and take turns leaving "Secret Santa" and "Undercover Easter Bunny" gifts on the front stoop for the kids, screen doors are left open when the weather permits, and you can walk into pretty much anyone's carriage house (no one has a functional garage around here) and borrow their rototiller/extension ladder/folding tables and chairs without asking. (We kind of operate like a commune - why buy a fertilizer spreader when you know that the McGlincheys have one? Buy something else and add it to the communal pile.) Our neighbors are like family, and we love our occasionally wacky but incredibly loving and loveable family.