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Martha Kitty died earlier this morning.

Martha was the loner kitty, a crazy calico. She chose when to give some lovin’ and it was intense. She would knead my back for 15 minutes if I lay still and wore polar fleece. She also liked dress pants. After U&A, going on interviews for the first time in more than a decade, she always found me, leaving large swaths of fur on my cuffs.

Most mornings George and Martha would wrestle and yell at each other, which in turn would cause the border collies to bark. It was a reliable alarm clock.

She was the mouser of the crew. Falco had no interest in chasing, and George and C.C. lacked a killer’s instinct. Not Martha. The chase wasn’t the point, the kill was.

The girl liked her boxes and open suitcases. She sought and found comfort in confined spaces. She comforted my old lab, Slicer. As Slice lay dying, it was Martha that slept next to her.

Most of all I’ll remember Martha for the socks. Each morning she’d drag several down the stairs, trophies from her imaginary kills. That hadn’t happened the last week or so, and I should have known something was wrong with her. Two fresh piles of socks to sort through on the table and not one was moved.

Robinson and I talked about getting pigs this spring. I do miss them. I know I made the right or practical decision to skip raising pigs this year, but I do miss them.

One of the dogs — well, Pollack — killed the big, bad male duck today. We’re now down to two females and two males. Hopefully, this ends the duck aggression, which is probably how the duck died.

When this male thought you were too close, he’d charge you. Too close was sometimes five feet and sometimes 100 yards.

Our best guess is the big, bad duck decided to attack one of the females, which drives Pollack nuts (it really is a rape that takes place). Pollack would bark from the other side of the fence. The male probably decided Pollack was too close and charged her, and then Pollack pulled him through the fence. And, that’d be it.

Animal count: 12 chicks, 8 hens, 1 rooster, 4 ducks, 4 cats and3 dogs.

I can die a happy man. From AP–

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Amy Rice feared for her dog’s life when a pit bull jumped over a fence into her yard and attacked her pooch. So she took matters into her own mouth.Rice says she bit the pit bull on the nose Friday after trying to pull the dog’s jaws off her Labrador retriever, Ella. The dog had jumped a fence to get into Rice’s northeast Minneapolis yard, and Rice says she feared the pit bull would kill Ella.

“I didn’t plan it, that’s what happened. I broke the skin and had pit bull blood in my mouth,” said Rice, 38. “I knew what happened, and I knew that it wasn’t good.”

Robinson would have gone straight for the pit bull’s jugular and left it to bleed out if he attacked one of her pups.