Baxter's Last Day in Canada

Well, folks, today is Baxter's last full day in Canada for this year.  Tomorrow we move to the Adirondacks.  Now, we will return to Canada next May, and we plan to stay in Canada for about five months before diving down to the Southwest U.S. ahead of the snows next year.

And it's true that we two humans hope to hop up to Toronto by car in late October for one last long weekend visit with William & Co.

But, for the meantime, Baxter - and we - are going to miss this huge, friendly, great outdoors.  The people have been wonderful.  The air is squeaky clean.  The summer climate has been balmy.  But we know better than to stay too long - we remember the Polar Vortex of last winter.

Baxter enjoyed a lot of time outside on this last day.  Here he is marking one of the trees on "his" property:

This afternoon, he ran into a cute little number who patrols the entire campground.  She looked like a 1- or 2-year old.  She wasn't the least bit frightened of Baxter, and she stood her ground, despite flat ears and some ceremonial hissing from His Highness:

Eventually, Baxter gave up and just accepted her presence.  He did try to share a few of the cat treats Kathy offered to this peripatetic feline, but she wasn't in much of a sharing mood.

The campground owner reports that she is a stray and that he has been trying to capture her for a couple months, so that he can get her to a shelter before the cold arrives.  We don't know.  She's pretty wary of humans and seems pretty canny.  This is a story the end of which we will not read.

Baxter asks us to tell you that he'll report back to you from upstate New York.