For some reason our power was out for three hours yesterday. Not sure why, but we did have 3-4 brownouts during the height of the storm, so maybe they shut it down on purpose to make a repair. That was the extent of the impact on my house in Castleton. In Samsonville, still no power, and the pool cover was ripped off and is in the water. Seems obnoxious to complain when so many lost everything, or live in places where there are few resources to be self-sufficient. Halloween...I do have candy on hand, and I made an effort to make the porch semi-respectable, but so far no trick or treaters. [Later: they started coming soon after I wrote this.] [Still later: We had more kids this year than we've had in at least the past five. The groups were huge! I was afraid we would run out of candy -- but didn't quite. We shut the lights out at 8:30.]

I was thinking about TB/TC (my marvelous cat Teddy) because he came from south NJ, just about where the storm made landfall. I wonder how the couple is who gave him away. He spends many hours in the day time outside, weather permitting, and even sometimes when it is lightly raining. He LOVES it. It is another of the many ways he is similar to Edna. There was no keeping her inside, even though I did not want her to be an outdoor cat. She wasn't, did not spend nights out there, but she had to go outside or she became grouchy and she would do her best to slip outside when the door was opened. In her case, she jumped the fence and went wherever she wanted. That's the reason her being out made me nervous. But, no harm came to her, and she always came back when called. To say my house is a good place for cats is an understatement. The yard is one story below street level, it backs up a deep ravine that has a cemetery on the other side, and so Edna never went in the front of  the house near the road.

Teddy can't get out of the fence, both because he does not seem inclined to try, and because he was declawed when I adopted him. I believe cat declawing (like dog ear and tail docking) to be cruel animal abuse, and it is something I would never have done. My vet shares the philosophy and would not agree to do it. I think in Teddy's case it was especially mean, as it was done when he was an adult -- five years old, in fact. But I admit that his lack of claws means no jumping and escaping from the yard, and so I can let him stay out there as long as his heart desires without a bit of worry.