Three baby birds, Two freaked cats, and a Partridge on my front stoop

Animal attraction? I came home one day to find this strange creature on my door stoop. My mother-in-law did some research and said it is a partridge. I think it is one strange bird. It just stood there. With my husband gardening nearby. With kids running past. Me taking photos. It's like it was posing. It showed up a few days later standing right behind my car. It didn't want to move. If I wasn't pretty sure they were extinct, I would have guessed it was a mutant form of DoDo Bird.

In the carport, we have a new family of birds. The mom chose the motion-sensor light to build her house on. Right next to the door. For the past few months, every time I drove into the carport, the bird would fly off in fright... and trigger the light. Very convenient for me, but the flap of wings near my head would make my heart race! Now, with the babies, she sits on the junk at the back of the carport and sings, or maybe she's tweeting to her homies about her new brood and updating her Birdies'R'Us wishlists! The babies look pretty snug for now - reminding me how moms are so good at getting their families to fit whatever space they are provided. And everyday, when I step outside, I pray that I won't find the nest (or any babies) on the ground under the light. Urck.

And lastly, there's my cat Lilo. After Rum Tum passed away last fall, we had been trying out new kittens. That failed miserably when my favorite of the cats pooped all over my bed. Urck!

So we decided to convert to a one cat family and Lilo (LiloBean JellyBean) found new confidence and a sense of serenity she had never experienced while under the dominion of RumTum Teazer. She relaxed and blossomed. Until Sunday, when her nightmares returned... supa'sized!

I posted a while back, the memorials I made to RumTum after she died. One was a little shrine type thing, the other was a larger-than-life cathead-shaped wooden cut-out of her face. On Sunday, I finally got around to mounting it on the mudroom wall above a little pass-thru window. I went back to organizing my new sewing room. My husband came in and asked if I'd seen Lilo's response to it. The poor thing was crouched on the floor hissing with a tail that was almost as puffy as her body! RumTum was BACK! And she was HUGE! I kept patting the painting and saying "It's not real" until her tail finally depuffed. As you can see from the photo (depuffed) - she still does not trust the painting! I have other big paintings of cat faces all over the house, but this is the only one that bothers her!