It was amazing to me that neither of their two dogs flinched when it was thundering while they were both lying on the couch.  During a thunderstorm all four dogs of mine crowded in the bathroom with my wife–over three hundred pounds of dogs–and it is a small bathroom.  All four dogs of ours get very nervous during thunderstorms.  They pant heavily and during the night my wife had to close the door to the bedroom during a storm otherwise she would get no sleep.

Last night Cool Hand Luke, my black cat came up to me in bed, arched her back to greet me in bed and got stroked and then settled down in the corner of the bed catercorner to me.  She is one of the three black animals who join me in my bedroom every night.

The other two are dogs:  Coco unusually sleeps to one side of the bed and sometimes Tilla is at the base of the bed unless my wife did not join me right away.  Then he will sleep on the bed to the left of me within reach of me.  This is their routine every night.  Sometimes there are more animals in my room.

Buttons, one of my cats hides under the bed and sometimes in the middle of the night there will be a scuffle between Buttons and Cool Hand Luke.  The two don’t like each other.  Other animals sometimes join us, too like Sweetie and Pax our other dogs.  It is hard sometimes not to step on a dog if you have to leave the room to use the john in the middle of the time (???).

And if there is a thunderstorm during the night all you can hear is the panting of the dogs and sometimes two or three jump on the bed.  I know it is a king sized bed but all our dogs are midsized and crowd us when that happens not to say anything about keeping us awake with their loud panting.  They simply are scared of the thunder and usually have to be kicked out of the room so we can sleep.  Thankfully thunderstorms only happen occasionally in the middle of the night.

We went straight into summer from spring.  It hit 81 degrees today.  The warmer weather finally hit here.  I did not want to leave my car’s windows open.  It looked as if we might get a thunderstorm.  My wife worked outside in the garden and I brought out two folding chairs.  We are ready for this warm weather.  It took a long time to get here.