Oklahoma often has beautiful spring seasons and we can’t recall a prettier spring than Kingfisher County is enjoying this year –even though it’s arrival has been slow.

Wheat fields have a luxuriant green and pastures are greening up. The sand plum bushes have bloomed, dropped their petals and now have leaves ... along with an infestation of webworms.

The stocker calves on small grain fields look like they are growing by the day. Some of the bigger calves are getting so fat they look “squinty” eyed.

We can tell it is spring at our house. Our mockingbird has returned from wherever he spends the winter and immediately resumed his war on our indoor-outdoor cat who thinks she runs the house and does. The mocking bird is so territorial he chases the cat when she goes outside. He even buzzes our head and sometimes alights on our sideview mirror and glares at us when we drive in.

The cat’s former safe place – the house roof – is no longer safe so she hides out on the back porch or under bushes until we get home then rushes to the door to escape into the house.

Uh-oh. That is no longer a satisfactory haven. Our daughter, Ellyn, has brought her cat named Kevin (can you believe a cat named Kevin?) home for us to babysit while she prepares for a move to Michigan. She has even hinted it might be a permanent adoption. Big Kitty (we’ve never named her) has a distinct animosity towards Kevin.

We have always been more of a dog person than a cat person but since we feed the cats, they have all started considering me their personal staff person.The ones that brought them (all three) into the house are never around at feeding time – Robert (our son now in the Air Force who was given a kitten by a high school friend three years ago), Christine (our wife who fell for fellow staff member Jeremy Ingle’s sneaky trick of bringing in a palm-sized kitten into the office a couple of years ago) and now Ellyn, who I thought was above such tricks.

Anyway, our cat food bill has shot through the roof –  especially when you consider Sam, the neighborhood yellow tomcat who began coming to our backdoor and yowling when the indoor kitties were being fed. Yeah, I started putting food out for Sam, too, and he’s at our back door just about every morning waiting to be fed. (Sam is the only cat with a name.)

I admit to being a little soft-hearted when it comes to animals, especially when Sam shows up with his head all scratched up from his carouses.

We also have a raccoon that comes to our garage and eats dog food from the sacks that are kept there. We wouldn’t swear to it but we believe the raccoon has learned to turn the handle on the garage door and let himself in.

The first time I noticed the garage door open and the top of a dog food sack tipped over for convenient dining I thought maybe I had accidentally left the garage door open. So I carefully locked it the next evening and made note of it. The next morning, the door was open and the top of the bag was tipped over again.

I don’t doubt that raccoons are smart enough to do this because when our son, Barry, was at home in Hollis a fellow gave him a baby raccoon.

The little raccoon, Rocky, didn’t settle for an outdoor life in a cage. He quickly made himself at home in the house. He was clean and not much trouble until he scared the bejabbers out of a visiting cousin’s little daughter who was taking a bath when Rocky decided to join her.

We finally had to return Rocky to the wild after the Baptist preacher who lived nearby called us asking me to come and get my (not Barry’s) raccoon out of his house. Rocky apparently would open their back door by turning the handle and just walk in.

We don’t begrudge our current little wild friend the small amount of dog food he eats but he could use a disposition adjustment.

One time when I caught him in the act of helping himself to the dogs’ food, he just gave me a “I don’t care what you think” look and shuffled right past me on the way to the door, sort of throwing a shoulder against me as he passed by.

He may be somebody’s pet, or he may be the same baby raccoon (now grown up) we found hiding in the pecan tree in our back yard a year or so ago. He seemed frightened then so we rescued him from his tree perch and let him amble off into the back yard in his distinctive raccoon shuffle.

We’re thinking as long as we keep dog food around we’ll have a new Rocky to deal with. We just don’t feel as responsible for him as we did Rocky I.

Speaking of pecan trees, they are leafing out. We think that’s as sure a sign of spring as the mesquite trees budding in far southwestern Oklahoma. When they leaf out, warm weather is surely on its way.

Have a glorious spring, everybody.