Stalking Kittehs At Sunset Après le Déluge

After Dinner Whiskey Hour was most pleasant this evening.  Ya know how the air is so very crisp and clean after a rain?  It's the same here on the High Plains o' New Mexico, yet different.  The rain brings out scents... amplifies them... when you're in the city.  The diesel smells from the buses and trucks recede and the odors from that bakery down the street or the coffee aroma from Starbucks next door suddenly overwhelm you, or it might be the perfume from that sweet young thang that just walked by, or it's simply the absence of nasty city smells that affects your olfactory nerves.  On the other hand, if you're in the woods the smell of leaves and/or pine needles overpower you.  If you're in farm country the fields overwhelm the senses with fresh aromas... sometimes its damp breathing earth, other times it's a young cornfield exhaling promise.  You know what I'm on about if you've been there.

It's different here.  There's not a lot of pollution, so you don't sense its absence.  There aren't many trees, so the smells of freshly watered pine, oak, or aspen don't come into play.  But water... standing water, water that's accumulated in every low spot after a hard rain... is a rarity in this part of the world, and it has its own distinctive aroma.  I can't quite put my finger on what it is, but what it is is wonderful.  So... that's why we threw our windows and door open, turned up the stereo, and sat out on the verandah this evening... just to take in the wonderfulness of the sunset after a long-awaited rain in this parched, dry land.  It was a multimedia show of the senses of magnificent proportions, Gentle Reader.  My windows are still wide open and I'm reveling in the coolness.

But... earlier.  Here's another sunset shot:

And yet another, this time looking towards town:

And then there were the kittehs.  I did mention we were stalking kittehs, right?  They've adopted that feral cat wariness, which is to say they really scatter, and quickly, whenever I appear.  But we did get a couple o' few shots...

They're cute lil buggers.