Recovering cat and fall hike

Varda's appetite has come back with a vengeance. She's even eaten some dry food, which I wasn't sure she could do with the very limited number of teeth she has left. She was a pretty bedraggled and woozy kitty when we brought her home on Wednesday evening, but she's acting pretty much like her old self now. She's still an old, skinny cat with failing kidneys, but I'm so glad to see her eating and enjoying lying in her favorite spot in the sun.Yesterday I took a lovely hike in Pedestal Rock Nature Preserve near Shades State Park, sponsored by INPAWS, the Indiana Native Plant and Wildflower Society. I didn't know anyone else on the hike but people were very nice and extremely knowledgeable about trees and plants. We were out in a preserve not usually open to the public with no trails, and our guide used a GPS to keep us going the right direction. The leaves are beautiful and it was nice to see some recovering forest (probably pasture about 40 some years ago) as well as older forest, and to understand some of the differences in terms of what grows there. All good background information for my Dryad fiction, which hasn't been getting much attention lately, but that's another story.