Breakfast with Zephyr

There's a warm and cozy trend lately of posting mouth-watering pictures of your daily breakfast on your blog, or having that be your entire blog content, or a weekly feature and educational snicket (halloumi, how have I lived my whole life without it?).

I don't have a picture of the contents of this morning's breakfast, that may follow some other day with more sunshine and before I have actually eaten it. But what I can tell you about is the delight in coming down the stairs and onto the porch in the morning, sitting on the porch stairs, and having coffee and well-buttered sourdough toast with m'girl Zephyr Golden.

We sit and she listens as I sing meaningless lyrics to her, then she purrs and starts her morning bathing, and we greet the neighbors and their dogs as they pass by. Recently, we were gifted with a snug gold velour armchair, and it has become Zephyr's porch perch, and frequently she sleeps the night in it. This makes an early breakfast with her easy to manage before our hectic schedules carry us off the porch and out into our busy day. The chair also makes a impetuous afternoon snooze very stealthy, when she allows me to nap with her on my lap as she curls up to sleep. We dream wonderful summer afternoon porch dreams, with the warm breeze carrying us over the hydrangeas and Japanese maples, over the bungalow eyebrow roofs, beyond the giant jasmine tree just beginning it's siren song of perfume, to the enchanted bamboo groves where there are endless shadowy paths to explore. We move silently through the slender fronds of black bamboo, arching to become invisible, creeping low to be silent, then folding to sit and watch and wait. For the right time.

Zephyr always sniffs the cafe au lait to determine it's variety (ethiopian) and that the milk is organic, but she's not a coffee drinker. She prefers organic butter to lick off the Portland Sour-dough Wheat toast, but about that she is not as picky. I usually have Yoplait vanilla custard yogurt, and that, as all cats know, is really inferior and too sweet. She returns to her hind leg grooming.

This morning we had another visit from our friendly neighbor dog, who had rushed Zephyr off the porch yesterday morning. This time, the little white dog only came up the first two steps to say 'hi' to me, and didn't press her luck with Zephyr "Hellbeast" Golden. Harmony was maintained, no one got hurt or lost face. By then, we were done noshing, and it was time to get to work. She makes her neighborhood inspections (someone has to do it) and I go back inside and fire up the sewing machine/computer/paper cutter/glue gun/knitting machine/printer and think about tomatoes.

Same time tomorrow, m'girl.