Ten Reasons to Drink Wine for Breakfast . . .

1. The usual, and some unusual, sparklers with a celebratory breakfast.

2. A 3 am post-crush meal of omelette and wine.

3. My black kitten, Diablo, leaps into our bed with . . . a live mouse!! Which he turns loose so he can play with it. And in the ensuing pandemonium and shrieking proceeds to lose it in the bedclothes! So at 5:45 am I am having a little tipple of the house viognier/roussanne blend.

Who needs the other 7 reasons . . .

In December, I got a new black kitten, Diablo. His first week home, he climbed up in the crabapple tree and then panicked, climbing farther and farther out on a limb until he fell out of the tree. I was dancing around under the tree with my arms out, so I caught him but we were both a little traumatized.

So far, Diablo has gotten shut into the pantry, the bathroom, the closet, the truck, a folding table, and almost the dryer. One evening I heard some pitiful mewing in the kitchen and I searched every cupboard but couldn’t find him. I finally triangulated the sound of his crying and found him in the refrigerator. He was splayed like Garfield between the fridge door and the crispers. Another night I couldn’t find him at all so I walked down to the creekside wine barn by moonlight to see if he’d been locked in. He wasn’t there but as I left I heard a timid weeping sound from a 60-foot tall oak.  I waded through tall grass and bushes, daring exposure to poison oak, to coax him down.

On Zinfandel Festival weekend, he showed up at 2 a.m. covered head to tail, top to bottom in pitchy tree sap. Every inch of his fur was as sticky as glue and he was feeling sick from trying to lick it off. I tried to clean him up with some warm water and a flax washcloth—and he actually let me. But it was useless, so we both retired to bed, tired and traumatized. The next morning, Diablo came in from breakfast with leaves, spiderwebs, and clumps of white dog fur stuck all over him and looking supremely annoyed.

It’s like having a little boy all over again. God bless little boys . . .