For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
We had talked a bit before Kat began to walk toward Toledo. “Stop where you are girl,” said Toledo, “I mean what I say about these explosives tied to your little friend here. There is enough there so that nothing will be left in this room when it goes off.” Kat stopped. “I just wanted to make sure I was close enough for you to see something,” she said, “since you are such an unbeliever.”
She then lifted her top to expose 3 bullet hole scars on her stomach. “This is where you shot me Toledo,” she said, “that day you stepped out of your van and deliberately picked me out and shot me with that assault rifle you had. And you laughed while you did it, because you wanted to hurt Steve so much, and you figured this was the best way to do it.
Then later you killed my twin sister Jennifer when she was about to marry Steve. I decided to come back and get my revenge, not so much for myself, but for what you did to Steve. Now you are planning to do the same thing with Sky. But it will not work this time Toledo, now you will feel the wrath of the Kat!”
“Forget the speech girl, whoever you are,” he laughed, “I do not believe you are Kat, she is dead and buried. It is easy to make some fake scars like that.” “True, it would be easy, but these are real Toledo,” said Kat, “and I am the real Kat. Yes, you did kill me and I am buried in that little cemetery. But if you do not believe me, then try to shoot me again now.”
Kat managed to stay amazingly calm all this time, which is more than I can say about myself. Just seeing those explosives strapped to Sky, plus it is obvious she has been beaten, and now she cannot talk. I wanted to rush right at Toledo, but I knew it would be useless, he would have me dead before I got anywhere near him.
“Okay girl, if that is what you want,” said Toledo, “and to think I was planning to let you leave here alive.” He aimed and pulled the trigger. But nothing happened. He tried again. Still nothing. “Something wrong Toledo?” asked Kat. “Shoot her, now!” he yelled to his men. They also tried, but their guns would not work either. “Get her, she cannot fight both of you at the same time,” he called out.
He sure did not know much about Kat, which was amazing. They looked at each other, then started slowly toward Kat, coming at her from two sides. Then, “Thwock! Thwock!”, and the two men were down. “Now for you Toledo,” said Kat, “the wrath of the Kat!” She kicked the gun from his hand, then kicked him in the stomach, then one last kick to his head, and Toledo fell to the floor. I knew what that meant.
Although all the girls can fight well with their legs, Kat and Jennifer were the two that could kill with a kick to the head. Now we have 5 minutes. Suddenly the back door flew open and Catalina came rushing in and went straight for Sky, telling her to lie down. Then she went to work. If anyone can get that off Sky in time, Catalina can do it. Sky pointed for the rest of us to leave.
“Not a chance Sky,” I said, “if that explodes, I will be right here with you. If you cannot get it done in time Catalina, then you, Kat and the cats leave in plenty of time.” She said nothing, just kept working. Muffin came to me and I picked her up. Meow,meow.=Me not leave too, we start together, we stop together. I smiled at her and hugged her.
I knelt down beside Sky and held her hand. Muffin went and rubbed her head against Sky’s head. Snow then went and did the same on the other side of Sky. It is amazing how long 5 minutes can be in a situation like this. Although I imagine that for Catalina the time must be flying by quickly, too quickly. “I will not get this done,” she said finally, “so I will rip it off, that should give 10 seconds before it explodes. I will try to run out the back door with it.”
That is when Muffin remembered something about MC and what he did so long ago with another bomb. Catalina ripped the bomb off Sky and Muffin jumped, grabbed it from Catalina and ran as fast as she could out the back door! There was a huge explosion and Rock came smashing through the front door and stopped, amazed at what he saw. Meowy!=My mommy!
Then Snow ran out the back door to look for Muffin. Sky motioned for me to go too. I ran out after Snow, so did Rock. Snow was running around in circles crying for Muffin. I looked and smiled when I saw where Muffin had dropped that bomb. But did she have time to get away after dropping it? Ten seconds is not a long time, and Muffin is not especially fast, though she was certainly running fast with that bomb…
To Be Continued.
©2023 Steve McLeod.
Good morning everyone! It is a beautiful, sunny morning again…and hot. It was 115F (about 46C) in my apartment yesterday. It had cooled down to 106F (41C) by early this morning, but the temperature is rising already. Outside, yesterday, the temperature was 91F (33C), though with the humidity it made it feel like 102F (39C).
Today is our last hot day however, cooler and rainy weather is on the way for a few days. Much cooler weather. It will feel cold after this heat. Oh well. That is how the weather is up here, it can go from hot to cold very quickly, then back to hot again.

Grover says, “I think Steve is crazy to go out in that hot sun.”
We have had more hot weather so far this summer than we have had in several years. Kind of feels more like the way it used to be years ago, before our weather began to cool off about 20 years ago. The birds and chipmunks disappear for the afternoon when it is the hottest.

Gerald says, “I think Steve has already spent too much time in the sun.”
Even the insects seem to mostly disappear. I am going to try to get those two butterflies again today. I did manage to get another moth yesterday, so that was very nice, plus I did get another different butterfly. So things are going well.
I did get another insect too, a wasp, but I think I might have gotten a pic of that one last year. I will have to check. I was trying to get a pic of one butterfly yesterday and one of those big wasps came flying past me, just missing my head. Then I felt something crawling on my neck and thought maybe that wasp had landed on me.

“I agree, he is already crazy. You won’t see us birds doing crazy things like that.”
I did not want to try brushing it off me, so I just waited a bit to see what would happen. It turned out to be a small butterfly, like the one I had been trying to photograph. Steve breathes a sigh of relief. Well, I should go try for some pics before it gets too hot. Thank you for stopping by today. Have a wonderful day and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2023 Steve McLeod.