Kat and the Kamama Wonderland

I started blogging in October 2006.  My goodness, has it been that long?  The reason I started was that I had a friend who wanted to start up a blog but procrastinated for months and so I challenged him to a race to see who could get a blog up and running first.  I won.  He lost and later lost interest.  I, however was hooked; especially by the wonderful new friends I was making.  Now over the years, some of my good blogging friends have faded, pulled away by the demands of real life and one has even gone to a better place.  I miss them all.  But there are a few friends that I have had since I took those early blogging footsteps and whom I am still in happy contact today.

As early as December 2006, I stumbled upon Kat and her blog “Stay at Home Kat“.  I had been looking to read a blog of someone with an interest in nature and natural history.  Kat can best be described as a fan, follower and practitioner of science and a friend of all living things.  She reigns over a charmed piece of  woodlands near Atlanta, Georgia which she has called the wonderful kingdom of Kamama. She is my Renaissance woman poster girl.  Her posts feature and showcase her love for nature.  She is interested and knowledgeable in astronomy,bird watching,  falconery, insects, pandas, reptiles, amphibians…..etc.  Did I mention snakes?  She was for many years a volunteer at the Atlanta Zoo for the Birds of Prey Show and is currently a member and supporter of the Georgia Aquarium.  She’s also from the Food and Hospitality industry.  Yum.

Kat has a particular passion for butterflies and plants milkweed so as to make Kamama an officially recognized way-station for Monarch Butterflies as they fly north from their wintering grounds.  Occasionally, she even acts as a foster parent and protect insect cocoons until they hatch.  Kat shares Kamama with two ginger cats and a dog, Taylor and many of her posts will deal with their antics and their interaction with other animal denizens of the kingdom.

During one of our earliest exchanges, Kat posted a mystery about how there was an abundance and predomination of fallen oak leaves near one side of her house when the nearest oak tree was a great distance away and immediately round her house were maple trees.  She was making scientific postulations about the movement of air currents and rainfall patterns to explain the phenomena.  I replied saying that as a scientist, I believed that the simplest explanation was that she had pixies in her garden.  For a long while after, she doubted that I was a real scientist.  I think finally she decided that I was a jester dressed in a lab coat pretending to be a scientist .

We had our friendly disagreements over discussions on evolution.  We also both went through a bad spell together when we each had to fight off the bears in our back yards (kind of an insider joke, you’d have to read a lot of old posts to get to the bottom of that one).  Anyway, our friendship has continued to grow and strengthen.  Who would have thought it possible for a Kat and a squirrel?!?

In another meeting of fates, both of us made important life-changing decisions last year.  Although happy with the decision, Kat has been adjusting to a new way of life and lately has felt a little down and lonely.  So I would ask if you could  drop in on Kat, Taylor and the ginger cats and the whole menagerie at Kamama and say a warm “Hello”.  Visit for awhile and enrich your mind.  Kat may even teach you how to “samba”.  To visit just click here.

Rare Gynandromorph Diana (raised and photographed by Kat)

Pixies, Kat and Dog,

All live in Kamama on the edge of town
A Monarch wayside stop
A sanctuary for animals  from all around
On this here Kamama ground

(By LGS; Sung to the tune of “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves)