The Place Where I Live

by Sage Lucinda BugBug Milliken

Oh, Kitties, I wish you could see where I live. To me it is truly one of the most beautiful spots on earth. But since you can't see, I will try to paint a picture of it for mew with my words.

First I live in a large old house with my mewmie and my many brofurs and sisfurs. It is not a huge house, mind you, but big enough. And it is a truly fine old house. It was built in 1915, and is on the second oldest block here in Fillmore, where we live. This is what I call a "fun" house, not all cold and austere like modern day houses. It is a house with character, with wood paneling, and fancy moldings, and warm brown oak floors which gleam in the firelight, and which are ideal for a kitten like me to slide on. The rooms sort of ramble into each other, so you can walk all around in a circle from the living room, to the dining room, kitchen, breakfast room, small hallway, and back to the living room. My sisfur Snow Ling, and brofur Tiger M love to chase each other around and around. Mew. Those two are very dizzy cats.

The house itself sits on a good size piece of land, and we are lucky to have a large front yard and even larger back yard. Mewmie has turned part of the yard into a large enclosure fur us, which we call the Kittens Garden. Oh, what a lovely place it is, like a huge outdoor room. There is a goldfish pond, and an olive tree to climb in. And a swing, and a picnic table, and mewmie's hibachi. Oh, yum. I love the long summer nights, when she sits outside and cooks hotdogs fur all of us. She has planted trumpet vines, and honeysuckle and jasmine all around the enclosure, so now, it is nice and cool inside. Outside the enclosure is a naval orange tree, and a persimmon tree, and a big patch of wild spinach, which mewmie cooks or makes into salads. In the front yard is anofur pond, and a small apple tree. The yard attracts lots of birds, which we can watch. We have also had many raccoons in our yard, and once a snake. Ewww. Other people have seen rattlesnakes, and coyotes, and mountain lions in town, but we nefur have.

Our house sits on a lovely tree-lined street in this small town called Fillmore.

Fillmore is a neat little town. It is kind of far away from everything, so that you really don't come by here unless you are driving through to the next county, or are specifically coming here. Fillmore is about 120 years old. It was started by J.P. Fillmore, the vice-president of Southern Pacific railroads, so we are an old railroad town set down in the middle of orange and avocado orchards. If mew come to visit Fillmore, one of the neat things to do is to ride the antique train which goes off through the orchards to the next small town, Santa Paula. Once you get out there, and are all surrounded by orchards, you feel like you have stepped back a hundred years in time. But oh, it is so beautiful, especially in orange blossom time. There is absolutely nothing like the fragrance of orange blossoms.

Fillmore is a funny kind of town. Although there are now 13,000 hewmins here, it still is very much a small town, with that small town feeling. Everybody in town seems to know everyone else, and many of the older families have been here for 7 or 8 generations. Mewmie's family has only been here for 3, but I guess if she had gotten married and had kids, it would be 5 by now. Fillmore itself is surrounded by ranches which have belonged to the same families forefur. It is great knowing people on the ranches. Living here, mew can become quite spoiled. Efuryone has fresh fruit and gardens with more food than they know what to do with. Mew can't imagine how good efurything tastes when mew know it has been picked fresh from a friend's garden that very morning. Oh, mew.

Fillmore is a neat place too. You feel a bit like you are living in the past. There are a couple of small restaurants down town, only two blocks away from us. And the people go down and sit and drink coffee and gab the morning away. Mew can tell who the tourists are because they are always in a rush.

Moving a little further out, mew will find that Fillmore is in Ventura County. Ventura County is centrally and ideally located between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara County, along the California coast. This makes it a great place in which to live. The weather is wonderful, and mew have the best of both worlds, with all the excitement of the big city kind of at your back door. We are within two hours drive of places like Disneyland, and Universal Studios, and maybe 4 hours drive from Big Bear, and some of the other big ski areas, just to mention a few places.

But Ventura County itself is quite beautiful. It is an agricultural county, and in fact, is the 11th largest agricultural county in the United States. Besides the orange and lemon and avocado orchards, Ventura Country raises strawberries, broccoli, onions, beets,... Mew. The list is endless. We even raise flowers, and you can drive fur miles along the freeway and see the beautiful fields of flowers. They are raised for their seeds, by the Burpee Seed company, so the next time you buy a packet of seeds, you may be planting a small piece of my home.

Besides all of the fields of growing things, Ventura County also has lovely clean beaches, where mew can go and spend a day in the sun. On the East side of the County, where Fillmore is located, there is the Sespe Wild Life Reserve, where if you are lucky, you could see a condor fly. And behind the Sespe is the huge Angeles National Forest.

Well, I hope mew have enjoyed this little ramble around my home. I hope that maybe someday mew will come for a visit.