A little thunder and lightning late in the afternoon.

 February 15. 

A little thunder and lightning late in the afternoon. I see two flashes and hear two claps. 

A kitten is so flexible that she is almost double; the hind parts are equivalent to another kitten with which the fore part plays. She does not discover that her tail belongs to her till you tread upon it. 

How eloquent she can be with her tail! 

Its sudden swellings and vibrations  She jumps into a chair and then stands on her hind legs to look out the window; looks steadily at objects far and near, first turning her gaze to this side then to that, for she loves to look out a window as much as any gossip. Ever and anon she bends back her ears to hear what is going on within the room, and all the while her eloquent tail is reporting the progress and success of her survey by speaking gestures which betray her interest in what she sees. 

Then what a delicate hint she can give with her tail! passing perhaps underneath, as you sit at table, and letting the tip of her tail just touch your legs, as much as to say, I am here and ready for that milk or meat, though she may not be so forward as to look round at you when she emerges. 

Only skin-deep lies the feral nature of the cat, unchanged still. I just had the misfortune to rock on to our cat’s leg, as she was lying playfully spread out under my chair. Imagine the sound that arose, and which was excusable; but what will you say to the fierce growls and flashing eyes with which she met me for a quarter of an hour thereafter? 

No tiger in its jungle could have been savager.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 15, 1861

February 14. February 15. February 16

A little thunder and lightning late in the afternoon. See  February 23, 1860 ("About 4 P. M. a smart shower, ushered in by thunder and succeeded by a brilliant rainbow "); March 8, 1854 ("Lightning this evening, after a day of successive rains."); March 16, 1854 (“ It is warm weather. A thunder-storm in the evening.”)

Yellow butterflies in the road after the rain of yesterday.

September 19

A. M. — To Stow. 

Hear the note of the goldfinch on all sides this fine day after the storm. 

Butternuts have been falling for two or three weeks, — now mostly fallen, — but must dry and lose their outer shells before cracking them. 

They say that kittens' tails are brittle, and perhaps the tip of that one's was broken off. 

The young gentleman who travels abroad learns to pronounce, and makes acquaintance with foreign lords and ladies, — among the rest perchance with Lord Ward, the inventor and probably consumer of the celebrated Worcestershire Sauce. 

See many yellow butterflies in the road this very pleasant day after the rain of yesterday. One flutters across between the horse and the wagon safely enough, though it looks as if it would be run down.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 19, 1859


See many yellow butterflies in the road this very pleasant day after the rain of yesterday. See September 3, 1854 (“I see some fleets of yellow butterflies in the damp road after the rain, as earlier.”); September 4, 1856 ("Butterflies in road a day or two.”); September 11, 1852 ("I see some yellow butterflies and others occasionally and singly only."); September 13, 1858 ("Many yellow butterflies in road and fields all the country over.”); September 17, 1852 ("Still the oxalis blows, and yellow butterflies are on the flowers"); October 7, 1857 ("Crossing Depot Brook, I see many yellow butterflies fluttering about the Aster puniceus, still abundantly in bloom there"); October 18, 1856 (“I still see a yellow butterfly occasionally zigzagging by the roadside”); October 20, 1858 ("I see yellow butterflies chasing one another, taking no thought for the morrow, but confiding in the sunny day as if it were to be perpetual.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Yellow Butterflies