What we miss when we're too busy

Our cat, who's not quite 10 years old, has been diagnosed with a salivary tumor, and is apparently not long for this world.  Because his favorite place to be is in my lap (and because our time together now is infinitely precious to me) I've been spending a lot of time sitting with him in our living room, in my favorite meditation chair.

Which means also I get to spend more time observing what goes on outside our windows, on our beach and beyond -- and what we see is often vastly amusing! 

Yesterday, for example, there was a deer who sauntered up our neighbor's boardwalk, and then an otter ran up onto our beach, chased by these dogs.  Their owner quickly beached his paddleboard and ran after the dogs hoping to leash them up before they tangled with the otter (those otter claws are huge and vicious).

Once he caught up with the dogs and leashed them, he took the board back into the water, allowing them to pull him along (what a great way to travel!), but of course they had to chase away the heron who'd been fishing happily in the nearby shallows...

It's amazing, really, what goes on around us all the time, if we only take the time to look.  But we tend to get so caught up in our own busyness that we fail to see...