The Treetops Kitty Café, 305 W. State St. in downtown Kennett, is having its grand opening from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 19.
"Admission to the cat lounge for that day will be $1 per
person and as always, there will be drinks and snacks available to buy. We’ll have a face-painter and some cat-centric activities for kids and at 2 pm,
we’ll be featuring cat stories and books. At 3 pm we’ll have presentations
about cats (e.g., bottle-feeding, socializing young kittens, general cat
care, health and behavior), as well as information on cat rescue
and volunteering for the café."
What is a kitty café, you ask? It's a place where, for a small fee, you can hang out and play with the dozen or so cats up for adoption who wander around the lounge. There's Wi-Fi, and there are drinks, snacks, and pet supplies for sale, with all income going toward operating expenses and animal care.
Treetops
Kitty Café is run by the non-profit TreeTops Animal Rescue.
Normal hours are
11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday.
A fed-up East Marlborough reader writes:
"Why is it some folks decide on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday evening to mow their lawn, blow off a deck, trim their yard or do some other very noisy activity?"
She says she and her husband were enjoying a glass of wine on their deck one recent weekend evening when a neighbor decided to fire up some yard equipment and then proceeded to operate it for more than an hour. She said she was so angry she got in her car and made the rounds of the neighborhood, asking residents to be more considerate and not use power equipment after 6 p.m., at least not on weekends.
"I never did identify the culprit, but I did meet more neighbors than I had previously known," she writes.
Three-day-eventing fans are excited that Fair Hill International, just across the line in Maryland, has been nominated by the U.S. Equestrian Federation to host a prestigious four-star competition. The sport's governing body, the Federation Equestre Internationale (FEI), will make the final decision this fall. If approved, the first four-star event at Fair Hill would be in fall 2019.
If selected to host the event, the 5,613-acre property would see major upgrades (funded privately), including "an irrigated turf racecourse, new cross-country course, rings and graded grass field on the infield, and a grandstand overlooking the turf track and rings," according to a press release.
The competition would also bring a significant number of horses, riders, grooms and spectators to Cecil County, all of whom would need a place to stay and food to eat.
A three-day-eventing competition comprises dressage, cross-country and stadium jumping phases. A four-star event indicates the highest level of competition.
The blue-shirted musicians of the West Chester Community Concert Band filled the stage at Anson B. Nixon park on Aug. 9 in the final concert of the summer series, and they played a wonderful mixture that ran the gamut from marches and ragtime to Sinatra and Gershwin (hearing the sublime "Someone to Watch Over Me" brought a smile to my face). During a medley of early 20th-century dance tunes, the woman in front of us was inspired to get up and dance the Charleston with considerable spirit.
The crowd skewed toward the more mature end of the spectrum; in fact, the Friends Home mini-bus brought a whole row of residents and staffers to the show.
And one friend told us that this show was by far her favorite of the summer; she admitted that although she attends all the concerts, she wears earplugs during the louder rock-and-roll ones.
The State Street restaurant Portobello's was the food vendor for the evening, and their exotic mushroom crepes were just delicious.
"Where did the summer go?" is a lament I've heard repeatedly this week. There's a "Welcome Back" banner at UHS, school supplies of innumerable variety are on sale, and at least one student of my acquaintance really needs to get cracking if he hopes to finish his summer reading ("Brave New World" and "Animal Farm," never more relevant). It will be interesting to see how the high school's delayed-opening experiment goes this year: will the students actually get more sleep?
The man next to me on a recent flight told me that in June he and his family had moved from Iowa to Florida. His kids were dismayed to learn that their summer vacation would last only a few weeks, as Florida schools start in early August. (However, the children were mollified by the fact that their new house has a backyard swimming pool.)
I am really enjoying my new computer (thank you, Best Buys on Concord Pike), but I find its slogan a bit presumptuous: "HP Pavilion All-in-One: The Centerpiece of Your Modern Family," it proclaims on a sticker on the base. The computer apparently has a pretty high opinion of itself.
Also: wireless peripherals have improved vastly since I last tried them. The keyboard and mouse work perfectly.
Hosting an open house is all in a day's work for real estate agents, but this one was really special: on Aug. 3 Jayne Bair and her colleagues at Century 21 Pierce & Bair threw a party to celebrate the opening of their new office at the historic Chalfant Mansion at 220 North Union Street in downtown Kennett.
I stopped in at 6:30 p.m. on my way to the Kennett Y and the place was full of well-wishers chatting and enjoying the raw bar, all kinds of hors d'oeuvres, and luscious-looking desserts. And on my way home 90 minutes later I saw that the party was still going strong.
Jayne renovated the Queen Anne-style home after a fire in November 2014 and the results are spectacular: the charred woodwork has been repaired and polished, the ornate fireplaces have been cleaned, the soot and grime have been removed from the mirrors and the building no longer smells like smoke. It looks wonderful. At the party a video screen showed dramatic photos of the "before" and "after."
Built in 1884 for William Chalfant, the house was an important work by architect Frank Furness, who also designed the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts on North Broad Street in Philadelphia, the old library at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Wilmington train station.
