When you live in Western Pennsylvania, February 2nd is a big day.  Just like in the movie Ground Hog Day with Bill Murray, a huge group of ground hog Punxatawny Phil’s followers trek on up to Gobbler’s Knob in Punxatawny, Indiana County, Pennsylvania.

They grab poor Phil out of his burrow to tell the groundhog whisperer’s whether there will be six more weeks of winter or if spring is just around the corner. 

It’s a big deal around here, and this year was no different.  Except that this year, Phil didn’t see his shadow.  So sprin will be coming early this year.  WooHoo!  I hope old Phil is right.

While I was outside playing in the snow with Charlie, I heard a cat meowing.  Now all my cats are pretty much indoor cats and especially when there is 12 inches of snow on the ground, there’s no way they are going outside.

So I threw Charlie’s Kong to get rid of him and started looking around. 

Out from under the shed came a cat that was so skinny, she had to be starving.  She came right over to me until she saw Charlie racing back to me, then she ran back under the shed.

So I put Charlie in the house and went back out to the shed and called her.  She came right back out from under the shed and came right over to me.

Well being the softy that I am, (I can’t even watch the ASPCA commercials without crying), I went in the house and got her some cat food.  The poor thing ate and ate.

My dear hubby, Jim, is not too happy to have cat number 4.  I named her Henrietta because she meows so much.  Like Meow Meow Henrietta pussycat from Mr Rogers.

Well this is what it looks like outside my window this morning.  Pittsburgh just got more snow.  And although it didn’t all fall at once, it came as an inch here, 2 or 3 there, we now have a grand total of 12 inches of snow on the ground.     

 It’s one of those wet snows, that just clings to the trees because it started as rain and then ran the gamut of freezing rain, then finally snow. 

I had to go outside and get pictures, because although I complain about the weather, I love when we have big snow.  This is a picture of our bird feeder.  There are no birds in it because Charlie, my black lab, has just gone charging down through there scaring the poor little chickadees away.

It’s hard to believe that on New Years Day it was 52 degrees and we’ve been up and down ever since.  Tuesday it was 41 and today we had snow and a high of only 20.

Well I guess we’ll see what the ground hog has to say in 2 weeks.