The weather had been rough for a few days. Fortunately, it had cleared up again, and in the more southern half of Minnaluna it was not badly felt either. There had just been rain, plenty of rain, which hung around for a good while as there had not been too much wind. But by the time the weekend arrived, the weather had cleared back up and the sun was back out to show just how pleasant the coming spring would be.

In the huge city of Bunny Meadows, preparations were made for a spring fair. Several of them tended to be held, in all different districts of the very large city - except for the Pooftail District which just contained all the waste recycling companies and waste processing plants, and the Hindpaw District which was mainly industrial. Larger fairs were found in the Tummy District, which was mostly commercial, and the Fluffback District which was mainly leisure and nightlife, but there were smaller, more localized fairs in the other, mostly residential districts as well.

One such fair, in the small shopping center area in the Forepaw District, was visited by a ruddy housecat woman and her twin daughters; the Baumgarten family. Lillian and Melissa Baumgarten had a free day on Friday and left their dorm at the large Bunbun College to visit their mother Martha for the whole weekend. Aside from the sexual shenanigans they shared with one another generously, Martha had also invited them to the local fair. It was just such a cheerful occasion; many vendors with cheerful stalls offering for sale colorful flowering plants, bushes, even ornamental trees; larger stalls displaying gardening tools, decorations and even furniture; vintage food trucks selling delicious street food and ice creams, all against a background sound of cheerful music and the hubbub of people talking with each other and vendors praising their wares.

Lillian was pulling a cute wagon filled with flowering perennial plants, a few young flowering bushes, a couple of climbing rose bushes, a packaged set of wood beams and slats that assembled into a pergola and a water feature that consisted of a large, wide, low tub in green plastic with a relief of vines and fern leaves on the outside and an additional deep elliptic bowl on a wide stand that held a pump and an artful figure of a feline fairy in a dress of fern fronds on the backside of the rim, holding and tipping an old-fashioned amphora into the bowl. Melissa was carrying a fairly sizeable ceramic pot holding a large and very dense Silver Bird bamboo plant in both arms, while Martha carried a heavy carrier bag filled with a variety of items and jars. Loading all of their purchases in Martha's Fiat Tempra station wagon required a bit of creativity, but eventually they had managed, with the compromise of laying the pot with the bamboo plant on its side alongside the packaged pergola and not closing the rear hatch but keeping it held down with a bungee cord.

Back in Memory Lane in the Forepaw District, Martha backed her station wagon onto the driveway so they could easily unload everything from the back. Small bottles of fruit juice were enjoyed while the three of them stepped this way and that through the front garden of Martha's house, with Martha pointing at some areas and saying where she thought it would be best to put some of the things they had bought, and the two sisters nodding and agreeing. The pergola had in fact not been Martha's idea but had been bought by Melissa and Lillian who had decided such a lovely place as where their mother lived deserved a flowery archway to welcome any visitors walking to the front door, and Martha had agreed and accepted the gift, but she was still going to make the final decision of where it would be placed. Over the path running from the gate by the sidewalk to the front door, just about in the middle.

With a couple of cordless drills holding screw bits and a rubber mallet, the two feline sisters assembled the pergola relatively quickly. It wasn't hard or difficult work as the package came with assembly instructions, all the screws needed to put it together, and a set of stainless steel holders with long pointy spikes on the bottom which were hammered into the ground and the support beams of the pergola were set into and bolted securely in place. Before too long, Lillian had also planted the climbing rose bushes on both sides of the pergola and Melissa attached some of the young branches to the slats of the pergola with green-colored zip ties.

The rest of their purchases was brought into the backyard. On the paved patio, Melissa set up the water feature tub and lay a cable to the garden shed, in a conduit buried into the ground and connected to a timer inside the shed, while Lillian filled it with water, arranged some weighted baskets with water lilies in it and released a small bagful of colorful platy fish and guppies into the water. While she also checked the filter and the pump and switched it on so the feline fairy figure started pouring water from her amphora into the elliptic bowl, from where it eventually flowed into the tub, Melissa set the pot with the bamboo plant next to the stand holding the bowl with the fairy figure to draw the stand from sight with the silvery green bamboo leaves drooping elegantly over the water feature. In the meantime, Martha moved calmly along the raised plant beds at the sides of her backyard to plant the flowering plants and bushes they had bought.

A sprinkle of rain brought the three cats into the house just about when they were finished with the backyard. Martha stepped into the open kitchen to make them a cup of tea, Lillian sat down on the sofa to stare out the window at the result of their work with a smile, and Melissa started puttering through the living room while picking at her left thumb.
   "Damn, got a splinter from that pergola." She turned to the open kitchen. "Mom, do you have any tweezers anywhere?"
   "In the drawer, sweetie," Martha smile, pointing at a breakfront cabinet with doors on either side and three drawers in the protruding middle section.
   "Thanks." Squatting down by the breakfront, Melissa opened the lowermost drawer and started rooting through it, letting out a cheerful laugh after a moment. "Oh damn, mom, you've been holding out on us! Why didn't you tell us you had this stashed in here?"
Rather triumphantly, the red-haired housecat girl held up a pink vibrating wand with a cartoon-ish cat head at the top. On the sofa, Lillian hid a giggle behind a paw, and in the open kitchen Martha curled her lips into a playful smirk.
   "The [i]top[/i] drawer, young lady! Kindly keep your nose out of my personal possessions if you could."
   "Ohh, of course!" Melissa sniggered. "But why did you even have this stashed in a drawer of this cabinet? That makes no sense, ma, you should put it in your nightstand! That way you know where it is and it's ready to grab any time we're in bed! And you should totally keep it ready at hand for us, this one is so much cuter and looks way more fun than the one you gave us way back when."
   "To be honest, I kind of forgot that was there," Martha shrugged with a light chortle. "And you know all too well there's a few toys in the drawer of my nightstand for our mutual playtime."
   "Then this one has to join them!" Melissa grinned, laying the pink wand on the coffee table. "And you [i]have[/i] to use it on us tonight, mom!"
   "All in due time," Martha chortled while carrying a tray with a tea set into the living room. "And weren't you looking for a pair of tweezers?"
   "I was, but I got distracted by your cute toy," Melissa grinned, turning back to the breakfront cabinet and closing the bottom drawer so she could open the top drawer.

She quirked both eyebrows, and eventually let out another laugh as she started rummaging through the top drawer of the cabinet. It was filled with loose batteries, single keys, opened packets of paper tissues, an assortment of ballpoint pens, a couple of old cellphones, several cables with red, yellow and white jacks on the ends, opened envelopes with letters or forms inside, folded menus from take-away restaurants, used rolls of sellotape, creased and stained instructions of an electric kettle, a microwave and a digital camera, random key rings, several disposable cigarette lighters and some boxes of matches, loose rubber bands, a few small pocket flashlights, an opened bag of scented tea lights and a handful of old remote controls. It actually took quite a bit of rummaging and rooting through the drawer before Melissa eventually found a pair of metal tweezers.
   "Goddam ma, this is like a man-drawer!" she smirked. "Look at all that random crap!"
   "Language, young lady, or no cookie for you," Martha chided with another chortle. "Did you find the tweezers?"
   "Eventually, after two hours of digging through all that crap," Melissa sniggered.
   "That's a trick, we've only been inside for twenty minutes," Martha chortled. "Do you need help?"
   "Nah, I got it."

Melissa flopped down on the sofa next to her sister and took a few moments to pick at her left thumb with the tweezers, eventually pulling out the small splinter. All the while as they enjoyed their tea and a cookie, they kept joking and giggling over the assortment of random items filling the top drawer of the breakfront cabinet.

And at bedtime, after their shower; yes, Martha did use the kitty-head wand on her daughters. And they on her as well. All in all, a very successful day.