My cats are very happy. We've had this sudden warm-up in our chameleon-like weather and boy, do those pets of mine love it. There is nothing, they tell me, like a brood of cats curling up at the open patio door, listening to the warbling of birds, feeling warm, gentle breezes rustle their fur while they sniff the fresh air with those dainty little noses.

It probably won't last. By the time you read this on Wednesday (I'm writing this column Sunday night) the weather may very well be chilly and dank once more. Then again, it might be perfect for sunbathing au naturel.'

Who knows?

March is a most capricious month…

Still, it's enough to give one a real touch of that annual rite of passage known as spring fever.'

Look around in the local stores or armchair shop' through a clothing catalog. The sherbet colors are all on display

positively good enough to eat.

Yellows as bright as a baby chick, greens the shades of ripe limes and fresh new grass, blues as clear as a cloudless sky and pinks the color of a gorgeous sunset entice the eye.

The landscape is beginning to change, too. Flowering trees bud out amidst the dull brown of the tangled forest, daffodils shine in the rough, dark patches, emerald green pastures slowly but surely appear and make the countryside appear much like the Emerald Isle across the sea.

It is a transition from death to life, from sleep to wakefulness, from hibernation to liberation. Spring is indeed a grand time.

Lady Spring does have a definite penchant for toying with the human race, however.

We don't experience it as sharply as our neighbors to the North who may see their pansies holding colorful heads above a blanket of snow well into April or even May.

Having lived in the midwest for a dozen years I can attest to the way spring teases and tantalizes you with one hand and dashes your hopes with the other.

Even here in the Heart of Dixie, it's hard to know if we'll need to sport short sleeves or toss a warm jacket over our filmy summer frock come Easter Sunday.

Still, once we enter the interminably long, hot and humid days of an Alabama summer, we may all long for the changeable weather of March once more.

Ice cream cone one day, hot chocolate the next…at least, at this time of year the weather is never boring.

My cats sure aren't complaining.