Good morning and a happy Cat Herding Day to all.🐈🐈‍⬛🐱

I have a guess for this but it seems almost too obvious. 🤷‍♀️

Thanks, Jasdip

Ditto rox.....but I'm going with it until something better comes to me.

Surprisingly even I had an immediate idea!

letters! It’s great to hear from you!

I am enjoying every second of my retirement -- maybe a little too much!!! Happy cat herding...

I also have the obvious guess. Thanks, Jasdip.

tj

I can think of several possibilities but none of them are obscure words, so I assume they're wrong.

FOOD hasn't jumped in yet, so I'll wait till this evening to post the answer

Well! Have you all heard of nocturn before? Kudos, I have not. LOL

Well shoot! I have heard of nocturn! I didn’t get it, though.

I thought it was knockback. 🤷‍♀️

Thanks, Jasdip.

I’m familiar with nocturn, but I had knockabout or knockaround. Thanks again,

tj

Yes, I do know the word nocturn but not linked to this puzzle. My initial instant idea was knockback & later I came up with knockabout. I feel like I scored even if my guess is wrong because both of my guesses were also made by the two who always guess right! @roxsolid & @tsugajunkie z5 SE WI ♱ That’s a win for me! 🤣

I thought of 'knock back' too.

And I thought it was spelled nocturnE - as in music, but just looked it up and see it is a part of Catholic matins.

I've only heard of nocturnal. I had to look up the meaning.

Sorry Jasdip sometimes I think about it a few times before posting, and then forget to actually post. This was such a time!

I was between knock-back and knock back, settling on knock-back because I wasn’t totally sure that’s a word I’d actually know or use.

knockback

One word, no hyphen. Cambridge Dictionary

an occasion when someone refuses to go out with, accept, employ, etc. another person: get a knockback If a man approaches a woman and gets a clear knockback, that should be the end of it.Every knock-back seems to deflate her. Fewer examples

• Some people do not handle knockbacks from nightclubbouncers very well.
• Because it is anonymous, customers will not suffer the embarrassment of a face-to-face knockback.

NocturnE is a word I know well from music but I still didn't get it. I had knockabout or knockback.

Collins offers this definition, hyphenated or not:

A knockback is a problem or a rejection which delays your progress or which reverses some of the progress you have made.