Cat on my pillow
persists in licking my hair;
God that's stinky breath.

If you've been reading haceldama's journal, you've been aware of the ongoing saga of the little black kitten that showed up in our back yard along with an amazing amount of other fauna. A friend has offered to adopt the kitten soon, but for the time being she's isolated in our bathroom away from our other cats because she's got ear mites etc. that we're treating her for.

Here are pictures of the kitten; she's a little over 3 months old:

(This lolcat brought to you by the letters S and S.)

My limited-edition softcover collection Sparks and Shadows is coming out in late April or early May.

Nalo Hopkinson wrote the introduction, and each copy is signed by both of us. The book is 356 pages long and contains 17 stories, 7 poems, and 4 humor essays.

If you'd like to reserve a copy, just send a brief email to Nanci Kalanta.

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And now, another cat picture:


You'd think we lived in a one-room house or something, wouldn't you?
We had five other windows open around the house, but they all crowd at this one.
(The cat-toppled book stack was rescued shortly after I took the photo.)
(Monte did the toppling; apparently he hates Donald Barthelme)

In the discussion of the dead mole Gary found on the kitchen floor this morning, several people have observed that cats often eat the heads off small animals they catch, apparently because brains are juicy and delicious. However, moles tend to go entirely uneaten by both cats and dogs unless the carnivore is really, really hungry.

Therefore, I conclude that mole brains must not be very tasty.

Therefore, I further conclude that when the Zombie Apocalypse comes, moles will be the only mammalian survivors.

Therefore, Earth of the Future will be populated by mutant Mole People.

You heard it here first, folks.

I for one welcome our future Mole Overlords.



"Archaeologists are just underpaid PR people for dead royalty!" -- The Mole People (1956)

So, all our cats but one are indoor-only cats; we don't have a cat flap to the outside, but we have one to the garage where some of the litterboxes are.

This morning, shortly after he shuffled into the kitchen to make coffee, Gary called me downstairs. I came down; he held a mole by the tail. "I found this in the middle of the floor -- is this a new cat toy you bought?"

"Uh, no, honey -- that's a dead mole."

"THIS IS REAL?"

"Yeah. If you see feet on it, it's not a cat toy."

This explains why Monte was so excited this morning, and so adamant that we get up. Thank God he left it on the kitchen floor. With the toy mice (which they lose under the furniture within minutes, but occasionally find one again, which is a source of much kitty excitement), he likes to have us toss them into the next room so he can play fetch, so he'll bring them up on the bed.

Okay, so we have a cat, B.

B. has always been a little, um, "special". Very very VERY friendly, follows you like a dog, slobbers on you like a dog, nips you like a dog.

In the past couple of months, she's taken to chasing her own tail. I've known lots of kittens who are tail-chasers, but they generally grow out of it as they get older. B. is the first I've known to have grown into it. (I could almost understand her doing this if she were an only cat and didn't have anyone to play with, but at least two of the cats play with her every day.)

She won't just chase her tail. She'll twitch it, and stalk it. And then she'll pounce on it. And then bite it hard enough to hurt/scare herself, so she'll hiss, or yelp, and go tearing out of the room like someone's attacked her.

5 minutes later, she'll do it all over again.

Our longhaired cat frequently urps up hairballs. No surprise there, though with diet and brushing we've minimized them.

The thing is, the moment she urps, she flees the scene of the crime and goes someplace else to act all nonchalant as if to say "What? That wasn't mine. You've confused me with some other cat."

So what I'll hear is "hurk-hurk-hurk-BLORF!-rumblerumblerumblerumble!"

And then I inevitably have to drop everything and do detective work because she can't just hurl a hairball out in the middle of the kitchen floor. It can't be anyplace obvious and easy to clean, no. It's always under something, or behind something.

Oh, look, there she goes now ....

So a housefly came in with me from the back yard.

Four of the cats are now going completely berserk trying to catch it. The fifth is not going berserk only because she can't see well enough to know that there's prey in the house.

I'm seeing the cats do leaps I thought them incapable of trying to catch this fly. They're not nearly as efficient as a flyswatter, but are far more entertaining. I'm just hoping they don't go crashing into the electronics.

Well, got the new kits into see the vet today. The good news is that we were able to leave them both off for the whole shebang -- deworming, de-fleaing, vaccinations, and fixing.

The bigger kit, the friendly orange one, is about 5.5 months old, just old enough to get neutered. He's not quite 5 pounds, which is fine for his age.

The little one, however, is not a kitten at all. The vet declared her to be full-grown, and possibly the mother of the orange kitten.

She's an adult cat. And she weighs only 4.5 pounds (2 kilograms). A sweet girl, and she has a terrible roundworm infection.

Whoever had her, and dumped her, needs to be beaten. Repeatedly.

The question now is, is the little female a littermate of our cat Monte? They're maybe the right age to be littermates, and they have the same coloring. Monte's not a huge cat, either, but we got him when he was just a few months old and made sure he got good food.

All of the no-kill shelters are full. All of 'em. Nobody will take these kittens. :-(