Those two are out again. Wonder when they’ll see fit to come home. Oh well, the butter forgotten on the counter will have to be my consolation company.

My colleague is sulking in the closet due to a tiny nose scratch you can hardly even see. Sensitive she is. sensitive.

Quiet night. Last night was inordinately loud. The simians gurgled onto the street in uneven waves of shouts nearly all night. So many flashing lights on the street and swaying simians. You would have thought the whole species was in heat for all the caterwauling. But tonight I could hear it if there were a mouse in the leaves at the edge of the building. But there isn’t. A few noise-machines, now and then…I guess it is up to me to make some noise then. Are you with me Ms. Zhou? On the count of 3….

Another photo gem has come to me. This Cat in Sinks link comes from The Presurfer. Now personally I prefer the bathtub, but the whole porcelain thing, I completely get it.

Not much happening around the home territory. My colleague has been quiet. The simians have been sedentary. There doesn’t seem to be much happening.

“Well, hi there Curley!” I said to the Devon rex in the next box over. “Have you been Shanghaied to the doctor too?”

Lovely creature. Happy to exchange brief bios before I was whisked away out of psychic link range. Those owl-disk eyes watched me as I went to check out teh office. No birds out the window today. It’s so nice to be past the nerves stage. I laugh at how I used to shake and quake at the doctor and helpers. I knew them all now.

Could do without the car rides tho. Can we walk next time?

They are running on peculiarly different rules than us cats. If Ms. Zhou clears out of a sun patch, it’s up from grabs. If she’s there, it’s hers. With their bed, if they aren’t there, we can’t be either. If they are there, we can be, unless they are doing the licky-thing. I can understand that. My dignity would rather they not watch me groom my personal parts either.

Hard disk crashed and a new one needed to be bought.( Do you know those things cost over $200? That’s a lot of cat food!)

I’ll see what I can reconstruct from the gap. And I’ll have to remove all the spam that’s accumulated in my absence.

The simian jane was alone and as naturally dressed as me when a knock came. Ms Zhou naturally dove under the sofa while I found a discreet distance vantage point to watch her flurry of activity to find clothes. She ran nearly as fast as me to the knock and got a box. When she set it down I sniffed it but no cat treats were in evidence. My new hard disk? No, as it turned out, it was another of those internet-replacement paper structures.

I haven’t been feeling myself. That is to say I haven’t been into any mischief. I have left the counters unclimbed, the table, even when there is a sunpatch on it, unlaid upon. Even though my colleague has been making a horrid pain of herself I haven’t pounced her as she is awake, nopt even when she is asleep. I haven’t done much of anything really, not even my catithentics. It sets Ms. Zhou off. She just needs more beauty rest than normal these days. I’ll give her that.

Have I been transported to the side of a highway? The clatter of the cold-food-box is noise enough. But plate licker, clothes licker *and* carpet jackhammer? All the noise machines at once? Have mercy on a creature’s ears. Even bed bottomside can’t block all that out.

An excerpt from Becoming a Tiger: How Baby Animals Learn to Live in the Wild, by Susan McCarthy.

Karen Pryor describes an incident in which her daughter spent an hour teaching her small poodle to jump into a child’s rocking chair and then make it rock. She rewarded its efforts with bits of chopped ham. At the end of the lesson the poodle jumped down and a cat who had been watching jumped into the chair, unbidden, set it rocking, and looked up for her ham.