As it turns out, the chicken feed may have problems that hadn't occurred to me. I told my petsitter (who has far more cats than I do) about it and she mentioned it to some other people. She received two negative comments in return. One person said the feed gets bugs in it, and the other person said it gets worms in it. Mealworms, maybe?

That's why I'm reserving final judgment until I've used it for a month or so.

Puck has played very hard to get the past couple of afternoons. He's taken to disappearing after lunch when I bring the rest of the cats in. Probably a reaction to being locked inside for over a week.

You could knock me over with a chicken feather. This stuff actually works! It clumps every bit as well as any of the clay litters, and even better than some of them. It's more lightweight and easy to deal with. I don't see any flaws with it so far, but will reserve final judgement until I've used it for a couple of weeks. At the moment, I'm a convert. Lay crumbles are my new cat litter of choice.

Out of curiosity, I googled on the terms "chicken feed" and cat. After going through twenty pages of results, I came across a couple of references. Kris Willison, who seems to breed Balinese and Javanese cats, mentions it on her page.

It also gets a mention on a Cat Chat page in a discussion of cat litters. There was one other mention on a page of dog health tips as an alternative for people who have dogs that want to eat cat litter.

Having returned from a nine-day trip, I entered the house and called out to Unicom and Nefreet. I called in vain. A few minutes later, I found them on the bed. They yawned in my general direction.

At least I was mobbed by the happy Horde in my office. Not being quite as spoiled as the house cats, they were glad to see me.

I had to make an emergency run to the feed store for more cat litter. I was looking over some of their alternative brands and asking questions when I had the following peculiar conversation with the man who was helping me. I had just explained the respiratory problems I have with clay-based litter.

"Have you tried lay crumbles?"
"What?"
"Lay crumbles."
"Uhhh...what?"
"Lay crumbles."
"I can't even figure out what you're saying."
"It's chicken feed."
"Chicken feed?!!!"
"One of my other customers read about it on the internet. She said it works the same as this cat litter."
"You mean it clumps?"
"That's what she says."
"And it's chicken feed?"
"Yep."
"What's it made of?"
"Corn. And it's only $4.50 for a 25 pound bag."
"I'll try it."

And that is why my cats currently have one large box filled with what looks like honey-beige cat litter. This, however, is the most nutritious cat litter on the face of the planet. What it's actually made of is wheat middlings, ground corn, calcium carbonate, canola meal, rice bran, safflower, dehulled soybean meal, and a long list of vitamins and minerals. It's designed to help chickens lay better, stronger eggs. Unfortunately, it won't be eggs that my cats are laying in it.

But at that price, hell, I'll experiment. Stay tuned for further reports.

I'm still out of town, so I have no new moggy stories to post, but Randy sent me email with this amazing story in it, which he has kindly given me permission to share:

I let Uni in because it was raining outside at about 9:00. At about 9:30 he went over to the sliding glass door and started growling. I looked over at him and his tail was as puffed out as I'd ever seen it. I got up from the couch, went over and turned on the deck light, but didn't see anything - until I looked over to where the living room windows are. And there was a bobcat, standing on its hind legs, stretched out, with its paws resting on a living room window, and looking into the living room, right across from where you usually sit on the couch. I don't know if it saw its reflection and didn't know what to make of it, or if it was just trying to figure out what glass is, but as it was standing there it kind of tapped the window with one paw, like Uni would do if he was testing to see if something on the ground was alive - you know, kind of like a low impact test strike. I tapped on the sliding glass door to get its attention (Uni is growling really loudly all of this time - sounding about twice his size), and the bobcat looks over at me, absolutely unconcerned, and then looks back into the living room. Finally he goes back down on all fours and slowly walks towards the bedroom where I can't see him anymore. I kept looking for it, but haven't seen him/er again. What a cool experience. It was a healthy looking animal - gray and white with black spots - mostly white belly - about twice the size of Uni.

Alas for the poor moggies. It's storming and raining, and they've had little time outside. The big furries, Theseus and Tribble, braved it for briefed moments, but that was it. I'll be gone for a week visiting family, so today was their only chance to be outside before being locked up for a week. They'll be pampered and loved by my petsitter, but they're not going to like having to stay inside. Poor babies. I just hope my office will be in one piece when I return.

It's a rude, blustery, temperamental day with a storm threatening, and the moggies aren't at all happy about it. A few of the hardier ones went outside for a while, but soon burst back inside through the cat door, saying "it's crazy out there!"

It's the wind, I think. Cats are geared to movement and I suspect that when there's too much wind, it overloads their sensory equipment.

The moggies had a party on my desk last night. A wild party, from the looks of it. My keyboard and the Rubbermaid container I keep over it had been knocked off the desk, and the keyboard was hanging almost to the floor by its cord. One speaker and a spare mousepad were knocked off. The large wastebasket was knocked over. Much mess and things askew. Innocent faces all around, of course.

Puck happened to be next to the office door after lunch, so I nabbed him then and there. While I was trying to get Blue inside, Puck managed to spurt past me and get out again. I went for him. He tried to make another fast getaway, but I made a luck grab and got him. No going walkabout today.

I was Pucked over today. All the other moggies came in after lunch, but not Puck. I called for him and looked for him. No sign.

Around mid-afternoon, when we had to go into to town, we called for him and looked for him. Nothing.

When we got home around 6:30, we called and looked again. This time, he finally showed up and we hauled him inside, the little snot.

Theseus paid a visit to the vet this afternoon. Hmmm...no, Theseus was hauled off to the vet. I got to do the paying. I got off more lightly than I expected. He railed at me the entire way there. I took him in because he's had a cyst-like growth in the corner of his mouth for weeks that hasn't gone away, plus his intestinal problems.

I had vaguely remembered Theseus having this thing on his mouth before, but I had completely forgotten that it had been surgically removed until the vet saw it in the chart. Apparently, this sort of thing is fairly common in cats. She gave him an anti-inflammatory shot to see if that will clear it up. If not, he's in for a second surgery on it.

She also shaved the disgustingness from his rear end and a few of the remaining dreadlocks on his flanks as well. Whatever he has is intermittent with no sign of it at the moment. As a precaution, she put a variety of worm-killing pills down his throat and we'll just have to see how it goes.

He was quiet as a little lamb all the way home.

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention. Theseus also wins the heavyweight prize of the Moggy Horde, weighing in at 18 lbs!

After rain and snow flurries this morning, the weather settled down to just plain wet. But around mid-evening, we were suddenly hit with a powerful burst of hail. Very small hail, fortunately. As we stood looking at it accumulate on the back deck, Randy remembered, "Unicom's outside!"

We ran to various doors calling and calling for him as the hail kept on coming. Finally, I went to the back door once again, called a few times, and Uni made a mad dash from under my car and up the back steps. He's opted to remain a warm and dry indoor moggy for the rest of the night.

Unicom wasted no time at all going out into the light rain last night and snaring a soggy gopher. Uni was extremely anxious to go out, in spite of the weather. We suspect he knows it's good gopher-catching conditions. We were speculating that the rain might force the gophers to the surface to seal off their holes or repair holes that collapse, little expecting a predator to be waiting for them.

We kindly let Uni bring it into the back hall for dining, and I had the fun of cleaning up the leftovers later.

Puck curled up in my lap a little while ago. That's one of the first times he's done that. I really enjoyed it. Lots of moggies lying around asleep on this wet afternoon. Kate is using Querida as a pillow for her head. Querida is too deeply asleep to notice.

Uni's on a roll. He got another gopher this morning.

I called for Randy to come outside and help me rescue a striped racer. This is a beautiful and harmless snake with a long, slender, nearly-black body and thin yellow stripes for its entire length, and a pale yellow belly. This was the largest one I've seen yet, a bit over a foot long. He was lying utterly still partway across the driveway. I've had to rescue this type of snake from my cats many times in the past.

Randy and I squatted down to have a good look at the snake while one cat after another came prancing by, over and across the snake with no clue it was there since the snake had the very good sense not to move. I ran my fingers lightly down the snake's back to the end of its extremely thin, pointed tail. The snake curled the end of its tail around my finger! That was very cool. It then held the curl up in the air. Sly discovered the curl and began sniffing the snake, at which point we needed to expedite the rescue. Randy carefully picked it up and deposited it in the high, thick weeds where it quickly disappeared.

A bit later, I was standing on the driveway outside my office, surrounded by ten of my cats lying in various poses around me. One of them was Uni, who hasn't co-existed all that peacefully with the rest of the Horde in the past. Now that Uni is a privileged house cat, he has only occasional contact with the others, aside from Nefreet, which doesn't help any. I saw Uni stroll down toward Knobby. Since those two have had vicious fights in the past, I remained outside to make sure there was no trouble.

Knobby got tense, which made the other cats get tense. Blasted Puck really started things by jumping on Knobby himself which set off a Cat Grenade. There was a wild flurry of fighting for about ten seconds and I found myself surrounded by a bunch of puffed up males caterwauling at one another. I had to wade in like a burly Irish cop. "What's all this, then? Break it up! There's nothing to see here! Move along!"

Tosca wandered around as though trying to decide whether to cheer on one of the guys or just get into a fight herself. The wailing continued. I "escorted" Uni up the driveway and herded various troublemakers away from one another until they finally calmed down.

Cats is a four-letter word.