Puck decided to help me while I was uploading eBay auctions. He "helped" me by hitting the enter key halfway through the process, so that I had to start over.

I'm quite miffed with Unicom. I was giving him his weekly anti-allergen rubdown which he hates. He moans and groans and complains through the whole thing. But today he also whapped me across the check. He's NEVER done that to me before. I was startled, to say the least. He didn't use enough claw to scratch me. All the same, he's not in my good graces right now.

Last night, Randy was sitting to the left of me on the sofa and Nefreet was curled up to my right. Randy began making his "panting dog" sounds that drive Nefreet crazy. Did she go over and chastize the maker of the sounds? Nooooo. She grabbed MY pants leg and gave it a vicious shake before running off.

I attempt to type with Puck sleeping alongside the keyboard, trying to push it into my lap and insisting he sleep with his head on the escape key. After moving his head a few times, he's settled for sleeping with his head up against Owl's butt.

The Puckster isn't much of a hunter, I'm afraid. Shortly after he went outside this morning, he nabbed a gopher. He had the gopher out in the open and was in combat with it. But whereas Unicom or Achilles would have killed the gopher in 30 seconds, Puck wasted time and the gopher escaped down one of its many holes.

Teenagers these days. They don't take their hunting seriously.

I went to the office door where Theseus was lying and realized there was a scorpion right next to him. He was clearly oblivious to it. I stomped the scorpion flat.

Owl, the nefarious Plastic Bag Eater, managed to snaffle a plastic bag even though I take pains to keep them out of his reach. I didn't know this at first. A couple of days ago, when I was getting the Horde inside for the day, I saw that Owl was resting under an oak tree down the hill a little ways. It isn't a place I've seen him hang out before, though some of the other cats occasionally will. I didn't think much about it.

The next day, as I was coming down the driveway toward the office to let the cats out in the morning, I glanced over and spotted what looked like a plastic bag under the tree, right where Owl had been. I hiked over and sure enough, it was Owl's secret plastic-munchie snack. What was left of it. What a loon.

I bought a sonic bug repeller thingie and plugged it into the bedroom wall socket. Every few seconds, it emits a small KLIK sound. Nefreet jumped onto the bed for her afternoon nap, then became aware of the sound. Her ears swivelled around, her eyes got big. She pinpointed the source. She crept to the edge of the bed, then onto the floor. She stalked over to the device and every time it went KLIK, she would jump. It reminded me of the way Captain Hook would twitch to each tick of the clock in the crocodile's stomach. Klik! Twitch! Klik! Twitch! Finally, Nefreet got up to it -- Klik! Twitch! -- sniffed it and decided it was nothing to worry about. Now she totally ignores it.

I had to go to Nefreet's rescue this morning. Uni and Nefreet got into a howling fight on the stairs to the loft, said stairs being open air and carpeted. When I got there, Nefreet was clinging to the bottom of the one of the stairs with four feet and Uni was standing over her in battle mode so she couldn't do anything unless she let go and fell. It was pathetic and funny at the same time, like one of those photos of a cat hanging onto a thin branch for dear life.

I hauled Uni off and Nefreet pulled herself back onto the steps. I don't know who started it, but she does have a bad habit of acting like a troll and trying to keep Uni from going where he wants to go. I don't blame him for getting fed up.

Tribble's nose has returned to its normal coral color. That would make it fairly certain that the extremely dark color was caused by his hypothyroid condition. He's back to his bouncy, treat-demanding self, but he's also back to being skin and bones. I can't get any weight on him. He seems perfectly happy as he is, though.

When I returned from the 4 day business trip, Artemis had forgotten who I was. Really. I'm not even making a joke about it. She was in Deep Hiding. I tried to coax her out from wherever she was by pouring fresh water into the water bowl. Her favorite thing is to drink from the stream of water and every morning she rushes over to do that. Not this time. It took me a very long time to finally locate her in an obscure hiding place. I When I did, she ran from as though I were the Devil Incarnate.

Later in the afternoon, she regained her memory and all was well, but what a weird cat.

I discovered, very much after the fact, that every plant I have growing in profusion around my house -- spiderplants, nephthitis and a diffenbachia -- are either very toxic or at least unhealthy for cats to eat. Naturally, Nefreet was obsessed with eating the spiderplants.

I found a nice, simple solution to that. I bought a packet of oak grass seeds, set up a pot in the dining room next to the glass doors, and have grown her a pot of grass to eat. Oak grass sprouts within a week. It couldn't be any easier to grow. And Nefreet loves the stuff. I now have a happy, grass-grazing cat who isn't throwing up so much.