The bluejays have been having words with cats today. A scrub jay perched on the fence outside the office window and screamed at the cats. Later, I went to the house and a stellar jay was screaming obscenities at Salem, the neighbor's black cat who drinks from the birdbath a couple times a day. I'm sure the jay didn't appreciate a cat using *his* pond.

Tosca was talking in her sleep. It must have been some dream because she was moan-yowling quite loudly, with her feet and tail twitching.

The feather toy has lost its last vestige of being a feather toy, thanks to a final pounce by Theseus. It is now a slithering snake-string toy, which the moggies seem to enjoy every bit as much.

If you're reading this blog, you probably don't need one of these. A Synthetic Animated Moggy.

Now that Owl is able to access my desktop again, he's turned my big HP printer into his permanent bed. This, of course, means that I'm SOL if I need to print something.

What? Disturb the cat? Unthinkable!

Tosca and Diva had a mutual grooming fest that was very sweet. See for yourselves.

Kate is a sadist. She loves to get in my lap and knead. The problem is that her claws go right through my pants and inflict me with ten needlepoint incisions. She's always so happy about it, too.

I keep a special towel around to whip onto my lap as soon as I see her coming, but every once in a while she catches me unprepared and inflicts happy pain.

We ordered a blind for Randy's office window and the box and packing it came in became cat toys. I opened both end of the long square tube, thinking Puck might like a cat tunnel, but the box is just a little too small for that.

But the packing! It's some kind of cushy cardboard stuff cut into accordion-like lattice. I put that on the floor and the moggies, every single one of them, went crazy over it. They had a Smellathon!

Photos of Smellaton.

I swear, Tribble stuck his nose into it and didn't come up for air for ten minutes. I think he was getting high.

Puck continues to make mischief, but right now he's cuddled in a cat bed with Kate and it's terminally cute.

Theseus has a big scratch on his nose.

Randy came out for a visit and was mobbed by furry attention-sponges. They're so neglected.

Oy. Puck is determined to live up to his name as the Prince of Mischief. It wasn't bad enough that I had to keep breaking up his attempt to start a fight with Tosca.

During the afternoon, he crawled *into* a large box of styrofoam peanuts that I thought was well out of his way on top of a set of shelves. But noooo, not satisfied to merely muck around in them, he knocked the entire box onto the floor. And onto the cat food and into the water bowl and into white drifts on the floor...sigh...

Randy, the dearheart, came out to the office and helped me pick them up. Which also gave him an excuse to grab the feather toy and play with His Mischief and the other moggies for a while.

Nefreet's behavior has changed a lot in this new house. For the better, I should add. I think it's a combination of finally settling in and the realization that she has the house to herself.

She no longer has to share her humans or her space with Unicom, and she doesn't have to worry about unexpectedly running into him, or being harrassed or getting into a fight. Her Dread Nemesis is gone.

This has freed her up to become more energetic and playful. I swear, you wouldn't know this was a older cat. She races around the house and up and down the stairs like her butt was on fire.

Her favorite toy -- she's totally addicted to it -- is a sphere made of brightly colored plastic suction cups. It was one of those tech convention giveaways, I think designed to be thrown and stick on walls. She loves to bat that thing around.

Another funny thing she's doing these days is hiding under a corner of excess drapery of the cover we put over the sofa to protect it from cat hair. She becomes The Lump and lashes out at those who dare to tease her from the Outside. Sometimes she simply grabs a clump of the extra fabric and disembowels it.

She's certainly a happier moggy than she used to be.

Nothing much to report in the moggy world, so I've posted some photos instead.

There is nothing worse than a bored, young cat full of mischief. I knew being forced to stay inside would be tough for Puck, but it's also proving to be tough for me.

His antics over the past few days have include knocking a large box of bubblewrap off a high shelf; methodically knocking large bags of wadded packing paper (leftover from the move) off the top shelves; trying to climb into a carrier up on a top shelf, which he knocked off and both he and the carrier came crashing down six feet to the floor. I was scared to death he'd really hurt himself this time. He looked rather shocked. I checked him out very carefully and couldn't find any damage. A minute later, he was back to playing energetically with a feather toy.

When he's not knocking things down, he harrasses other cats and I have to keep jumping up to play cop and break it up. I wish I *could* let him outside, but it's not safe around here.

Here's a more detailed report from CNN about the ancient cat burial (it has a photo, too). It's been a fascinating story to follow.

(CNN) -- Archeologists say they have evidence that a bond between cats and humans was forged thousands of years before previously thought.

An elaborate Neolithic burial site uncovered in the Shillourokambos settlement on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus reveals that the friendship between cats and humans may go back 9,500 years. Prior to the discovery, Egyptians were thought to be the first to keep cats as pets, around 2,000 to 1,900 BC.

Scientists, who published their findings Thursday in the journal Science, say a skeleton of a young cat was found just a few inches from the remains of a human, buried in a similar fashion.

"We don't know if the human was a male or a female, but we do know that he or she had a special status in society," said Jean -Denis Vigne, vice president of the Scientific Council of the Museum of Natural History in Paris.

The cat was the Felis silvestris species, a wildcat, a bit larger than modern domestic cats. It was about eight months old when it died.

Researchers found many items not often found in other graves, including flints, a small green stone axe, and two dozen shells. The cat skeleton was just 15 inches from the human skeleton. Vigne said the animal skeleton showed no sign of having been butchered, and its proximity to the human suggested some respect or reverence. It is possible, he said, that the cat was killed to accompany the human in the afterworld.

Vigne said there is no way to know if this cat was a pet. But he said the burial find in Cyprus indicates that the relationship between cats and people involved spiritual links.

Stone and clay figurines of cats have also been found at archeological sites in Syria, Turkey, and Israel from the Neolithic period, the latest period of the Stone Age.

Archeologists examining early bonds between cats and humans usually describe the benefits to the pet owners as rodent control. The cats would benefit from easier access to food, the researchers said.

But in the case found in the Cyprus dig, the cat would likely have been brought to the island from a mainland location, some 35 to 50 miles away.

Vigne said other animals, including cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and dogs, were probably also transported from the mainland around the same time.

"This is an important site for the whole of western Asia," said Vigne. "Because it has told us this civilization crossed the sea to this island both for culture and to domesticate animals."

Until this Cypriot excavation, the Egyptians were long considered the earliest civilization to both tame cats and to show a great reverence toward them. The Egyptian goddess Bastet often appears with a human body and a feline head.

Along the Nile River, cats were viewed as protectors of the home, keeping the household free of pests. The Egyptians even bred a new species of cat 3,900 to 4,000 years ago.

The Cyprus site was first excavated in 1992. Vigne expects about two more years of study there, which will probably mean the French scientist will put off owning a pet cat for a bit longer.

"Perhaps when I retire," he laughed.

It was the unfortunate Diva's turn to go to the vet today. I was hoping that her constant running, goopy eyes problem would go away once I moved to a new locale and Diva was no longer going outside. But yesterday, her eyes looked really goopy. That pretty much rules out the allergy theory, unless it's an allergy I brought with me from old office to new office.

Off she went and she was a very good girl, sweet thing that she is. I have eye drops for her, but the vet was insistent that since Diva's had this problem for so long and it never clears up, I need to take her to eye specialist to find the underlying cause rather than continuing to treat the symptoms only. She's given me the names of three specialists, all over an hour's drive away. I'll see how things go after this round of treatment.

Owl truly has amazed me now. I saw him jump all the way from the floor to the highest part of my desktop. That's a regular sized cat jump, which means he's using that knee pretty well, even if he does want to keep holding it out straight when he's lying down. He's spending a lot of time on the desk, purring up a storm, even climbing into my lap. Happy moggy.

Owl is such a happy boy now that he can get onto the top of my desk. He's hanging out here much of the time. I even saw him jump down from the very top level. I was worried about him doing that, but he landed very easily with no apparent problem for his knee. I've very happy about that.

Querida's eye looked terrible this morning, crusted all around. I had to get a washcloth and spend a few minutes cleaning her up. Which she hated, of course. I really need to get hold of some lysine for her.

This house has come with its own troop of the neighbor's outdoor cats. The most frequent visitor is Salem, a black cat, who comes around to drink from the birdbath. He's extremely shy and won't let me get near him. Then there's Duncan, who's black and white, who has sniffed my fingers. The big brown tom, Harley, who was more than willing to let us rub his belly, but who also starts fights with the other cats. There's another big brown tom, Tom, that I haven't seen yet. I caught a glimpse of a gray cat today, name unknown. I don't mind if they hang around, since I'm not letting my cats out, and this well-fenced yard keeps them safe from the roving dogs, but it's rather amusing that we have a "shadow horde" around.

I debated what was appropriate for this blog. It is, after all, intended to be about my horde of cats. But it's also my blog and may be whatever I want. Rather than go into detail, I will only mention here that I've been in Tucson for the past several days dealing with the untimely death of my best friend, Katherine Lawrence. To read more of my thoughts and feelings on this painful loss, you may read my obit posting at sff.net.

Immediately after I got home from Tucson, I discovered that Querida had an eye infection, so the poor old girl was hauled off to the vet that afternoon. This was my first experience with the vet since moving here and so far I'm impressed. Nice woman with a great attitude. Very meticulous and thorough. We have Querida on anti-biotics and I'm supposed to get her some L-Lysine since the vet thinks the chronic eye problem may be from a Herpes virus. The Lysine is supposed to combat that.

Amazing news -- twice today I've found Owl up on my desk! There's only one way he could have gotten up there and that's to jump. Which means he's able to jump again! I'm astounded. I want to actually catch him in the act to convince myself he's jumping and hasn't simply developed anti-gravity levitation skills. Wait, here he goes.

Ah, the mystery is solved. I had completely forgotten that I temporarily placed a large rubber container down at the far end of the lower branch of my desk which provides him with two short jumps up here. Still, they're little jumps and that has to be good for him. It also means I won't be moving that container away.

Birthday greetings: sometime earlier this year, Querida reached the ripe age of 17. Puck's birthday is unknown, so I've assigned him April Fool's (so appropriate) and he is now 3. My "little girl" of the group, Diva, is now 7 (at best guess).