I think I'll have to reverse my policy of letting Puck go Out. The brief time he gets outside isn't enough to satisfy him, but seems to be just enough to get him all hepped up and riled and frustrated. He spent his first year as a totally outdoor cat, his second year with a lot of access to the outside, and now suddenly in his third year, he's forced to be an indoor cat. The very short tastes of the outside must reawaken the wild boy inside him.

Whatever the reason, he jumped Sly last night and they had a series of short, vicious battles where they were biting one another around the neck and fur was literally flying. Puck was the aggressor. I had to chase them around the office until I finally managed to get hold of Puck and whack him a good one on the head to express my displeasure. I held onto him until he had calmed down and stopped huffing, then I checked him over carefully for bites. Didn't find any.

After that, I found poor old Sly and massaged his neck and shoulders checking for bites. Sly thought that was wonderful and turned on his purr machine. As near as I can tell, they pulled out tufts of fur, but didn't inflict actual wounds. I hope.

At any rate, Puck did not go Out today.

Puckaroo Banzai had TWO visits to the Outside today, the lucky boy. He has quickly glommed onto my willingness to let him come outside with me when I empty the water bowl. This morning, he bounded out, rolled in the dirt and immediately went to sniff everything on the front porch.

Late this afternoon, when Randy got home from the gym, he came out to say hello to me and the moggies and he took Puck outside for a while.

Meanwhile, Theseus is once again a major stinkybutt and I despair of dealing with it. So mainly, I try to pretend it isn't there. Except I can smell him as soon as he's within two feet of me. Feh!

The moggies were very happy to have us home again. The sitters said everything went fine and all pills were given.

We got in late Sun. night and immediately had to battle ants. The sitters had accidentally not closed Nefreet's tub'o'food tightly enough and the ants were having a par-tay! Food! Food! Endless food!

I had to take care of the Horde before we could collapse. There was much joy in Hordeville because Big Mother Cat was back.

Nefreet, feeling insecure, meowed at the bedroom door at 6:30 am the next morning. We weren't ready for that.

I let Puck come outside with me this morning while I dumped the water bowl contents onto the apple tree and refreshed the birdbath. Puck's first order of business was to roll in the dirt. Then he had to sniff everything in the universe. I stayed on the porch with him a few minutes longer, but had to work to do so I slung him over my shoulder and brought him in. The next thing he had to do as a result of that was harass Tosca because he had, after all, been Outside.

One of the small pleasures of life I missed immediately after moving was the lack of birds. At my house up north, we had tons of birds and a great variety of them. Juncos would arrive by the dozens and bluebirds by the handful would splash in the birdbath.

When we moved here, we brought a birdbath with us and immediately set it up, and I hung seed bells and then a feeder. Then I waited. And waited. I began to despair of ever seeing a bird in this yard.

Months later, we finally have a fair number showing up. Nothing like the old place and nothing like the same variety. The most common visitors are the red house finches and the titmouse. There's also a more unusual golden-orange house finch. There are black-chinned sparrows that are striking to look at. We get scrub jays and once in a rare while a couple of Stellar jays (with the black topnotch).

There are none of the hordes of acorn woodpeckers we had before. I've spotten one type of woodpecker that I haven't seen before. I'll hear a loud metallic rat-a-tat-tat and I know he's trying to peck through the metal banding at the top of the power pole. He can't seem to figure out that he's never going to get through that metal. I forget what type he is.

Yesterday, a new pair of birds arrived. A very pretty and somewhat large black-headed grosbeak. The male looks like a calico. He has a black head, bright cinnamon on his chest and part of his neck, black and cinnamon streaks on his head, black back with white bands on the feathers. Similar colors to Nefreet, in fact, though his orange is deeper. They have huge beaks, in keeping with their name, for eating seeds. Unlike the other birds who come and go nervously, the grosbeaks take up residence on the feeder for ten to fifteen minutes at a time, methodically devouring the seed. Sometimes the smaller birds sit on a wire nearby and swear at them.

Then today, a pair of robins visited. The male had a rollicking good time taking a bath in the birdbath.

We also had to run off Tom, one of the neighbor's tabbies, who was crouched by some bushes near the tree with the feeder, watching lasciviously and chattering to himself. I'd say it's pretty clear that he's been the one catching birds in our yard.

New rule -- never leave a pile of packing paper lying around for too many days. I mainly left it because Puckaroo Banzai likes to play in it and hide under sheets of crumpled paper. But last night, I caught Tribble peeing in it, much to my dismay. I suspect Blue may have done the same earlier, now that I think back on his behavior. I saw him coming out of the papers, then scratching at them as though trying to cover up something. At least there's only concrete underneath, rather than carpet.

The new catsitters came by today, a very nice older couple and die-hard animal lovers. It was their second time here, but I didn't have spare keys for them the first time. Today I gave them the keys, along with some documents I'd prepared for them. I wrote up a chart of which cat gets what medicines, plus a bunch of other relevant info on where to find things, what the routine is, etc. I also gave them several pages with color pictures of each cat, with name, age, temperament, health issues and whatever else I thought they'd like to know. I've already done paperwork at the vet's authorizing these people to bring my cats there in case of emergency, so I let them know about that.

I walked them around to everything, where cat food is, etc., and reintroduced them to the moggies. Most of the Horde will come forward to greet new people. Theseus, Blue and Kate hid in a heap in a corner behind a box, and Knobby vanished into some other hidey-hole. The rest demanded or allowed as much attention as could go around.

We'll only be gone a few days, so it'll be a good test run.

Puck decided to "help" me with filling the Lysine capsules again this morning. He grabbed one of the small, empty gelatin capsules and made off with it.

Okay, I thought, if he wants gelatin capsules, why not give it to him? I took one of the large capsules from which I'd emptied the Lysine, put the two halves to back together and when the Merry Puckster showed up for more mischief, I tossed it to him. I figure it can only benefit him to eat a bit of gelatin with Lysine in it. He leapt happily upon it and chased it down a table top and onto the floor. I found half of the capsule later, so he might not have found it all that palatable after all.

I had to fight off another ant invasion in the cat food and sprinkled boric acid around the outside of the office to see if that would help. The ants don't seem interested in the sugar-baited type of boric acid I had to buy. These ants want protein.

Which is why I'm perplexed over the major ant invasion in the house where we have Nefreet's catbox. There were ants all over the box and in the litter and they seemed to be after the cat crap. I've never seen ants interested in cat crap before. It took me forever to get that taken care of and get all the ants out of it.

Owl was sleeping peacefully to the left of my keyboard when Puck plopped himself along the top edge of the keyboard and used Owl's butt for a pillow. After a few minutes, Owl scrunched sideways. Puck buried his head in Owls' stomach. After a few more minutes, Owl got in disgust and stalked off. Puck hasn't budged, of course.

Puck has also taken to helping me put the Lysine capsules together in the morning. His "help" consists of batting the gelatine capsules around and sticking his tail in the Lysine powder.

Tribble has forgiven me pretty quickly, now that the Horrible Meds have stopped. He's on my desk, to the left of the keyboard, looking quite happy.

Puck keeps scooting out the door. If we have the time, we'll stand outside with him for a few minutes, but it's made getting in and out of my office a whole lot trickier.

One of the neighbor's tabbies was hanging out in the yard the other night. The next morning, we found the remains of yet another bird -- just the head, wings and feet. I'm not terribly happy about this, but short of trapping the cat, I can't see what to do about it. As Randy pointed out, that would certainly justify her accusations of me being a cat-napper. [g]

Speaking of Randy, I came inside and saw a bandage on his hand and indications he'd been bleeding pretty freely.

"What did you do to your hand?"

"Nefreet got me with a dull tooth."

"Ah, you were annoying her."

"We were annoying one another."

We made the mistake of letting Puck have five minutes or so outside, under our strict supervision, several days ago. Ever since, he has made mad dashes out the door as soon as I open it. Fortunately, he doesn't run off or try to avoid me, so I have no trouble catching him, but I'm thinking that giving him a taste of the outside then denying it to him again was a bad idea, poor boy.

Someone, whose name probably begins with Puck, disemboweled a roll of paper towels during the night and left the remnants all over the floor.

Then I found that half of the remaining "lizard" toy had been amputated. It's actually a wand with a long piece of plastic string that used to have a bunch of feathers at the end. One by one, the feathers were destroyed, leaving only the long plastic string. This turned out to be Puck's favorite toy -- chase the lizard! Now, alas, even the "lizard" is too short to do much with. I must find a replacement.

WE'RE DONE! We're done, thank Bast. This morning, Tribble got his claws into my thumb so that I had a bloody thumb while giving him the meds. This evening, he didn't even bother trying to hide, though he still fought me over taking it. But that's the last dose and I felt a great satisfaction in throwing out the hateful bottles and dosers.

I must admit, Tribble looks good. He's gained some weight and feels more solid than he has in a long time, his fur looks better, and he seems to generally be feeling pretty well.

Likewise, Diva and Querida both have improved fur quality from taking the L-Lysine. And they both seem to be feeling pretty well these days. If I could just find a way to clear up Querida's permanently stuffy, snurfly nose, that would be great.

Tribble put me through my paces this morning. I searched all his previously used hiding places. No luck. I started in on all other possible places and finally found him lurking behind a couple of pieces of old bed headboard. I'd been meaning to finish cleaning out one corner of the office and put those pieces back there. Since I couldn't reach him as he was, I went ahead and tackled that task.

As soon as I moved the second piece of headboard, Tribble darted off. I had to finish up what I was doing, then began round two of Find The Tribble. He'd done a very good job this time and it took me a while to locate him in a teeny place that I didn't think he could squeeze into. This required moved a very large, but thankfully lightweight box and the Hideous Meds were duly administered.

It isn't giving the meds that takes the time. It's the finding of the cat for the giving of the meds that is time-consuming.

Only 3 more doses to go!

The vet wants me to keep Tribble on the Hideous Meds for the full 21 day course, so we stopped by there today after having lunch out and I picked up enough of the Bitter White Gunk to last until the final dose on Sun. night.

Only five more doses to go!