Tosca is not happy that I rearranged my desk. The big HP printer is now in an entirely different location, on the left-hand wing of my desk, rather than to the right of my monitor. That was one of her favorite sleeping spots. She jumped up there yesterday and stood on the right side of the desk going "What th--?!" Her tail whipped back and forth in Extreme Disapproval.

I started to point out to her the new location of her napping spot, but discovered it was already occupied by Owl.

Poor little moggies. How they suffer.

Poor Knobby. I rarely mention him because he's such a pathetic little boy. He's neurotic and timid, so he spends his time hiding out. I usually only see him when he and Puck have a noisy, yowling confrontation that I have to break up, or when Knobby is unleashing several quarts of cat spray, which does not exactly endear him to me. Fortunately, he uses the same piece of cardboard each time, which I put up specifically for that purpose.

But the past couple of days, Knobby has been coming around and begging for attention. This consists of giving him head and ear scritchies, which he loves. Today I thought I'd try putting him on my lap, in case his desire for attention was really that strong.

A big N-O to that. He freaked, spun out and disappeared. He is so not a lap cat.

Unlike the big, happy Siamese love-sponge I have in my lap right now.

I gathered up a large handful of white goose feathers at the pond in the park, which I will turn into cat toys. String, gaffer's tape and goose feathers -- what could be more perfect? They're in my office now and Puck is doing his best to destroy them first. The other moggies have found them to be most interesting to sniff.

Tosca likes to reach out and grab the other cat's tails. I haven't seen a single cat yet that actually appreciates this, oddly enough.

I missed celebrating Tribble's birthday! He turned 15 on May 1st. And he is a bright and bouncy as ever. He mugs me for treats every morning and every night. Tosca and he do a tag-team mugging for treats.

I have a big, purring pile of Siamese in my lap. He's found a way to squeeze his entire bulk into a compact shape that doesn't interfere with typing, amazingly enough. What a happy boy.

Owl has lost some weight, maybe a couple of pounds. Which is not bad, because he was carrying a bit more weight than he needed. I'm wondering if the anti-histamines could be the reason. At any rate, his fur is looking lovely and thick because he's not pulling it out and he looks very good at the lower weight. He looks trim and fit.

Of course, if he keeps losing weight, I'll have to do something about it, but for now he seems to be doing great. He's become outgoing enough to actually come out and greet strangers who visit the office and he's always happy to see Randy. He's still not sure he likes it when I kiss him on the head, though. Owl, I mean, not Randy. ;)

Here's a site of terrific wonderfulness. Enjoy.

The Infinite Cat Project.

Something I have feared for weeks has happened -- ants have found the cat food bowls. We have a big ant problem in this new house. I thought we'd just brought a batch with us in the jasmine plant, but we have ants in the walls behind the shower and are constantly battling invasions.

I figured with ants in the house, they were likely all around the property and if they ever found their way into my office with all the cat food bowls, I would be in trouble. That's what happened last night. I went to give the mogs their night-time treat of canned food and found ants on one of the bowls. Disaster! Catastrophe!

Fortunately, they'd only found one bowl. I doled out the food, removed the ant-infested bowl and washed it, and sprayed along the wall where they were getting in. I haven't seen any new ants this morning yet, but I know this was only one battle in a war. These are the tiny black ants that go crazy over meat and protein, and cat food is an irresitible lure.

THE GREAT CAT LITTER CHICKEN FEED EXPERIMENT: One year later, I declare this experiment to be an unqualified success. The lay crumbles work great, are cheap as all get-out, and I haven't had one single insect of any sort result from using it. It is dusty, but it's no worse than dust from clay litter, while being a lot more environmentally friendly than clay. I wear a dust mask anyway, but I've also learned to close my eyes when I'm pouring out a large amount of it.

Speaking of matters of the cat box, one of my cats has had a problem that's been going on for months now. I keep finding single, hard "tootsie rolls" outside the boxes. Almost every morning I find one close to the boxes and then I usually find one somewhere else in the office. I have no clue who's responsible, but I sure would like to find which moggy it is and figure out why he/she has this problem.

Nefreet got up into the kitchen window, which is above the sink, and gave some cat outside a stern hissing at. Probably Salem come to drink from the birdbath, but whoever it was had vanished by the time I ousted psycho-kitty from the window.

I did one of those really stoopid things. I sliced open my thumb while opening one of those peel-back-lid cans of cat food. Bled a whole lot.

When I came into the office this morning, I once again found the large box of bubble wrap lying on the floor, courtesy of Master Puck's bag of mischief tricks. There was also a goodly amount of shredded bubble wrap lying on the floor. I went to pick up the box and it was heavy! I looked inside. There was a very happy Owl in his new cave, sleeping on his bed of shredded bubble wrap.

I came outside the office in the dark and saw a shadowy shape lurking nearby. I said, "Hello, Salem," naturally assuming it was the neighbor's black cat. But instead of running away, this cat ran right over to me to be petted. It was a lovely gray cat and the same neighbor has a gray cat that I've only seen from a distance, so it may the same one. He (I'm assuming, since all their other cats are male) was on the skinny side, and was behaving very oddly in that he was obviously friendly and more than willing to be petted, but he kept growling the whole time.

Of course, the growling may have come from smelling the other cats on me, not to mention smelling the plastic bag of cat droppings that I had brought out to put in the garbage bin. We visited for a while. I petted, he growled and rubbed up against the stair railing before vanishing into the night.

He might be one of the culprits who fights regularly somewhere near the office. Almost every other night, there's a short, vicious cat fight usually between 9 and 10 pm. This doesn't exactly promote harmony and peacefulness within the Horde, some of whom tend to jump up and run around trying to figure out who's fighting and what should be done about it.

Things are peaceful this morning, though. Puck went bubble-wrap diving. Pills, treats, water and food have been given. Nap time is in progress.

Nefreet was a Happy Sofa Lump this morning. Pictures ensued.