When Opal gets going, she's a rocket. She whizzes around the house at warp 10 bouncing off furniture and using humans as launching pads. Last night, my shoulder became a launching pad for a furry streak at full speed, which is why I have a nice set of claw marks on my back.

Simon continues his stunts, knocking over the wastebasket, shredding papter towels and his stunt today was chasing Saffy all over the office. I finally scooped him up and put him inside the Cave to cool down and give the poor girl a break. But I didn't bother to secure it with the bungie cord, so he was out about five minutes later.

It occurs to me that Simon may not have been simply a lost cat. I wouldn't be surprised if people dumped him because they couldn't cope with his antics.

I pulled a freshly washed pair of track pants from my dresser drawer and was baffled to find they had no drawstring. I couldn't imagine how the drawstring could have come entirely out in the wash. I looked around for it in the dryer and laundry basket and finally gave up. Then Randy found it under the bed and the light dawned. Cat toy. I'll bet Opal or Pippin started playing with it while my track pants were in the laundry basket, pulled it out and made off with it.

This morning's Simon Stunt: he knocked over a tall wastebasket. I found cat food cans, paper towels and various debris scattered around that area of the office. And even though I went out of my way to keep him from getting to the bags of chicken feed, he ripped a small hole in the one I just brought in. He has also developed a talent for throwing up in the most inconvenient places he can find. I'm concerned that he's been throwing up for the past three days. I should try some hairball medicine on him.

I have the Mother of all Bruises. Half my right gluteus maximus is a solid mass of purple-black-red bruising as a secondary result of the dog bite. It looks rather spectacular. Too bad it doesn't feel spectacular.

Opal brought me the mousie this morning for the first time in weeks, but she only fetched it once before losing interest. Saffy continues to play fetch, though not with the same enthusiasm. She lets herself be easily deflected if one of her sisters goes after the fishie. I have to be careful not to throw it anywhere near Puck or Simon because she won't go up against them to get the fishie. Zoe brought the fishie to my desk later and fetched it a few times, but she's getting the point where about three times is enough.

Randy loves to let Pippin knead him on the stomach, so I have to keep Pippy's claws trimmed to prevent the ground hamburger effect. I've discovered that if I hold Pippin upside down cradled in my lap with his head resting against my stomach, he is entirely relaxed and gives me no trouble at all about snipping his claws. He is such a mellow boy. Very jumpy about sudden, unexpected noises, but otherwise mellow.

Doug came by this morning to check on me and give me hugs. He's truly devastated by what happened, and seems resigned to having Tondo put down. Such a tragedy. Doug was in tears when he left.

I found Pippin asleep on the bed and indulged in some cat therapy. I petted him up and told him what a good boy he was and listened to his stomach gurgle. Then a lump in the bed chirruped at me. Opal was only inches away, burrowed under the covers. She wanted to make sure I gave her some love, too, the sweet thing.

I have a major pain in the ass. Unfortunately, it's not a funny pain in the ass. It's a literal one. I can barely sit by perching on the edge of my chair.

I went out for my usual walk after dinner. Randy went to the gym. We've gotten to be friends with Doug, whose house is about halfway around the hilltop loop that we do. Doug has a dog named Tondo. The poor dog was terribly abused and Doug rescued him. He's tried very hard to salvage and rehabilitate this dog. Tragically, it hasn't worked. Tondo has attacked a number of people, including Randy. He nearly took a chunk out of Randy's arm and was only prevented because Doug was holding onto the dogs's leashat the time. Yes, the dog attacked even when the owner was there and having a quiet friendly conversation. However, this is a large, extremely powerful dog and hard to control. I think he may have some Ridgeback in him.

Tonight, well before I got to Doug's house, I was surprised by Tondo. He should never, ever have been out of the yard and not under control, but there he was. I said, "Hi, Tondo," hoping he would remember me as Doug's friend who has petted him several times. I was far from any other house and had nowhere to go.

Instead, he lunged and attacked me, then ran off. He ripped a large hole in my jeans, through my underwear and, to put it bluntly, bit me on the ass. It hurts like hell. Two other women about 100 yards behind me on the same walk witnessed the attack. They're both nurses, so they took a look at me and walked me home.

I had to call Doug and give him the bad news, not to mention informing him that I will file a report with Animal Control. Doug was very upset over what happened. He's a nice guy and I know he feels terrible. He was at work, but plans to stop by and see me on the way home. Doug say he would have Tondo destroyed. I also feel terrible, in that I hate to bring about the death of an animal, but this dog is simply too dangerous and unpredictable.

Saffy suddenly leapt onto my desk, nearly onto my keyboard and was wildly batting at something at about my eye level. I suddenly realized it was a drifting wasp heading around to my left. I bolted out of my chair, but by the time I gathered myself to look around, the wasp has disappeared. I praised Saffy for being a good girl and told her to find it again. I suspect she will eventually.

Zoe wanted to play several rounds of Fetch the Fishie, which we did, but poor old Kate was most annoyed. She was trying to have a quiet nap along my keyboard and Zoe kept bounding onto the desk and dropping the fish next to Kate's head.

There's nothing quite like coming into the office and finding cat vomit on my desk. And on my papers. I know, I know, you'd think I would know better by now than to leave papers on my desk, but I'm not that organized. I try to clean them up, but they creep back and pretty soon my desk is littered with notes and reminders of things I need to do. At least none of it is critical. I'm not that silly. ;)

I was petting Bob on the porch last night. He was purring madly and soaking it up, but I finally needed to go inside. He was so upset that I was leaving that he actually attacked my leg! I yelped loudly enough for Randy to come to the door to see what was wrong. Bob is a nutso cat.

I gave the Horde some "pixie dust" (catnip) this morning. I took a sisal mouse that they usually ignore and coated that with catnip and suddenly it became much more interesting. The rolling around and general stoned frenzy is over. Theseus is sleeping off a catnip hangover, I think.

I've noticed that Simon isn't a uniformly grey cat. Aside from a few bits of white in his coat, there's also a dark, almost black, patch on his back. And amidst all his grey whiskers, he has a solitary, long white whisker.

That Simon was at it again. I had to shoo him away from a bag of chicken feed that he was ripping open, then barricade the bag with cardboard to keep him away from it.

I realized why Theseus is always so desperate to have me scratch him under the chin. This cat is so fat, he can't scratch himself! He really is desperately fat, but there's nothing I can do about it without depriving the entire office Horde of food at the same time. And you know they would all be driving me completely insane without access to food. It's a terrible conundrum.

BIG FAT MOGGY

Usually Simon plays a bit too roughly for the girls, but tonight he was being very sweet to old Kate. He gave her a mini-bath and gently licked her head and ears. It was nice to see.

The cats found me another wasp and I zapped it quickly with spray. Here I thought I was rid of them.

Bob's tortie girlfriend is showing up with him nearly every night. She's sweet, but shy of us. They were romping and pouncing on one another and rolling around in the grass. It's funny that we have a black male and female tortie in the house, plus out in the yard, plus black cats and tortie in my office.

I was printing a label and as it came out of the printer, Simon spotted, grabbed it in his little pointy teeth and tried to make off with it!

When I'm not using the printer, it serves as a cat bed, which is why I have a nice, thick plastic cover for it.

The wasps aren't gone after all. The cats found one a couple of days ago and the next day I found it crawling in the cat litter where I dispatched it. They found another one today and I was finally able to zap it with spray when it came down onto one of my torchieres.

Simon pulled two more Simon Stunts. He keeps knocking down a packing box, the one that my color printer came in. I keep the good boxes like that for future moves. It has shaped Styrofoam pieces that hold the printer in place, so I think Simon is after that. I keep having to pick it all up and put it back on the shelf where it's stored.

And, as I feared, he has learned that he doesn't have to chew up a mere paper towel. There's an ENTIRE ROLL of paper towels he can attack! Which he did. I can no longer keep the roll of towels anywhere handy. Noooo, I have to put them in an obscure place where, theoretically, they are beyond the reach of The Shredder.

I met Bob's friend and it's not the fluffy pale calico at all (who Randy got to see briefly the other day). Bob's housemate is a tortie who is very sweet and let me pet her, though she's a bit more cautious than Bob. If she's from this neighborhood, then she's definitely related to Opal and Sapphire. She has Opal's slim build, Saffy's kind of markings, and the same kind of soft fur they both have.

I went to Lolette's yesterday to give her a donation for Cause4Cats that had come in via me, plus some vouchers I'd gotten from another local animal group to help with spaying. I also had to buy some cat food and get Simon's second shot. I brought it home and gave it to him myself. He was distracted by the new bag of food that he immediately wanted to rip open, the little snot.

Lolette has some Siamese kittens. Siamese! They're adorable. I miss my beautiful Siamese boy. I mentioned it to Randy and his eyes lit up. He doesn't think we should take on any more cats, of course, and he's right, but I suspect he wouldn't kick that hard if I happened to bring one home. Oh, dear Bast, the temptation....

I was working on the proof pages of my big, fat book (these are copies of the final pages before they go to the printer, so it's my last chance to fix mistakes), so naturally this was the afternoon that Zoe rediscovered how much she likes to fetch the fishie. We did much fetching of the fishing in between the proofing of the pages.

Randy is home after being gone for a week. Pippin and Opal are delirously happy, racing around the house. Randy is equally happy, having missed his moggies very much. Everybody's happy!

Talking cats! Hysterical!

Tosca and Diva talk a lot but so far it's all in Moggish rather than English.

A beautiful new cat showed up on the porch this morning. I think it might be the female cat that lives with Bob. She was fluffy, a bit of white but mostly pale tortie markings, and with the most enormous green eyes. If it is Bob's housemate, she's shy because she vanished as soon as I opened the door.

Opal has an extremely peculiar method of drinking water. She doesn't sit or crouch at the water bowl like most cats. Instead, she lies down by the bowl, often wrapping herself around the bowl, and drinks lying down. We can always tell when she's been drinking water because her entire chin is wet. Such an odd girl.

Bob is a love sponge. Every time I go outside, Bob is there begging for attention. I even picked him up and cuddled him, and he loved every minute of it. Randy thinks he must not get enough attention at his home. I figure he knows when he's got a couple of suckers wrapped around his paw.

Today's Simon Stunt was finding and shredding a styrofoam peanut. He must have had one stashed somewhere. I hereby dub him The Shredder. Not only is it appropriate, but it's an inside joke. The episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that I wrote was called "The Return of the Shredder".

When I came into my office, I was greeted by what I will call "Simon stunts". I don't have absolute proof that he's the culprit, but I figure it's a safe bet. First, I went over to change the water and found an odd cluster of two cat toys and a soaking wet paper towel lying on the floor near the water bowl. The toys I can live with. But the sopping wet mass of paper towel required that a cat a) get hold of a paper towel, b) put it into the water bowl, then c) take it out of the water bowl! I cannot begin to imagine why.

Then I discovered that the bag of cat treats was on the floor. That's not unusual. I picked it up and treats began falling out through a hole in the bottom. That definitely has the earmarks...or shall we say fang marks of a Simon stunt.

Last night, I was about to leave when it sounded as though a hundred bulls had run through an entire china factory and a cat grenade went off with cats racing wildly in all directions from the scene of the crime. Moggy Unknown had made this delightful mess on my floor. The one relief is that nothing was broken.

It looks like the wasps are gone. What a relief.

Randy got home late last night. Opal and Pippin were very happy to see him. When it was time for bed, he didn't have the heart to shut them out of the bedroom. We didn't get much sleep, between the toe-pouncing and one of them finding a jingly ball to bat around underneath the bed. I don't think he'll object to keeping the little darlings out of the room tonight.

As luck would have it, I ran into Tom's entire family of people at the local market. I asked her how Tom was doing. She said he was a little weird at first, but by nightfall he was happy to come inside with them, and that he was remaking the acquaintance of his furry friends -- Salem, Gizmo and Duncan. Sounds good so far.

I decided to experiment with letting Pippin and Opal sleep with me last night. They were reasonably well-behaved after the initial period of curious inspection and toe-pouncing-upon, but they woke me up just often enough to ruin getting a good night's sleep. Don't think I'll be doing that again.

On a note of good news, I didn't see any wasps in my office today. I'm thinking the one I saw yesterday might have died on its own, or a cat got it. Let's hope that's the end of them.

The wasp-slaying continues. The cats are so good at finding them that it makes the job much easier. It seems like there might be slightly less of them showing up. I hope so.

Tom went home today. It was late morning and I'd been thinking about the fact that Tom's person had never followed up with phone call. The phone rang and it was her, inquiring whether he was around, was being fed, did he look healthy, etc. She said she was keeping the carrier in the car and would drive by during the day, but hadn't seen him. I explained that he's only been showing up at night, but since she said she didn't have a car in the evening, I hadn't called her. She now has a working car again night, so she said she'd try coming around at night.

Five minutes later, Tom showed up. I called her back to say that he must have heard us talking and he was here. She quickly put her four kids into the car and came over. I gave Tom's weird claw one last clipping and sat on the porch saying my goodbyes to him. When his people first arrived, he hid under the porch, being a cautious cat. She coaxed him out and he seemed happy enough to see her. What he wasn't at all happy about was being put in the carrier. Dear Bast, how he howled.

I hope it works out well and that he'll stay put this time. No more Tom, but Bob remains, wanting lots of attention.

Randy is gone for a couple of days on a business trip. Poor Pippin and Opal are noticing his absence. Pippin got on the sofa tonight and looked confused because his human pincushion wasn't there. He chose to use me for a kneading pillow instead. Must--ouch--trim--ouch--his claws.

I forgot to mention that after I complained about Opal not playing fetch the mouse any more...she began fetching the mousie. Yet more proof that cats are telepathic.

I also keep forgetting to mention that Junior reappeared a couple of weeks ago. He's the white and orange feral tabby that we TNR'd a year or so ago when he was about six months old. I kept him inside my office in a cage to see if he could adjust, but decided that one Ariel in the Horde was enough. After I let him go, we never saw him again. I guess he's finally decided to risk coming back. He's all grown up now, of course, a big boy, as wary as ever.

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