Things had been going well with Zoe until today when she took off after Jetta again. I put a stop to it immediately. It's odd that she's shifted her aggression to Jetta from Tosca. At least Jetta seems able to deal with it better. If/when I find another full-time job and am not here to supervise it could be more of a problem.

A blog reader sent me a link to a site she's created with family-safe cat videos culled from the web. It's a nice-looking, well-organized page, so enjoy Cute Cat Videos.

We heard a THUMP in the night from downstairs, but we were too tired to haul ourselves out of bed to investigate. In the morning, we found one of the plants had been knocked off the top of a bookshelf. The pot didn't break and the plant may survive, but we had a mess to clean up. The obvious culprit is Opal, who insists on jumping up there in spite of our best attempts to make that difficult...hence the broken plant.

Randy and Opal have a ritual which they both enjoy tremendously. Randy asks Opal if she wants to go for a ride, then he bends over so she can jump onto his back. He straightens up slowly so that she can easily make her way onto his shoulders and there she perches happily while Randy gives her a ride around the house. She'll even ride his shoulders up the stairs to the second floor. Opal "goes for a ride" every day.

Unfortunately, lately she's gotten too enthusiastic, taking advantage of any bent-over back presented to her -- like mine -- except that I don't have the shoulders for a good perch. Worse than that, she's decided a couple of times now that she's going to take a ride whether Randy is ready for it or not. This morning I was making breakfast when I heard from behind me "Agggh!! Get her off!" I turned around to find Opal clinging to Randy's back as he stood at the sink. Naturally, she sunk her claws in to get a grip because Randy was standing straight up. He was a man in pain. We patched him up with Bactine and bandages, but we need to find a way to convey to Opal that a straight back is NOT an invitation to go mountain climbing.

I would say that Opal wins the Mischief Lottery this month.

Whoever got these shots is The Best Cat Wrangler Ever!

How to Store and Organize Your Cats

Five years ago right around this time, four kittens were born to a feral Tortie mother in the tiny crawlspace beneath an old, ramshackle cabin in the mountains. A few weeks later, Randy happened to pass the cabin and hear tiny mews coming from under the cabin. A few weeks after that, we trapped them and the rest is history.

Happy Birthday to Jetta, Opal, Pippin and Sapphire.

Zoe planted herself to the left of my keyboard, gulped a couple of times and started to throw up.

My friends, this is the ultimate test of one's reflexes. I wasn't quite fast enough and she tossed a couple of chunks onto the keyboard, but it could have been a lot worse. The rest was diverted elsewhere, barely missing my folders and paperwork. There's a reason I put a large Rubbermaid container over my keyboard any time I leave it.

Maybe it's Zoe's idea of an April Fool's prank.

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