Part of the morning routine is that Saffy joins me at the bathroom sink while I'm washing my face, then I leave a small pool of water in the sink for her to drink from. She has two water bowls to choose from downstairs, but she loves drinking from the sink. This morning, I gave her a cuddle and when I stood up and faced the mirror, I found a smear of blood across my chest. I had the typical reaction you can imagine to seeing unexpected, bright red blood where it doesn't belong. I wiped it off and confirmed it wasn't mine, then began looking Saffy over carefully. I found a bead of blood on the outside edge of her left ear. She'd obviously been playing whack-a-paw with one of her siblings and gotten lightly nailed on the ear. Nothing serious.

Pippin has developed a new physical reaction to having a certain part of his back scratched. It's the area just past his shoulders. He reacts the way I've seen many dogs react -- he smacks his lips and if you scratch long enough, he tries to scratch with his hind leg. It only started about a week or so ago and we're both wondering what could be causing it.

Speaking of Pippin, my big sweet boy bit me. I was giving him the once-a-week rub-down with the anti-allergy liquid. He never likes it much and usually gives me a hiss or two, but this time he actually bit me. It wasn't hard enough to break the skin, but enough to hurt. I gave him a whack on the head and a lecture. A couple of hours later, all is forgiven. I'm fortunate that he doesn't hold grudges.

Things are going pretty well with Zoe. I had one other moment the other day when I caught her at the earliest stage of stalking Jetta and I cut that off instantly. What makes me happy is that Zoe looks brighter-eyed and is more playful. I hope, hope, hope the peaceful trend continues.

All quiet on the western front. It usually takes about a week for the lower dosage of tranks to affect Zoe's behavior, so this is a critical time. I'll hold her at this dosage for a couple of months until I can be sure she isn't getting aggressive again before I try to cut back any further. Also, the vet warned me that weaning off Amitriptyline has to be gradual.

I heard a cat getting ready to vomit in the office. I hurried over to see who it was and arrived in time to see Tosca throwing up...and missing the inside of my shoe by half an inch. Because of Randy's allergies, I change both my clothes and shoes when going between the office and the house, so I had my house shoes sitting there in the line of fire. I got lucky.

Amusing moment in bed. I was woken in the wee hours by a chorus -- Randy and Pippin snoring together. Neither one of them snores very often, but this time they were in sync.

I had a small spot of trouble with Zoe this afternoon, but she wasn't going after Tosca. She was going after Jetta. I immediately defused Zoe's attempts to harrass Jetta, but good grief, now it seems like any black cat is enough to set her off. Zoe's been peaceful since, but it's not a good sign.

I'm making another attempt to wean Zoe off the tranks. I have to do it slowly and carefully because this isn't the kind of med you can suddenly stop giving. Also, I need to closely monitor her aggression level. It's been several days and so far I've only seen one spark of aggression that I nipped immediately. I'd like to be optimistic, but last time I tried it took several days before she started attacking Tosca again. Now that I'm working at home, I'm around to police the situation. I'm really hoping for better results this time around.

I've just returned from a week-long business trip to Lugano, Switzerland at the southernmost Italian end of the country. The day before I left, Tosca had the staples removed from her back. It's healing up well and she's doing fine.

The flights to Switzerland are gruelling -- a 20 hour day with 12-13 hours of that spent on planes. The trip itself was fantastic. The moggies missed me and have were happy to see me back. Zoe and Jetta have been glued to my lap. Pippin decided that we needed to get up at 8 am this morning instead of letting us sleep in. He used two of his main techniques. First, he gets affectionate and cuddly close to our faces. Usually that's all it takes. When that didn't work, he looked for mischief to get into and found it by sticking his head in the wastebasket and chewing on something plastic. That worked. Sigh....

On my last day in Lugano, I took a bus ride up to a small, gorgeous mountain village called Bré. Down in the city, I only saw people with dogs, though I did see a cat-themed boutique called Il Gato. But in Bré I did finally see some cats, so I thought I'd share a couple of them. The Swiss-Italians seem to prefer tabbies, especially orange tabbies. They all looked dubious of me, though one pale orange tabby nearly let me pet him. Judging from the reactions, however, I don't speak Meow well in Italian.

		Animal	All Bird Cat Dog Horse Pig Rabbit Reptile Small&Furry	Breed		Zip Code