Today Susan was making herself meatballs for lunch. She heated them up and put the plate down on the counter while heading to the refrigerator for some tomato sauce.
Up jumped Auri, who stuck out a claw and flipped one of the meatballs off the plate! She then played meatball hockey for quite a while after finding out it was too hot for her to eat!
Back in the Sixties or Seventies, David Peel released an album entitled "The Pope Smokes Dope". While that scenario is extremely hard to believe, it is no doubt true that the current Pope and I share a different addiction…that of kissing cats.
Pope Benedict XVI is well-known as a cat lover and a recent New York times article goes into this in some depth.
But wait, there’s more! His official biography was written by a cat ! How things have changed since Pope Gregory IX declared black cats to be evil, causing innumerable cats to be killed!
Like cats, Popes have multiple names. Pope Benedict’s cats may call him Benny, but I doubt it, since his real name is Joseph (he took the name Benedict when he was elected Pope). And, anti-Catholic propaganda to the contrary, even Popes don’t have unlimited power — Pope Benedict was unable to have his cats join him in his official residence. So fooey on the Vatican, anyway…at least "Catholic" begins with "cat"!
We have a very dear friend who lives in Tokyo and is not only a world-famous computer journalist but also a cat lover. She has two cat blogs — one in English and one in Japanese — and she recently sent us a link to a Japanese tuxedo cat video. It’s on the Japanese-language version of YouTube, so there are lots of tuxedo “related videos” on the right side of the page, just like the English version.
OK, not really friends, perhaps. But all the cats loved to watch them.
Today Susan unexpectedly lost one of her beautiful fish, a Gold Nugget Pleco, and Madame Houdini, a White Line Gecko. Dang, they were both fine yesterday.
Here’s a picture of Madame Houdini with two of her little gecko friends in happier days (like when she was alive):
She wasn’t called Madame Houdini for nothing. In her most famous escape (documented in the upcoming book Famous Geckos and Where They Hid, soon to be a major motion picture starring Stickon D. Wall and Leggo Mai Gecko), she not only got out of a completely sealed tank, but eluded six cats for three days by pretending to be a wall decoration, and then resisted capture by numerous experienced reptile wranglers. If you don’t believe me, check out these photos.
Madame Houdini could often be found on the back wall of her tank, where she teased the heck out of all the cats, but especially Jennifur, Auri, and Aurum. Jenni sometimes stood up on her hind legs like a meercat to look at her, while Aurum would come out in the middle of the night and stare at her for hours.
We will all miss them both.
When I went to the Animal Rescue Site to do my daily “click to donate”, and check the sales 
I noticed AnimalWork.org. I’ve written about the Animal Rescue site in Good Places to Shop While Helping Others, Too.
I already have a great (most of the time) job working with animals and helping people take the best care of their pets as possible. But for others who are job hunting — AnimalWork.org lists job openings for positions in the U.S. at zoos, grooming establishments, veterinary practices, retail, pet training, pet caretakers, service related organizations, and welfare and protection (i.e. what most of us would call shelters and animal control).
We have a guest blogger this evening: Steven, our youngest (a precocious 14-year-old) son. As soon as I heard what happened to him, I dragged him over so you could hear it too:
Hello, this is Steven. Just tonight, I fell asleep on our living room couch. I wake up about an hour later with Charger laying next to my chest, Agile under my head (he makes a very furry pillow), Yang in the crook of my leg, Yin on the other side of my legs, and Aurum (mind boggling!) sitting right on top of my side. It was quite a furry blanket as you can imagine
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