Since my hub, Feedle, did this, I'll do it too.

1. What was the first band you saw in concert?
It was 1974. I was ten going on eleven. The venue was Tanglewood, in Western Massachusetts. I went with a group from my summer camp. Oh, you're asking me what band? Um...Seals and Crofts. (blushing) If you don't know who they were, ask your parents. Or grandparents.

2. Who is your favorite artist/band now?
I like all songwriters with the last name Williams, related or not. But my fave band of all time? Creedence Clearwater Revival.

3. What's your favorite song?
If I picked one, it'd probably be different five minutes later. But for this five minutes, give me "The Quicksilver Daydreams of Maria" by Townes Van Zant. If anyone wrote a song that gorgeous about me, my husband might be in trouble (just kidding, really!).

4. If you could play any instrument, what would it be?
Drums. Especially with timbales. Ow!

5. If you could meet any musical icon (past or present), who would it be and why?
Laura Nyro. The woman epitomized zaftig musical goddesshood.

I haven't posted on this thing for a very long time -- or even told many people it exists -- because it seems like every time I do, it turns into an epic, and I don't always have the patience for epics. But I'm going to try to make like my brilliant husband, Feedle, and post shorter items more regularly.

I recently discovered a most entertaining Web site: FuckThatJob.com. It was started by an unemployed Web designer, who got so disgusted with the jobs she was seeing listed (many of them unpaid internships which required the skills and experience of someone whose market value was in the six figures) that she decided to start a site and post a bunch of them, in her field and in others. I have a job, but Feedle has been out of work for so long (he's a Unix sysadmin) that I needed some reassurance that it was the job market that had gone nutty, not him (though I kinda knew).

Anyway, one of the listings really struck me, because it was for an administrative assistant job in New York paying the starting salary of...$5.15 an hour. That is what I made in my first temp administrative assistant job out of college in New York... in 1984. And it wasn't easy to live on that even then. Obviously, the only person who would take such a job in New York, where even crummy studio apartments in bad neighborhoods go for $2000 a month, would have to be living with his/her parents, or have a trust fund or wealthy spouse. Or maybe deal crack on the side. At least if you have an unpaid internship you can still draw unemployment! So why, exactly, would someone with an independent source of income want to shuffle papers around a desk in some dork's office for minimum wage, in an industry that isn't even glamorous?

Have people gone insane? Or am I making a mistake using the word "gone"? Thank Goddess for my job. It's no glam-fest, but at least it's not blatant exploitation.

Somebody spiked the enchilada sauce I put on my Tina's burritos tonight with LSD. Either that, or I just saw Tony Orlando, circa 1974, singing "Young at Heart" to a blushing Captain Kangaroo, after they both got done gushing about "that great lady and U.N. Ambassador Pearl Bailey." And then they did a (really, really bad, amateurish, embarrassing) comedy sketch as the Three Musketeers, with Bobby Sherman as the third. Oh, wait, that was John Davidson. Dang if they didn't look alike.

Man. I haven't seen molted Velveeta that thick since...well, 1974. That flashback came courtesy of the GoodLife Network, quite possibly the strangest commercial cable station in the world. Supposedly this channel devotes itself to programming "designed to appeal to affluent baby boomers." Yeah, it's very hip stuff...especially if you've been dying to see The Tony Orlando and Dawn Rainbow Hour, Jimmy Durante Presents the Lennon Sisters, or Finder of Lost Lunches...er, Loves, just one more time. I know I have. **cough**

Mom and Dad, all is forgiven for limiting my television viewing to an hour a day when I was a kid. You were only trying to prevent my IQ from shriveling to a number more suitable for bowling shoes, which undoubtedly would have ensued had I been exposed to even more of this stuff than I already was.

Was "classic" TV variety always this bad? I'm not talking about great exceptions like Carol Burnett, which had top-notch comedy writing and musical numbers that were often quite witty in execution (or if not, at least relatively painless to watch). I'm talking about your typical mid-60s to mid-70s programmers, the ones whose laugh-free comedy sketches were coated in obviously fake canned laughter, whose musical numbers featured more hairspray than heart, and lots and lots of ugly sequined outfits to boot. And oh lordy, the smarm, the smarm, the patently insincere "you are such a wonderful human being, kissy kissy kissy" kind of bilgewater...yes, yes, I watched plenty of these shows when I could get away with it. And...gulp...I liked it. And they say kids today are corrupted by popular entertainment.

The Andy Williams Show was my favorite. What was the big running gag on the show, the one my six-year-old brain found unaccountably hilarious? It was that guy in the bear outfit -- the Cookie Bear -- ending each sketch with, "Andy, you're weird!" I trust you're getting a hernia from trying to suppress your guffaws. Nowadays you can pop in on just about any Waiting for Guffman-esque small-town amateur night and find more inspiring talent on display than you saw on most of these shows. (BTW, if you've never seen Guffman, you must find the thing and rent it. It's a true original.) This, we were told, was the cream of the crop of American entertainment.

The funny part is, in a way, it was. In those days, everyone's mother didn't have a fabulous three-octave singing voice. Everyone's dad couldn't play a Jimmy Page guitar solo. Your "average" American couldn't even handle a microphone, let alone sing on key or deliver a punchline. In those days, just about everyone with talent could "make it," if only briefly, because there wasn't that much talent to go around. Now, of course, just about everyone has a demo tape, a novel, a screenplay, head shots, whatever, even if they're 72 and lived their whole lives in Bad Underwear, Kansas...and a fair number of them are actually pretty respectable. Your "average" person in 2003 is much more talented...and conversely, the really talented people out there are the ones we're least likely to see on television.

So why, exactly, do the folks at GoodLife Network think we "affluent" (ahem) boomers are dying to watch these bad toupee-fests they call nostalgia television? So we can laugh about how bad television was when we were kids? Maybe, but I think there's something else going on -- I believe it's called "selective memory." In other words, if you give people a few memorable moments, they'll forget about everything else they just fried the last hour watching. Case in point: that Jimmy Durante/Lennon Sisters thing. (John Lennon's very ashes would cringe if you asked if they were related.) Tonight, after a really dumb opening sketch featuring Durante dressed as a baby and sitting in a giant carriage, and an inexplicable Lennon Sisters medley of "The Windmills of Your Mind" and "Goin' Out of My Head" featuring lots of "artsy" blurry photography along with the hairspray and sequins, Durante came back on in his real clothes and sang a ballad in his own gruff, inimitable style...and just blew all the rubber baloney clear out of the building.

Yes, I thought as I watched. This is exactly what's missing from today's entertainment. Much as I never want to be one of those old farts sitting around going, "Ah, the old days, you young people don't know what real talent is, nyahh nyahh nyahh," it smacked me in the face like a Soupy Sales banana cream pie that you almost never see people like Durante attain popularity any more. They exist, I'm sure, but they're like, y'know, old. And they have big noses and funny voices. Ewww, who wants to look at that? Nowadays, if you want to sing on television, you've gotta be 22 years old, look taut in chin-to-toe leather and have all the showbiz hairflipping/high-note vaunting moves down, like that American Idol chick. I'm sure that if Durante had been on Idol, Simon What's-His-Butt would have told him after his big number that, sorry to have to tell you this, but no matter how talented you are, you can't make it if you're old. Especially if you have the Schnozz that Ate Topanga. Now get outta here and take your wrinkles with you!

Sigh. So what would you rather have on your little screen -- 55 minutes of icky "razzle-dazzle" with five minutes of utter magic embedded in the middle, or an hour of solidly competent forgettability?

Joe Strummer is dead. Maybe the hook to another Neil Young song feels more appropriate right now: "And I'm gettin' old..."

Joe Strummer, for all you Generation YY-ZZs out there, was the lead singer for the Clash, who in the late 70s and early 80s were The Shit to me, and "the only band that matters," according to the PR department of their record label (Epic in the U.S., CBS in their native UK). I was one of those annoying kids in school who would always talk up bands no one had ever heard of, and then when they got popular, I ran around going, "See? See? Wasn't I right?" Of course, the Clash was one of them. When I was 16, almost every other sentence out of my mouth was, "And you have to hear London Calling! You haven't lived, you haven't heard music, you haven't felt until you do..."

Yeah, Us versus Them. Or sometimes, Me versus Them. It was all so simple: either you Got It or you Didn't Get It, and what albums were in your collection were the line drawn in the sand. That there might be different ways of Getting It -- or that maybe there really wasn't an "It" to get -- never occurred to teenaged me. It also never occurred to me that I would never take London Calling out of its sleeve (ah, remember records? This was a two-record set at a one-record price -- the band insisted on it!) again after the age of 21. I guess after a while, you don't have to play certain records any more; you've listened to them so many times you know every nuance by heart, you can play it in your head like a clear 50K-watt station whenever you want to hear it.

But now I'm wanting to hear, especially, "Death or Glory," with its deathless lines:

And every gimmick hungry yob diggin' gold from rock 'n' roll
Grabs the mike to tell us he'll die before he's sold
But I believe in this and it's been tested by research
That he who fucks nuns will later join the church.

If anything, it's even more true than when they recorded it 23 years ago. Scary.

Joe Strummer was only 50. He had a heart attack, they say. Teenaged me, of course, wanted to believe that any "heroes" of mine weren't into substance abuse, that at most they maybe "tried stuff" a couple of times but didn't make it part of their regular lives. Hee hee. I don't know for sure what Strummer's vices were, other than smoking (teenaged me also didn't want to believe that my "heroes" didn't "really" smoke, that they just posed with cigarettes now and then -- stop, my sides are killing me!), but as Feedle succinctly put it, "Chances are pretty good he wasn't exactly a health nut."

Then again, you could say the same for a lot of other people who are still kicking around -- some of whom have cleaned up their acts, but some not. Keith Richards, anyone? Does this guy get a new liver every year or something? Or do they just transfuse all the blood in his body on a weekly basis? (Well, he does kinda resemble a vampire...)

And then there are some who cleaned up their acts too late, like poor Warren "Werewolves of London" Zevon, another teenaged favorite of mine just a few years older than Joe Strummer, now dying of terminal lung cancer although he quit smoking seven years ago, after having previously given up his heavy drinking and drugging habits. (Reminds me of another teen-years fave, Laura Nyro, dying of cancer a few years ago after she quit smoking, went on a macrobiotic diet, etc., etc.) Why does Warren Zevon have to be on the endangered list, and Jesse friggin' Helms can't manage to come down with even one lousy hyperplastic cell in his wizened airway? It is SO not fair.

I wonder: if Zevon could have seen into the future and known that conquering his chemical problems wouldn't save his life, would he still have wanted to do it? I hope so. I hope he would still have believed that being clear and honest with himself and with those around him, and wanting to breathe free, would still have been worth it, even if that wouldn't have been "very rock and roll of him." Maybe some people thought that's what Joe Strummer meant by "he who fucks nuns will later join the church," but I don't think so. I think he meant that putting on a big show of being "rebellious" is just as fake and stupid as putting on a big show of being "straight," that posers are posers no matter what they're posing as. It's just too bad that so much of the "rock and roll" pose has traditionally meant, "Dissipate yourself as much as possible," to too many people.

So anyway, to keep track: Joe Strummer is dead. Warren Zevon is dying. Of five original Byrds, two are still living, and one of them is David Crosby. The two lefthanded Beatles have outlived the two righthanded ones. Half of the Ramones are gone. Laura Nyro is gone; meanwhile, Joni Mitchell puffs on and on. And if Keith Richards doesn't know how to do anything anymore except play his silly guitar, well...he doesn't have to. I'm sure he has a well-paid house staff to help him do things like tie his shoes, feed him his cereal, catch him before he faints in the hallway and carry him up to bed, and call his doctor to request 20 more units of type AB-negative fresh-frozen plasma to mix with his Stoli.

And, of course, every party-hearty nose-powderer out there thinks he/she's gonna grow up to be Keef, not Strummer or Zevon. But only one in a million will be right.

I thought the RESCUE guy was joking at first. At about 1:30 in the afternoon yesterday, he stuck his head into the cat room and said, "We have to get all the cats out. Bomb scare." However, it quickly became evident he wasn't kidding at all. Some nutjob had called in a bomb threat to PETSMART -- to PETSMART!-- and we had to grab and stuff the kitties into whatever carrying cases we could find. Ten kitties. Four cases belonging to RESCUE. PETSMART told us to go ahead and start pulling cat carriers off the shelves for the rest of the felines, Bast bless 'em.

Needless to say, the cats were not exactly grateful for the efforts made on their behalf. In fact, there was one cat -- a generously proportioned red tabby named Andy -- who refused to come out of the green-carpeted mini-condo into which he'd wedged himself, even though he and his twin brother, Griffith, had been allotted a large-dog-sized carrier between the two of them. They finally wound up carrying the green carpeted thing out of the store with Andy stuffed in it, and proceeded to try to coax him out onto the sidewalk, but even the efforts of three persistent humans failed to get him to relinquish his position in the green condo. Ultimately, they took off the top of the carrier, put the green condo apres Andy inside, and put the top back on. Who knows, maybe he had the right idea.

So then we had to transport the kitties to their temporary shelter about a mile away, where RESCUE houses the cats with medical and extreme stress problems. The RESCUE volunteers by themselves didn't have enough space in their cars (I had been dropped off), so we had to rely on a PETSMART customer to transport a couple of the kitties for us. Imagine that. In a pet store, you actually find people who instantly cease to become strangers because they love animals as much as you do. And you can trust them and everything. Wow.

Cats do not travel well, in case it wasn't already obvious to you. The entire ride to the annex shelter was one big unhappy meowfest, as if we were specifically doing this just to torment them. Jacquelin and I were kept in charge of babysitting our babies in the lobby, where we let them out of their carriers to eat, drink, pee and hiss at one another, until we got word a few hours later that the bomb squad had done its job and that, as is true in 99 percent of bomb scare cases, the call had been a hoax. Then we had the amusement of packing up the cats into the carriers again and transporting them back to PETSMART, with the aid of couple of other RESCUE-ers.

What killed me was when a PETSMART employee told us the demi-terrorist had said when he called, something along the lines of "You mongrel animal lovers, there's a bomb in the store. Ha ha ha." I don't get it. Even on a Sunday afternoon, there aren't that many people in a PETSMART, which would seem to make it a questionable target for a bomber...unless the bomber actually did hate animals that much. See, we were able to get all the humans and cats out pretty quickly, but they had to leave the fish, birds, hamsters, etc. in their glass display cases, because it would have taken hours to get them out. Had there actually been a bomb, there would have been more fur, feathers and scales getting singed than human flesh. And not even cat fur. Hamster fur. Mouse fur. Gerbil fur.

You have to wonder what a gerbil ever did to hurt this guy. On the other hand, maybe it's not something I really feel like dwelling on.

It shouldn't be like this.

A holiday is supposed to be relaxing and celebratory. It's not supposed to make you feel like God made one big mistake, and the mistake is you. You're the only one who doesn't have a nice big house for huge APS-bill-bloating twinkly-lights displays, or a open fireplace for roasting chestnuts, or a credit card on which to fling endless purchases of foil-wrapped tchotchkes for everyone with whom you've ever had a pleasant conversation in your life, plus your family (tee-hee). You're the only one whose partner/spouse can't afford to buy you sparkly precious (or even semiprecious) gems, or can't afford to buy your partner/spouse the grown-up toy of his/her fantasies.

Everywhere you go, everything you do, says, "Neener neener, someone else is making great money and having a great life, and you're not. God, but you suck. Why don't you just die already and make room for someone younger and cuter?"

And let's not even discuss the whole children/Santa/toys/goodness issue, which doesn't even directly affect my life, but adds to the overall feeling of misery. People are frantically shopping not so their children will experience enjoyment and enrichment from the gifts they receive, but so their children's self-esteem won't be permanently damaged by Santa "forgetting" to get them the same toys all the other kids have, not to mention all the other children pointing and laughing at them as they cart own their little treasures to show off at school. And their parents will run you over and kill you in the parking lot if you even think about inconveniencing them for two seconds. It's stuff like this that makes me appreciate communism, at least between Thanksgiving (or is it Halloween now?) and New Year's.

Well, I, for one, am fighting back. "Holiday depression" should be an oxymoron, and I am conducting a one-woman campaign to make it one. I am going to focus on what I can do, and what I can give, rather than what I can't. Even if I have two cents in my pocket, I am going to make the most of it. I will look at other people's pretty lights and thank God I'm not the one receiving the APS bill in January. I will watch all the competitive shoppers out there and laugh up my sleeve, ditto their VISA bills. I will invite people to share great food, not useless objects that will only take up valuable space. And I may not be able to buy Feedle the toy of his fantasies, but he can know that I would if I could, and he'll receive something from me that lets him know I love him, even if I have to make it myself.

Round one: I win. Because I say so.

Anyone else wanna join the fight?

I saw the little fella at PETSMART today, and he was not the sweetie I remembered. He didn't want to be picked up. He didn't want to sit in my lap. (This wasn't just directed at me; nobody had any better luck with him than I did.) He did demonstrate a newfound interest in feather toys...and in puncturing my leg with his claws diving after them. Got me good in a few spots, he did.

I don't blame him at all. The poor guy has been rejected twice in his eight months of life: first by his initial owners, who dumped him off at the pound because of their allergies, and then a second time by Lord Nasty and Lady Wimp. Who could blame him for deciding that our entire species is a total waste of perfectly fine sperm? I'd happily join him, if I could manage to develop a taste for those horrible crunchies they eat (ptooie!).

More information has dribbled my way about the Great Spongebob Rejection, Mach II. The Nasty One's email to RESCUE didn't actually say, "I don't like cats"; what he said was, "I don't like it [emphasis mine]." It. Meaning that sweet creature who trusted you and who you treated with less sensitivity than the fuzzy strawberries you return to Safeway. Oh, and get this: he requested that they pick up the kitty when his girlfriend was away, because she'd grown quite attached to his furry rump and all that and he didn't want to cause her more pain...I think I may toss my horrible crunchies.

I can just picture the whole thing playing out. I'll bet the Wimpy One spent more time snuggling with Spongebob/Linus than she did ministering to the Nasty One's bottomless needs...and Spongebob showed her a lot more appreciation, too! So he got jealous and gave her a him-or-me ultimatum...and instead of handing the Nasty One $20 and telling him to go take a cab to somewhere south of Purgatory, Texas, she gave in. Why do people sell out like this? What kind of control freak demands that a partner give up a beloved pet just because he/she "doesn't like it"? Now, killer allergies I understand -- not being able to breathe is a heckuva lot of no fun. Incorrigibly aggressive behavior towards other animals or humans in the house -- OK. But dang if this guy doesn't sound like he deserved to get his face scratched off.

Will Spongebob ever be the same again? I've been petting him and reassuring him that not all humans are as bottom-of-the-barf-bucket as this. I don't know if he'll ever believe me or not, but I'm sure someone else will adopt him. He's still adorable and sweet, and he'll probably be fine once he gets a real home. But if you ever stop to wonder what makes some cats so disagreeble...look no further on those they've depended upon to feed (and love) them.

Meanwhile, I and my fellow volunteers this afternoon decided that we are going to propose to RESCUE that anyone who wants to adopt from us should be required to provide an endorsement letter from his/her psychiatrist. If they don't have a psychiatrist, we will appoint them one. (I'm sure there must be an animal-loving shrink out there somewhere who'd do the job for us pro bono.) They will be evaluated regarding issues like valuing inert objects over living things (especially furniture), the presence of shedded fur on overpriced designer threads, commitment phobias, and of course, compliance with prescribed psychotropic meds. Anyone who skips Paxil doses to lose weight or bases his/her self-esteem on owning Italian leather anything is O-U-T. (While we're at it, why don't we require such tests before issuing marriage licenses, too? I'm all for that.)

RESCUE will never go for it, of course. They have a hard enough time finding worthy applicants as it is.

Anyone remember that old t-shirt that said, "The more people I meet, the more I like my cat"? Well, here's another justification for that point of view.

I have a volunteer gig I do on Sunday afternoons, working for a local organization that rehomes cats and dogs from the pound's euthanasia lists (read: gas chambers). They have four centers in local PETSMART stores where they "display" some of the available kitties and bring a few dogs in for visits on weekends.

Anyway, remember when I said I wanted a lap kitty? Well, there was one in particular who I recently fell in love with (okay, everyone else did too!), a 7-month-old cream tabby snugglebug named Spongebob Squarepants. (Which pretty much guarantees that he's in for a name change immediately upon adoption -- just try fitting that name on an ID tag. But I digress.)

Naturally, I wanted him for my own, but although the building manager here said she personally would look the other way if we brought in a third cat, we couldn't get official endorsement from the building owners to do so, and RESCUE needs to have that documentation for a renter to adopt. So, a Nice Young Couple who had adopted a dog from our org before got him. The Nice Young Woman snuggled MY cat in her arms (down, girl...) and said they were going to name him Linus. Awww. How cute. How heartbreaking.

An aside: My not getting this kitten triggered off a serious self-pity jag. I'm 39 years old. The humiliation of having to ask permission to have the pet you want, and being told no! The lack of success that implies! If only I hadn't been such a slacker all my life...okay, okay, if only I hadn't drawn such crappy cards in my mental health gene pool...I tried all the usual you-never-lose-what's-divinely-yours antidotes I could come up with, told myself I had two great cats and this couple had none, and it was no fair hogging all the great ones for myself...don't get me wrong, every RESCUE cat is wonderful (some more than others, I'll admit), and I've been sorry to see some of them go, but it was never like this. Never such a feeling of being...robbed.

Well, guess what. Two weeks later...the little guy is back. They returned Spongebob. Let me repeat: They returned Spongebob. He's back. In my center. No joke.

Wha'happen? Did "Linus" crap in their shoes? Did he appropriate a treasured designer blouse for his hairball-blankie? Did he make shredded coyote-snack biscuits out of their dog? It didn't seem possible that this little melt-in-your-arms snuggler could become such a destructo-puss, although we've heard stories of cats who were vastly different (usually better, but sometimes not) once they were in a home environment. So why was he an unacceptable pet?

Turns out it had nothing to do with Spongebob's behavior...and everything to do with the Nice Young Man (ahem) turning out to be a secret cat hater. "We have to return Spongebob," went the email he sent to RESCUE (I'm paraphrasing). "I thought I would like cats, but I don't."

I thought I would like cats, but I don't.

You steaming pile of evil-men-do. You did not have a cat. You had Spongebob. You had a cat that comes along once in a baked-Camembert moon, the kind you can pick up and hold and hold and hold, and he'll purr and purr and purr...the kind you can put on your lap and then sit down to read a Salinger book cover to cover, and when you finish the book he'll still be there. You should be honored that he deigned to take his dumps in the same space in which you mouth-breathe.

And this guy seemed so...Nice. (Another aside: this couple isn't married. Girlie, he did you a favor by showing you his true colors before you slipped on the ring! Please, please, PLEASE do not marry him and proceed to replicate his defective DNA.)

I am 39. I have to ask my landlord's permission to have a pet. I have a highly skilled McJob, but no "real" career, no "real" money. And I am fat, very, very fat. In society's eyes, I am nothing.

But, at least, I am not...that. We take our comforts where we can.

Meanwhile, I get to hold Spongebob at least one more time. And who knows. Maybe I can talk my upstairs neighbor into adopting him. Stu, are you reading this??

Here 'tis, my first ever Live Journal post. Or, to paraphrase Annie Lennox, "These are the contents of my head." (Well, some of them.)

First, a couple of words about my felines. I am limited by my present lease to two, which is probably a relief to Feedle (who harbors fears of my becoming one of those "cat ladies" with sixty pairs of pointy ears running around, pooping everywhere, etc.), but I would love just one more. Just one, I swear! I want a lap cat, the kind I can pick up and hold as long as I want, who I can put in my lap and will stay there, etc. So far, I have been unable to coerce or bribe either of my kitties into becoming this sort of cat. (I get the feeling tranquilizers might have to be involved, and I don't go there.) But they are wonderful boys. So meet...

Pendo, age approximately 2-1/2. Pendo (my nickname for him: Pendo Bear; Feedle's: Hey Ugly) is pure softness, inside and out. We got him as a kitten from our pet sitter in San Francisco (we could afford such luxuries in our San Francisco days, sigh), who also named him and told us his name was a Swahili word for "love and friendship." It fits! Not only does he have the world's most amazing fur, he'll let you curl up next to him and bury your face in it. Once I post his picture, the question you'll probably ask first is, "What's wrong with his eye?" Well, he was born with feline herpes virus, and that damaged his right eye. He can still see out of it a little bit. (The left eye is fine.) But he does like to pretend he can't see the food in his dish! He's also less capable of entertaining himself than any cat I've ever seen, which is why we had to get him a playmate. Therefore, when a friend of a friend moved out of town and couldn't bring her three-month-old kitten, into our lives scampered...

Binkley, age 8 months. Binkley (my nickname for him: Tallulah Binkhead; Feedle's: Fanny Face -- see a pattern here?) was originally named "Binx" by his former owner, who swore up and down the name had nothing to do with Jar Jar Binks. Still, we thought he needed a new name, so Feedle came up with Binkley, after the character in the old Bloom County comic strip. This boy is a ferret in a cat suit, crawling into every space he can get access to, and he'll eat pretty much anything, especially if it's forbidden. (The problems I've had trying to keep him from eating baby's breath -- oy, the draaama.) But what a purr! Even as a little kitten, you could hear that rumble of his across the room, and he's one of those cats who purrs on contact. Sometimes even before contact. Such a doll. Now, if he'd only sit still...

I, of course, want to hear about everyone else's pets. I volunteer in the cat department for AZ Rescue, which takes cats and dogs from the pound's euthanasia lists and tries to rehome them. Soooo many great cats out there...now if only there were enough great humans to give them the worship they deserve. That's probably what would keep me from having sixty cats: how could you possibly give them each enough attention?

But I still want that lap cat. Feedle says Pendo will sit in his lap at 8 am, but you expect me to drag myself out of bed at that un-Bastet-like hour for that?