"I love cats because I enjoy my home, and little by little they become its visible soul." - Jean Cocteau

Cats can be such a pain. There are days when Gracie won't stop yowling at my roommate's door and Garfunkel won't stop trying to get his 22 lb bulk onto my lap, even though I'm obviously not in the mood. Days when Garfunkel's defecated outside the litterbox, Gracie's peed on the couch, and one of them's barfed all over the living room carpet... all before I've managed to leave for work in the morning.

But there are days when they've both made me laugh out loud before I've been awake even an hour and a half. Garfunkel, who I swear was some sort of pervy stalker in another life, has an obsession with rolling around in my dirty laundry. When I woke up today to the sight of him emersed in a pile of laundry, tail twitching, with two pairs of dirty underwear clutched in his paws, rubbing them on his head, I almost split a gut. Then, Gracie, the more standoffish of the two, was in her endearing uber-affectionate mood, which quickly turned into her wide-eyed OMG MUST PLAY AND SLASH YOUR ARMS OPEN mood. This, albeit dangerous, is one of the cuter and funnier things on the planet. On the whole, I guess they're worth having around.

Gracie is also the more curious and mischevious of the two. I was super amused the other day to find her perched precariously on the upper reaches of my bookshelf:



But even more amused when I went flipping back through my camera to discover that this was the last picture I'd taken, months earlier:



I need to find something new to take pictures of.

In other news, it's raining and I ate chocolate cake for breakfast. Not a bad Saturday so far.

We all knew this day would come.

Ew, folks. Ew.



I have no right to complain (considering it's December and we get snow in October not infrequently), but I did so enjoy it holding off for a bit. I really wouldn't mind winter so much if it didn't actively try to kill me every time I tried to drive somewhere. I only live a mile from work, and this helps a ton in reducing the chances of me slip-sliding my way to an early demise, but still, that mile can get pretty icy -- I can't count the number of times I've slid past the road my office building is on. I do like the whole white Christmas bit, and snow is very pretty and peaceful, but until transporters are invented, I remain officially Not a Fan.

In cheerier news, I have a purring Gracie cat in my face. I've switched the cats (who eat out of the same bowl) to senior food, since Funkel's just turned ten and was starting to show signs of needing it. However, senior cat food is more caloric and Gracie (age 2.5) is already a bit tubby, so I've been trying to give them less, which means they get hungry a good few hours before it's time for me to feed them. And when Gracie, who's usually a bit standoffish, wants to draw your attention to something (like an empty food bowl), she gets affectionate. (She is seriously the most manipulative creature I have ever met, but she's reeeeeally cute, so she gets away with it.) This means I've been getting more than my usual amount of Gracie affection, which is pretty awesome. I should have thought of starving her months ago.

An entire section on alien prosthetics? SWEET.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I managed to forget what real life feels life for a few days, which constitutes a great break in my book, so, mission accomplished over here. Lots of sleeping in, good food, friends, and family made it pretty awesome, too. Also, my uncle came bearing unexpected gifts, so I now own the new Star Trek movie, complete with the second disk of special features which I generally scorn as a waste of money that only fools would buy into, but as soon as someone else bought it for me became the coolest thing in the world which I watched every second of immediately. Good times.

In semi-related news, it was a good move getting a second cat, no matter how jealous Garfunkel sometimes gets of Gracie. I came home today after four days at my parents' and his general demeanor said, "Oh you're back? I remember you. Well, pet me as long as you're here." This is a vast improvement over the first time I left him on vacation, during which time he would not eat, drink, sleep, or use the litterbox until poor distraught Jennifer went out and bought the Happy Kitty Hormone Plug-in of Happiness the vet recommended. "Also," said Garfunkel after I'd been home a few minutes, "could you refill my water bowl?" Because apparently the blue came-with-a-box-of-Easy-Mac bowl is the only one he'll drink out of anymore -- the extra I put out was untouched but his usual bowl was bone dry. That insane excuse for a self-sufficient predator would die of hunger or thirst completely surrounded by water and food if it wasn't in his normal bowl. Because even if he's emotionally more well-adjusted, he's still crazy.