I am screaming and punching myself

Why I have pets: summer edition

Sometimes the only thing that can redeem an otherwise intolerable part of the year is the chance to humiliate the cats.

Mission accomplished.

Wii are family

J got a Wii system a while back, and I've grown really fond of this adorable addition to our gaming options. It's much more kinetically active than most systems, and its general goofiness makes for a fun time, with less of the tooth-gnashing bloodlust that can be engendered by the XBox games.

But the best part is the Miis, the little characters you can create to reflect yourselves and your friends. J made a little Mii replica of our household!

The first casualty of pet ownership is dignity

"Good news!" I crowed jubilantly into the phone. "Emily pooped!"

How did I come to this? One of the reasons I've given for not having kids just yet is that I don't want to be intimately involved with the excretory functions of anyone but myself. But sooner or later, as a pet owner, you're gonna have to go there. It's just part of mammal stewardship, I guess.

Peyton Place for pets

This is Slate.

He looks kinda like the unholy offspring of Mojo and Emily, doesn't he? (Now let us never speak of that biologically impossible and utterly icky concept again.) Slate lives next door, with Rigel the bastard, Casper the terrified and Latte, Our Kitty of Perpetual Sorrow (she always looks upset). And a couple of humans and a dog or two out back.

Slate and I have a sort of thing going. When I get home at night, I'll call his name and if he's around, he'll poke his head out from his chair on the porch. He'll cheerfully jog halfway across the porch or the yard, then get (or pretend to get) distracted by something so I'll have to go the rest of the way to meet him. I'll scratch his head and sweet-talk him, then pick him up and snuggle him until he scuffles his way out of my arms. He drools a little. I've decided it's charming.

But then, oh, the guilt. Because whenever Slate and I have one of our little tete-a-tetes, I open the door of my house and am greeted by the stony stares of Mojo and Emily, and I could swear I hear the strains of "The Rain" by Oran "Juice" Jones.

Cats-in-costumes update

This just in! The smaller size poncho is an unqualified success!

Not only does she tolerate the poncho, I think she might actually like it!

Okay, I'll lay off the kitty costume posts for a little while. Unless I can get Mojo into the larger poncho and get a Donny-and-Marie-style photo of the both of them. All bets are off in that case; I'm sure you understand.

Winter fashions for unwilling pets

It's happened. We've become That Couple. The couple who gleefully purchases costumes for their pets, gets the pets into the clothing through a complicated system of treats and half-nelsons, and documents the pets' systematic humiliation with photos.

No, we don't have kids. Why do you ask?

Evil in the sun

It's come to this. I promised myself I'd hold out on blogging about the cats, but I'm absolutely out of ideas this week. Sure, there'll be tonight's episode of ANTM, and I might get into Top Chef enough to blog about it, but otherwise, there's precious little to write about. And one of the primary laws of the Internet is: When you don't have anything to say, post a cute critter picture.

Howzat?