We have three of our own, Scrambles, Cowboy and Midnight. There is a 4th cat who comes in the cat door and makes himself at home. We call him scroungy, for the obvious reasons. He is not a very nice cat. Actually, he is a worthless cat. He is guilty of urinating and defecating in places that I don't approve of, like in my house. And he hisses whenever he sees me, like he's defending his territory.

When Majik was alive, he would keep scroungy out of the neighborhood. He was the King Cat, and not afraid to let scroungy know about it. None of the other cats seem to mind scroungy being here, though. Eating their food, pissing on their floor, ruling the house when I'm not around. They're wimps. I love them, but they're wimps!

Until scroungy, I've never met a cat that I couldn't tolerate. I've met some that I didn't really like, but none that I really hated. Karen says that scroungy and I have a personality conflict. Yeah, we hate each other.

So, as of today, the cat door will be shut. I'm going to go buy a couple of litter boxes and some cat litter, and our cats will be inside cats. They aren't going to like it much, but that's the way it will be. Scroungy does have other resources, so I'm not really worried about him. Like I would anyway.

Another part of the cat problem is... mice. With three cats, I shouldn't have a problem with mice, right? Wrong. As I was unloading the dishwasher the other day, there was ample evidence of mice in the silverware drawer. Mice shit all over the place. Maybe, with the cats permanently inside, they will get bored enough to take care of the mice. I hope so, anyway. Midnight has been known to kill mice, but she's the only one.

OK, I went to Walmart and got cat litter and a litter box. I also got an I/O VESA board that works, and I now have a mouse back! I mean a pointer... we discussed mice a couple of paragraphs back, I've still got those, too. Anyway, I must've blown something when I added the new memory. I'm glad to have it back. At least now I know all of the keyboard shortcuts for Win95!

Cowboy is frantic. The cat door doesn't work anymore (I locked it). The litter box is sitting in front of it, I hope that I don't have to re-train these damned cats to use a litter box. Does anyone know how that is done? I kinda got the idea that it was automatic, that cats instinctively knew about litter boxes. Well, obviously, scroungy doesn't... I guess I'll wait and see what happens before I start getting worried about it.

Cowboy is settling down quite a bit now. He was climbing the walls for a while there. Just in the last six months or so, he's become a lot more loving. He will now come and jump on my lap, whereas before he wouldn't let me touch him but occasionally. Majik was that way the last couple years of his life... turned from almost a feral animal to a cat that needed affection. It must be hormonal, just getting past a certain age. I'm glad to see it happen to cowboy, too. He's a nice cat.

My ISP is down, for some reason or another. So this is going to get out a lot later than I had planned. I can get & send mail, and FTP, but no net access. Not even locally, so something is going on down there. I'll try again later, I guess. I hate it when that happens...

How delightful! I'm a number freak (as opposed to a mathematical freak) and today is one of my favorite days... 11/11. I made sure that I was looking at my watch at 11:11 this morning.
11/11 11:11:11.
And, just to completely make my day... when I got on the line this afternoon, my counter said 3333!

Taking the Saab to the mechanic in a little while... I will get there (hopefully) in first gear (since that's all I have), so I'll leave early and be ready psychologically for people to be honking and gesturing at me.

I made some revisions to my front page this morning. Cut out a sub-menu altogether, even though it did have a graphic that I loved on it. Put the stuff I had on it at the bottom of the main page, and pruned it a bunch. Updated a bunch of stuff that's been unchanged since I started this way back when. Got a bunch more to do. I would like to put backgrounds in my poems that matched the mood of the poem, but I'm not very artistic-minded. I have no idea how to match a background to a mood. In many cases, I can't even figger out what the mood is much less match it!