Felis catus status

I'm sure you've been desperately wondering how the cats are doing. You've probably lost a couple of nights' sleep here and there wondering to yourself, "How are Olive and Beatrix?!! What are they doing, thinking, eating, etc., etc.?!" My apologies. They're fine.

Olive has decided to pursue a modeling career. I'm not opposed to this as long as she works on her portfolio on her own time. Here she is this AM, practicing for a photo shoot that I see on her Google calendar is scheduled for sometime in the late afternoon tomorrow.

    It's a jungle out there.

Beatrix has no such ambitions. Sometimes all the "what should I do with my life?" pondering she does obviously depresses the hell out of her but it's nothing a romp around the hallway or a wrestling match with a rubber band can't solve.

    Who am I? Where am I? Why am I?

On the subject of ambitious felines, have you heard about Lil' Bub, a cat who is turning into the ruler of the internet, who also happens to have a jaw problem that prevents her from shutting her mouth? Here she is when she spent a day working at the Buzzfeed offices recently. Enjoy. (If you haven't seen it already, that is. Apparently she's so famous she even made an appearance on Good Morning America. Not that that's such a great barometer of fame or anything.)

Take that, all you Kindles and Nooks

Hm, OK, let's see if I can get back to this blogging thing.

Let's start with a little winter reading list. Here you see pictured a stack of the current tomes I am tackling, and interestingly enough, none are from the library! That's kind of weird for me. Actually, I was going to take The Book of Calamities (I love dark and disturbing books) out of the library, but then I ran across a copy at the Strand for five bucks and the rest is history. I'm about to finish Grace, which has been very entertaining (and was a gift from my lovely fashion-obsessed sister Erica), have only just cracked The Magic Mountain (which I found on the book-swapping table in my laundry room, and P has always been pushing me to read it, and Emma says it is one of the best books in the world, so I kind of have no excuse, I should at least give it a shot) and Crime (which I got off the discount table at St. Mark's Books and I'm kind of disappointed in, except that it contains a great short interview with one of my ex-boyfriends), Hark! A Vagrant is freaking hilarious, I defy you to read this without guffawing immediately (received it as a gift from my humor-appreciative sister Brook), and last but not least, The Art of the Personal Essay, which unsurprisingly has a lot of great stuff in it, and I'm reading because I keep threatening to write a personal essay or two (I bought this one for myself, full price. Wow!).

O.K., perhaps that was a bit too much information and a kind of boring topic for the first post in a long while, but heck, I'm tryin'!