My new most common phrase is

"Cat food is for cats. People food is for people."

One of my main complaints about pets is when they beg for food. Who knew that one day I'd be chasing a cat off my lap while trying to eat.

The other new phrase is, "You smell like ass." I guess that's what I get for thinking that the Walter the Farting Dog books were so funny that I got them for all my friends' kids (and myself). I now have a farting cat. It is now (God forgive me, people are starving in the world) on a special diet to keep it from shitting and farting so much. Nothing like a cat that sits on your lap and both sniffles and wheezes (it still is doing that as well as leaving snot marks on my shirt) sleeping, purring, and then there is a brief interruption in the purr as he works really hard on a fart, and then the purring resumes.

At least the diarrhea stopped. But he still smells like ass. This is fortunate, because it gives me an excuse to repeatedly bathe him (yes, I know, you don't need to bathe a cat but I can't stand filth), and there is nothing funnier than an angry cat in the bathtub. B.B. Av tried to catch it on film but the disk was full and by that time the cat had fled the scene. Wet cat cracks me up; it's just the antidote to a miserable day at the hospital.

The ears, which Mom noted in the pictures, are really funny - when he flattens them down he looks like Yoda. We are trying also to get a picture of that from behind. A new name that is starting to catch on for him, instead of the poetic "Shunra" is "Ozniyahu." In Hebrew, there are lots of names that end like this - Eliyahu, Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah), or even the surname Netanyahu. "Oznayim" are ears - so he is oznayahu or something like that. He actually turns when you call it, so it might stick.

We also have been joking around a lot - that we certainly didn't get the prettiest cat or the smartest cat (as we hear it bang its head yet again on the underside of the bed), and not the best hunter or a manly cat, but damn did we ever get the funniest cat. When we leave, he gets closed in the bathroom where he has food bowls, a house, a shit box (sorry, I'm sure it has another name in English but I can't remember it), and some toys. They were in the way, so after two days we moved them to the other side of the bathroom.

Today, I came home to find the cat on the clean towels, but also that the bathroom had been rearranged back to the original order. No shit. We have a decorator cat.

A side note to the labels I'm putting on the posts: "Pet is pleasant." B.B. Av's parents/family have this ridiculous yippie dog that always used to drive me crazy. I'd always say, "Why the hell do you have that thing?" B.B. Av would answer, "It's a pet. Why do you hate the pet? Pet is pleasant."

Side note to that: his parents actually got this dog when his brother was a kid and liked playing with dolls. They suspected, alas, that the wee lad was growing up to be a future friend of Dorothy and their great plan to prevent this was to get him a dog. "Nothing like a boy with his dog, right?"

Unfortunately, they got him a personality-less, highstrung tiny terrier, whose color on its license is listed as "peach." Could there be a gayer dog in than that? (His brother is now indeed, as they say in Hebrew, a "parent-disappointer" and quite happy.)

Now I guess I see what they meant. Pet is pleasant. It's nice to have something warm and soft that is happy to see you, and that you can make so happy with just a little bit of cuddling, and that forgives you even when you scrub it down in the bathtub. When it sleeps on your lap with its teeny paws over its eyes, it sort of makes up for all the mess and wheezing and deworming and farts.

Obligatory cute cat photos to follow.