cat post
For those of you uninterested in kitty doings, move along, nothing to see. 

This is the thing though.  My brother's cat has come to visit me over the summer while he and his new bride (Hi Caro!  Welcome to the crazy family!) do the whole wedding/honeymoon/set up new life type of things.  This is not a hardship.  The trick is, this is a cat with Personal Boundary Issues.  He does not want you to touch his feet, his belly, his tail. . . .  The problem is Milo is a cutie!  He's fluffy and orange with fat white feet and a furry fluffy white belly and a curling plumy tail.  All of these things demand touching, especially when he rolls over on his back, wiggles his feet in the air and tempts you to rub his belly.  But that road only leads to Certain Doom. . . . 

Cats.  So difficult. 

And it's not just me.  My littlest, oldest wraith of a cat, Rikki, has decided that Milo is an ambulatory plushie.  He spends many hours waiting for Milo to lie down, so Rikki can pounce on him, knead his belly, and clean his face.  Milo, unsurprisingly, objects.  Not in any aggressive way, no.  He just lies there and howls piteously while Rikki purrs and cleans his whiskers, until I come and take Rikki away. 

The girls are remaining aloof, slinking by the room with their heads turned away muttering "This, too, shall pass."  It has forged a temporary alliance between them so that I find them seated together in small spaces instead of ignoring each other from separate rooms. 

And Merlin, my sweet (but not too bright) grey cat thinks Milo is his new best friend.  He follows Milo around and doesn't try to groom him so maybe someday his affections will be returned.

Other than that, I've been slow-writing (building new worlds, new stories, new outlines, new, new, new!) and blitz-reading.  I just read Martha Wells' Stargate Atlantis books, ENTANGLEMENT  & RELIQUARY, thus breaking my self-imposed ban on tv tie-in books.  (This is not out of any weird snobbery--it's mostly because my brain gets confused about what I've seen and what I've read and then I start going through all my discs looking for episodes I remember, but can't find, and my life is confusing enough on a daily basis.)  They were great fun!  If she had others, I'd buy them too!  Really, people, I can not stress this enough: READ MARTHA WELLS!  Death of the Necromancer is something I re-read every year, no matter how busy I am.  

Craving murder mysteries though, and I've got a Border's coupon burning a hole in my pocket.  Give me some suggestions?  I like police procedurals, but not doctors/lawyers books.  I also like cozies and amateurs.