My brother stopped by earlier for final sizing of the replacement cutting board he’s making for me and he thinks that Chaos has grown taller during the past month. How is this possible?!? The cat is two years and two months old – shouldn’t he be long done with the growing thing?!? Is it just that he’s slimmer now, so he looks taller? Or is that simply wishful thinking?

Personally, I think that this cat is plenty big – he’s 15 lbs, and the vet says that’s a good weight for him. He’s tall enough to fish things off of the countertop when I cook. When he’s sprawled on my lap (winter only), he stretches from groin to mid-shin (not including his kinked and slightly short tail). Who needs an afghan when you’ve got a catghan?

Speaking of winter, here’s the view that greeted me from my living room window this morning:

I missed getting a picture of Chaos looking out the window at the snow. So I wrote a haiku instead.

Silhouette in black

Pointy ears twitching, watching

Dreams stalking snowflakes

Sitting down to recuperate a bit from making cornbread stuffing to take to my brother’s in-laws tomorrow. It made me realize how very little cooking I’ve done in recent memory. Or in not-so-recent memory for that matter. I blame it on microwave popcorn; specifically, Orville Redenbacher’s SmartPop! Kettle Korn. The stuff should have a warning label: “This product is extremely addictive. Once you’ve had it, you will abandon normal dinner food and spend your evenings eating SmartPop! Kettle Korn and swilling chardonnay. Hee hee.” If I’d been forewarned, would I still have purchased that first box?

Recuperating turns out to not be particularly relaxing, as I did the old yardstick under appliances and bookshelves sweep earlier to retrieve cat toys. This means that Chaos is in “fetch mode.” “Fetch mode” requires two conditions. The first is the availability of one of several favorite fetch toys – tonight it’s been “sparkly purple mouse” and a plastic doohickey that once sealed a carton of Silk soymilk.

(Let me assure you that, blurry and spit-ridden as sparkly purple mouse is, he is much more photogenic than the plastic doohickey.)

The second condition is for me to be sitting down at my desk or, um, well, in my bathroom. Enough said about that.

Anyway, Chaos is so devoted to playing fetch these days that my shoulder has a perpetual faint achiness. It’s gotten to the point that I’m pretty happy when a treasured fetch toy is misplaced under a piece of furniture. I’ve known where sparkly purple mouse was lost since last Wednesday afternoon, and only retrieved him this eveninig. I’m pleased to report that he’s lost again. But don’t you think that Jeanne’s knitted Noro rug (thanks again, Jeanne!) shows off both Chaos and sparkly purple mouse to their best advantage?