Cripes, I think I hate October 31. Group after group afer group of Sticky Little People coming to the door, holding bags out, expecting treats for BEGGING. I beg, and what do I get? I get that poky finger wagged at me. They beg and it's all "ahhhh how cute!" I'M CUTE! I WANT TREATS!

After the Sticky Little People stopped coming to the door so often, the People had dinner, and Buddah was downstairs so he got a little bit of roast beast, which he seems to find a little tasty, and that made him feel better about all the sticky people that were here tonight. I would have been happier overall if there had been no sticky people, and if Buddah had stayed upstairs so I could have had his share.

But, now that Sticky Little People Begging Night is over, that means turkey day is coming soon, but I'm not holding my breath because the people don't seem to stay home for that anymore. There should be a law, that people have to stay home for Turkey Day.

Why it sucks to be Buddah...

There's a rule that if a kitty is not there when the People are done with dinner that the People won't call him and say "we have food you'll really like if you come downstairs" so if you're upstairs taking a nap, you have no chance of getting a bite for being good.

Tonight the People had STEAK and Buddah was asleep upstairs. The Man looked in the front room in case he was waiting in there being good, but since he wasn't, he didn't get a bite of steak. He doesn't even know it yet! He's still asleep!

I was good, I only poked the Woman in the butt 149 times to remind her I was there waiting for a taste. If you poke 150 times you get in trouble. Good thing I can count.

STEAK!!!!

The Woman keeps wagging her pokey finger at me.

Wag, wag, wag "Will you stay out of the pantry?" (No, because it's fun in there, I can jump on shelves and puh food around.)

Wag, wag, wag "Can you at least try yo get your entire ass into the litter box?" (No one said I wan't trying. Get me a bigger box.)

Wag, wag, wag "Can you keep your fur out of my nose?" (Stop breathing.)

I don't like that pokey finger, and I think when she's asleep tonight, I'm going to creep up onto the bed and bite it.

HAPPY BLOGIVERSARY TO ME!

Let's celebrate four years of moi with an after dinner mint

Hey, I'm nothing if not classy...

Book Stuff...

We know this is short notice, but we'd like to include kitty pictures in the book. Even if you aren't a writing kitty, we'd still like a picture (by November 1st...)

If you want a picture in the book, it needs to be either really big, or a small photo that is rendered to 300 dpi. It can be color or black & white, but all photos will be changed to B&W for the book. And this time we'd like to actually identify the kitties pictures, so please name the file with your kitty's name, as you would like it to appear. Like, if it were a picture of Buddah, the file name would be "buddahpest.jpg" but without the quotes. Or if it were me, it would be "psychokittymax.jpg".

Send them to kathompson@gmail.com with the subject header "WATK PICTURE SUBMISSION." In the body of the email, please state the kitty's name for clairity (ya know, so it doesn't wind up mis-spaced...like "bud dahpest" or "psycho kittymax.")

Submitting a picture implies your consent to publish it, so don't worry about signing a publishing agreement. Because, really, you wouldn't send it otherwise, right...?

Are ya excited yet? Are ya? 'Cause we're getting close to A REAL BOOK! and we're GONNA BE FAMOUSER!!!

Remember the oval litter box? Since it was difficult to use the Woman bought a new rectangle one and put the oval one into the carpeted box that I hate to use.

So you know what Buddah and I did?

We decided to use the oval box inside the carpeted box. And we didn't tell anyone. Well, not until it got gross and needed to be cleaned. So now that she's going to check it everyday, I think we'll stop using it.

Just for a while.

Heh.

Oh man, the People are not happy. The warm air blowing thingy fixer didn't show up today and didn't bother calling to say he wasn't coming. The lady that owns the house isn't happy either. Supposedly the fixer will come Thursday morning, but we'll believe it when we see it.

Stuffs

• The Woman has been "busy" and hogging the computers--both of them!--and hasn't let me or Buddah get online to do much this week.
  
• For revenge, I peed outside the box. Twice. Right there BESIDE the box.
  
• Not intentionally, but it got the point across. "You're pissed off, aren't you?" she asked.
  
• Duh.
  
• Tomorrow someone is coming to see what they can do to fix the warm air blowing thingy. Luckily, it hasn't been cold the last few nights.
  
• We had krokpot chicken the other night. Buddah only licked the gravy off his and then gave it to me.
  
• So I played with him later. We played I'm Not Touching You, which the Woman thinks is bizarre.
  
• We played it in the china cabinet. I was inside the bottom, Buddah was outside.
  
• The Woman kept saying "I don't want you playing in there" but she was to lazy to get up and make us stop.
  
• There is no china in the china cabinet.
  
• There is lots of booze.
  

I jumped up onto the Woman's lap and she commented as she petted me, "Your fur's a little cold there, Big Guy."

Well, yeah, that's why I jumped up into your lap. To tell you to turn the warm air blowing thingy on.

And then she said, "The furnace doesn't work. I'm sorry."

What? WHAT?

The warm air blowing thingy is BROKEN and I'm going to FREEZE to death!

Oh she says it won't get that cold tonight, but she has blankets to sleep under. I'm going to have icycles hanging off my useless nipples. I want someone to fix it and fix it Right Now, but the Man told the Woman In Charge that it wasn't urgent yet because it's not that cold. Why did he not tell her to get her skinny butt over here and MAKE IT WARM?

Someone better plan on having a kitty in bed tonight.

"My face," the Woman says, "is not a pillow."

But I disagree. It made a mighty fine pillow, and the rest of her made a mighty fine bed, and she should be hppy that I chose to sleep on her early this morning instead of following my first impulse, which was to go stand in the bathtub and sing as loudly as I possibly can.

---

Book Stuff: she emailed proof copies of almost everyone's submission for the new book last night (exception, if you sent in something in the last day or two, she hasn't formatted those yet.) So if you sent something and didn't get a proof, yell at her. If you just sent something in, she'll get a proof to you today or tomorrow.

---

Oh! I got awards!
Sammy and Miles and Derby and Frostin awarded me this:



I'd like to pass this along to Edsel and Skeezix and Bonnie & Victor and Ginger and Skeeter & LC

annnnnnnnd
Monty award my this:



I think the blog that really deserves this is the Cat Blogosphere, because it provides an important connection point for all the kitty blogs out there.

I feel all special and chit this morning!

Oh yes he is...
Heh.

Oh. How deflating.

The Man had fish for dinner. The Woman had chicken, but the Man had FISH. Real live fresh dead fish. So I was good, I was very good and while the Woman cooked up her chicken and his fish I sat patiently and didn't get in the way and I didn't beg and I didn't jump on the counter to get a closer look and sniff. The Woman even commented on how good I was being, and while they ate I sat on the floor and waited, and Buddah sat on the counter and waited, and then the Man said "Ok, I saved you some." He took all the crunchy stuff off and the skin and gave us each a nice sized piece.

But it was gross.

How can fish possibly be gross? IT'S FISH! By definition fish s supposed to be mouth wateringly wonderful. Go ahead, look it up in the dicitionary. It says right there Fish: a noun: the world's most wonderful taste treat. And there's Fish: a verb: to procur the world's most wonderful taste treat.

See?

Fish cannot possibly be gross! But it was! Buddah and I both looked at it with such deep sorrow that the Woman felt bad and she took the crunchy stuff off some of her chicken and let us have bites of that. Poor Buddah was so disappointed that he only ate a nibble of the chicken, so I had to finish his for him--that's how good I was being.

I just don't understand how this could happen. The Man ate it, he said it was just "ok" but the Woman wasn't offended because she thinks all fish is gross (now you see what I have to put up with...) but I just couldn't bring myself to eat any of it.

I think we should get a Mulligan on this meal, and they should have better fish tomorrow, fish that tastes as good as it looks, and Buddah and I should get a whole giant piece each. And if Buddah doesn't want his, I can force myself to be good again and finish it for him. Because you know you shouldn't leave good fish just laying there, not when there are starving kitties all over the world.

How can people go from buying Twinkies to buying grapes and bananas? I don't want grapes and bananas. They bought apples, too. What good are apples to me? I don't eat apples? About the best thing I can do with an apple is roll it off the counter and onto the floor, where it will split into a gooshy apple-tinged mess.

Well, that part might be fun.

But really...think of the kitties, people. Some kitties like fruit but I'm not one of them. At least buy something junky as a break from that dry crunchy crap.

Oh, and can I have some milk? I saw you out some into the fridge and I haven't had any in years. If I can't have a Twinkie, at least give me that.

Ok...if you have a story idea or poem idea or whatever, the Woman says she'll take more stuff through the weekend, and in the meantime she'll work on creating proofs for what she already has.

And tonight she's going to email everyone who ha already submitted so they know she got their submissions, which she should have done already but she's limited by that puny human brain and is kinda thoughtless, plus she gets distracted by that rumbly bike a lot...

On the Twinkie thing, she says there's only TWO of them left in the box and then she's not buying anymore for a while because SHE likes them and she's fat enough as it is thankyouverymuch. Why do we have to be punished because she has no self control? I don't even have to have the whole Twinkie...just the cream filling with a little bit of the yellow cake stuff glommed onto it.

See how reasonable I am?

The Woman has actually been making herself useful, and has been working on The Book...and it looks like it's a bit short. Like, it might reach 110 pages if she's clever with how it's formatted and she puts it in a small trim size. She might be able to be bribed into taking a few late submissions, if they're ready to go.

In other breaking news, Buddah discovered he, too, likes Twinkies. The People will never be able to sit with one in hand again.

In other other breaking news, I did NOT snuggle on top of the Woman with Buddah, no matter what anyone else says.

I now know what Stinky Goodness is made of at the Bridge.
TWINKIES.
When we die, we get TWINKIES.
I know this because I got some of a Twinkie today, and it was THAT GOOD.
Everything should come with that creamy filling.
Oh yeah.

Cripes...if you sent me email anytime between late August and now and never got a reply, I apologize. Everything was going into my spam folder and I didn't think to check it; I don't get a lot of email anyway so not having any didn't seem out of the ordinary, but now I have to wade through over 3,000 messages and figure out which are spam and which are actually for me.

And today is the deadline for submissions for the new We Are The Kitties book and today technically extends until midnight, so whatever the last midnight in the last timezone is, that's the deadline. So basically, if you get it in by the time the Woman checks her business email tomorrow, you're good. And she has this major thingy in the morning, so she probably won't be able to check it until afternoon...so there ya go. Midnight is probably somewhere around 4 p.m. PT on October 2nd.

The rest of this week she'll be doing a dummy layout for the book to see how long it is; it looks like there are enough submissions, but if there's some space she might ask for kitty pictures to do like the last book and have a couple of pages of a collage type thingy.

Then everyone's submissions will be put into a proof layout, each on by its ownself, and if you submitted you'll get a proof copy in .PDF format so that you can look it over and if there are any typos you can tell her so she can correct it. If you don't get one by November 10 (it should be a lot sooner than that, and I'll mention it a couple of times when she sends them out) then you need to let her know so that there's not the crushing disappointment like there was last year when Beau got left out (you won't get left out this time, Beau, I'll sit on her and remind her over and over to triple check both her computers!)

OK, I am now going to poke through my email and see what's for me and what's just an offer to increase my already massive manhood. If you have any questions, either leave them in the comments (the Woman will check tonight and tomorrow) or email them to her at kathompson@inkblotbooks.com.

She's all a-twitter...I think she's looking forward to this book more than the other stuffs she's working on.