:::blink:::

Wow, it's almost Friday already. This week went by awfully fast. In fact, I think I missed a day or two because it seems like it should only be Wednesday.

But, at least it went by fast because we were busy. We finally got the Woman to sit down and help draw pictures for my next book. Buddah even tried to help, which meant we threw away a lot of paper, but at least he tried.

I think we've got it 80% written. And drawn. I have some really sweet drawings that don't have anything written down about them yet, so this weekend we're going to pin the Woman down and make her help us with that, too.

At one point "marketing" was mentioned, but then the Woman went into shock, and curled up in a ball on the floor and started twitching and sniffing...so I'm pretty sure she doesn't like that part of the whole thing and is going to avoid it.

She needs to get with it, though, because if she can do it then I can sell 50,000 or 100 books, and buy a house, and maybe I'll let the people live there, too.

Maybe.

---

Oh! Oh! Oh! Look what Max from Crew's Views gave me!



WooHoo! Thanks!

Finally, the Woman recognizes just how wonderful I really am.

It took her long enough.

Sheesh.

The Great Breeze Box War of 2008 part...7? 12? 523?

Since she wasn't giving up, the Woman did not put the Breeze Box away. She moved it to another location, into a room where Buddah frequently sleeps, plays, and gets all crackhead on himself, thinking (I suppose) that if he was the only one peeing in it, maybe he'd keep using it in "his" special place.

Only he didn't.

Now, she assumed neither of us was bothering to even look at the box, until she caught me in it last night. I didn't realize she was there, or honestly, I never would have gone near it. I don't want to give her any kind of satisfaction, though I can't honestly understand why what I poop in matters to her as long as it's not her shoe.

Anyway, I was in it and she was watching quietly. I kept turning around and around, I stepped out and stared at it, got back in and kept turning, and when I finally got out she said, as if a lightbulb had actually gone off over her head, "It's not big enough, is it?"

I looked at the box again, and realized she was right. I get IN the box, and try to find a comfortable way to let loose, but I just don't fit.

Now, I'm a tall kitty. I can squoosh myself into normal kitty size proportions when I don't want her to get a good picture of me even though it makes me look fat, but the reality is that my body is long enough that if I don't have a litter box matching my size I wind up peeing over the side and onto the floor, and I try to avoid that.

With the plastic side thingies on the Breeze Box, I'm all squooshed in it, and with them off I know I'll pee over the side, which makes everyone unhappy. So I just don't use it.

I wandered downstairs and used the regular box, which needs to be cleaned. I hope someone reads that part.

Now we're wondering: if the Breeze Box was a few inches longer, would more kitties use it? Are the kitties who are using it normal size or smaller kitties? Are the kitties who won't use it my size?

It's a puzzle. The Woman now knows I at least get in the Box...but I can't get comfy enough to do my biznezz.

It may be that simple: bigger box for bigger kitty, and the Humans would win the Great Breeze Box War of 2008.

Every once in a while when I'm sitting by the front window, someone comes up and curls their hand into a fist, and they knock on the door. This causes one of the People--usually the Woman--to get off their lazy ass tushy and open it for them.

This got me to thinking. People are trained to respond to knocking. Well trained, it seems. Given this very nearly Pavlovian (Pavlov tricked dogs into drooling, you know; I'm not sure why he thought it was funny, but I think I would have liked to have seen him do it) response, it made me think.

So this morning, I jumped up on the bed, curled my paw into a tiny fist, and instead of punching the Woman in an eye, I knocked on her forehead.

Holy carp, it worked!

Her eyes fluttered open, she sucked in a deep breath, and said "Well, good morning." Then I sat down and said "I'm hungry," and she said, "Give me a minute, ok?"

So I was very polite, I gave her a minute and then accompanied her to the giant litter box room and helped her take her drugs, and then she actually went downstairs and fed us!

Granted, this is a little less fun than punching her in the eye (you learn less fun words, too) but it works! And it proves that People are a little closer to dogs than previously thought, given how trainable the apparently are.

I was lounging on top of the short climbing tower near the front window today, when this strange man headed for our door. The Woman says to relax, he was just here to praise the house, and he wouldn't hurt me.

Well, all right. It's a nice house, nothing spectacular, so I don't know why the People needed someone to praise it, but whatever floats their boats and makes them feel better about living here. I didn't run from him and he was appropriately in awe of me. He said he has a little girl tux cat, she's old but only 5 pounds. I think I'd like to meet her.

Then he started wandering around the house, but I never heard him say one nice thing about it. He took pictures, but that's not exactly heaping the praise on, you know? He went upstairs and I heard him say Hi to Buddah, but still no praise.

There was mention of a buyer and maybe more people coming over to praise the house. I quit listening at that point, because someone already OWNS the house and she's a very nice lady, and she certainly doesn't seem to be so needy as to have to have some stranger offer up praise about this place.

Then he shook the people's hands, and left.

WTF?

This was odder than the other day when they let that other strange guy come in to wash his hands, and I'm still not sure they realize he took the Woman's rumbly bike.

Oh. This is very, very sad. The lady that came to our house to interview me for the paper has an inoperable tumor and her friends and family have been told to go say goodbye to her. One of her newspaper friends wrote about her today in the paper, about how hard it is to say goodbye. I am very glad that I got to meet her and that she understood the awesomeness of Max, and I'm very glad that the Woman let her have my books to read. I hope they made her a little happy.

Please think good thoughts for her, and especially for her friends and family. They must be hurting right now, having to say goodbye.

There was some braveness going on here this afternoon, and it wasn't me!

Some strange guy came into the house to wash his hands (? I don't know why the People invited him in to wash his hands, but they did, and I hope they know he took the Woman's rumbly bike before he left, and I'm pretty sure she likes that thing) and Buddah tried to suck up to him to get some crunchy treats.

Now, even I have to admit that takes some cojones; now the guy did mention that he has cats and Buddah reminded him of one of his, so I suppose he was thinking the dood couldn't be all that bad if he has a bunch of his own cats. But yeah...I was impressed.

Don't tell him that, though. I wouldn't want him to think I was starting to like him or anything.

Look...the proper response to that perfectly formed and wickedly odiferous 4 pound poop is not "OMG What did I FEED you???" It is "My! That's impressive! May I clean that up for you?"

Really.

Sheesh.

Heh.

So...the Woman offered up her books for sale as PDF files, because like 4 people have asked for them over the last bazillion years. And instead of rushing to buy, people asked for mine instead. Heh. Heh.

She sucked it up and did it. So her books, my books, and the WATK books are available as PDFs.

CLICKY HERE.

If she sells any of her books or mine she'll buy a pizza; if any of the WATK books sell as PDFs she'll donate the money.

(edited later to add: it has come to may attention that I need to make it clear that these are not automatic downloads; I have to send them manually. I check my email several times a day, so it shouldn't take too long for the PDF files to arrive in your email. I apologize for the confusion. ~The Woman)


Oh, and get your writing heads in gear. She wants to do WATK 3, but maybe not have it come out until after Christmas. The first one came out after the holidays and it did better than the second one. START THINKING!

The Return of Simon's Cat!



Heh.

One of my many jobs is to make sure the Woman gets up in time for breakfast every morning. If I didn't do this, she would surely sleep through Time To Open The Stinky Goodness, and Buddah and I would starve to death. Or we'd have to eat the dry stuff. But I think we'd starve.

So this morning I headed upstairs at the appropriate time and started to push the bedroom door open...but she wasn't there. In fact, the door was mostly open. Since I am a smart kitty I assumed she was already up, and since she hadn't come downstairs I knew she was still in the house--presuming, of course, she didn't sneeze out her last few brain cells and jump from a window--so I looked around, and spotted the lone closed door.

Then, because I am *supposed* to throw a door open every morning, I slammed all 15 16 of my pounds against the door. It didn't open, but I heard her sigh and then say "^$#&#*@ Max! Give me five freaking minutes!"

So I counted. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And then I did it again.

When she yanked the door open I sat down and looked up at her and said, "Good morning!" but she wasn't very nice about the whole thing and I was pretty sure I wasn't going to have a good morning unless I did something to make her happy.

So I jumped up on the bathroom counter and while she was taking a bunch of drugs her medications, I helped her get the water into her mouth by standing up and head-butting her water cup.

This was pleasing to her, because she said "God, you are such a big help."

I do my best. Plus, it got her to go downstairs and fee dup before she washed her hair, so it must have made her very happy.

Okay...y'all know that while I can be bought with free stuff, I don't accept paid advertising here. I am a commercial free Psychokitty.

So if I stick something on my sidebar, I really believe in it. And today I stuck something on my sidebar because it is TEH AWESOME!!111!!!






If you watched NBC news tonight you saw a story about a little girl who is working really hard to get food to dogs ho need it. And she has a cat site, too! FREE FOOD FOR KITTIES IN NEED! And the cat blogosphere is all about kitties helping kitties, right?

Well, all right, dogs, too.

If you go to Free Kibble Kat and play the trivia game once every day, 20 pieces of kibble get donated. And when you're done playing for kitty food, you can go to Free Kibble and get dog food donated.

Go play every day, and if you do, I'll be your very best friend.

She watched General Hospital without me today.
Then The Younger Human was here, but he didn't stay.
They all went out for a while and came back smelling like chicken and STEAK!
I didn't get any.
I'm not happy.

Oh holy...tonight I was sitting on the Woman's lap while we watched today's General Hospital that she recorded on the deeveear, and she was slouched a little bit in the comfy chair, so she picked me up and set me on her chest and stomach.

That part was ok. Her squishys are comfortable enough and I still had a good view of the TV and could still see my idols Sonny Corinthos and Jason Morgan, both bad guys. I settled in and was watching the Gummy Bear Mafiosos talk to hot women, and you know what she did?

She went from petting me to making these gag-me baby talking noises, going "oooh you're so cute, does you luvs it when I scratches your ears like this? Is Max a happy kitty?"

GAWD!

Look, all I wanted to do was watch GH and maybe get some head skritches, not put up with this hormonal perimenopawsul person grope me and make me want to barf with all her baby talk.

I did what I had to do.

When she told me one more time I was sooooo cute, I stretched up and stuck my tongue up her nose.

Oh yeah, she shut up. And then I got to watch the rest of GH in peace.

Ohnoes...while I was lounging by the window this GUY came up to the door, and the People let him in the house! He took PICTURES of everything! The kitchen and the room with the big TV and the comfy chair and even the outside giant bathtub! And then. THEN! I heard one of the People say something like "mumble mumble mumble if you buy the house mumble mumble mumble," and at that point I just about lost it.

My people are selling this house! AND THEY DON'T EVEN OWN IT!

The lady who owns it...oh, she's going to be super-pissed. And I don't blame her, not one bit.

This better not mean invoking the M-word again.

The Woman won't admit it, but we won the Great Breeze Box War of 2008. I just refused to use the Breeze Box (though I feel bad for disappointing the nice Tidy Cat people because they did give it to me, after all) and Buddah peed in it a couple of times, but then stopped.

Now, that hasn't stopped the Woman. The box is still available, but she's accepted that the rest of her life (at least while we're still here, which is the part worth living) will be spent scooping chucks out of the litter box and sweeping up all the little trails we leave on the floor when we get out of the box.

In other news, Buddah did not freak out at the sounds of all the popping and e-e-e-e sounds coming from the street last night. I wanted to see at was going on, but the Woman wouldn't open the curtain for me because she was afraid Buddah would freak out if he saw stuff happening.

He ruins everything.

But, at least it's not the first 4th of July he was here. He hid under the bed then, and I had to sit on the floor nearby so he wouldn't cry, the little sissy.

Check it out.

Word of my ability to poop-at-will, and to make Peoples' eyes water because of it, have reached Important People. They were so impressed by the awesomeness of my pooply stench that they emailed me and asked "hey, would you like to try some of this?"

I'm all about the free stuff, baby. Of course I said yes.

And you know what? The stuff works. Either Buddah or I can lay this massive stink bomb, and the Woman spritzes a little bit, and vwala, people stop gagging. Better yet, the Woman gets all coughy around most stuff that has a smell, like perfume and candles and armpits, but this stuff didn't bother her. I worried just a tiny bit that when I said yes the Woman would be all "Oh No you didn't!" because she has "breathing issues" but she doesn't mind it and likes the smell it leaves in the air.

I can't figure out how to work the bottle myself, but I suspect it would do a fine job of covering up People Funk, too. I wonder if there's a way to get them to use it like deodorant...?