Who Gets Pounced and Who Gets the Pounce?

Ah, home again, home again, jiggity jig!

Two days in a 1980's hotel with dysfunctional Internet service was enough for me to Really Appreciate the Blogorium, bathed in WiFi radiation comin' at you at 2.5 Megabaud, KOMA broadcasting 50,000 watts out of Oklahoma City, all hits, all the time.

That thought takes me back to the 70's when we would pick up KOMA on the AM dial late at night and not every night. Those nights were special nights because KOMA was the Way Cool radio station of the 70's broadcasting something totally new: Talk Radio. Yep, the DJ would engage truck drivers, aliens, Bigfoot and that waitress from Dan's Diner to expound on a whole raft of subjects from politics to particle physics. Cool beans, except we didn't have that expression back then.

Groovy.

I confess to have said "groovy" in all seriousness. Later I would commit the sin of uttering "heavy", truly, in all seriousness. I skipped "righteous" but lapsed into "tubular" which, to this day, I have no idea what it means. But, I said it in all seriousness. Tubular, man. (head nodding sagely) Now I say "Wazzzzzzzzup?" only to invoke nausia in my kids. It works, too.

That extended stream of consciousness leads me back to home again. Welcome Home, said the fish. Good old Twinkie the 8-year old, nearly fin-rotted dead gold fish who has more lives than 100 cats and who, according to the depressing How to Raise Goldfish book, may live 20 more years and I swear if he does that there will be only a pair of fish lips floating in the tank nibbling at the shrimp flakes I toss in every morning. Anyway, of all of the House Zoo inhabitants, only Twinkie the Wonder Fish showed any excitement at my return. Good old Twinkie. I'm sure the pinch of shrimp flakes boosted his enthusiasm.

Nobbs the Cat, also known as the Pretender, "appeared' to acknowledge my return with an arch-backed purr around the ankles followed by a dash to the food bowl.

In my euphoria of actually being acknowledged by Nobbs I breached protocol by picking him up and saying something stupid like "Who's a nice kitty?" only to experience the Five Claw Paw Exploding Hand technique, whereby Nobbs scratches you at five pressure points and bites you on the hand. I staggered five steps and poured him a bowl of Cat Chow.

After I staunched my wounds, I poured myself a G&T.

Sandy the Cat then came down the stairs and hopped on my lap purring and basically getting in my face. That earned him two Pounces. "Pounce" is a cat treat that Sandy will nearly do cartwheels for. He's a Pounce nut. Sensing that I was at Death's Door, he capitalized on the opportunity for one or two more Pounces before I expired and I did not disappoint him. Two Pounces down the hatch Sandy curled up on the couch and went to sleep. Now, that's a cat with priorities.

Nobbs, on the other hand, never gets a Pounce. Probably because they're not made of human blood. Which, apparently, he prefers.

Pounced or Pounce? You decide.