I swear these little hairy varmint critters are going to be the death of
me yet; they're going to tickle me to death!

BIL John and I have spent the last couple of days installing a highly
polished marble floor in Chez Yehudah. It's nothing at all like the
Italian ceramic floor we installed in our former abode. This is, as my
grandfather used to say (he was kinda country, if you know what I mean),
"slicker than snot on a glass doorknob." You understand, Gramps didn't
hang out with the hoi polloi much.

So anywho I was sitting in a chair admiring the new floor when Samantha
came trotting up and decided she wanted to sit in my lap. Sam is our
resident Siamese lap fungus, as some of you may recall. With a mighty
bound she flopped down on the floor and just lay there, too surprised to
move. I could see her playing it over in her mind again, right up to the
ungainly flop on the floor which had been aimed at my lap. But the
essential movement that was supposed to have culminated in a snuggle and
a skritch turned into an ungainly skating maneuver not unlike a hog on ice.

She had it easy, though. The one that really tore me up was Spirit, our
long-haired, silver-gray kitten, now about a year old. She walked into
the living room just as I opened the door and let the boys in. They had
been shut out all day, locked out in the warm, cruel world so they
couldn't track through the fresh mortar spread invitingly on the floor.
The cats have better sense, so we didn't lock them out. Spirit walked
around the corner just as the stampede of three doxies and a Chihuahua
burst through the door. Every dadblame one of them mutts slammed into
her, one at a time, and each one spun her exactly 180 degrees on that
shiny, slick marble. She was so dizzy by then she could barely walk.

The d*gs didn't fare much better. As they ran into the living room in
single file, at full gallop, they all fouled up trying to make the turn.
 One by one they leaned into the turn, then leaned some more, and slid
into the wall, feet madly scrabbling for purchase on those confounded tiles.

Looks as if we're going to be entertained for a long, long time.

Cheers,
Dave