Last night, after visiting the inlaws and shopping for a couple bags of chow
for the kids, I was  just beat. I managed to get the cats fed, brushed Roxie
and Brandy under their vigorous protests, and fell into bed.

About 430 AM Brandy began to try with all her might and mouth to wake me and
Louie up. I could barely manage to get up and moving about 630, and when I
started messing around in the kitchen i heard the loudest and most indignant
meowing I'd heard in a long time.

Did a head count: Roxie on her bed, Brandy near the kitchen door, Odessa on
her favorite basement step, Sabrina on the love seat. Was a suitor coming
around for one of the Ladies; and if so, why wasn't Stosh getting mad and
cussing at the windows?

I opened the kitchen doo and there he was in the breezeway, mad as hell. Hre
went immediately to eat; only afterward would he let me give him a pick-up.
"Stoshu, poor little guy! Mama was so worried, how does my sweetie feel?" And
after a moment: "You little SOB! Why didn't you start meowing last night
after you snuck under Louie's legs and the door got shut? You could have
gotten outside, you little so-and-so!" Channeling my mother, damn it. Stosh
likes to make a game of trying to sneak into the breezeway when we come home,
just so we'll go after him and give him his pick-up. But we got back from
Louie's parents very late, and we never even saw him slip by. And like any
mother, I am now blaming myself and making sure I remind myself that I am
just a miserable excuse for a mom, and Stosh is going to land himself in jail
when he grows up and get a tattoo of a battleship or a hula-hula girl, or at
least mis-spend his youth hanging around a pool hall.

He seemed OK once he ate, and went to the box and took an impressively long
leak. Thoughtful little guy, holding it in all that time. Brandy wasn't happy
with him though, and mumbled cusswords at him all morning. Stosh then plopped
down in front of a heater (turned up to warm my little man) and spent his
time combing his hair until I left for work.

Blessed be,
Baha