[click on photo below for all of Donna's pictures of Suzy.]

LITTLE

MISS

SUZY

Actually, she's so excited and affectionate that she isn't exactly sitting on my lap, but walking around in circles, gazing up at me with adoration, and languidly rubbing all over me, the computer, the desk, and the wall. A few readers may understand the comparison to her brother, Kenard: This is rock-solid, stubbornly determined kitten lovin' that doesn't take no for an answer.

It's strange to have her here alone, away from the many cats and kittens she was living with back at Donna's house. I was afraid she might be lonely, but so far she's entertaining herself by following me around and purring like a banshee.

I picked Suzy up on Sunday night. Monday I took her to get spayed in North Portland. She was rather traumatized, both from the long car trip (she'd never been outside of Donna's house) and of course the surgery, which involved shaving her belly, removing her uterus, and stitching her up again. She was all doped up on kitty morphine, stumbling around for a few hours, but now she's back to normal.

I haven't been able to coax her to eat much food -- she just had a tiny bit of milk and some dry food. She growls at the door and when people walk by outside the window, and clings to me whenever I take her out of my room. I'm hoping eventually to let her outside, so I hope the fraidy-cat attitude wears off. I spent $60 so she could be a liberated woman and explore the great outdoors without being shackled to childbirth, so she damn better well get my money's worth of frolicking!

In other news, I've decided (tentatively) to accept the manager job. I called Dave (the general manager of both the pizza place and the coffeeshop) and told him what my concerns were, and he encouraged me to at least try it out. He said he would help me with a lot of it, or that I could hire an assistant manager (even one of my friends). Also, there's the added, and immediate, benefit of being able to make $12 an hour from the very start, even if I am only working behind the counter at a pizza place.

I went in today to fill in a background check form, tax forms, and the official employment application. If for some reason something goes wrong and they don't hire me, I'm going to stop by Starbucks tomorrow for their hiring event, just in case. But unless something weird happens, I'll probably be working at the pizza place in a few days. Then I'll start working with Dave on the coffeeshop project.

Oh my, I'm falling asleep. I'll try to write more tomorrow. Sorry, Dan!

I was having a dream about drowning in words. I mean literally, I was drowning in a flood of words, letters, and sentences. We had rags to try to soak up the words, but there weren't enough and words were streaming through the streets. It looked kind of like the videos from the news of the flooding in Texas and Ohio.

Goodnight, cats and kittens.