My cat, George, sits perched on the arm of my chair.

He's purring madly in the direction of the large pink plastic glass on top of the laser printer.

Occasionally, he makes an abortive move to step onto the half-open drawer that would make an excellent step up to the large pink plastic glass.

It's filled with club soda, the bubbling noises intrigue him.

He also likes iced tea. Plain, no lemon.

When George was a kitten, we lived in a shotgun-style apartment...windows front to back. In the middle of the night, he'd play monsters-in-the-water and decide to traverse the path between the front window and the back without touching the floor.

He'd land claws first in the screen during the summer, hanging there for a moment before dashing back across to the other side. In the winter, he'd pounce on the ledge, find no room for purchase with the windows closed, manage a graceful half-gainer "this is not me falling" move, and zoom away to the far goal.

He used to be quite a leaper, but he's an indoor kitty with lots of time on his paws. Mostly he sleeps.

He's grown to be a very large cat, resembling most of all a living version of the Kliban cartoons, although he's been on a kitty diet of late, so he's dropped a few pounds. Still can't get him on the treadmill as often as I'd like.

His latest fetish is rubber bands...he likes the taste.

He's not the furball sort, but when he can't quite get the whole band down, he'll cough it back up in pieces.

The doctor says to try negative conditioning...how much more negative can you get than the taste of a rubber band? Of course, the doctor also says George needs some dental work, and that it'll cost twice as much as my annual cleanings.

What a racket. Wonder if cats get wisdom teeth.

Maybe he'll need kitty orthodontia. Little kitty bridges. I'll have to provide him with a kitty denture case and little tubes of kitty polydent.

The rubber bands'll get stuck in his dental work, and that'll really teach him.