One of the perks of my life is annoying cats.

Last night I was summoned to the kitchen to see if I could hold onto Sascha, who was clearly favoring one of her paws, while Mrs. Cwabs checked to see if it was broken. For readers who may not know, we have four cats (Sascha, Dexter, Red, and Celeste, pictured), which is probably too many, but it means there's aways a cat availble if you need one for buffing the car or sticking their big ol' head into your water glass or begging for a piece of ham when you make a sandwich.

Sascha seemed to be in a little bit of pain, but she would still put a little weight on the paw when she walked.

As it happens, we've known our vet since 1996, when she was still a junior-college student, and she lives within walking distance of the house, and we'd had dinner with her that night as Mrs. Cwabs was supposed to have lunch with her yesterday and they didn't manage to connect. So in our specialized case she will occasionally make a house call, especially since she was out anyway. She stopped by about 9, walked in with her dog in tow, petted Sascha a couple of times, then picked her up by the scruff and slammed her down on the sofa. Dexter and Red passed through the room and gave the events a passing glance.

Such screaming you have not heard. Sascha's eyes were as wide as kitty-sized dinner plates, her mouth open to get the biggest possible chunk of any stray fingers and also the better for yowling as if someone had laid an unabridged dictionary on her tail. She'd start to squirm, and the vet would shake her so that the scream would come out as MREEEOW-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow! About a minute of feeling the paw, and it was over. Sascha scampered away in a foul mood. Diagnosis: possibly broken, possibly nothing, bring her in tomorrow for sedation and an x-ray.

We said hi to the dog, and bye to the vet, and she drove on home. I returned to the bedroom to find Red and Dexter sitting next to one another on the bed, staring at me with a look of complete and utter puzzlement.

This morning Sascha seems perfectly normal, and took a swipe at me with the paw in question. We probably scared her into not being such a wimp.

Another thing to love about Memphis.

We were going to see Musical of Musicals (The Musical) tonight, but Mrs. Cwabs' grandboss and great-grandboss got canned earlier this week (politics and product recall, respectively) and the going-away party is tonight, so I changed the reservations for Sunday.

The going away celebration is at a local sports bar called Fox & Hound, which has some pretentions towards being "English," inasmuch as they serve beer in glasses and two or three of the available beers are also sold in England. There are two of 'em in the Memphis area--some friends of mine and I had gone to the one near work one Tuesday night to receive terrible service, and at the end of the evening to be told by the manager that we weren't allowed to smoke cigars in the smoking section, which is fine but capped off a lousy evening there.

The last time I was at the location that isn't near work, the guy sitting in the booth behind us turned around, tapped me on the shoulder, and asked, "Are yew uh cop? 'Cause if yew are uh cop, yew gotta tell us." After being told that no, I wasn't a cop, the guys pulled out their boxes and started taking hits. The guy stood up, came around to our booth, and addressed us:

Guy: That smells good, don' it?
Me: Uh, noncommital response
Guy (to waitress): Come over here, sweetheart! Gimme somma that!

Nice to see that they're consistent with their smoking policy. I'm thinking I might be elsewhere for the going-away party.