Yossarian the Kitty Guest is settling in nicely—thanks to those of you who provided advice on the transition! He's confined to my study right now, and he doesn't seem to mind so much. He has a good view of the front patio, and he likes to hang out underneath the big blue chair. That last part worries me a bit, because it's a reclining chair, and if anyone actually reclined it while he was under there, he would get rather squished. However, there are usually too many files/books/random items of clothing on the chair to make sitting possible, so that shouldn't be a problem.

When I spend time with other people's cats, I'm often struck by how nice they are. Yossi is a sweet little wisp of a thing. When I came in this morning, he squeezed out from under the blue chair and sat on my lap for a while. I let him stay, because he actually didn't seem to have been reading too much Bram Stoker lately. I had forgotten that cats come that way. Compared to Yossi, Leo is a brutish bruiser of a kitty. "What is good in life?" I asked him one day. He answered with an enthusiastic speech on the "lamentations of the sparrows."

Nicer isn't necessarily better when it comes to cats, and I often find the ways Leo can be a rat bastard quite funny. Still, if I had my druthers, I'd lower the probability that I'll stand at the sink and find myself suddenly choking on toothpaste, as there are cat teeth in my ankle.

I also love that Yossi, for obvious reasons, makes me think of Catch-22, because it's simply one of the best books ever. I taught it as part of an introductory humanities course in 1998 and 1999, and I do believe that book is almost as much fun to teach as it is to read. The first year I taught Catch-22, my classes were reading it while elections for freshman class officers were being held. Washington Irving got two write-in votes for President. He also showed up on the roll sheet from time to time, as did Irving Washington. A.T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army, also visited my class on occasion. I know this because I received notes from him informing me that he yearned for me tragically.