CAT ROLE MODELING

Dolby, The Feline Amplifier (top, girl), and Uppali, Everyone's Role Model, are caught here in typical poses. Dolby, by following Uppali's every move, learned how to door-knob hang and thereby attract a lot of human attention as an escapist. Her even louder meows at breeding time, which seems about every other weekend, were not dampened by spaying as the vet, chief surgeon at the local gov vet hospital, left in one ovary. He first said he did it so there would not be "a sudden drop" in hormones, and that gradually she would stop coming into heat. Four heats later, he denied leaving it in at all when asked "What next?" She is still a Screaming Mimi in desperate need (ours) of a better pet vet. Meanwhile she has met over the Interscreen on the window "monitors" a lot of cute guys.

The search goes on for a vet that might be able to find the component that is causing us to lose sleep and want to park her in the oven when she's in season. (UPDATE: Dr. Sunil Kumar, who operates on elephants and cats, unzipped her and showed me that TWO ovaries were left in her. Unless she had three ovaries to start with, Dr. Giggins, her original spayologist, was being modest about saying he "intentionally" left one in there.)

In contrast to Dolby, with or without ovaries, Uppali boy only emits a small sound used sparingly to encourage us to take him for a walk to eat grass, which every day he delicately throws up in a slime on the living room floor. He is known variously as St. Uppali, Mr. Mischief, and Oopser (the later a reference to errors he makes in repeatedly trying to open locked doors and sliding off in disarray). This silver tabby, a U.S. citizen and former resident of the Santa Isabel Indian Reservation in California, has never met a human he didn't like to rub up against, although sadly not all humans reciprocate.