Live­jour­nal’s Writer’s Block ques­tion of the day is, “Cats or dogs– which do you pre­fer, and why?”

I don’t pre­fer one over the oth­er. I’ve shared my life with cats and dogs from my ear­li­est years and love both. My par­ents would­n’t con­sid­er allow­ing dogs inside the house and weren’t hap­py about hav­ing cats there, but small­er crit­ters are eas­i­er to sneak in, so I got more time to snug­gle with the cats. Recent­ly, I haven’t had a home with a fenced yard, so I haven’t had a dog. It seems unfair to have a dog with­out giv­ing him a place to run around and play off the leash every day. The cats deal with an all-indoor envi­ron­ment more eas­i­ly. But as soon as I’m able to do so, I’ll have a canine com­pan­ion again!

The NaBloPo­Mo prompt for today:
What is the first thing you see when you walk in your house?

Right now, the first thing any­body sees is Sam’s desk. No, that isn’t pre­cise­ly right. If you’re look­ing straight ahead at the wall, you see a col­lage by Katie, which is much love­li­er.

I’m try­ing NaBloPo­Mo again! The theme this month is “Return,” although I’m not at all sure what the heck that’s sup­posed to mean. I got today’s post in just under the wire, obviously—but I did post! Tomor­row I’ll try to do it much bet­ter. And I’ll even include pho­tos of the new kit­ten! Maybe he’ll have a name by then.

That’s an old pho­to of Katie and Kiyoshi. I’m not the fam­i­ly pho­tog­ra­ph­er. She is, fol­lowed by Sam. But there’s a pho­to, and this post real­ly needs one.

Any­body else using Live­Mocha? Espe­cial­ly to learn French? I just joined (as Tech­noMom, of course) and would like to have “friends” there. I start­ed with the begin­ner lev­el, les­son one, and actu­al­ly learned a few new vocab­u­lary words. (My wee bit of for­eign lan­guage instruc­tion in high school sucked, to put it mild­ly.) You’re sup­posed to ask your “friends” for feed­back on your lessons, but I don’t have any and don’t real­ly want to ask total strangers about how bad­ly I did.

Sam and Katie have been at Dragon*Con for the past few days. We had a house guest, David, but I did­n’t real­ly “meet” him because of the late con hours and hav­ing a real­ly bad pain flare. Sor­ry David! He went home this after­noon. I’m glad Sam has the day off tomor­row to recov­er. I’m glad Hope got to come to D*C, but pout­ing because I won’t get to see her while she’s in town. I know that she has bright­ened Sam’s week­end.

I fin­ished read­ing The Jen­nifer Morgue by Charles Stross last night, and start­ed Phae­dra Wel­don’s Wraith. I liked Morgue, but it was­n’t quite as strong as The Atroc­i­ty Archives. The short sto­ry at the end of the book, “Pimpf,” did­n’t do too much for me, but I’m not a video gamer so that prob­a­bly has a lot to do with it.

I’m real­ly lik­ing Wraith. A lot. The fact that it’s set in Atlanta is nice, because I can fol­low along the geog­ra­phy as the char­ac­ters move around. (Usu­al­ly, such things go right past me, even if there’s a map.) Thanks to Good Reads, I know that there’s a novel­la, “Out of the Dark,” on Wel­don’s site that takes place between this book and Spec­tre.

I’ve also been brows­ing through the archives at Two Lumps, thanks to a link from . I had a pair of Russ­ian Blues who were entire­ly too much like Ebenez­er and Snooch! If you’re a vet­er­an of cat cohab­i­ta­tion, be care­ful when read­ing. I rec­om­mend not hav­ing a drink in hand (or in mouth) and being care­ful to emp­ty your blad­der before you start read­ing.

Kyoshi is busy telling me that he still does­n’t want to cud­dle with any­body but Katie, but he wants her home NOW! RIGHT NOW! And that we real­ly have to stop let­ting the kit­ten out of the house with­out his per­son­al super­vi­sion.

I’ve long known that there were peo­ple who inflict indig­ni­ties like sweaters and even tiny lit­tle boots on their canine com­pan­ions. I had no idea that the dog­gy fash­ion had become so very fash­ion­able, though.

Then I saw it. One moment I’m sur­round­ed by bird feed­ers and cat toys, the next, there it is: an entire row of Canine Cou­ture.

I called Katie to my side to make sure I was­n’t hal­lu­ci­nat­ing, but no, she saw it too. We brought home pho­to­graph­ic evi­dence, not expect­ing you to believe us with­out it.

That par­tic­u­lar “dress” was the most eye-catch­ing of this sea­son’s dog fash­ion — at least, what that Tar­get is car­ry­ing.

We were very hap­py to come home to our sharp-clawed cats, safe in the knowl­edge that they would nev­er per­mit such a thing.