Here�s a great story you�re all going to love: it�s wonderful and involves love and the deep, deep bond that a girl can have with her beloved cat. Like Lassie, or Black Beauty, right? A classic inter-species, platonic (as far as you know) love story of deep emotion. I�m going to tell this story right now to distract myself from the loud, loud talking of the coworkers I now sit amongst, in my new office. The bitterness I feel over losing my private office will eventually wear off, but for now, I can�t concentrate on anything, owing to the constant talking and random asking of ludicrous questions. No, I do not know where your pencil cup is. Does it matter? Use a coffee cup. It�s not like that pencil cup is made of gold and signed by Jesus.

Moving into a communal office space is, for my coworkers, an invitation to chat loudly and report on each new discovery in the boxes being unpacked. "Hey! Here's that letter opener I was looking for!" Each discovery leads to a long reminiscence about, say, the origins of the object. I believe that the occasion of moving into a communal office space is not the time for loud talking. Rather, it is the time for typing quietly in your blog about how your cat threw up.

Which reminds me: here is a great story you�re all going to love. Also, it involves a slight amount of throw-up, but to protect you from that element, I will substitute the words �burst into song� instead of �barfed.� You�re welcome.

So� a few days ago, my little orange cat disappeared. And, as I have reported, she also returned, a little bedraggled but generally in good shape. She slept on my neck that night, to maximize her exposure to my healing rays, and also to cement our psychic bond.

I arrived home yesterday and after taking the dogs for a walk, and feeding all the animals, I made myself an elaborate dinner of Grape Nuts and expired milk. I didn�t 100% realize that the milk was expired, but when I did notice, I�d already poured it, and it was only expired by one day, and what the hey, right? It smelled fine. It tasted fine.

So, there I was with my Grape Nuts, and the phone rang, and I got up and left the bowl temporarily unattended, with a pool of expired milk in the bottom. When I returned, Orange Kat was finishing the milk. �That�s OK,� I thought, �It is just one more experience that will draw us closer together.� And everything was great, until 45 seconds later, when Orange Kat burst into song in a giant, exuberant flood under the bed. Yes, I had been eating Grape Nuts in the bed. (If you are feeling judgmental, you can just go start your own damn blog to register your complaints.)

So, there was little Orange Kat, singing and singing under the bed, and then she ran into the dining room and burst into song once again, tra la la, and a few more times, albeit with less enthusiasm, although very close to my latest art project.

�Poor Orange Kat!� I thought, feeling guilty over her �latest musical outburst as I got out the rags and started to clean up. I hadn�t realized she had a milk allergy, or I would not have left an unattended bowl of expired milk near her.

I had to get to band practice, so I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. I was still feeling a little woozy from cleaning up after the cat. Lo and behold, the wooziness multiplied and blossomed, causing me, moments later, to burst into a song of my own! It was so �great... �Aha!� I thought, between verses, �Orange Kat and I are sharing the deep bond of food poisoning!� And that, my friends, is a bond no man can break.

So, here is a small amount of advice from me and Orange Kat to you: if you have some milk, and it looks fine and smells fine and even tastes fine, and you�re 100% certain that is is perfectly OK, but the label says it�s expired, walk on the safe side of the street and don�t drink it. Just a suggestion.

Star of the day. . .The Glands