Fuzzy Guys - Unconditional Love and Crap On The Carpet

Last week I wrote about joining my cousin and her husband on a quest to buy a male alpaca. After discovering that the alpaca equivalent of kicking the tires is to give your prospect's testicles a good squeeze, I have decided that the universal maxim of alpaca shopping should be something like;

No ifs, ands or buts, the proof is in the nuts.

Or,

 
He'll be a delight if the cojones are right.

Or,

Last weekend I sang and played my guitar at an Alpaca Open House in Indiana. It was at Honey's Alpaca Ranch, owned by my cousin Heide and her husband Kurt, not too far from Indianapolis.

Alpacas make a better audience than you might think. They are not real big on applause, probably because they only have two toes, but at least they don't stand in front of you having shouted conversations with each other while you're playing. And all in all, they seemed appreciative.

But then I may be taking too much credit. When I first plugged in the guitar microphone and got a blast of feedback, they charged the stage like a herd of fans at a Hanna Montana concert.

Cats are kind of strange.

I guess this will come as a surprise to absolutely nobody. For people who don't much care for cats, it probably goes a long way toward explaining why they... well, don't much care for cats. And for those of us who inexplicably do like the fuzzy little maniacs, I guess it is at least one of the reasons why we do.

It's been a while since I've talked about my cats here. We're down to two now, Libby, a.k.a. "The Phantom," and Mindy, a.k.a. "I'm Not Fat, I'm Just Fluffy." Aside from my wife and the vet, nobody living has actually seen Libby for a couple of years. I know she's real, though, on account of the steady conversion of money to cat food then to stinky litter, with an occasional vet bill thrown in.

First published July 29, 2005

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Brenna the Dog, the big scary
Doberman who is actually a giant cream puff with fuzzy ears. Now I’ve
been asked to provide equal time for our cats. Ok, here goes.

First
off, I’m pretty sure we have three cats. I’m not entirely sure, because
you can never be entirely sure of anything when it comes to cats. I
have my suspicions that one of them might be a really tiny covert CIA
agent in a kitty suit, but so far Karl Rove has been
uncharacteristically silent on the subject...