Is My Cat Really an

Is My Cat Really an Alien?

I am getting very suspicious of Aliera.

She has been tearing around the house in what I consider a sinister manner, because there is no apparent reason for it. No catnip, no substance abuse of any kind, no stimulating activities. She’s gone from a typical cat who sleeps for 22 hours a day to a small tornado running an indoor marathon. And she keeps biting me.

I think she’s taking samples.

Sethra’s collar has somehow disappeared, too. I originally thought that she got it caught in the blinds, which she gets hung up in on a regular basis; but now I’m wondering if Aliera has sent it back to the mother ship for analysis and replication, so that the hordes of little furry aliens planning to invade us will have perfect disguises as ordinary house cats.

I’m not sure what they want, exactly, but it’s not Friskies Ocean Fish with Salmon Paté, that’s for sure. I got a batch of this flavor (or rather Michele, who was shopping for me, got them) because a vet on one of my forums said salmon was a very good food for cats; but I forgot that they’d earlier shown disdain for the paté-style cat food, and apparently that was the only one she found that had salmon. With each succeeding offering they’ve eaten less and less of it, and last night they simply turned up their noses without taking a single bite.

Maybe I’m onto something here. Remember Anthony Boucher’s short story “Nine-Finger Jack”? The narrator found he was married to an alien, an advance scout for an invasion force, and there was only one substance that could destroy them….

Literary note: Bruce and I went to Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer’s book signing for their new collaboration, Don’t Look Down. Bruce wrote a bit about it in his blog. (Hilde didn’t feel like coming.) I was a bit frustrated because my copy of the book hadn’t arrived yet, but I printed out a copy of the ad for the book for them to sign, and will paste it into the book. I have now read it, and can recommend it. A surprisingly high number of people on amazon.com have given it bad reviews, and I’m not sure why. The book does have flaws, but I’ve read so many MUCH worse novels that I can easily overlook them; on the other hand, its virtues—wit, good dialogue, very likeable characters, lots of action—make it a definite keeper for me. Crusie writes the female PoV and Mayer the male, and they blend together seamlessly IMHO. She’s a director called in to film the end of a movie after the previous director dropped dead; he’s a Green Beret on leave hired on as advisor and stunt double by the clueless male star. Then we get stolen pre-Columbian jade phalluses, the CIA, multiple treacheries, a precocious five-year-old, and a one-eyed alligator who doesn’t know that eating people is wrong, and the fun just never stops.

Summer in Arizona is here. It was 99 degrees today, and is due to hit triple digits tomorrow. My furnace is dead and my A/C and swamp cooler are both in a state of desuetude, so I’m due to spend a fortune replacing the whole schmeer.

And the season for letting cats sleep on top of me—especially the fluffy one—is definitely over.