A while ago we acquired a second cat, "Sly". Now, most people get their cats from Paws, the Humane Soceity, or even breeders. Not us. We steal 'em. We stole Frankie from our friend Winslow. Well, technically he asked us to take care of his cat. He just didn't give us a timeline. Sly we stole from our friend Eric. Last week another critter was added to the farm: Opus. Opus is a fuzzy little girl that our friends asked us to care for. Normally, this is an unsafe thing to do as Danna has a tendancy to latch onto warm fuzzy things and not let go. But, this time, Danna has proclaimed that three cats is one cat too many. There is a trouble factor, which we will represent as t, that can be used to express the level of trouble c cats bring to a house h:

t = h^c

This equation shows that the amount of trouble grows exponentially with each cat, and is proportional to a constant representing the number of fragile objects in house h. In addition, the hours of sleep z the occupants of house h get can be represented with the following equation:

z = 1/t

Last night demonstrated this inverse relationship wonderfly. I remember waking up five distinct times. Twice to the feeling of a cat landing on my stomach. Once to the smell of cat ass as one sat on my head. And twice more to the sound of a cat vomiting, either on the bed or on the carpet next to the bed. This morning we awoke to no less than three fresh hairballs, and while we waited for the carpet cleaner to work its magic on the third a fourth was produced a few feet away.

Now we could try to blame all this on Opus, the new temporary guest in our house. But most of the antics we see are not caused by Opus, but by the two existing cats. It's as if Opus is a catlyst that enables the other two cats to behave however they want. For us poor humans, there's nothing else to do but laugh.