I have a thing for P.K.

He's in charge of rodent control for Richford, but unlike most municipal employees he doesn't let his job description limit what he does. If you come into the town hall and he's downstairs, he comes right over and makes you feel welcome.

P.K. knows how I feel about him and he likes to brush up against me, the rascal. The other day, when no one was looking, I reached down and gave him the kind of caress better imagined than described.

Um, I did mention that P.K. is short for Pretty Kitty and he's a cat, right?

I am one of those cat people. I adore cats and I'm a bit afraid that when I get even older and even more eccentric than I am now that I might end up one of those old ladies with, like, 89 cats or something. Jeepers, I hope not ... but you never know about these things, eh.

Almost all my cats have been adults, strays who wandered into my life. When my daughter left home for CEGEP, I got Zubby, my second kitten since my university days. He promptly bonded to my husband. Five years later, I am *still* miffed about this.

Zubby is a passionate hunter and very, very proud of his dead things. I wouldn't have any problem with this--hey, I figure anything that a well-fed house cat catches is probably not a candidate for Mensa--except that Zubby brings his culls from the local gene pool into the house. We have tried to dissuade him from this, but he just can't grok that we're not into dead things.

Most of the year he can't get into the house without our help. If we see him with a dead thing in his mouth we just don't let him in until he gets rid of it.

But summer (which happens to be his peak hunting season) is also the season that we open the windows at the head and foot of our bed. Zubby has figured out how to slide open the window screens and get into the house.

I can't begin to tell you how icky it is to have a cat come in through the window over your head and drop a dead mouse on your bed.

Even worse is when he brings in what he assumes is a dead thing, but which in fact turns out to be a "playing dead" thing. My spousal unit has had to chase down everything from chipmunks to bats courtesy of Zubby's largesse.

You know, Paul's got great reflexes for a guy his age.