We figured that now that the new cats have been here for two weeks the notion that this is their home is securely imprinted and it was time to give them their first taste of the great outdoors.

When we opened the door this morning and our new calico cat Enid walked out on the back deck she went mental. "OMIGAWD, did you know about this? Did you realize that there's a WORLD out here?" pretty much sums up the attitude of a cat who has probably never been outside in her life.

She was completely overwhelmed. There was so much absorb that she was practically giving herself whiplash watching everything from birds flying overhead to branches moving in the wind. After an hour of being riveted to the deck, she asked to come in and promptly fell asleep on our bed, exhausted.

Norma, on the other hand, spent the first year of her life as an outdoors stray. Her attitude to the door to the outside being opened to her? Well, as she rocketed out she shot me a look over her shoulder that said, "Lady, it's about freakin' time." Then she spent several hours methodically exploring and as she went along rubbed her face on various things, a cat's way of marking territory.

Norma now owns the front step, the Marnmobile, the spousal unit's truck, our woodshed, a considerable amount of the wood in our woodshed, the fire escape, the back deck, the barbecue and selected portions of the exterior of our home.

We're hoping she'll still let us live here if we continue to provide food, water, kitty litter and affection. If Norma puzzles out the concepts of "money" or "rent" the spousal unit and I will probably need good legal representation.

I love Enid for her goofy good humour, her kitten playfulness, the way she constantly trills and chirps her delight at the world. But, well, to say that Enid is not the sharpest pencil in the box is to put the situation kindly.

Norma, on the other hand, may prove to be our new gold standard in cat intelligence, a distinction hitherto held by a small tabby cat named Lily who died a few years ago. Lily was so insanely smart that she overcame a cat's natural fear of the water and used to wade into the shallow end of my pond, stand very still until a goldfish swam near, and then hook it out on to the ground as a bear hooks salmon out of a river.

Two weeks with us, and Norma already recognizes her name. She has figured out how to open the door that goes under our bathtub enclosure--you have to press on this door for it to spring open. It's flush with the surrounding wood, so she can't hook it open with her claws. This means she has had to watch me open this door and then mimic what I've done.

Uh oh.

Not only have I hidden my credit cards from Norma, I am very careful to never, ever say my any of my PIN out loud while she is around. I think we can all agree that the horror of opening a VISA bill and finding $2,500 in catnip and kitty treats charged to it is the sort of ugliness that should be avoided at all costs.

Today was also Day 1 of the new, high octane running program. Yes, I have ramped things up from Death March Lite to Oh Yeah You'll Learn About Pain, Maggot.

The instructions for Day 1 were remarkably simple. Run for 45 minutes, it said. The longest I have run to date is 35 minutes. You would think that adding a mere ten minutes to this time would be a piece of cake, a stroll in the park, a mere trifle.

You would be so very, very wrong.

At 35 minutes I had finished my 5K, my three miles. Thanks to a very stiff breeze, I was barely sweating. This lulled me into a false sense of security. I ignored the warmth in my calves, the soft protests of my thighs, the beginnings of an ache forming in my shoulders and continued running past my drive.

Then right about minute 40 my whole body threw a hissy fit. Despite the stiff breeze, sweat started to burn in my eyes. My calves went from warm to Ring of Fire. My thighs began threatening to shut down. The beginnings of an ache in my shoulders blossomed into a full blown knot. Oh, and my buttal region started to get snarky.

The last five of those 45 minutes was a study in gutting things out. It wasn't that it hurt to breathe, it wasn't that I hadn't been drinking enough water, it was simply a case of pushing everything beyond where it wanted to go. Here it is, nearly five hours later, and my buttal region is still whining.

I've decided to keep my aging carcass in the dark about the fact that Day 2 of the Oh Yeah You'll Learn About Pain, Maggot program involves a series of 400 meter sprints. As far as my body is concerned, Sunday is my day of rest, Monday is cross-training at the gym and we'll just keep it in the dark about Tuesday.

The kindness of strangers continues to amaze me. So far my three loyal readers have sponsored my Jog for the Jugs on Oct. 5 in Montreal to the tune of $835, inching ever closer to that $1,000 goal.

Added to the Bazonga Booster Hall o' Fame have been:

Another Booby Prize has been offered by one of my three loyal readers! Ileana has generously donated a painting for someone who sponsors me in the breast cancer run. A painting! An original painting! You can pick the subject. She's a student, so if you could help her with postage, it would be great. Again, as with past Booby Prizes, I ask that the sponsor contact the donor directly and iron out details.

Don't worry, the upper echelons here at MarnCo (the ruthless multinational behind The Big Adventure) fully realize that if we continually bombard our three loyal readers with pleas for buckazoids between now and Oct. 5, they will probably hunt us down and kill us all in our sleep.

So the pleas, unlike the training, will taper down and we will shortly return you to our regularly scheduled programming.

Such as it is.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 389.63 miles (627 kilometers)

Goal for 2003: 500 miles - 804.5 kilometers