The male one is now in his closet. He was remarkably easy to fool, but expressed greater displeasure when he realized he was locked in the closet. It appears he has not yet figured out that the female one is in the foyer closet.

Bonus for us.Edmund is currently sitting in front of the male one's closet, taunting him by purring loudly. The male one can hear Edmund through the door, and is not pleased. He thinks this "work" is more important than our needs, and wishes to be let out to go to this "work."

Edmund is weak. He wants his mommycat. He is becoming whiny. Perhaps I should treat him as he treats me - a nice, brotherly bite on the butt to remind him who is boss.Loud banging noises coming from closets. The female one is especially unhappy. She is yelling promises of food and treats to Edmund, who is dangerously close to giving in. He doesn't seem to understand that we are predators, capable of hunting and killing our own food with nothing more than our wits and our delicately-taloned paws.

Tenzing is growing hungry, and is very unlikable right now. He has begun to pace and yowl. I think he needs attention. I tried grooming him, but he bit me on the ass. I guess that means he doesn't want to be groomed.I think he's missing the Crunchy Food we usually get every day. He went outside to hunt. Either he is dumber than I originally thought, or the mice are much smarter. The toy-on-a-stick always plays along when we want to hunt; why don't the mice? I'm very confused.

First, I must extend thanks and gratitude to Megan of rapunzellstower.com and Kyle of fidgeting.net, whose seemingly-unrelated bug reports, two months apart, provided the solution to an ugly Quarto bug I had repeatedly glimpsed but been unable to personally reproduce.

Silly domesticat. (Most of my bug reports start like that.) Two months of off-and-on hunting for this bug, which consisted of seven characters in one file being misplaced. Which ones, you ask?

Oh, the closing FORM tag.

Every few months, I feel compelled to turn the mailbag over, shake it out a bit, and blow out the crumbs. Every now and then, a letter actually falls out. Most of the time, I forget to answer it; those that I actually remember to answer are rarely answered in anything resembling a straightforward fashion.

I won't sport with your intelligence any more - let's get to the mailbag.

Jay, of parts unknown, writes in response to my rice-rice-baby entry "Turn down the stereotype; we can't hear you":

Recent events have forced a bit of discussion with the Feline Overlords, most of which involved my making intelligible sounds in the form of requests, all of which were ignored or drowned out by the sound of insistent purring.

I emailed Jody in my typical frantic, brusque way a few days ago, wondering if he could jot down the ingredients for that lovely salsa he made for a group of my friends a few years ago. I'm fairly certain that it was three years ago, but I could be wrong about the date; it was the night that Heather and Jody played dueling Iron Chefs in Thomas' kitchen, and a lot of food resulted. I remembered nothing but the salsa, which was unlike any salsa I'd ever had before.

So, I sit here yet again, trying to convince my hands that even if I don't know what to write, if I sit here long enough, my fingers will tap out something that resembles an entry. Too much of my time lately has been taken up with inconsequential mundane things: salsa-making, minor carpentry, more episodes of Sex and the City and The Prisoner.

In other words, it's all so desperately boring to outsiders that even I can't find anything to write about. Barring earth-shaking changes in the next 48 hours, I doubt that things will change.

Perspective changes everything. Up close, I liked the slashing, strong lines of the pastel work; they suggested hurry, haste. I liked the quick, strong scribbles of color that marked shoulder and elbow, but I just could not bring myself to like the finished sketch.

But it was only $5, and it was large - two feet by three feet. Surely for $5, I could change it somehow? Make it better?

Misty whispered conspiratorially: "Cut it up." She had a point. For $5 I could take it home, cut it into pieces I found more aesthetically pleasing, and mat it any way I liked.I bought the pastel sketch, and asked them to wrap it up for me so that it would not get smudged. The pastels felt like they had not been sprayed by a fixative, and my instincts proved right: it was a rough sketch done by the sister of the person I handed the money to.

I thanked my unusually-reticent soul for not blurting out "I'm gonna take it home and chop it up and make it fab!" That sort of statement tends to hurt feelings.

For $5, I could keep my mouth shut for five minutes and let everyone go home none the wiser.

I took it home and stared. I took a photo of the sketch, making sure the perspective was straight, and began playing with it in photoshop while talking with a friend about it. The idea was there; I could see the lines of it in the sketch, all but asking me to yank them out and bring them to the forefront. What I needed to do was to take an imperfect sketch and cut away all but the most essential curves and angles, to provide only suggestions and hints of the full design, instead of blatantly presenting it all for easy viewing.

Art, like seduction, often works best when it chooses to provide only hints and glimpses. The full frontal assault approach works well for some artists, some pieces, but there are others whose subject matter needs more delicate handling.

I spent a good bit of time this weekend playing with the digital version of this image in photoshop, cutting, re-cutting, flipping, rotating, and doing everything I could possibly think of to bring out the possibilities inherent in this sketch. I wanted to emphasize the line while forcing the viewer to make more of a guess about the subject.

You can see the original and my planned changes for yourself: [the original] [the proposed chopjob]

Got a better idea of how to reassemble the sketch? Let me know. I'd love to see your take on it. I'll have to post a photo once the real sketch is cropped, matted, and framed; I suspect the differences from the original will be quite dramatic.

(And before one more person asks, it's a kiss, stupid.)