Back in the Neolithic days before there were blogs and cheezburgers, the standard upon which website lameness was judged was “pictures of my cats.” The more of those you had, the lamer your website was. As a survivor of those days, I’m generally loathe to write about my cats on the blog, since I feel like I’m teetering toward lameness whenever I do, but since a surprising number of folks sent thoughtful e-mails or comments about our loss of Lyla the Nice White Cat, on the Times Union blog and on Facebook, I do feel I owe a status report on things of a feline nature hereabouts.

We’ve zeroed in on Ladyjane as the official name of The New Grey Cat, so thanks for all the thoughtful and clever suggestions. I’m not quite sure what Ladyjane’s subtitle is yet, though. She’s quite busy, like Rosie the Busiest Orange Cat in the World, and her feet are truly awe-inspiring in a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not sort of way: she’s got five full toes on each back foot, five full toes on her left front foot, and five full toes plus a little dewclaw between the thumb and the fist on her right front foot, for a total of 20 full toes and a dewclaw, compared to the normal cat complement of 16 full toes plus two dewclaws. She also has a very odd voice, and talks to herself pretty much continually when she’s awake, sounding like a bumblebee as she chirps and buzzes around the house. So she could be Ladyjane the Busy Big-footed Bumblebee Cat, though that seems a smidge unwieldy.

Ladyjane and Rosie have moved past the mutual assured hisstruction phase of new cat relationships and are now at the “I see you and I smell you, and we may sit next to each other, not touching, but we shall neither look at each other nor actively acknowledge that we like sitting together, lest grumbling commence.” The cat tower of power in my office provides convenient perches to facilitate this phase, as per the photo at right. They’ve actually done quite well together, all things considered, and having Ladyjane around has certainly served to occupy Rosie’s prodigious intellectual abilities, which was the objective, so mission accomplished in that regard.

Okay, so barring some new dramatic developments, I will now try to raise the quality of my blog back from the “pictures of my cats” stage. I’m just waiting to do so until you all forget that I was predicting that the Capitals would beat the Penguins in the NHL Eastern Conference Semifinals, and that I was gloating about the Royals playing .600 ball, right before they embarked upon a six game losing streak. Move along. Nothing to see here.