Silence of the Gums

You recall that several weeks ago, after extensive dental surgery, our cat Popcorn was left with two teeth, down from her original 30. She was in considerable pain beforehand, though we didn't realize it. Now she feels better and is moving around more, though not much. She's almost 19. In cat years she's Mesozoic, probably Lower Cretaceous.

She's even craving a bit of lap time. I picked her up today but didn't settle her down on my manly thighs to her satisfcation. In earlier days, she would have nipped me.

Today she gummed me, an event that was painless, amusing and a little sad, just in that order. She wouldn't last a minute in the Lower Cretaceous, not anymore.

Addendum: Should I be spending time discussing my cat when I could be eviscerating George Bush? I have been working on my paper on newspaper columnists this week, and here's a quote from Carl Hiaasen, novelist and Miami Herald columnist, concerning the time he attacked his newspaper in his newspaper for getting in bed with crooked Florida developers:

I was saying these are horrible, evil monsters and they ought to be stopped. When I start writing columns about what my dog dug up that day, I want somebody to put a bullet in the back of my head and drag me away from the keyboard.

Not if I see you coming,