Eye of the Tiger
Tiger is an indoor cat. Aside from the fact that she is truly a 'fraidy cat, my parents decided before she arrived that she'd be an indoor cat. Our previous cat, Sam, had been the great white (and gray) hunter, depopulating our backyard of birds and shrews, and driving off a once-resident population of rabbits. Sam was an unholy terror, picking fights with cats twice his size all over the neighborhood; he was declawed and undersized, but up until he was very long in the tooth he won every fight he started. There was one last fight, though, that my parents credited greatly with the decline of his health. After that, Sam was kept indoors the remainder of his life. Not that Tiger has anything like Sam's magnificently ferocious temperament, but even before that was known my folks were resolved to keep their next cat inside the house.

But even though she's lived her whole life inside human dwellings, Tiger likes to look at the outdoors. And, weather permitting, she likes to sit on open window sills. The month of August has been living up to its fearsome reputation, with daytime highs well into the 80s almost every day, and a few brushes with *gasp* 90° Fahrenheit. But at night temperatures have been plunging back to more reasonable levels, and I've been sleeping with my bedroom window open. Tiger likes to be in my room late at night (but she refuses to sleep in here overnight, slipping out through my just-open doorway between 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning), and enjoys sitting on my open window sill and looking out into what seems to my pitiful human eyeballs to be impenetrable darkness. The air's taking its time cooling down tonight; so, my window's still closed. Pause here a moment and take a guess at what you think is going to happen. Tiger jumped up onto my window sill… and bounced off. Poor kitty! I heard a gentle thump, and turned to see a clearly surprised Tiger getting up from having landed definitely not on all fours.

She's sleeping peacefully on my bed as I type this, and with her goldfish-like memory I'm sure she won't remember a thing. Poor stupid kitty.

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
Reel Big Fish, "Turn the Radio Off" from We're Not Happy 'Til You're Not Happy (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: This one goes out to The Sardine, who's been plagued at work by the crumminess of internet radio stations.

The song "Turn the Radio Off" should not be confused with the earlier R.B.F. album Turn the Radio Off. I wonder if more bands should do that: not title an album after one song on that album, but title a later song after a previous album. I'd wager Real Can of Yams could write a song called "Good or Suck!" that would either be really good or, you know, suck.