hey, I love my cat too, but ...

I still remember (ok, I've got pictures) when my now 14-year-old cat looked resentfully at my smaller-than-him new baby daughter, who was blissfully unaware of the sibling rivalry. She's two years younger than him, and I never let her forget that he's part of the family too. Although she's stopped asking me if we can replace him with a dog, so I guess he's finally grown on her.

Much to my annoyance, this typically fussy feline sleeps between my knees, because I don't want him to suffer being shut up alone in a cold room all night. (I used to lock him in the bathroom with the litter and his food, to avoid the tussles with him in bed. But I've gone soft.)

We felt sufficiently conjoined to this lovable Siamese sabra, that we paid the airlines something like $300 each way to take him with us to Toronto and back to Israel two years later.

And yet, I'm not a cat person any more than I'm a kid person. I have no interest in snapshots of other people's kids, and wouldn't want "the world" (AS IF my readership were so impressive) gawking at pictures of my luscious pre-teen. But the thought of posting pictures of Sunny the Cat on my blog strikes me as banal in the extreme. Naturally, I have a few pictures of him, which I shoot when his adorableness impresses me, but they rarely capture his edible cuteness, and are unremarkable. Like pictures of spectacular scenery, unless you're Ansel Adams, the interest is often lost in the translation from the naked eye.

So it did surprise me to read that Allison wonders "why, in the big-time blogging circles, it's considered respectable and serious to post daily photos and obsessive descriptions of one's CAT, [but if you do the same regarding your child, you get typed as a girly-blog]." Eh?Respectable and serious? Sez who? I get a serious YAWN when I see cat-posting.

However, I did run into an exception the other day, noteworthy for its gross-out factor fascination. You'll appreciate my meaning if you follow the link. (Thanks to Meryl for that zen moment.)