Our cat Joseph, Joey for short, is the best tempered cat in the world. He used to be a wild outdoor cat in the country before he adopted us. He was quite the brave kitty never hesitating to take on all kinds of wild beasts. In the evenings, I'd dig out engorged ticks hidden underneath his long fur. Despite jabbing and poking with tweezers and a knife, Joey would just lay on my lap purring. Joey used to follow us on walks and would come running when our car drove into the neighborhood.

When we moved to the city, we brought Joey with us and he became an indoor cat. Now he follows me around the house like a dog and always wants to be a part of the action. There's never been a better cat for children. He has never once hissed or struck out against anyone and doesn't even mind being used as a pillow.

A couple of months ago, Drew was wearing his Incredibles pajamas and demonstrating his best impression of Dashiell "Dash" Parr. Drew was running up and down the hall so fast we could hardly see him. Joey just sat in the middle of it all, taking it all in, in his typical fashion. A better cat there has never been. (YouTube version after the jump.)

Joey is not a fan of the sun (or flash) interrupting his napping. The poor thing only gets twenty-two hours of sleep a day, no wonder he's always exhausted.

Will and Joey in a serious stare down. Two equally pitted rivals. Joey commands unparalleled speed and agility but deep down under lurks a fraidy cat. Will is fearless and has no comprehension of boundaries (or ability to read labels). A battle of the ages...who will assert control of the food dish.

I haven't been at my desktop computer for three weeks due to my graphics card going out. The minute I get it fixed and sit down to do a little computing...I have a partner. Even Dogbert didn't scare him away.

When I tell you our cat is just a big ball of fur...I'm not exaggerating.

Much to the enjoyment of Drew and to the consternation of our cat, our backyard has become the home to a four-legged good luck charm.

Anybody got a good stew recipe?

My sister called this week to tell me that she had to put her nineteen year old cat, Chin-Lee, to sleep. It's unbelievable that he'd been around since 1985...the Soviet Union was still an Evil Empire, New Coke came out followed closely by Coke Classic, the Titanic was located, we watched Breakfast Club and Back to the Future while listening to Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas and USA for Africa's We Are The World...and I was a lifeguard and freshman in college. Chin-Lee was a great cat. One of the five fastest land animals in his youth and one of the orneriest cats in his old age.

One of the funniest stories was one time when my sister got Chin-Lee a new cat pan. He proceeded to stand in it, stare at my sister, put his butt over the edge and poop on the carpet...making it abundantly clear that he didn't approve of the new pan. This continued until my sister retrieved the old pan from the garbage. Eventually, she solved the dilemma by putting old filthy poop-filled litter in the new pan and slowly changing out the old litter for new over the course of a few days. Chin-Lee will certainly be missed.

While creating the prior post, I played the video a number of times while clipping excess footage from the front and back ends and converting it from avi to wmv which reduced the file size by 75%. As is often the case when I'm working on the computer, my cat, Joey, was in the room napping. Joey is incredibly good natured. In fact his vet, who specializes in cats, said that Joey was the best tempered cat he had ever seen.

While I was upstairs editing the video, Joey jumped up on the table between me and the monitor, which he has never done before, and poked his head around the sides of the monitor looking for the growling cat. I picked him up and put him down on the floor and that was the end of that.

Later that night while I downstairs, I heard Joey meowing repeatedly and continuously. I don't remember him ever doing this before and I assumed he had gotten locked in a closet or something and wanted out. I went upstairs where the meowing was coming from and there he was, standing on the computer table meowing at the dark silent monitor. Obviously, the video had some impact on him!

My sister has a nineteen year old Siamese cat named Chin Lee. Despite being hard of hearing with poor vision and arthritic, he has managed to maintain a his wonderful disposition as you can see in his video if you click on the nice kitty below.