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We took the opportunity to do a little catblogging

After a quick check of the backup camera's manual, we remembered to use the flash for this backlit photo of -- in Tuck's words -- Admiral Baby Cakes taking command.

Getting back up to speed with the fallback digital camera -- a workmanlike Hewlett-Packard [Those dirty rotten scoundrels!] Photosmart 735 -- while our first love, the Pentax Optio 450, visits the spa for its annual renewal in Golden, Colorado, we took the opportunity to do a little catblogging.

Between rounds of superball this morning, Tiny performs a Muybridge trot across the kitchen counter to greet her opponent.

If only we'd reread the H-P manual earlier, we would have known when Tiny initiated a rousing game of crazyball just after breakfast to use the "burst" feature to capture multiple still pictures "as long as the shutter button is held down." As it was, we just kept reclicking and hoping for the best.

"I happened to be peeking through a gap in the fence with my camera at the moment the man jumped," said photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who "pioneered the art of street photography." Similarly, we happened to be peeking into the kitchen this morning at the moment Tiny jumped -- and caught -- a superball.

By clicking and clicking as fast as we could, turning our camera's eye as nimbly as we could to follow Tiny while she pursued her quarry -- up onto counter, down onto floor and back again across the kitchen landscape -- even without the "burst" feature, we lucked out and caught a stop-motion Cartier-Bresson moment.

Update: For more Cartier-Bresson moments, click on over to Carnival of the Cats #131 at House of Chaos, where the antic felines in residence -- "That doesn't include you dog ! Get lost" -- are presenting "a selection of feline extravaganzas to marvel over."

Update II:  Cats, dogs and all things bright and beautiful are welcome at Modulator's Friday Ark #106.

"Nevertheless prepared to make the case for the US"

It only smells when you kiss his gorgeous mug.  Babe (right) had an encounter with a skunk in the wee hours at Goomp's yesterday, and the memory lingers on. Two of the beautiful people -- nephew Chris and his enchanting lady friend Nicole -- dropped by for champagne and doibs Sunday morning. Chris applies the sniff test, above.  As Susie noted when she heard the news, it must be embarrassing for someone of Baby Cakes's gravitas to be so malodorously disposed, but he's managing heroically.  Anybody out there know of a miracle cure?  Googling suggests tomato juice is out, while hydrogen peroxide mixed with baking soda is in.

"Some Americans argue there's no point trying to win over the rest of the world because the leading nation in any era is always doomed to be unpopular? Do you agree?" Clive Davis asks former Reagan speechwriter and current Hoover Institution Research Fellow Peter Robinson in a lively and quotable e-mail interview:

Oh, sure.  Without a doubt.  What citizen of another country wouldn’t feel some resentment at Number One?  But it’s possible to hold Europe and the United States together, even so.  I consider Thatcher instructive here.

"If you had Karen Hughes' job, what would be your first three priorities?" asks Davis:

Honestly, at this point I’d have exactly one priority: to find, and to hire, Arab-speaking Americans — native speakers, with a feel for the Arab world, who are nevertheless prepared to make the case for the United States. Lots of such people exist. It drives me to distraction that so few occupy prominent positions in the State Department. Note, though, that the armed forces have done pretty well on this score: General Abizaid is a fluent Arab speaker.

We adore General Abizaid . . . 'Have caught him from time to time on C-Span reruns.  He is the very model of a native speaker with a feel for the Arab world who is "nevertheless prepared to make the case for the United States."  You absolutely must read the whole interview, wherein Robinson notes that "Despite the constant carping, no responsible Democrat wants to pull out of Iraq, while no responsible Republican wants to increase our troop levels at all dramatically." Our blog buddy Frank of The Cool Blue Blog made the point big time here the other day. Here's our fave bit of business of all, Robinson's answer to "What's the best book on America that most Europeans have probably never heard of?":

But aside from [my own book], I’d read Mark Twain, both Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Yes, I know Europeans have already heard of Twain. Really, though, you can’t find a more gorgeous or more accurate portrait of this big, free-wheeling, rambunctious country.

We fell in love with Huck and Big Jim in high school as the two oners made their wise and witty way together down the Mississippi on a raft. As we told Scott Johnson of PowerLine awhile back, we think Mark Twain would have been a blogger. We learned to our horror in recent years that politically correct "educators" had determined Mark Twain's masterpiece was racist. That was number two beside our sorrow at the loss of scientific intelligence betrayed by the inroads made by Intelligent Design "theorists" in our day. Some hope has come in recent curricular developments that would bring biblical studies into public schools as a historical subject rather than religious indoctrination.

Update:  Lots of intelligent designs at the 82nd Carnival of the Cats at Where the Dolphins Play.

What a swell party that was

The first game of the Series (How about those Sox!) just getting under way last night (note our own Gold Toe sox in the foreground) and Tiny getting off on the new Coleman "ComfortSmart Quickbed" set up on the studio floor so the three of us -- Tuck, Susie and ourselves -- could watch in total comfort, able to doze off at will.

The double birthday party for Tuck and Susie last night was perfect -- details below -- and recalled the magic of intimate parties past. Above, a page from our snail blog of yore, a "magnetic" photo album wherein we arrayed artfully cropped snail photo prints and laboriously hand-pressed headlines (one letter at a time) made with something called "Letraset." The Heinous Furpiece was our beloved Bill -- above right in our loving arms and below making cocktail conversation with Susie.  He was the kitty of our salad days who wandered in one day and said, as Brigham Young did when he came upon the valley that would become Salt Lake City, "This is the place." Such a boy.

A cat named Bill posed for a photo op in our funny old side-loading washer/drier (there WERE such things) from Tuck's parents way back when (left).  Susie remembered all these years later and went (goes?) "Eureka" when she found the fab pop-up birthday card that Tuck calls "the best card I've ever received."  It's a keeper.

Tuck demonstrates condition of his current crop of working gloves over birthday dinner of beef strogie and candied carrots last night as he is gifted with two brand new gorgeous pairs -- one for yard work, the other (pile lined) for snow blowing?

The morning after: Fresh eggs from The Country Hen arrayed for dropping into the poaching pan while bacon was frying, English muffins were toasting and Hollandaise was thickening preparatory to yet another triumphal Eggs Benedict breakfast at Chelsea-by-the-Sea

In the morning, in the evening, ain't we got fun?

BBC gets first down

The battered BBC soldiers on with help for "us Brits who are only used to watching rugby and the 'real' football," reports "A Welsh View":

As Super Bowl XXXVIII approaches, BBC Sport Online provides a simple guide to the basics of the National Football League.

Comments our expert American correspondent:

You can tell the BBC wrote it: Here we play on fields and have teams -- not pitches and sides. But other than a little different language, they explained the game very well.