Onboard Serenity, in the main hangar, watching Faith operate the telemetry as Buffy, off-camera and skimming atmo, guides in a solar altimeter probe.  It counts down with a grating, crunching sound every thousand feet as an old-school display board flicks its digits - then ... passes through zero.  Jayne gives one of those swively-eye looks and asks why ain't it crashed yet?

The graunching sound continues: useful bits of brain are challenged enough to start waking up.  Waking up?  Oh yeah, must be a dream.  It's a Joss mashup blended in with some some radio news piece about a satellite, but what's that damn noise?  Grekk! Grekk! Hnrrk! Gakk!

Ah yes, it's the cat hacking up a hairball.

Wakey wakey.

Is it rude to stroke a Cat Near You when you've never seen either the beast or its feeder, but just because it is an ickle cute kitten?  I mean, is that a horrible faux pas?  Help me, Auntie Etiquette, you're my only hope.

Some memes are born to spread.  Cat owners of the world... go shopping for this.  Because your cat deserves a severed petting hand this Hallowe'en.

Cat people: does a brief nuke to warm up cat food make your impossibly picky moggy eat whatever filth you set before her, as it wafts and reeks of tasty goodies?  Or is it just mine..?

I got to get pills into my cat.  she's sussed the crumble-into-food trick and the hide-in-morsel trick.  There's just one of me: any tips on how to get a small pink pill into a small grumpy cat solo?