The felines were bugging me for something to eat so I laid out a good spread after I lost the 10th race at Philly Park - beef bits, whitefish, cod and tuna.

The white speckles you see on the rubber mat in front of the kitchen sink are not defects in the product. They are "claw scratches" from cats that need to wear their claws down every now and again. Yes, we have have store-bought scratching equipment here and the cats have left the furniture alone but there is something about that rubber mat that they love. And they can have it.

Dogs don't share their feed dishes and most become angry when a human goes near them when they are eating. Even the guy that gave them the meal.

I have learned that cats will happily and gently share food within a family and that gobblers will even back away to make room in order to permit a littermate entrance to a feed dish. In the foreground here we see Mister Mittens sampling the beef bits with gravy that her kittens have abandoned to plow into some fish.

Those ancient comedy movies that had cats following fish had it right. They will eat a lot of meat as carnivores and hunt birds, mice and rats but they go absolutely bonkers over fish.

I have been a "dog man" my entire life but when 1/8 Pole brought the young Mister Mittens into the house last October for a meal and a rubdown I knew she was special. A seed got planted into my heart. How she lasted last winter as an outdoor stray I will never know but she has a home for life now.

Several years ago, I had friends over for dinner. I was at our weekend place in the "country" (I lived on Manhattan at the time) I had taken main course out of the oven...squab stuffed with apples and sausage..which I would never eat but my guests would.

I heard this wailing, pitiful cry outside and turned to see a cat clawing his way half way up my screen door. The aroma of the squab was more than the cat could bear...wafting through the air and "torturing" the cat . who eventually got my portion

Cats are great!

There is nothing like being an old fart and waking up in the morning with a young girl with lovely green eyes in your bed staring at you with interest up close.

OK, so it's Mister Mittens looking for breakfast but it's still better than nothing at my age.

Damn, I love that cat and her kittens. They are just lovely wonderful creatures.