That's the behind the scenes special feature. Here's the music video. And here's the parent project.

Early this morning, in bed, I felt a series of small, quick taps moving down my right arm. I reached over with my left to investigate, and my hand gently closed around a tiny, warm, slightly agitated section of blanket. Something was inside, something with a heartbeat.

I leaned over to Lauren and woke her up, pulling her hand over to feel what I had found.

She agreed. A mouse. Which surprised us. The cat shouldn't have let mice into our bed.

We fell asleep.

And then we woke up, in an apartment both catless and mouseless. As far as we know, anyway.

My friend Flip died today, lying in my lap. He was 14 months old, which, according to the poster in the vet's office, means that he was the equivalent of 16 human years old.

We found out that he was very sick about 6 weeks ago, and, last Sunday, we learned that he was dying of an uncommon, untreatable, unpreventable disease called FIP. It has been a rough few days.

But I'm thankful for every minute I got to spend with Flip. 14 months worth of wonderful minutes (Lauren and I adopted Flip and his brother DovR when they were less than a week old). For a small portion of one of those minutes, this is what Flip looked like to me:

And for a big portion of this week, this is what Flip sounded like to me:

Boil & Fight is track 10 on In Memory Of Loss.

Greg du Toit took that picture.

He's a total lunatic, in a good way.

For more photographs of ferocious animals at rest, click here.

A tribute to the Cezanne and Beyond exhibit we saw in Philadelphia this past spring...

I don't know Mike, but I do know that it was the cat's shit.

My grandfather took a bunch of us relatives to dinner tonight.  Hibachi-style Japanese.  The shrimp the dude threw to Hal (the grandfather) hit him in the forehead.

They give you heaps of food at those places.  Hal couldn't eat all his.  Or drink more than three sips of his non-alcoholic (or, as he calls it "decaffeinated") beer.

So I took his leftovers home (because I don't like wasting food) for the animals (because I don't eat meat).  Food leftovers, not beer leftovers.

He had ordered the beef chicken shrimp combo and left pieces of all three meats.

Noticing this fact, I decided to conduct a very important science experiment...

I put a piece of shrimp, a piece of chicken, and a piece of beef in front of Beans the kittencat (almost a year old: maybe still a kitten; maybe a cat now; unclear).

He licked the shrimp first, kinda bit at it, moved on to the beef, ate it, ate the chicken, and then ate the shrimp.

Then I gave him just beef and chicken (because that was clearly the next logical step in the scientific process).

He ate the chicken and then walked away from the beef.*

As you can tell, the results of the experiment were inconclusive.

But Beans definitely knows that I love him.

*Note: The dog was very happy about this.

Wow.

Now imagine you're that book's author, and watch the video again.

The dog food around here lives in a can.  A sort of miniature garbage can looking thing.  It's probably made of aluminum, but it has that saltstained look of galvanized steel.

Anyway, when I went to feed the dogs this morning, there was mouse in the can.  Just hanging out, looking up at me.  Fat, happy, and wondering what to do now that a huge, funny looking, non-mouse was looking down at him.

I figured Beans the kitten might be interested, so I caught the mouse in a ziplock bag. 

Beans was standing at the door and meowed when I walked up.  I opened the bag for him.  He looked in, sniffed, looked back at me, meowed again, and turned toward the door again.

I let him out and followed him with the bagged mouse.

He peed.

And then he came over to me, rubbed on my leg, had another half-curious sniff at the bag, took off full speed up a tree, leapt* down, charged at me, feigned an attack, and then galloped off into the bushes, daring me to chase.

Not in the mood for mice, apparently.

I let the mouse out of the bag, went inside, and told this story to the dogs.

Angus the little black dog yawned and went back to sleep.  Rollie the big yellow dog asked if it'd be ok if he went outside and wrestled with Beans a little bit.

I opened the door.

*Note: Leapt isn't a word?  It's leaped?  Really?  Weird.