There are a number of neighborhood cats who frequent our house (mainly because Karen leaves a bowl of food out for them in the mornings). There's a dark-brown medium-hair, very affectionate, whom Karen has dubbed "Blossom". Blossom was joined by a beautiful snow tiger (lynx point) Siamese whom we call "Boo-Boo" (after Jay's pet name for the object of his affection in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back), a skittish orange tabby tom without a tail, whom we call "Milhouse", and a tiny black kitten, also skittish, whom we named "Loud Harold" because of his constant meowing. Actually, it's more like the alarm buzzer from Dark Star than a meow.

Softies that we are, we wanted to take them all in, but so far we've only adopted Boo-Boo (because she's declawed, thus less able to defend herself, and she also had the nerve-wracking habit of pelting madly across the street to greet us when we came home). I took her to the vet one morning, and had them give her the full battery of tests and shots. Surprisingly, she was in excellent health; no feline leukemia or HIV, no worms or other diseases. So I gave Slim and our indoor cats a preventative flea treatment and brought her in.

She wasn't afraid of Slim; simply irritated at his constant habit of coming up and sniffing her until she batted at him. Anastasia, my Russian Blue, hissed at her a couple of times but quickly came to terms with the idea of another cat living in the house. Romana, Karen's lynx point, is a different story.

She hisses. She growls. She glowers and lashes her tail madly whenever Boo-Boo comes into the room. We were hoping she'd accept another cat of her own breed, but she's insanely jealous. Actually, it reminds me of SCA group dynamics, in a number of ways.

Last night, we went out with Sev & Lisa to see Austin Powers in Goldmember. Although we all enjoyed it, I can't say it was my favorite of the three. Though there were some great gags (the opening comes especially to mind), there was a lot of reused material (for which, to their credit, they did poke fun at themselves), and the Goldmember character was weak and not terribly funny.

Apart from the Goldmember role, Myers did an excellent job in the already-established characters (as usual, his facility with accents is excellent), and I was pleasantly surprised by Beyoncé Knowles' performance.

I was fascinated by Verne Troyer's "stunts". On more than one occasion, he was slammed brutally against a wall, so hard that they had to be using a dummy — but then he would get up without the camera cutting away. However they did it, it was very well done.

The outtakes during the credits, as well as some of the credits themselves, hinted at some interesting deleted scenes. Can't wait for the DVD to come out, so I can actually see what they were.