It’s Feline Friday, and time for another round of our favorite cats. This week, our cats are joined by Ms. Olive, the store cat in Hilo Bay Books, which we visited last Sunday. She is really a fine cat who enjoyed welcoming guests into the store. She’s well worth a visit to Hilo Bay Books, all by herself. The fine collection of books is just an added bonus. In any case, you can see this week’s photos by clicking this link or by clicking on the photo of nap time Toby, below.

Cat people can read on, others might want to just check the photos instead.

Okay, time to tell a tale on myself. Meda says it sounds demented. “But it’s your blog,” she says, shrugging.

The story involves Mr. Toby, seen here innocently napping on a recent afternoon.

Toby’s birthday is sometime right about now. He’s nine years old now. I still think of him as that tiny kitten rescued from the wild four-acre area in front of our house, on the third try, back in late October 2002, although he’s now a hefty cat weighing in at over 14 pounds.

Back then, he had to be bottle fed after the rescue, then he slowly began trying to eat canned cat food. What a mess! He was a “food face” for a week or more before getting the hang of the process. We finally found his proper name several weeks after the rescue.

Toby and I now have a little morning routine. I get up around 5 a.m., find my way in the dark out into the kitchen, make sure the cats have water, then sit down at the dining table and open my laptop where I check my email, check for any overnight blog comments (usually spam), do a quick news scan, then start the day’s blog post.

Toby, meanwhile, shows up on the table right away, usually rubbing his face on the corner of the laptop screen in that marking behavior of cats we all know so well. He knows it annoys me, but he also knows I’ll quickly break and give him my full attention, even if only briefly. So we go around and around. He does the screen, I shoo him away, then I stop and give him some pets, and we repeat. Sometimes he tries to walk across the keyboard, sometimes he’s content leaving his mark on the screen. Round and round we go. Then it’s time for breakfast, and Toby joins the other cats in kitchen while I dish up and distribute the morning meal into eight dishes.

That’s a normal morning. But I brought a cold back from Hilo and have been fighting it all week. Yesterday I got to the table and didn’t open my computer right away. Instead, I downloaded the morning’s Star-Advertiser onto my iPad and sat down to quickly scan the news. I had only a dim light on, otherwise the house was dark. Toby made a couple of passes past me on the table, but I think my coughing scared him away before he got his requisite pets.

So there I was, quietly reading the news, when I felt an unusual warmth on my right thigh. I looked down to see a spreading wet patch on my shorts. My first thought was something like, “OMG! I’ve lost bladder control and didn’t even know it!”

Then I looked up and there was the wiggling rear end of a gold cat aimed in my direction, tail proudly lifted, and a stream of warm liquid arching gracefully off the edge of the table and onto my leg, an almost direct hit. My curses as I ran for some paper towels sent Toby flying in the other direction, but instead of a scolding, he just wanted some positive attention. I guess that’s what it was all about. I quickly changed shorts, put the soiled pair in some water to soak, and returned to have a heart-to-heart with Mr. Toby.

Needless to say, I made sure to pay full attention to him this morning when I first opened my computer. Better safe than sorry.