Chicago played its very own April Fools joke on us today, by suckering us with a gorgeous, warm morning then slugging us with snow and sleet in the afternoon and evening. Great.

I had the following IM conversation with Sarah (Jane's Sarah) about yesterday's post:

SDCrawford: good blog
sjerslix: Thanks
SDCrawford: for a minute there I thought you were having all the guilt of a
Catholic
SDCrawford: bad Episcopalian
sjerslix: Hey, my mom was raised Catholic -- it's in the blood
SDCrawford: my fav quote to define Episcopalian from priests:
SDCrawford: you have questions... we have questions!

And if that's not comforting, what is?

I had to take the cats to the vet today. Joy. I decided to snag Mongo first, as he's usually the one who panics more. I swooped him up from the couch as he cried and yowled, then popped him in the carrier with minimal trauma.

Bug, tragically, is not stupid. She saw what was going on and fled. I've determined a few things:

• I need to get doors that you can close -- and keep closed -- from the outside.
  
• To hell with double or queen-size beds
  
• If I keep the double/queen-size beds, they need to be higher off the ground so I can squirrel under them just as well as the cats do.
  
• No matter what happens, I really need to clean under the beds, and other major pieces of furniture, much more often.
  
• If Wendy had not been available to run interference, I would have been toast.

We finally liberated Bug from inside the lining of the box spring in the guest room, but she managed to draw a bit of blood on the way to the carrier. Ow.

Then trapped in the car with two pitiful cats -- Bug silent and glaring at me, Mongo crying and peeing. So now my car is redolent of cat piss. It's a beautiful thing. Bug checked out fine, but Mongo apparently has hyperthyroidism -- I need to call the vet tomorrow to find out what the hell I can do about that.

Fortunately, my cats have very short attention spans. By the time I got home, they had apparently forgiven me -- Mongo snuggled up as soon as I sat on the couch, and Bug deigned to have her ears scratched. She was freaked when I moved the cedar chest back by the bed, though.

Of course, they could just be lulling me into a false sense of security. I would not be surprised to find poop in my shoes, or a ring of hairballs around the bed, or mysterious claw marks on my face tomorrow morning.