Cats! What could be cuter?

I was supposed to go to the hospital today, but my allergies have been acting up, and I didn't think sneezing through my shift would offer much spiritual comfort to patients. Also, I have tons of work to do, so I'm staying home.

Meanwhile, here's the latest batch of kitty pix. All three cats were in photogenic positions the other day, so I grabbed the camera and got nice shots of all of them.

These first two are of Harley the Hilarious, sleeping upside down on a chair in the family room. Because his white belly fur is longer than his top black fur, my mother always says that he looks like his stuffing's coming out. These photographs show how apt a metaphor that is!

And here we have Figaro the Flexible, the long, skinny cat in a long, skinny box. Gary calls him the grayhound of cats because he's so lean and lithe. We think there must have been a Siamese in the woodpile somewhere.

Oddly enough, we know that both Harley and Bali are half-Siamese, but they don't look it a bit! Figgy also has that whole Siamese climbing thing going on. None of the cats sounds Siamese, though, for which I'm grateful. I grew up with two Siamese and loved them dearly, but their voices do get grating.

And here's Bali the Beautiful, posing on our dining-room rug. He really is a gorgeous cat, and he has such soft fur! Actually, all of our cats have soft fur: we think it's the food we give them.

In knitting news, the pieces of the laptop sleeve are all done, but have to be sewn together. I'll post a photo of the finished project. My big triumph there was figuring out how to knit a buttonhole. It's not the world's most beautiful buttonhole, but it's functional.

Also, last night -- with Katharine's patient help -- I started working on Gary's balaclava, knitting in the round with five double-pointed #5 needles. This is tricky work: since everything else I've done has been on #10 needles, I feel like I'm knitting with toothpicks. The project's definitely going to take a while! But Katharine tells me that if I can make my way through this pattern, I'll be an experienced knitter.

After this, though, I think I'll do something easy, like afghan squares in chunky wool.