Spaz's Fun Toys

As I write this update, my cat Spaz is batting around a toy mouse all over my apartment. He gets absolutely nuts with those 50 cent toy mice you can buy from any generic pet store, knocking it all across my apartment (the toy mouse, not the pet store). I am not quite sure what causes cats to instinctively know that they should be going crazy with the toy mouse and not any of the other crap I've got laying around this place.

For example, before I bought him the toy mice, all I had to offer Spaz was the junk laying around my apartment. This consists of a bunch of RCA cables, plastic DVD porn cases, and a plastic cup that reads "NFL 1997" on it. I'm not quite sure why the NFL decided they should advertise on cups. Perhaps drinking milk helps remind people they like professional football, I don't know. Anyway, I tried forcing Spaz to play with the generic stuff in my place but nothing worked. I would take the RCA cable and throw it around the living room while saying, "Look Spaz, it's an evil three-headed black snake which is able to magically carry both audio and video signals with average quality!" and then I would pounce on it. I was hoping my instructional technique would give him some ideas, but he instead just turned and walked away. I soon remembered that I had a couple of the bouncing nVidia balls that Jim Black, the nVidia PR guy from QuakeCon, gave me. I figured cats should love balls and bouncing stuff, so I threw it against the wall and waited for fun to ensue. Nothing.

"Come on, Spaz!" I shouted while pushing around the ball. "Go attack that ball! It could possibly be made from Styrene Butadiene or Polybutadiene Rubber! Cats hate Styrene Butadiene and Polybutadiene Rubber! Go get it!"

Spaz just stared at me.

"Jim Black gave me that ball! He's from nVidia! Cats hate good OpenGL drivers! Go get it!" I commanded while pointing at the ball, which had now come to a complete halt. "Jim Black is nuts and he'll eat you if you don't get it! Please, for the love of God, just get that ball!"

Nothing.

So I don't really need to say that I was quite surprised when Spaz began playing with the toy mice I bought for him. He literally spends hours of time batting and knocking these things around like crazy. But why? The nVidia ball rolls better and even has a special blinking LED light inside that causes permanent eye damage when stared at (much like Hired Guns). I assume it's just some crazy instinctual thing that kicks in whenever a cat sees a mouse-like object, just like the reaction dogs get when they see cats or when any 3D Realms employee sees their company's name on a Planet Crap thread. No particular point to all this nonsense, it's just an interesting experience for a new cat owner to notice and a particularly boring experience to read about.

Fresh off his victory over the band "SNAFU", Leonard "J." Crabs has decided to grace our lovely little site with yet another contribution: his own Q&A column. Yup, "Leonard's Law" is a weekly / biweekly column which will help answer all the tough and complicated legal issues you may have. Check out today's issue and feel free to write him yourself:

Leonard's da man! Admit it!

Once again I have the unfortunate displeasure of telling you that I received another email from Mr. Cliff Yablonski. I'm sure you know what's coming up...

You read it here, folks. Go to Cliff's hate-filled den of ill-will and gaze upon more unfortunate victims of his seemingly endless rage.