Last night I was in Martin's, mainly to get a couple frozen dinners to last me through the 'maybe' snowstorm.

Of course, that also meant cat food, more chicken breasts for the Roxie the Rottie-----Hey, what's this? I look down on one of those cat toy racks and there are containers of catnip! 1 oz. containers; equal to

the size of one of those prepared dip containers....sure; why not? Everybody needs a treat, now and then!

Get home, put away groceries, take the nip upstairs with a couple old, old luncheon napkins into which I dump some nip, then tie off with dental floss. ----some spilled on the floor, plus there was a fuzzy 'toy' in there which I tossed over on the chair where Be-Be was.

WHOA! Jimminy Crickets!!!! Wha' hoppened? Sheeeeeez!-Cats everywhere!

If they hadn't all been fixed, it would've been an orgy!!

I never saw them act like this before

----I've given them little catnip toys now and again, but there was never a reaction like THIS!

Be-Be actually ate part of the fuzzy toy before I could get it away, risking life and limb to do that, I might add---she is one tough little cat and doesn't waste time on negotiations..

Whitey, the deaf 20-pounder was meowing the strangest notes I've EVER heard--Princess, who is above it all and disdains everybody else in the house, had her chin on the floor and was pushing herself back and forth through the loose 'nip with her hind legs. Three others came in and found where I'd tossed the balled napkins and just went into ecstacy and total 'om' as they left their writhing bodies and attained Nirvana.

(----'Nirvana can only be explained to the 'unenlightened' by negation. Thus the Buddha tries to explain this deep concept to one of his disciples. He asks whether the fire, when it is extinguished, can be said to have gone north, south, east, or west. Nirvana, however, cannot be described as existing, not existing, both existing and not, or neither existing nor not'. )

Got it?

I'm sitting there, speechless----it was like the same scene at the nursing home when I saw all those residents cutting up out in the hallways around 11 o'clock at night!!!!

Finally, after about an hour of ecstacy and total abandon, they started winding down and there were cats on their backs with feet in the air, cats in a stupor with bodies hanging from chairs, wooden stools, across my pillow on the bed---some had mouths open, with a piece of tongue showing. Now and then an ear would flicker, but that was it. They were OUT!

This morning was the first morning I didn't wake up to Be-Be clawing the edges of the bed at 5AM to get me riled up.

Everybody was quite mellow today and now they're all NAPPING, of course.

Catnip is goooood.