Cat With An Emerald Eye

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I am told that most people would be happy to receive personal advice from on high.

However, I am not most people. I am not even a person.

And right now I am preparing for my annual autumn slump. This, I believe, is a universal condition. When that first October evening turns nippy, something primitive in the cells of every red-blooded critter stops dead for a moment, looks around and turns into a couch potato, or maybe a pumpkin.

Call it a genetic disposition to hibernate. Call it a seasonal disaffective disorder. Call it Ishmael.

Whatever, it is one of nature's most powerful urges, and I did not get the enviable reputation I have as the primo progenitor in this town by ignoring nature's most powerful urges.

It does not matter that my hometown is Las Vegas, where virtually year-round it is hotter than the scales on the back of a skink. Of course, my closest acquaintance with a scale is in the piano bar of the Crystal Phoenix, since I came fresh from the factory with a luxuriant coat of jet-black fur. Still, there is bone and muscle under all this velvet plush, and I am old enough that a chill can creep past my barrier fuzz and into my skeleton. Come September, the nights dwindle down to a precious few degrees, like forty or fifty. Then October, November, and December kick in and it really gets cold when the daylight goes on down time.

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