In kitten news: Everyone! Everyone, please pay attention. I have an announcement. A big congratulations to Squirrel who, in her nearly two years of existence, has finally learned how to relinquish her semi-rational/semi-retarded brain into mindless pleasure induced kneading. Using her clawed feet as happy instruments of torture, the cat has finally succumbed to, or learned, instinct; turning my thigh into squishy bleeding bread-dough.

Oh, day of days, I guess I always knew that Squirrel would grow up. But as any proud parent would say, I wasn't prepared for the day when she would graduate from a steady diet of purring and face rubs, to the oh-so-mature pleaure-mauling. Needless to say the g/f and I are quite proud of our little bundle of fat-sack'd fur. Don't get me wrong, she still begs for apple wedges when I'm slicing one up, and stares at me with eyes half-lidded when she poops in the laundry room. But now some of the innocence has gone.

I would say, with some confidence, that we've got a wily teenager on our hands. I can tell because she has started throwing fits for attention and suffers drastic mood-swings. Scrambling noisily, back-arched, she bolts from room to room, her eyes giant, alluding to the copious amounts of natural dopamine coursing through her teeny-tiny little animal brain, which resides in a head that is all cute and covered in fur and big ears. God! She's so cute you could just eat her. Don't you just want to stuff her in your mouth, squishy fur and all?!

In other kitty news, the g/f and I have come to the conclusion that Squirrel was in fact, prior to our acquisition of her, a polish jew surviving in the ghettos of Nazi Germany. We have decided this for the following reasons:

1) She hides diamonds in loaves of bread, which she then breaks and rolls up into little balls and eats.

2) She regularly responds to the name Itzahk Keetenstein.

3) Squirrel is small in stature, has long dark hair, a long-ish nose, and a polish accent.

4) She is petrifide of box pianos, the German language, men with names like Hans/Sigfried/Rainer/Adolf, and Swastika armbands.

I can only hope that these fears and habits will subside as she adjusts to the civil inequalities and "rally around the flag" fanfare of post-Second World War American society. God forbid she turns out to be a migrant Mexican worker only pretending to be a Holocaust survivor in order to stay North of the border, picking fruit for $5.37 an hour...I would be devastated to have to report her to the Department of Homeland Security and pay all the back taxes for the domestic work she's done for us. That would be so Zoe Baird of me...

Now I'm going to go creep it up while Squirrel hides from the vacuum cleaner.

It's true! And I am no longer going to deny or ignore this fact. Hiding my shame with continuous athletic exercises to shift attention from my groin and onto my active lifestyle will not do. I wish to bring this issue forward, making the conversation both public and acceptable. After all, roughly half of the global public is wang-and-nut-enhanced, and I would wager that a fairly large portion of that be-nutted public has experienced the excrutiating insecurities of flaunting the well-defined outline of their junk when wearing sweat-pants.

In fact, it is in the public interest, nay, PUBLIC NEED, that I commence this discussion of cock-and-balls-itude on the principle of galvanizing men worldwide against their fears of showing a little too much nut. Whether in the gym, at a Saturday afternoon football game, summer barbecue, or a lazy Sunday morning brunch, the outline of your perky package should be the least of your masculine concerns. "Brothers!", I say. Do not be ashamed of your flacid and flexible manhood. Wear it proudly, just as a woman adorns her beautiful boobies with bedazzlement, gaining attention from her neighbors of either sex while, at the same time, earning free drinks and catcalls at the bar, display your pocket-rocket in all its profiled glory. Despite cold days, lesser endowment, or undie type, let your junk dangle proudly for the world to ogle, draped in the fleecy cotton of your gym-wear.

I, for one, will proudly wear my piece like the prize exhibit it is, swinging in boxers or bundled in briefs. If I am feeling frisky, I might even release the twig and giggle-berries into the greater polyester wilds of my favorite track pants, uninhibited by the bunching seams of my gitch. "Men!", I exclaim, let us be proud of our family jewels! Let us rejoice in our hanging bits, breaking free of the "size does matter" chains that bind us, allowing our ships to set sail with the "motion of the ocean".