Cats. Don�t like �em. Never have, never will.

They are evil, evil animals. And I�m allergic.

I was very strongly reminded of this at the weekend.

Last year the Munchkin acquired a cat. And despite my intense dislike of felines there�s really only so much you can say to discourage a nine year-old from getting the animal they want. The cat is not as bad as some cats I have known, and doesn�t shed as much hair as many others, and so I�ve kept my teeth firmly planted in my tongue to prevent ranting, and have even been known to cat-sit occasionally.

I can only do this because while I am somewhat allergic, it takes a while to hit me, I don�t smell cat the minute I walk into the house and immediately turn into a sneezing, sniffling, watery-eyed mess. Unlike Nathan.

Which is a big problem. Especially when we all headed down to the beach house for the weekend. The beach house the cat had been in only last weekend. The beach house we hadn�t been too since the Munchkin got the cat, so none of us had considered the cat consequences.

Nathan arrived a bit before me, and was already sneezing when I got there. By Saturday night he was actually a bit better, but Alex and I were coughing, wheezing messes.

Stupid cats.

We never had cats growing up. Mum was badly allergic to them, as is Boofhead, though he actually still likes them for some reason. I learned to hate them because Mum wouldn�t go near them. That was reinforced when I shared a house during uni days with a cat that was truly the spawn of Satan. It was evil, mean, and had very sharp claws.

Now, my group of friends seems to be divided pretty much 50/50 pro and anti-cats. Smurfette, Nathan, Pat, Alex and me are totally anti. Betty, Jane, Maria, Wino and Imelda are all pro. Jane has two, Wino and Imelda have two, Maria has one, Betty would have at least one if I hadn�t successfully banned them from the house on the basis of allergy. It is a point of division and much amusing debate. And restricted social plans because Nathan really can�t last more than about half an hour in the homes of cat owners while still being able to breathe and see.

I�ve noticed that a lot of the journals and blogs I read seem to be written by cat lovers. And cats clearly do create a lot of entry-worthy chaos, so I can see the correlation. But it does make me feel the need to put it out there that some of us hate the things too. Not all internet writers have, or even like, cats. There, I�ve said it.

Though apparently we write about them anyway.

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Unrelated query: why on earth did I spend a portion of last night dreaming that I had to find my old school uniforms in order to get my graduation ceremony? Even though I was my current age which is significantly beyond high school graduation, which was what was making it so hard to find the uniforms, and our school didn�t have a graduation ceremony anyway. And why was I looking for school uniforms both for the school I went to and the one Smurfette went to in her final year, but I never did and therefore should not have been graduating from or owning a uniform for? Has my subconscious been concerned all these years that I don�t know where my old school uniform is, and it�s only just been triggered by Pat showing up on the weekend lugging around an old school bag? All of these are things to contemplate, I suppose. And no, I have no idea what happened to my old uniforms. Or why I might be missing them.