ALERT OCT 20 -- WHO LET JERRY IN?!

ARGH!!! Ming's got a serious problem! Of the FOUR-LEGGED KIND!!! The Palace is under siege! Calling all cats and kittens! You've just won a free vacation in Ming's apartment for as long as it takes! Where's Tom?! Bring over your buddies and you can play jazz as loud as you want! Tuna salad and buttermilk on the house! Just do me this small favor! AAARRRGGHHHH!!!

Update Oct 24 -- Jerry Says Hi!

Yup, didn't hear a peep for a couple daze so I thought he mighta took off. But then Thursday nite while I was talkin with Gita on the phone he poked his tiny little head out of my closet and took a look around! I LEAPT up from my chair and began chanting OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD Gita started getting excited cuz she thought i was reacting to something she was telling me so she said something like "No, really! It really did happen! What? What's the matter with you? Do you have brain damage?" JERRY! J-J-J-JEERRRRYYYY!!!!! He then popped back into the closet - the one filled with plastic bags and paper bags and with water damage on the wall. Today I'm a staying home, cleaning up my joint, throwing all the plastic and paper OUT and vacuuming up every inch of the floor. Plus my dads lent me yet another high freq-pest-repelling noise box, which i've already set up. Between the sterile wasteland cleanness of the floor and the annoying noise box trick-they-used-on-Gappa, I'm a giving Jerry ONE WEEK to get out on his own! If he don't, I'm a have to buy the glue traps. Yes, (sniff), it's true. I will! I really will! Cuz it's better to have to take Jerry out quickly now, than have to drop an exterminator down on his whole family if he decides to raise one later.

Update Nov 20 -- Jerry Gone for Good?

Well, one month ago tonight, I finished playing Vandal Hearts for the second time, casting Salamander on Dolf's crazy ass and sending that vengeful jerk to kingdom come. I nodded off at the beginning of the end credits. A few minutes later the plaintive sound of Ash's ocarina woke me up, and I sat up to watch the epilogue with half-shut eyes. Sleepy eyes. Dopey eyes, which could scarcely comprehend what they then saw scampering across the floor, as if he'd been lured out by the Pied Piper of Hamlin. Actually, scampering's not right. Strolling's more like it. Strolling curiously, unhurriedly, with the four-legged gait of a meditative being who knows enough about life to stop and smell the roses. Or in this case, the half-eaten bag of Cheetos Cheese Curls sitting open on my coffee table. It gave me the impression this wasn't the first of many such wee-hour outings without my knowing it.

Remember when the heroine of Truly, Madly, Deeply awoke to find herself face to face with a rat in her living room? Well, that was me. I freaked. I was afraid to get off my futon that night, and for many days I wouldn't walk around unless I had slippers on. I named my little guest Jerry, after Jerry in Tom and Jerry, to make him/her seem less scary.

Well, I finished the long-awaited epic clean-up of my studio, which incidentally was considerably slowed down by much nervous poking around at piles of plastic and paper bags with a broomstick, and found three possible pathways for Jerry to have gotten in: two on either side of the radiator, and one in the back of a closet. I put little plastic and vinyl odds and ends in front of the radiator holes, and barriers and obstacles to prop em up so at least I'd be able to tell at a glance if security had been breached. Then I propped a large sheet of plywood against the hole in the back of the closet and held it up with three heavy cans of paint and a happy bag of cement. I then breathed a hopeful sigh and sat back and waited.

And that's the end of the story! Yup, it's been one month and I haven't sensed hide nor tail of Jerry. Except for that weekend I saw the X-Files movie AND the X-Files season premiere within 24 hours of each other and came home late Sunday night, my imagination swarming with visions of pissed-off Roswell mutants, and could have sworn as I turned on my kitchen light that I could hear a mysterious creature digging purposefully in my wall. Yagh! But Jerry's gone, and what's better, I didn't have to adopt a ferocious cat or buy those horrible glue-traps either. Thanks to the eleven or twelve votes that came in about whether or not it was time to find myself a feline companion. Wanna read em? (1 vote added Nov 21, 1998)
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