Breathing it, drinking it, bankruptcy is all-day air and fuel for the practitioner. At our Twitter site, we gravitate toward the so-called off-topic remarks. Can't properly cover median income, chapter 7, and second-mortgage lien-stripping with a 140-character cap. But Twitter's a perfect outlet for occupying one's digits at the red signals with mundane observations of interest to few.

Professional blogs are not necessarily the sole province of shop-talk. It's good for the mind to ramble and steer from the designated topic of insolvency and debt relief. Let me speak of Roger Ebert, film critic, now viciously disfigured and rendered mute by that bitch, cancer. Now, Rog and I have had our arguments: I pointed out that a bare-torsoed Paul Newman picture on his site featured the wrong caption: it referenced the title character of the prison-flic, Cool Hand Luke, insead of Ari Ben-Canaan, the protagonist of the film, Exodus. Rog semi-conceded the point. However, his editor promptly resolved the issue by cropping the photo so you could no longer see the Star of David on Newman's chest (Luke wasn't Jewish; Ari was), and leaving the caption as is. That all transpired when Newman, a great philanthropist, passed away. Where was I?

Right: so Ebert is a Pulitzer Prize winner. Now that's not the comparison: my greatest blogatory aspiration is that my wife might read my drivel when the most indulgent of moods strike. The comparison, rather is that Roger likes to go off topic. He blogs like a madman and it's not all movies. Politics, religion, family: everything goes. He has lost the power of speech, but not the power of language. Thus, this rambling preamble leads to today's topic that's off topic: cats.

On our first date, I asked my wife about her house pet status. She related that there were felines. Two felines. "You have TWO cats?" Now, I wasn't fearful of strange cat-lady issues. Strange cat ladies aren't foxy. Instead, I was thrilled, 'cause I like cute and furries. I mean I'm not obsessed about 'em, I just think they add nicely to the background, roaming from one sun spot to another, sleeping like sleep's going out of style: an enviable life.

If dogs are a hunter's companion, then perhaps cats are a bankruptcy attorney's province. For some reason, I see colleagues of mine with this same type of animal ownership. I've had dogs before: golden retrievers who respectively died violently or succumbed to that awful hip dysplasia that attacks this cute and dim breed. That made me sad and I'm over dogs. I'm paranoically private about my people, so the point of this piece (while chewing a PB&J during my self-alloted 30m lunch break) is to compensatorily relay a bit about my animals, my cats.

Cats aren't perfect. In fact, they're probably from outer space, here visiting, observing and reporting to the mother ship when the Planet Earth might be most vulnerable to hostile takeover. But until then, we sort of tolerate them and they sort of tolerate us.

I call them The Guys, though one is male and the other, female. Onyx, our male, is a Bombay cat, predictably named for his color. He's soft and plush, and our toddler likes to pin him down with coercive snuggles. He's just a stuffed bear that softly purrs with accompanying dollops of drool.

At some point, my wife had left him to his own feeding devices with an automatic kibble dispenser. He demonstrated poor self-regulation and gained generous proportions. I've since improved the situation. He's no jacked-up pickup, but he's no low-rider either and he's been commended by his loved ones for much-improved clearance to floor. Onyx has emotional problems: he occasionally drags blankies and whimpers. It may have to do with his mutilation. At a tender age, Onyx padded outside to find a healthy pack of raccoons helping themselves to his outdoor food bowl. Onyx figured, share and share alike and nudged himself in. Now, raccoons are routinely considered members of the cute-and-furry animal group, but it's not an accurate observation. They are a vicious thing, chock full of chutzpah. If I once felt bad about the raccoon tail hanging off my boyhood Indian headdress, then no more.

Apparently, they couldn't all be friends, as one of the black-eyed interlopers promptly bit off Onyx's tail.

Onyx had once sported a luscious piece of tail. Now it's a nub and so it goes. If it's any consolation, a local yokel obtained the sheriff's O.K., took his rifle from the closet, and happily blew off the racoons' heads.

The second cat is Snickers. Snickers are the kings of candy bars. While Three Musketeers have their nougat, Mars, its added caramel, and Baby Ruths toss in peanuts, the Snickers bar possesses all the above candy bar elements. The chocolatory earth, wind and fire. Snickers, the cat is a pound-purchase who was nary a pound: a barely survived preemie. She's scrawny, but she has a tail: the perfect tool to waive and slap and taunt her tailless brother. Snickers' claim to beauty is a function of textile shortage. Her divine seamstress apparently exhausted her patterns: our furry girl shows a tortoise-shell back and a calico belly, an odd 2-for-1 design. Naturally, she doesn't possess the normal arrangment of body parts. She is a Hemingway cat: you'd count six fingers on each Snickers forepaw.

There's more to be said, but it can't be that interesting insofar as my proofing of the above has put me into slumber. As I finish my ode to my aging Bombay and Hemingway, I simply think I will miss them when they're gone. I'll remember the good times; forget the blanket-dragging, the tail-teasing, the furballs, and the litter. Well, maybe not the litter.

Nice to trek out of Bankruptcy Land. But we'll be back to business before ya know it.

Copyright 2010 Law Office of Asaph Abrams www.bankonitsd.com

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