There is a certain je ne sais quoi that comes with being awakened hours before one intends by a cat full of ear mites.

Correction: three cats full of ear mites.

Yet that is exactly what transpired yesterday morning when Sumi decided to excavate her ear.

On my head.

It is difficult to express how many showers and loads of laundry and repeated vacuumings have to occur after such an event. Especially after the veterenarian shows you an ear mite in the microscope. A great huge hulking armor-plated beastie fully intent upon evil filled the entire eyepiece. Certain that the mites were already carrying out their plan for world domination by using chez Holloway for a staging area, we began our counter-assault upon them.

Soon, the house began taking on the appearence of the Russian Front - yet smelled lemony fresh. Cats hid in every conceivable place - feeling very much like Poland in the mites' attempt at establishing a Fourth Reich here.

But we will prevail.