This morning I sifted through all the photos that I found on an abandoned backup drive. Most of which I never thought I'd see again after Apple lost my iCloud Drive data back in January. It was dumb luck that I even had the drive, yet alone was able to recover anything off it. Some of the photos were on my blog, but they were low-resolution. Now I had the originals back.

The most important ones to me were those of Jake and Jenny when they were little. I had most of the images backed up in multiple places, but there were a few sets that were only on iCloud Drive. Like this one...

How terrible would it be to have lost that?

Hope you have a backup strategy for your photos.

Jenny is afraid of everything. Including me. If I walk into the room too quickly and she can't gauge if I'm going to run up and attack her, she'll bail. Run out of the room and wait to see if it's safe to return.

Jake, on the other hand, will plop down on the floor at the bottom of the stairs and lay there, waiting for me to step over him. I've known this about him from very early on, so I'm always pretty careful when I'm not sure of where he is. Especially when I'm sitting at my desk, because he likes to lay behind my chair while waiting for me to finish...

Sometimes Jake's laying around is helpful. Like when my sister uses him as a kickstand instead of my arm...

Right now Jake is laying on the kitchen floor waiting for dinner to come. Guess he wants to be nearby so he has less distance to travel.

Jenny, whom I love more than potato salad, is turning into a cranky, bitter, judgmental creature. Which is to say that she's a cat. Whereas her brother is quite a bit more easygoing, she gets to be more of a demanding little princess every day. Which is fine by me, because the more of a personality she develops, the more I love her for it.

This past week Jenny was sitting next to me getting petted. Jake, experiencing sserious FOMO hopped up on the couch and climbed over her so he could sit on my lap and get petted also.

Jenny was furious.

She hissed and ran off.

Around ten minutes later I look up from my phone as I'm petting Jake and see Jenny sitting opposite staring at us...

But she wasn't staring. Not really...

Look at that face! She was glaring at us. Dang was she salty.

Then, last night, I was petting Jenny on my bed waiting for some laundry to finish drying. Again Jake decided that he wanted to lay on the bed too. He hopped up, flopped back on his back as he always does, which resulted in him rolling into Jenny, which she did not like one bit. I mean look at that face!

She did not like this disruption at all, even though I never stopped petting her. Eventually she got up and repositioned herself so that Jake wasn't touching her.

Maybe not a princess... probably more like a queen.

And her majesty was not pleased.

Jake absolutely kills me.

He's always been all about carrying his toys around, but he wants me to know it because he starts howling while carrying them now. Adorable. His toy box is in my office upstairs, so I'll hear him howling... then stop... then be howling... then stop... and so on. Then I'll go upstairs for something and see toys dropped around like...

In other Jake news... his snaggletooth, which was once an on-again off-again thing while he was sleeping, seems as though it's a permanent fixture now. Every time I see him sleeping, there it is...

He seems none the worse for wear, so I guess it's all good.

Despite the fact that I am doing so much better with my eyes lately, Jake still feels the need to watch over me.

Or maybe he doesn't actually care, but finds me to be a comfortable place to sleep somehow.

He's still wanting to take naps on top of me...

He's still snuggling up against me every night...

Meanwhile Jenny is still indifferent, as you can tell from her adorable little frowny face...

Speaking of Jenny, this past week she woke me up at 4:30am because she thought it was important for me to know that there were two birds fighting on the roof outside the window...

At which point she decided to fall asleep, leaving me wide awake...

Don't worry. Eventually Jake decided to join her...

I was never able to fall back asleep, which is typical.

My cats are not the clingy type. Jake likes to run and greet me when I get home from work so he can get petted. Jenny likes to be petted until I fall asleep at night. From time to time they'll want more attention than usual but, for the most part, they're happy to hang out with me... but at a distance.

The exception is when I'm sick or hurting.

Jake has a weird ability to sense this and, when he does, he's all over me. In these past weeks when I've been dealing with eye-related issues, he's been stuck to me like glue. When I'm trying to work...

Or trying to sleep...

Or watching television...

Or taking a nap...

I mean, it's nice to have the company, of course. But it's also nice to have my own space. After next week I'm hoping that my problems will start to resolve themselves and Jake will deem me suitably fit to go back to his normal routine.

The fact that my cats are such a small percentage of my size and yet occupy a far greater percentage of my bed is an irony that's not lost on me. And do you think that they care even a little bit that I have to struggle to find a place to sleep? The answer will not shock you. It's no.

Take this show from last night, for example...

Now, lest you think that the square-ish lump is my legs folded up, it's not. That's a pillow that Jenny was propped up against that I couldn't move or else she'd get mad (seen in green below). No, I'm barely on the bed at all, with my legs almost falling off (seen in red below)...

Now, the good news is that Jenny rarely wants to stick around after I go to bed. The minute I close my laptop and turn the lights off, she's running downstairs to sleep who-knows-where. So once she's gone I could move the pillow and move my legs on the other side of Jake where I have a little more room. He will be in that exact same spot when I wake up in the morning. At which time he'll let me know he's hungry.

Cats have got to be the most narcissistic creatures on the planet (after humans, of course). The world really is all about them. And when it's not, they make it that way.

I'm visually-impaired this week, so naturally that's when my cats decide they want to be problematic.

Jake, who hasn't been dragging his toys around to create toy gauntlets for months, has all of a sudden started to do that again. Almost as if he knows I will have a tough time seeing them... and will possibly trip on them, fall down the stairs, and die...

And, yep, Jake has been caught on video, so there's no defending him...

This past week was a banner catio week because the weather has been warming up. The only problem is the wind, which doesn't seem to bother Jake. He just digs his claws in and braces for impact...

Jenny, however, will come running back inside if it gets too windy. She would much rather lounge on the couch getting pets than be uncomfortable...

But don't get the impression that Jenny is any less weird than her brother. Lately she's been sitting on her tail, which is not only puzzling to me... but to her brother as well...

Though it's probably unwise to refer to my cats as "weird." All cats are weird. It's what makes them cats.

Jenny is getting to be more of a problem with food than Jake ever was. If Jake is slow to his bowl when the food drops, Jenny will eat hers... then his. It's so bad that I get up and call Jake over so he gets to eat. But this week there's been a new wrinkle. When Jenny sees that Jake is finally coming, she will stop eating her food... then go to his bowl to eat because there's more food there. Jake gets whatever she didn't get around to eating. I can't even be mad because that's a pro move right there. But there's going to come a time when she's too smart for her own good... and I'm not sure how I'm going to handle that.

Also? My cats have started talking. Quite a lot. If Jenny thinks I'm taking too long brushing my teeth and she want me in bed so she can get petted? Meows. So many meows. Jake can't meow, but he whines and frets and squeaks and wails. ZOMG the wailing. This past week I just walked in the door and he comes running up to be petted. I have to sit a bunch of stuff on the counter first, so I walk by him. He exploded with wailing. You'd think that I kicked him. In the face! Then... once I have my hands free and start giving him a rub-down? All the squeaks.

Cats only get more nuts with age. What will they be like in five years?

He was trapped in a region of non-stop war in Syria, but did his best to help people and feed cats in the area. And died there after joking about having dug his own grave.

It's a good thing I'm not God. Because I'm telling you right now, there would be no hiding from my wrath. Nothing could save you. I would wipe all violent aggressors off the face of the fucking earth without so much as a thought. One minute you're killing innocent civilians and cats... then next minute you would find yourself transported to the surface of the sun.

Which kinda begs the question... where is God in the middle of things like this anyway?

Definitely not in Syria, that's for sure.