I did standup tonight, and it went fairly well; I really need to start writing things down more often so I can get into a groove more easily, though that’s neither here nor there in terms of the point of this post.

After the show, a couple of guys came up to me and were blatantly hitting on me. Not in that creepy, I want to lick whipped cream out of your pussy way, but obvious nonetheless. I really don’t get it, I was wearing ratty jeans and a t-shirt (no time to change before the show, I spent a lot of time slacking off after work and then realized I needed to install my new headlight, so I had time to wash the car grease off of my hands and that was IT), not a stitch of makeup, and here I have not just one, but TWO guys vying for my attention.

Is there some sort of chemical that girls give off just after they’ve been on a date that makes them instantly more attractive to other guys? Something that men biologically cannot ignore? Like “I don’t know what it is, but all of a sudden this girl is HOT!!!!”?

Part of it could also be that I skipped on the self deprecating jokes this evening, instead opting for, “Oooh, big crowd tonight. That makes me all HOT. Don’t act like you don’t want some of this! *EVERYONE* wants a piece of me. Like, for instance, Pavel called me the other night and said he just couldn’t stop thinking about me–the department of Immigration has been calling him, and he’s hoping to push up our marriage. Now that’s love, if I’ve ever seen it.”

For those of you who have never been to comedy night, Pavel is (and this is his own description) from ‘one of those little monkey countries over in Europe that’s trying to build a democracy, only it’s been sort of slow going, because they don’t have any oil and therefore have to do it all by themselves.’ He and I have a long standing joke about getting married as he could then get a green card, and I could ‘use his excellent health benefits’.

So yeah. Two guys hitting on me tonight…in front of my fiance. HOT.

My downstairs neighbor has a considerable number of cats, which they let roam all over the apartment complex via a hole cut in their blinds and a removed screen on their window. A lot of of times, I’ll come home and there will be a cat sitting on my stairs. I often sit and play with them for a few minutes, as in this way I can get all of the fun parts of cat interaction and none of the downsides like litter boxes and baths and destroyed furniture. I’ve determined that they must wait on my stairs in shifts, as when I came home from comedy on Wednesday, one I’d never seen before was sitting there. I played with it for a few minutes and then went upstairs. As soon as I opened the door, the cat shot past me and RIGHT INTO MY APARTMENT.

…I quickly learned that opening the door and prancing back outside like one is the Pied Piper of Cats will not entice a cat to follow you out of your home. Shit. Shit. I don’t want to try and pick it up, how else can I get it to leave? Tuna! I have a can of tuna in my pantry; I’ll open it up and the cat will not be able to resist following me out the door. Now where is my can opener? Still packed in a box somewhere. Dammit! Ok, here’s a can of chicken salad with a ring tab. Maybe THAT smell will be enough to convince the cat to leave. My next lesson was that standing in the doorway, propping the door open with one hand and leaning out of the apartment as far as humanly possible while holding a can of chicken salad in the other hand will cause a cat to poke his head out the door to sniff and quickly retreat into the apartment.

It was becoming clear to me that I had no choice but to pick the cat up and carry it outside. In my limited interactions with cats, I have come to understand that a lot of them don’t like being picked up, so I approached it rather warily. I didn’t want to corner the cat and thereby scare it, because then I’d just be ANGLING for bites and scratches, but it was zipping around, checking EVERYTHING out. I finally got near it, and I thought all of my fears and concerns were for nothing, as when I picked it up, it was purring. Apparently cats also purr when they are incredibly pissed off, the way a dog can wag its tail when growling, because when I approached the door, I had a screaming, spitting, hissing, writhing bundle of cat in my hands. It was there that I realized I had another problem–I need a hand free to open the door. But there’s no way I want to let go of the cat with one hand and cradle it with an arm against my body. NO WAY. By some miracle of dextrous circus-freak limbs, I was able to get the door opened with my foot. Then came the debate of how I was supposed to go about setting it down. I couldn’t just put this angry cat on its feet, as it would just bite me and run back inside. And although I was agitated myself at this point, I could never participate in a willful act of cat-tossing.

So I did the only thing it seemed reasonable to do. I carried it down the stairs, still yowling, and shoved it through the hole in my neighbor’s window. Am I sure it was their cat? No.