At the coffee shop yesterday noon:

When it comes down to the last stale bagel, they should swap out "day-old" for "lonely, lost, and desperately in need of a home."

The slate-gray edifice of the state office building looms against the slate-gray overcast of an afternoon sky.

It's no Chrysler Building, but the state office building is ornamented with and art deco facade that gives it a lot of character and makes it one of my favorite downtown buildings. The city-county building (next to it on the right) is a practically featureless, pale blockhouse in comparison.

The building's design makes it appear large and yet reserved. Stately, I guess. You can make out more details of the art deco design.

Bonkers calls dibs on the warm sunny patch.

What is it about a napping cat that makes people smile? Nobody in our family can look at Bonkers sleeping in the sun and suppress at least a grin. He is the picture of contentment when he has a warm spot where he can curl up like a rolley-pollie and snooze until the sun slides too far away.

(Just how do you spell "rolley-pollie" without the first half mispronounced by most of the population? When it's "roll" nobody has any difficulty saying it right, but when it's "rolley" or "rollie" or "rollee," almost anybody I know would say RAH lee. So a standard spelling, please, for the bug that sounds like ROE lee POE lee.)

When I come back, I want to be a housecat, but not just any housecat: I want to be Bonkers, right here, in the sun, at this moment. What a life.

... and then, whatever the polar opposite of "contentment" is, that's a hungry cat. Bonkers is one of the warmest, friendliest, lapmost cats I've ever met, but when he wants his kibble he's the most relentlessly annoying, bar none, of any pet. I would never intentionally hurt a pet, but when he's hungry and underfoot it's almost impossible to walk to the kitchen tap to get a drink without punting him between the goalposts. There must be a way to cure him of this, but short of feeding him until he explodes, I don't know what it could be.