Friday Cat Blogging/Counterproductive Fisticuffs Blogging
By 
Dr. Zaius. I took care of The Doctor — one of my best friends’ cats — for about a year while dedicating my life to a project otherwise known as Not Writing the Goddamned Dissertation. Dr. Zaius, at the time, weighed in at around 18 pounds of glorious feline flesh, and I spent the better part of the next year gradually working him down (through a combination of reduced diet, increased exercise, and subtle, persistent ridicule) to a much healthier 15 pounds. MeMe Roth would have approved, and I must say I’m as proud of that accomplishment as I am to have received the Ph.D. 17 months after Dr. Zaius moved out.
In any case, I had the good fortune to hang with Dr. Z and relive the good old days while I was in Chicago last weekend. I also got the chance to see the second near-no-hitter of my life (the first being a Danny Darwin one-hitter at Fenway in 1993), and the first bench-clearing brawl in 20 years of attending major league baseball games.
For the record, the last fight I tried to instigate — sometime in early 1983 — looked pretty much like this one (e.g., two empty punches and a swarm of idiots.) I did intentionally plunk an opposing hitter in the summer of 2000, but that was during a slow-pitch softball game, and the provocation didn’t work out quite as I had hoped.