Dear Diary,

For one’s birthday, one always hopes that one will receive a visit from the Birthday Bird of Katroo. (It’s a family tradition, reading Dr. Seuss’s Happy Birthday To You on our birthdays.) But…this morning saw instead, the Cat in the Hat.

In an incident that seemed right out of The Cat In The Hat Comes Back, black powdered in from a printer ink cartridge splattered all over the living room and the kitchen (and was quickly tracked into the dining room by little feet.) And this from a cartridge that would not print any more (which is why I foolishly tapped it on the arm chair in hope of loosening up the additional 5000 pages of ink that was supposed to be inside it to begin with.)

Juss, bless his heart, immediately volunteered to do his "old job" of washing the kitchen floor (currently that’s Orville’s chore, but Orville is away at camp.) and helped clean up very cheerfully.

Things are much better now…but does anyone know how to get ink out of carpet?

Oh, and PROSPERO LOST is now officially out in paperback.