Daughter Jessica has left town to visit friends in sunny California before heading north for Alaska to help with the Iditarod, from which she plans to fly to the Ukraine, to help monitor the parliamentary elections there. Wife Ginny has spent two days of the past week taking a course in real estate. Same old, same old.

That's left the two black cats Boots and Harry, to entertain me. And, to tell you the truth, the two guys have been up to the task.

I consider myself very lucky in the natural selection of these two. We used no scientific methodology in selecting them; they just happened to appear on our doorstep one morning. There were no horrific and bloody battles for turf, no fussy hissing and spitting, no contracts out on one or the other. It's true, they tussle roughly with one another, wrap each other in a death grip and pull each other off the sofa and onto the family room carpeting. And Harry, he's the theater major, at the drop of a hat, will start yowling and whining and coughing wheezily, as if he's being murdered by The Cat Killer.

At their first meeting, Boots, taken aback by this fake but plausible suffering, jumped backward, withdrew his claws from Harry's unharmed hide, and proceeded to lick the other boy's heavy-coated hide as if he were a kid attacking a popcycle. Harry puts on such a performance roughly three times a week, and each time it fools Boots, wherever he is. Harry, I think, is shameless.

I must admit the two male cats are maintenance-free. Well, I take that back. I'm in charge of filling their food and water dishes in the morning., and one thing I noticed was that if I don't fill the food dish to overflowing, neither of them touches it. That doesn't seem to apply to the water bowl, but it does to the food bowl. On many early occasions I spent some time pointing out that there was more than enough dry cat food to satisfy two ravenous gorillas. "Look into your bowl, you two fat ninnies," I yowled in my best imitation of a pregnant cat, but they didn't respond, except, in Boots's case, an anemic and off-key feline kind of squeak. I thought they were both a tad blind. But then I found out that no self-respecting cat will eat out of a less-than-full dish of anything. Why, you may ask? I found this nearly unbelievable, but here it is. A cat won't eat out of a less-than-full bowl, because he/she doesn't like his whiskers touching the detritus on the sides of the bowl. You know, some people refuse to drive if there's the slightest sign of dirt on their windshield. Maybe my two cats are a little more …fastidious than other cats. But, then again, that can't be. Not five minutes after I've filled their food dish to over-flowing they're sweeping it out of the food dish and onto the plastic food-tray which their keepers (Ginny and I) have thoughtfully placed there. Pretty soon, there‚s more uneaten food in the plastic tray than there is in the designated food dish. Oh, well, enough of this boring subtopic of my essay. You get my point: these two boys may be finicky, but they won't take any prizes for fastidiousness.

Some cat expert or other once wrote that cats large and small spend approximately 95 percent of their daily life asleep. (Can you imagine how said cat expert went about the actual research for the stuff that resulted in that finding? Think about it!) Well, I can believe it. (No wonder there so few cat civilizations in Western culture.).

Boots and Harry spend around 86 percent of their daily life asleep, and those periods of sleep don't vary a whole lot from day to day. First sleep period runs from 12:01 a.m. to 6 a.m., at the end of which time they're both out in the kitchen rummaging on the counters looking for uneaten people-food. And if they can find some, each one grabs hold of it and drags it to the floor. Since Harry has very little of the hunter/ scavenger instinct, it's usually Boots who drags a whole loaf of bread in its cellophane wrapper from the kitchen counter and leaps onto the floor to regale his patient and hungry friend Harry. They play out a miniature version of the time ritual of the primeval food gatherer, minus nothing but the fire over which to cook the food brought home by the hunter.

At 6:21 a.m., having disrupted the kitchen for breakfast, they both shift to a period of play, which lasts until about 11:27 a.m.. This past Christmas, Ginny had a brilliant idea for cat-gifts. She bought a garbage-can cover-sized game that prompts said cat to bat a little black mouse-size rubber ball on a track. As the little black mouse object scoots along the circular track, the cat can either stare at it in rapt attention, or he/she can step into the middle of the game and smell a catnip-saturated cork center until he/she is inebriated beyond human belief. This catnip-saturated center is usually enough to send both Harry and Boots into a deep cat-sleep until Ginny comes home for lunch. Ever on the alert, Harry stands guard on the back of an easy-chair in the family room and looks out the window in the direction of the driveway.

Before the car ever pulls in, Boots, too, has crawled up on the back of the chair, hangs his head over Harry's, and the two of them present a fetching picture of extreme domestic tranquility worthy of Norman Rockwell.

Afternoon, from noon until roughly 4:51 p.m., is, once again, nap time, with the two animals cozily ensconced atop Ginny's and my bed. They've exerted themselves mightily, and need their sleep for their grand finale after supper. This last period reaches from 5 p.m. until nearly midnight.

A business colleague of mine in New York City once said of a business friend of mine, who was bouncing a tennis ball in the Men's Room. "Play, play, play, that's all these kids do all day is play."

That surely applies to Harry and Boots, too. We have no large carpet in the living room, and since that room is 33 feet long, Boots and Harry naturally think it can be used as a warm hockey rink.

And Boots, especially likes to pick one of their slightly damp, velvet- covered mice out of their water bowl and start batting it along the varnished floor.

I don't know the scoring of this fast-paced game, but it sure is a crowd-pleaser.