That Proves Huggy Bear Is One Cool Cat

Let’s answer some Slice questions.

“Yes, I have a 12-year-old cat named Huggy Bear who has NEVER left the back yard,” wrote Kathryn Marshall of Spirit Lake, one of several readers who told about felines who stay inside the fence.

Mead’s Joyce Hunt addressed the same subject. “Several years ago, one of our cats disappeared for three months,” she wrote. “When she returned, she was nothing but a bag of bones. She refused to leave her food bowl for two weeks. She hasn’t left the yard since.”

In the matter of where to set up a TV camera for the local access cable channel, readers’ suggestions included placing it outside the STA Plaza, overlooking the falls downtown, pointed at a huge pot hole, aimed at a panhandlers’ corner, directed outside a drug house or at a stretch of sidewalk frequented by prostitutes, and pointed toward any busy intersection “controlled” by traffic lights.

After we asked about spirits-lifting sights, a reader told of a woman on North Maple in Spokane who puts cheery pink-lettered messages on her picture window “Be spontaneous,” et cetera for the benefit of passing motorists.

And we heard from a guy who said no one ever laughs at his luggage because it’s “Huckleberry’s finest.”

Another Internet surprise: Gemologist Arlene Stromberger clicked on a Web site she thought would be about Japanese pearls.

But suddenly her screen was filled with nude Japanese women.

Brad Moeller wonders: “Can you be a smoker, yet not a litter bug?”

Golden oldie: Bob Ward was at NorthTown when he was amazed to hear one teenage boy inform another that he was “full of malarkey.”

Take a second and check: Is your driver’s license expired?

Let’s hear it for Annette in the white station wagon: Robb Raymond was loading some diapers and cat litter into his car outside Costco when a woman asked if she could take his cart back for him. He thanked her and went on his way, not realizing he had left his day planner and checkbook in the cart.

But before Raymond even got home, the woman had called his house to report finding the items. She volunteered to bring them by.

When she arrived, the Raymonds tried to give her $20 for her trouble. She told them to buy something nice for their baby instead.

Pretzel logic: John DeBauw notes that reading the block numbers of the street you’re driving on requires taking your eyes off the road.

Today’s Slice question: How long before Spokane and Coeur d’Alene are considered suburbs of Post Falls?

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Drawing

MEMO: The Slice appears Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; fax (509) 459-5098. There are now 534,126 local groups raising money by holding spaghetti feeds.