From "Chelsea Girl" (a reader of this site) comes a worried e-mail: "Please assure me that though you're in Minnesota, Lydia is being properly fed." Lydia, you may recall, is the cat who hangs out in my back yard — the one I had to trap and take in for spaying and a kitty abortion a few months back.

Correction: "…one of the cats who hangs out in my back yard." We're up to five now. Five feral felines — try saying that fast — feed at the dishes I leave out on the rear porch. Usually in the evening, it's Lydia plus one guest. Years ago, I fed a cat we named Jackie out there…and Jackie was quite territorial, claiming my yard as her own. If another pussycat even entered, let alone approached The Dish, Jackie would leap to defend her turf, chasing off the intruder like one of Sinatra's bodyguards protecting The Chairman of the Board. Lydia is unthreatened by others and even acts as hostess. She's awfully generous with the food I pay for. As long as she gets her fill, all are welcome.

In the last week or so, the clientele out there has included a silvery/spotted cat of enormous size and appetite. Both of those qualities have been enhanced because this one looks ready to deliver a litter any day now…and may have, by the time I return. I made the layman's diagnosis that she was too far along to be trapped and hauled out to the vet, especially when I was about to leave town. She may even be too big to fit in that trap I bought. So I have the feeling Lydia will have plenty of new customers for the little Free Buffet she's operating on my stoop.

Fear not, Chelsea Girl. It's operational in my absence. I left plenty of food in the bins and a housesitter to dole it out. We've come too far with Lydia to abandon her now.

Hello from way up in the sky, en route to Minnesota. I'll post this when I hit the hotel room but I'm writing it from seat D-10 on a Northwest Airlines flight. A nice flight attendant lady is prowling the aisle with a bottle of H2O and a stack of nested plastic cups, asking everyone, "Water? Water? Anyone want water?" She makes it sound like we're not likely to get any in Minneapolis so we'd better tank up now.

The flight left right on time and they're saying we'll be in 10-15 minutes early. I like that. If I ran an airline, I think I'd pad the schedule so every flight would get in 10-15 minutes earlier than we say. It might take us just as long as any other airline to get you where you're going (or longer) but when you thought of us, you'd think, "Boy, they're good…they're usually 10-15 minutes early."

Security at LAX was the usual drag, made draggier by a raging debate ahead of me in my line. A lady who looked a lot like Paris Hilton (but wasn't) was refusing to remove her footwear…and getting very loud and strident about it. On one hand, she had a point. They were sandals — and I could have hidden a lot more weaponry or explosives in my wallet, which I did not have to put on the conveyor belt, than she could have secreted in her flip-flops. On the other hand, it was not like she had a prayer of winning the argument and having one lowly Security Agent reverse TSA policy.

"You're required to put your shoes through the x-ray," said a man of steadily-diminishing patience while behind us, we could all hear voices crying out, "My plane leaves in ten minutes" or similar pleas. For some reason, no one thought to move her to one side and debate the issue while others passed on through. Paris kept responding, as if someone was paying her to say it as many times as possible, "But these are not shoes." She was right on some theoretical level but wrong to think she was getting on her plane without complying. By the time she did as ordered, the line behind her was the length of the Nile and at least a few people had probably missed their flights.

The pilot just said we're at 31,000 feet and we'll be starting our descent shortly. He'll "have us on the ground" (isn't there a nicer way to put that?) in about 25 minutes and then there's 5-10 minutes to taxi to our gate. I think the "10-15 minutes early" didn't include taxi time so maybe we're not as far ahead of schedule as they suggested.

I'm going to wrap this up and spend the rest of the flight paging through the in-flight magazine, getting up to speed on the Great Steakhouses of America. How is it that I never get to vote on what gets onto those lists? It couldn't be because they're just a cheap advertising ploy and that the restaurants listed are the ones that paid to be included, could it? If it turns out that's the case, I'm going to stop wagering on these things.

If you're anywhere near Mission Viejo, California, this will be of interest to you: Frank Ferrante, who you're all sick of seeing me rave about on this here blog, will be Grouchoing all over the stage at the Saddleback McKinney Theater this coming Tuesday, July 8. Frank's one-man show as the Magnificent Marx is, like the man he replicates, a treasure. Click the link for more details.

Here's what's up with my occasional employers, Sid and Marty Krofft. As noted, there's a huge-budget Land of the Lost movie in the works (I was on the set two weeks ago) and other projects in the offing. I've worked for them on and off for thirty years and one thing I learned early-on was never to write them off or count them out. Along with their other talents, they're darned good at just bouncing back. If this new movie were to fail — and I'll betcha it won't — they'd be back a year later with something successful.

I am assured by half the Muppet Experts in the world that Cookie Monster, as seen on The Colbert Report, was performed by a gent named David Rudman. Frank Oz began cutting back on his Muppeteering in the nineties due to age and other career opportunities, and others began imitating him. Around 2001, Mr. Rudman emerged as the primary Cookie Monster manipulator and it's easy to see why. He's darn good at it.

A month or two ago, I spent a few hours on the set of a Muppet shoot with Kermit, Gonzo, Fozzie, Piggy, The Swedish Chef, Pepe the King Prawn and a few others. Four Muppeteers were handling the cast…with a few more providing hands and such. The four were Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire, Eric Jacobson and Bill Barretta. Dave originated and still plays Gonzo and Bunsen Honeydew, and Bill started Pepe and a few other recent characters.

But for most of the stars, we're on to second (and third) generation Muppet Wranglers. When Jim Henson died in 1990, he willed the role of Kermit to Steve. Eric is the specialist in the roles Frank Oz no longer does — Bert, Grover, Fozzie, etc. For a while, he did Cookie Monster on Sesame Street but Rudman took it over, in part because it was easier to have Bert and C.M. interact if they weren't done by the same performer. I don't watch Sesame Street often and haven't since it essentially turned into The Elmo Hour. But when I've caught new Muppet segments, I am impressed with how faithful they are…and how well they integrate with scenes rerun from the era of Henson, Oz, Hunt, Nelson, et al.

Having been deeply critical of some cast replacements on animated shows, I'm impressed that someone knows the difference between a good Muppet imitation and a bad one…and hires accordingly. The four men I saw on that set a few months ago were as good as you could reasonably expect; maybe a little better than one would dare hope for. I wish more people cared that much about keeping classic characters sounding and behaving like themselves.

I just saw a man on MSNBC say he's going to vote for John McCain because Barack Obama is an "elitist" who doesn't understand the problems of the average American. This is the same John McCain who admits that he doesn't know the price of gas, is chauffeured everywhere he goes, has no idea how to use a computer, has had free medical care for most of his life and who owns more homes than most people have toilets.

I use a program to scan my e-mail and flag possible spam. The company that makes this program just sent me an e-mail to announce an upgrade. And their program flagged this e-mail as possible spam.

Easter Eggs on the Internet.