Welcome to OnMeowaukee Cat Week, a meowsome bunch of articles, photos, videos and an Instagram contest celebrating all aspects of Milwaukee cats. Sponsored by Bark N' Scratch Outpost, these seven days are dedicated to those creatures with nine lives who make our lives more paw-sitive.

In this series, we peep into the private life of Elmo, a long-haired orange tabby cat who has a penchant for journaling.

Dear Diary,

As the weather warms, I must share my exceeding displeasure with remaining indoors. As you might have already guessed, I have not yet been successful with my escape through the hatch I located earlier this year on the east side of the house – an old milk chute, as it turns out.

Of late, I have tried tirelessly to make my getaway. But, it seems that each attempt is thwarted – either by my own failure to test the boundaries of speed, or by the clever actions of my keepers. Needless to say, I am growing weary. I shall not speak of this any more today. But you can be certain that my mastermind is working continually on a solution to this quandary.

In the meantime, I have made a few very disturbing observations about my surroundings. First of all, Zoe grows agitatingly more friendly all the time. It seems that she has charmed my masters by demonstrating all sorts of inane tricks (most especially her habit of falling down "dead" when they shoot her with one of their fingers). It seems that they have fallen under her evil-monkey-spell, and I am quite suspicious.

Why is she doing this? And what does it all mean to me? I’ve been mulling such thoughts each day as I feign work on my daily studies. She often comes past smelling of tuna … her reward for bowing to the masters. Ahhh… Maybe there are larger fish to fry.

Moving my conversation out-of-doors, I’ve observed through the kitchen window the meanderings of two very foreign felines – alley cats, if you will. They seem to come around most of all in the evenings – and they stay and taunt my masters with their whining. I’ve seen them begging affection of late, and I wonder of their intentions. I should hope they do not have plans to adopt my masters, for that would create a whole new set of variables in my already complex existence.

What makes matters even more hard to digest is that my masters have even taken to naming these stray creatures. They are sitcom-sounding names – "Lenny" and "Squiggy" – totally ridiculous, if you ask me.

Just writing them here conjures vague memories of greasy hair, the image of someone named "BooBooKitty" and an intense craving for Pepsi and milk.. Ah, well. If I cannot vent such things in private, where can I vent?

I bid you adieu for tonight.

ELMO