Cats Play

It's midweek and 15 minutes before curtain and the wide-body Shubert seems a lonely landscape of empty seats and isolated ticket buyers. No waiting masses, no yearning hunks of humanity. Has Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Cats," after more than 10 years, run out of lives? "Watch," an usher says. "Watch what happens." Five minutes later the scene changes. Groups of five and six arrive, trailing children. Couples. Singles. Groups of four. Double-daters. Couples. Couples trailing children.

Those evil cats . As soon as we reported on a "virtual play room" at a Los Angeles animal shelter where human admirers could manipulate remote-controlled toys and watch kitties' reactions, the feline-obsessed began lining up like it was giveaway day at Pinkberry. At one point, the number of people waiting for the virtual play room topped 70, and the queue for a two-minute turn stretched to nearly three hours. “This just goes to show I shouldn't read The Times at work,” one person wrote on the play room's chat board.

The longest-running show in Broadway history closes Sunday. Big news. The passing of a New York phenomenon--an era, even. So why do I feel (a) vaguely guilty for feeling (b) like Diana Morales in "A Chorus Line" who, upon hearing Mr. Karp, her unpleasant acting teacher, had died, felt (c) nothing? The show in question is "Cats." The mass-market kitties-in-a-junkyard phenomenon comes from the pen of Andrew Lloyd Webber. The music accompanies lyrics derived mostly from the 1939 poems of T.S.

Inspiration comes in many guises for a performer. Jacqueline Bisset found her muse from an unfortunate incident involving her cat for her latest film, "Death in Love," which opens today. Written and directed by Boaz Yakin, the controversial family drama casts Bisset as the rage-filled, sadistic mother of two adult but emotionally stunted boys (Josh Lucas and Lukas Haas).

Most teachers stuff their classroom lesson plans into a desk drawer at the end of the school day. Barbara Cser says she stores hers in a litter box. That's because cats help her teach reading, writing and arithmetic to fourth- and fifth-graders at her Glassell Park schoolroom. The 9- and 10-year-olds are learning science by studying the animals' superior eyesight. They talk about feline symbolism in social studies. They discuss cat poetry and read cat books in language arts.

When you think about finding steady work in this town, you might consider the police or sanitation departments, maybe the school system. And, of course, there's always "Cats." Always, always. Just ask Ethan Fein, a graying 49-year-old who plays guitar in the 25-member orchestra. He bounced from weddings to bar mitzvahs for years. Then came Oct. 7, 1982, at the Winter Garden Theatre: opening night for "Cats," the musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber based on a collection of cat poems T.S.

If American worker productivity drops in the third quarter of 2012, I'm fairly certain the cause will be traced back to this: iPet Companion, a "virtual play room" that allows anyone, anywhere, to play with criminally cute, reprehensibly distracting orphan cats waiting to be adopted in city shelters. The Los Angeles Best Friends Pet Adoption & Spay Neuter Center, a Mission Hills facility owned by the city of Los Angeles and operated by the nonprofit animal welfare organization Best Friends, launched its iPet Companion virtual play room Wednesday.

Gussie Moran had legs that went on forever. She walked, the late designer Ted Tinling said, as if she were tiptoeing across tennis balls. She was a California girl with a California tan. She was a jock, she was beautiful, it was 1949 and Gussie Moran showed her lace panties at Wimbledon. "Gussie was," says Jack Kramer, part of Los Angeles tennis royalty, "the Anna Kournikova of her time. Gussie was a beautiful woman with a beautiful body.

Those evil cats . As soon as we reported on a "virtual play room" at a Los Angeles animal shelter where human admirers could manipulate remote-controlled toys and watch kitties' reactions, the feline-obsessed began lining up like it was giveaway day at Pinkberry. At one point, the number of people waiting for the virtual play room topped 70, and the queue for a two-minute turn stretched to nearly three hours. “This just goes to show I shouldn't read The Times at work,” one person wrote on the play room's chat board.

Even the most sedate tabby can be coaxed into a kittenish performance with one of these small hand-crafted toys stuffed with 100% fresh catnip. Created by Catsss Pet Products Inc., they come in colorful fabrics and a fanciful variety of shapes: from a mouse to a sardine, a bird to a bug, and even a "friendly" veterinarian doll that your cat can gallantly toss into the air.

To many Hollywood executives, "user-generated content" means short videos of cats playing the piano. In other words, it's not the kind of competition that threatens people who make $100-million movies. But a spate of new studies provides a more detailed picture of consumers' efforts to create content for themselves and their friends, and the results spell trouble for Tinseltown. Consider the research recently published by Deloitte, a consulting firm, on what it calls "the media democracy."

UCLA Coach Ben Howland will face his alma mater today when the Bruins play Weber State in a first-round NCAA tournament game here. And while he is concentrating on game matters, some of his former Wildcats teammates took the opportunity for a trip down memory lane. Howland arrived at Weber State from Cerritos College, they say, full of vim and vigor. He was a redhead and had a mouth on him. Oh yes, he would talk.

The longest-running show in Broadway history closes Sunday. Big news. The passing of a New York phenomenon--an era, even. So why do I feel (a) vaguely guilty for feeling (b) like Diana Morales in "A Chorus Line" who, upon hearing Mr. Karp, her unpleasant acting teacher, had died, felt (c) nothing? The show in question is "Cats." The mass-market kitties-in-a-junkyard phenomenon comes from the pen of Andrew Lloyd Webber. The music accompanies lyrics derived mostly from the 1939 poems of T.S.

When you think about finding steady work in this town, you might consider the police or sanitation departments, maybe the school system. And, of course, there's always "Cats." Always, always. Just ask Ethan Fein, a graying 49-year-old who plays guitar in the 25-member orchestra. He bounced from weddings to bar mitzvahs for years. Then came Oct. 7, 1982, at the Winter Garden Theatre: opening night for "Cats," the musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber based on a collection of cat poems T.S.

"Laser Lady" repeatedly dials 911 to report the same problem: Her pesky neighbors keep trying to shoot laser beams at her head. Could the operators please send someone out to put up protective shields? This day she was calling from a beauty parlor. Although she was wearing a tin foil helmet "for defense purposes," the perm solution applied by the beautician was posing an ominous threat to her well-being. "Please," she begged the 911 operator, "put the shields up."

It's midweek and 15 minutes before curtain and the wide-body Shubert seems a lonely landscape of empty seats and isolated ticket buyers. No waiting masses, no yearning hunks of humanity. Has Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Cats," after more than 10 years, run out of lives? "Watch," an usher says. "Watch what happens." Five minutes later the scene changes. Groups of five and six arrive, trailing children. Couples. Singles. Groups of four. Double-daters. Couples. Couples trailing children.

For much of her life, Lucille Sackett has taken care of cats, most of them not her own. "Oh, I've always had two or three that belonged to me," she said. One was instrumental in Sackett's decision to open her own cathouse, so to speak. "I once put my Siamese cat in a kennel, and when I got the bill I told my husband we were on the wrong side of this business," said Sackett, 70, who opened what she believed to be the first kennel in Orange County exclusively for cats, naming it Cat Nap Hotel.

Inspiration comes in many guises for a performer. Jacqueline Bisset found her muse from an unfortunate incident involving her cat for her latest film, "Death in Love," which opens today. Written and directed by Boaz Yakin, the controversial family drama casts Bisset as the rage-filled, sadistic mother of two adult but emotionally stunted boys (Josh Lucas and Lukas Haas).

Most teachers stuff their classroom lesson plans into a desk drawer at the end of the school day. Barbara Cser says she stores hers in a litter box. That's because cats help her teach reading, writing and arithmetic to fourth- and fifth-graders at her Glassell Park schoolroom. The 9- and 10-year-olds are learning science by studying the animals' superior eyesight. They talk about feline symbolism in social studies. They discuss cat poetry and read cat books in language arts.

For much of her life, Lucille Sackett has taken care of cats, most of them not her own. "Oh, I've always had two or three that belonged to me," she said. One was instrumental in Sackett's decision to open her own cathouse, so to speak. "I once put my Siamese cat in a kennel, and when I got the bill I told my husband we were on the wrong side of this business," said Sackett, 70, who opened what she believed to be the first kennel in Orange County exclusively for cats, naming it Cat Nap Hotel.