Two newspapers. One proprietor. And one of the most famous headlines of all time. (Well, in the UK at least.)

PS Don’t you think that speech bubble ruins the effect of the Gotcha?

We’ve finally decided to give up Mouse. We originally agreed to look after her until Simon‘s brother-in-law and fiancee had bought a house and could take her in themselves. But we always knew there was the option of keeping her if that’s what we wanted. Mouse leaves tomorrow.

At this moment she is sitting on my knee, kneading my leg with her paws and occasionally snagging my jeans with her claws. I’m going to miss her perched on the arm of the couch next to my desk, pawing and meowing at me while I’m trying to work. I’m going to miss having something to distract me from the hours I spend chained to this keyboard. And I’m going to miss having an animal break up the monotany and dead air in the apartment.

I am not going to miss the fur which is all over the couch, my keyboard, my screen(!) and currently my face (it’s drifting up from little mouse on my lap). I’m not going to miss scooping the poo and wee out of her litter tray a couple of times a day, or sweeping up the granules of litter which she walks into the apartment and spreads liberally around our tiny bathroom. I’m not going to miss feeling guilty that a young, active, strong cat is cooped up 24 hours a day, seven days a week in a 700 sq ft space.

I am not able to say goodbye to Mouse because I am not a pet person. I am a pet person. But what kind of a life does an animal have when it can’t go outside? Simon says that Mouse won’t be allowed out in her new home in Baltimore. But I assume that the place will be bigger than this one. And who knows, maybe one day her new family will move to a place where cats roam outside. They have a far better chance than Sofie and I, who seem destined to spend our lives trapped in tiny homes in big cities.

Does anyone know where an Englishman can watch the World Cup at 9am on Saturday in Brooklyn, preferably over a nice fried breakfast?

I spent an entire day yesterday combing through two years of posts on Mark Cuban’s weblog for a project I am working on. Cuban started out selling IBM PCs at a store in Dallas. He became a billionaire when he sold his company Broadcast.com to Yahoo! for $5.7 billion in stock. Nowadays he’s well known as the outspoken owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team.

Whether you’re interested in business, basketball or blogging you should take a look. Here’s a favorite of mine from a post entitled Success and Motivation—Don’t Lie to Yourself:

I learned a lot from Don Nelson when he was coach and GM of the Mavericks. He told me something early on, that opened my eyes. I forget the exact conversation, but we were talking about players, and I asked him why he didn’t talk to a specific player about something that was going on. What he said was that “The worse evaluator of talent is a player trying to evaluate himself.”

The same applies to business people and particularly to entrepreneurs and want to be entrepreneurs. We tend to be less than honest with ourselves about our strengths and weaknesses.

Here’s a handy post with links to Cuban’s other posts on entrepreneurship and business. They’re blunt, honest and, I think, pretty inspirational.

You guys in glasses have as much pity for our boys as a cat does for a mouse.

A bit of Babel for your morning (click on the quote for the full story). Warning: depression may ensue.

Thanks to The Diary of Disenfranchised Booksellers for pointing me in the direction of Sovlit.