Greebles. They’re often on the ceiling at our house.

“She had six strong legs and it frightened me. She had insect eyes but I could still see that the look she gave him you give to me.”

Why would he want to? The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

I had a cat that was maybe 6 or 7 years old when she suddenly started having seizures. After a seizure, she’d be wobbly for a few days, then eventually back to normal… until it happened again. Vet couldn’t figure out what was going on. We decided to try to track when she had the seizures—was it when she ate something out of the ordinary, got exposed to something unusual, on a recurring schedule? That sort of thing. We quickly found out that within a day or two of giving her a dose of Frontline flea treatment (the kind you drip on the back of their neck) she’d have a seizure. We stopped giving her Frontline and she never had another seizure.

We have one. The cat likes it, and we love it. Super-easy to empty.

—Oh, we use only the finest baby frogs, dew-picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in the finest quality spring water, lightly killed, and sealed in a succulent, Swiss, quintuple-smooth, treble-milk chocolate envelope, and lovingly frosted with glucose.

—That’s as may be, but it’s still a frog!

—What else?

—Well, don’t you even take the bones out?

—If we took the bones out, it wouldn’t be crunchy, would it?

American here, but I agree with a traditionally Polish or German gift. I’ve always thought Polish pottery is lovely.

I’m so happy to see “A Song for Lya” on your list. It’s one of my favorite SF stories!