I had just popped a couple of Vioxx to ease the pain in my Celebrex when the telephone rang. It was the Answering Service in High Heels telling me to call the Cat Lady.

Like most average Americans of my age and gender, I had no idea what that meant.

"Julie - the woman you wrote about who cloned the cat," Andrea said. "I just talked to her and she wants you to give her a call."

"Oh, OK, good one. Ha ha. Now what do you want?"

"No, seriously, I have her cell phone number right here."

"Right, right. Well, see, the thing about that is, I already have Katharine Hepburn on hold and I have to get back to Gwyneth Paltrow right after I talk to her and I've been keeping Sharon Stone waiting since forever, so I couldn't possibly ..."

"I'm serious. Julie says there were some inaccuracies in the wire reports that she wants to clear up."

Instinctively, I immediately knew two things: 1.) She wasn't kidding; 2.) She had already taken Julie's side. In fact, these two known cat lovers had already struck up a rapport. Andrea had nothing but glowing things to say about Julie, the woman who gained fame last week when it came to light she had paid $50,000 for a clone of her cat Nicky.

It was one of those few times you will not hear me praising Al Gore for inventing the Internet, because it has become too easy for people across this great land to read things that were never intended to be spread west of Little Orleans.

I can't tell you how many times I've been in the position of having to tell someone unfamiliar with this column that I don't meeeaan nuthin' - all thanks to http protocol.

It was a difficult decision whether to call back, but at least I figured I'd get 30 minutes on how "cats are people, too" and how she can communicate with animals through a mutual twitching of their ears. You know, good bizarre material for future columns.

Imagine the crushing disappointment when she answered the phone and turned out to be normal - more a woman of science than anything.

Her father was a doctor, and had argued some time ago that cloning was a valid science which, 20 years down the road, would be considered mainstream. Julie said she was skeptical, but curious nevertheless.

Unlike most press accounts had it, she did not have Little Nicky cloned out of grief for Big Nicky; the cloning plan had been more than two years in the making. On the issue of cost, she said $50,000 indeed may seem expensive, but noted it was a choice she made - rather than replace her aging car, in this instance. Plus, she gives more than that to charity, including no-kill animal shelters.

Besides, she asked, would you really rather have a BMW or your cat?

I cast an uneasy glance over at Colonel Sanders, who had chosen that particular moment to contentedly chew the cover off of one of my leatherbound Tolstoy classics. I don't believe animals can understand what you're saying, but, well, he was within earshot, so I tentatively answered, "The cat?" Neither Julie nor the Colonel want to know what I was really thinking at that point.

Julie continued that she had never intended to go public. She changed course when the cloned cat turned out to be startlingly similar to the ex-cat in personality. Neither cat, for example, has the traditional feline hatred of water. Both are happy to jump in the shower. "It's uncanny; it's not like a new cat, it's like an extension of the old cat."

This could yield some important clues, Julie said, to the age-old nature-vs.-nurture debate. It appears to her that we might be born with a personality and behavior that is less influenced by environment than we are led to believe.

At this point I had to interrupt. "You mean to tell me that all you want to talk about is rational science? Do you realize that does me no good whatsoever? I'm a humor writer, give me something I can use. Tell me how the ghost of Big Nicky appears to you every night and whispers winning lottery numbers into your ear. Tell me that Little Nicky knows something only Big Nicky could have known, like his AOL password, or something. Come on, say something wacky. And would it kill you to shriek a little?"

But it was of no use. She was determined to be calm, friendly and reasoned. At the end of a half hour, it became clear that we simply were not communicating on the same level. Or maybe we were. After all, I couldn't see her. Maybe she was twitching her ears.

Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.