IF YOU ROUTINELY flush 100-dollar bills down the commode, enjoy watching barf roll down your TV screen in the middle of "Frasier" and otherwise suffer from a particularly virulent strain of masochism, what you deserve is a cat. Just don't let it near the Internet.

Successful cat ownership, as my wife Elizabeth and I have decided from years of hard-earned experience, ideally requires the wealth of Croesus, the hide of a crocodile and the patience of a corpse. Plus the ability to take a joke.

(Actually, there is no such thing as a cat owner. There are only suckers possessed by cats. If you think differently, you've never been awakened at 2:15 a.m. by a tiny claw gently pulling back your left eyelid to see what's inside, and found yourself throwing a paper ball around to entertain the claw's owner.)

Elizabeth and I have recently become the prize possession of a small ball of black and tan fur who, after a couple of false starts, has been duly dubbed Angel Gabriel Webb.

Angel started off as Albert Rodney, but at the recommendation of our veterinarian quickly had to be given a more appropriate moniker, Molly Melinda. Then we discovered our lady vet didn't know balls about figuring out the sex of a kitten - thus Angel Gabriel.

The little tabby is a boy - but just in case the vet has another change of, ah, heart, we opted for the sexually neutral Angel. And if needs be, Gabriel can be easily expanded to Gabrielle. You never can be sure of anything with cats.

At the age of six weeks, Angel weighed in at about nine ounces - big enough, he reckoned, to begin laying flying tackles on Ali Magraw, our 17-year-old tortoiseshell cat who weighs about 14 pounds and looks like she swallowed a bowling ball, and our 14-year-old silver tabby, Currant Bun.

Eight weeks on, a sort of peace that only cats could come up with more or less rules. Angel contents himself with nursing Ali's left front paw with great sucking noises that would do justice to a sexually overwrought rhinoceros. Ali, who seems to have adopted the little bugger, slurps away washing him.

Currant Bun couldn't care less, as long as his naps are interrupted only by what has now become five or six meals a day, all of which goes to make up his existence in the hours between sacking out on our bed at night and waking me at 4:45 in the morning for meal No. 1.

I wasn't kidding when I suggested that a healthy bank balance is a necessity if one is to prevent having one's kitten decide while you are asleep that your derriere looks quite appetizing and have a healthy nibble. Elizabeth couldn't sit comfortably for much of the rest of the day.

Grocery shopping means stocking up on cans of cat food for both "seniors" and kittens, sachets of cat food with or without protein, depending, dried cat food for the teeth and, for all I know, cat food pills for a longer tail, sharper claws and a louder "meow" when a suicidal fly hoves into view.

And the cost ... Well, put it this way. With what we spend on cat cuisine, my wife and I could dine out comfortably three times a week on shrimp cocktail, pate de fois gras, pheasant under glass and baked Alaska, with dinner mints and coffee.

As it is, we make do on fish and chips takeaway a couple of times a month.

Still, it could be worse. There is the case of Boris, the cat owned by a British lady named Betty Richards. Boris managed to order up 450 cans of his favorite chicken cat food on an Internet shopping site while Betty was, presumably, cleaning out the litter tray.

It seems Boris wandered across his human pet's computer keyboard, paying particular attention to the number keys, and ordered up more than a year's supply of his choice victuals - about $700 worth. Betty caught the mistake before the fork lift arrived from the supermarket.

Angel does his best to supplement his diet. He catches flies, moths, wasps and any other creature of the insect world that is stupid enough to flick an antenna in his eyeshot (this kitten can spot a gnat at 30 paces and turn it into an hors d'oeuvre in 2.73 seconds flat).

Then he sits there and chomps away on it, making appropriate little gustatorial noises, generally about the time a singularly nauseous barf scene from "ER" flicks on the TV screen.

I will concede that Angel Gabriel is not the worst for this sort of thing. Elizabeth and I have raised 11 kittens/cats in our 14 years together, but by far the champion stomach-churner of the lot was our otherwise delicate little Persian, Coco Chanel.

Coco's favorite party trick was to nosh down a sumptuous meal of something such as pilchards in tomato sauce (on a 0-to-10 scale of vile, about a 29), then climb atop the TV set, lean over and barf the works down the screen. Then she'd wander back to the food bowl, purring.

Then there was the time that Coco, Currant Bun and another of the 11, Freda, teamed up to trap a bird who failed to realize that perching on our window sill was rather like playing "chicken" on the Interstate with a car full of escapees from the suicide ward of the local home for the bewildered.

But let's not go there. You may be reading this over soft-boiled eggs, or corned beef hash, or oysters.

Meanwhile, as for the Webbs, these cats they come, these cats they go, and each one leaves a special glow. But I am a bit concerned about Angel Gabriel, who now seems to have a beady eye cocked on one of the local buzzards.

Thought for the Week: Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7th of your life.

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