Books Lying Open
¤ The Complete Tales and Poems, Edgar Allen Poe
¤ Shelters of Stone, Jean M. Auel
¤ Abarat, Clive Barker
¤ Hearts in Atlantis, Steven King
¤ Everything's Eventual, Steven King

Soul-Devouring Worry
¤ Eventually running out of soul-devouring worries.

Curse of the Day:
¤ May your one lifetime slice of pear pie actually taste pretty damn good.

Phrase of the Moment:
¤ Phrase: I don't like that at all.
¤ Usage: "I didn't like that at all."
¤ Synonyms: That forcibly removed me from my happy place.
¤ Deviations: "I didn't like that at all."
¤ Origin: Malaya-ism.
¤ Notes: Best issued after a seemingly minor setback, delivered in a sad little voice, over a pouty lower lip.  Provokes amusement and sympathy in the heart of a sympathetic listener. -- August 19, 2003

There's the quick "how I spent my weekend" update.  Much more below about the kitty-looking.  I didn't finish the May Mailbag yet, but I did work on some of the photos pages.  The only one with any significant updates (yet) is the Dusty photo page.  It's more than tripled in size and every shot has a new and occasionally amusing caption, plus the page intro has more info about various Dusty things, including his broken tail.

¤ With the two year anniversary of the 9/11 events just passed, it's surprising how many major questions remain unanswered.  Many of them are being hindered by the Bush Administration's continual stonewalling and delaying and underfunding of the official congressional task force investigation into the 9/11 events, but a lot of others look to me like things that newspapers and news magazines/TV shows should be all over.  Isn't that what journalists are supposed to do?  Investigate things?

A list of 11 topics with extensive news story links from all of them can be read on the Unanswered Questions website, and there are 20 shorter questions in this excellent article from the Philadelphia Daily News.  I'll quote a few:

2. Why did Attorney General John Ashcroft and some Pentagon officials cancel commercial-airline trips before Sept. 11?

On July 26, 2001 - 47 days before the Sept. 11 attacks - CBS News reported that Ashcroft was flying expensive charters rather than commercial flights because of a "threat assessment" by the FBI. CBS said, "Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term." Newsweek later reported that on Sept. 10, 2001, "a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns."

Did either Ashcroft or the Pentagon have advance information about a 9/11-style attack and, if so, why wasn't this shared with the American public?

 

7. Why did President Bush continue reading a story to Florida grade-schoolers for nearly a half-hour during the worst attack on America in its history?

In arguably the greatest understatement in U.S. history, Bush told a questioner at a California town-hall meeting in January 2002 that 9/11 "was an interesting day." Interesting, indeed. In the two years since the attacks, questions have only grown about the president's bizarre behavior that morning, when he was informed in a Sarasota classroom that America was under attack.

"I couldn't stop watching the president sitting there, listening to second-graders, while my husband was burning in a building," World Trade Center widow Lorie van Auken, a leader of relatives of Sept. 11 victims who have raised questions about the attacks, told Gail Sheehy in the New York Observer.

 

8. How did Flight 93 crash in western Pennsylvania?

Based solely on circumstantial evidence from several cell-phone calls made by passengers, most of the public and the mainstream media have come to believe that the plane crashed because of a struggle between the passengers and the hijackers.

Meanwhile, the FBI reportedly has enough hard information about what really happened on Flight 93 to have worked up a flight-simulation video. But that video, the cockpit audio recording and the hard data from the other "black box," the flight data recorder, is still top secret.

 

13. Why did the Bush administration lie about dangerously high levels of toxins and hazardous particles after the WTC collapse?

Because apparently some White House officials felt that the health of the American economy and Wall Street was more important than the health of New York City residents who lived nearby. For example, on Sept. 16, 2001, a draft press release from the Environmental Protection Agency said: "Recent samples of dust gathered by OSHA on Water Street showed higher levels of asbestos in EPA tests." That was deleted and replaced with this: "The new samples confirm previous reports that ambient air quality meets OSHA standards and consequently is not a cause for public concern."

A key figure in the changes was the head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, who - you can't make this stuff up - is a lawyer who formerly represented the asbestos industry.

At least we can all rest assured that our democratic government will investigate ceaselessly until they have the answers, and will immediately share them with their constituents, the American people, putting the vital interests of we citizens above any political or big business considerations. *snort*

Sorry, but I almost managed to say that with a straight face.  I don't know how politicians do it.  Probably it gets easier when you have no soul.

She's had her kitty for 3.5 years, since she got him as a young (6 months or so) adoption from the Humane Society.  We like him, he likes her and tolerates me, and is fun to play with, but lately Malaya has been getting the urge for another kitty.  Our official excuse is that our kitty is bored, and that he might like a playmate.  Of course our kitty sleeps approximately 97.4% of the time, so it's hard to say what he'd do with a friend other than act as a pillow, but that's not the point. The point is that another kitty would not be too expensive and would be fun to have around and might enliven things around here.

I was not real sold on the concept, and had been wet blanketing the topic when Malaya brought it up. We'd been to various kitty show locations; lots of local pet stores host them on weekends for the local cat charity, CC4C, and seen pretty kitties, but I had been thinking that one bongie was enough, and that we didn't really want/need 2 of them in our small condo.  Especially not a new/tiny one.

Malaya was more interested in it though, even though she loves Dusty now, and kept bringing it up to me.  Not in a "give in and let me have this" sort of way, but more along the lines of, "wouldn't it be nice if..."  She wasn't doing it in a nagging or persuading way, just sort of pointing out that it might be fun to have another kitty.

She also says that it would be fun if I had a cat.  Obviously we'd both love it and stroke it and bite its tender ears a little bit, but Dusty is clearly her cat; his affections fall largely upon her.  A new kitty wouldn't necessarily prefer me, but it would be neutral, and would love us both equally. Or perhaps love me more, since I'm home to play with it more often?  (Though that's far from guaranteed, since it's not like my additional time alone with Dusty is making him come to prefer me over his momma.)

This also assumes that you buy the proposition that cats "love" anything.  I think that's an exclusively human emotion/delusion, and that animals can be loyal and all of that, but they don't have the intellectual capacity for it.  Well, maybe higher levels of apes and dolphins and stuff.  I'm not going to get into that topic today though.

Anyway, Sunday we got out in the afternoon (yes, I went and looked at cats for adoption instead of watching football, drinking beer, and choking on pretzels) and checked out three of the local sites, and saw a bunch of lovely kitties.  It's hard to judge their personality or temperament in a pet store; the CC4C people, (who are mostly 50 y/o or older women) are very gentle and the kitties are calm, but most are sorta nervous about being in a small cage with all these strangers around.  Plus every pet food store is pretty well infested with dogs, mostly because everyone who comes there to buy overpriced dog food brings one.  Their constant whining and barking and dog farts obviously upset the kitties.

I held a few cats today, kittens as well as juveniles and a couple of adults.  And they were nice, but what can you say?  They're cats. I hold Dusty every day, much to his displeasure.  The things that differentiate one cat from another aren't going to be real evident in a 3 minute cuddling and stroking interlude in a bright and noisy pet store.  You can tell a real scardey-cat or a real lazy bones, but the in between is hard to say.  A lot of the cats they have for adoption were abandoned by owners, or found as kittens, or caught feral and tamed down, and what stage they are in the "becoming a suitable pet" process is hard to know. A couple of the cats we saw were not available for adoption or handling, since they were very new to whoever was keeping them, and had been brought along that day just to get them used to going outside of their home, and to acclimate them to the pet store environment.

The people who show them at the stores are the people who are fostering them, so they can tell you if the kitty is playful or dominant or bashful or whatever, and that gives you some idea, but that's how they are in a given environment. Their foster home.  Our condo is very different, with a different cat and different owners, etc. Plus most of the kitties are kittens or juveniles, and their personalities are going to change over time anyway.  Ideally for the better, but that pretty much depends on how you take care of them.

The funny thing is that the kitties were so calm and huggable, for the most part, even by a strange person (me) in a strange place, with strange noises.  Dusty would turn you into coleslaw if you tried to take him out of a cage and handle him in that way in that place.  Which is what struck me funny; here we have this pet cat who is supposedly well-cared for and calm and tame and sweet and a good pet.  Yet he doesn't like to be held very much, only tolerates it in certain positions (he has to be over your left shoulder with his hind legs against your chest) and only for a short period of time, and so on.  He's more accepting of Malaya manhandling him, but he isn't real fond of being held upside down or over the wrong shoulder or in a way he doesn't want to be held under any circumstances.

So in theory, any cat we brought home would be a more malleable creature than Dusty, at least in some ways.  However Dusty has a personality.  Prickly in some ways, but at least he's an individual, and he will respond to proper treatment.  He's very much a cat, and a dog owner type of person would have no patience for him and his idiosyncrasies.

The one funny thing I saw while handling the kitties was at the last store, at just about 4pm, when they were packing up.  They made time for us to examine them since we're their ideal customers; a couple who are obviously capable of caring for a cat and seriously looking at them.  While I was holding a cute little beige kitten and talking to the cat lady, some annoying little kid came running up and started clamoring to hold the kitty.  He was about 10 and unremarkable, except for being more eager to talk than possessed of anything worth saying.

He wanted to hold the kitty, and reached up like I was going to pass her into his clumsy grasp, but was cut short by the cat lady asking if he'd washed his hands.  They have bottles of disinfectant hand cleanser stuff since they want you to not transfer any germs or diseases from one cat to another, or from some dog you petted on the way into the store or whatever.  And you're supposed to get a squirt of it after each cat, and before you take on another one.  It's not exactly hospital sanitary, since the cats are all on your shirt and arms when you hold them, but it's better than nothing.

So the kid turns and holds the bottle of stuff for a minute, but doesn't actually use it, all the while yammering away about this or that, despite the fact that both the cat lady and me were ignoring him. She was eager to tell me more about that particular kitty, and I wanted to hear her even though I knew we weren't going to be taking any kitty home that day, much less that one, which I thought was too young and too light in color.  Anyway, the lady turns away to put up some cages and let me hold the kitty, and the kid puts down the bottle of disinfectant and starts trying to talk to me, and touches the kitty's head. It was a very mellow kitten, and wouldn't have minded being held, even though it was pretty clear (to me, anyway) that he'd be clumsy and such.  However he stroked her forehead gently enough, but then leans in and kisses the cat between the ears.

I don't suppose there's anything real wrong with that, but I hardly ever kiss any animal, even one that's my pet and I know is relatively clean.  I certainly wouldn't do it to one in a pet store, and especially not while some other person was handling it.  I didn't like the little shit touching the cat or standing close enough to me that he could do so. Get your nose-picking little paws away from my face and chest area, junior.  But then to lean in and kiss the cat's head, which was pressed against my chest while I was cuddling it... I found it very weird.  Not to the point of wanting to kick him through a display shelf of bird chow, but it was definitely enough to remind me again of why I so dislike most children. And why most children deserve to be disliked.

Of course I so dislike most adults as well, but for entirely different reasons.

So we didn't get a kitty and didn't seriously consider it, but we are thinking about it for next week.  I am at least, and I think Malaya has been game to get one all along (if we saw one that we loved at first sight), but wasn't going to do so unless/until I was as interested in it as she was. We're not bound and determined to return home with a feline; it's not like we're going to grab the first one without mange and with an even number of limbs we see, but we'll look more with a "we could get him/her..." mentality, rather than a, "they're cute and it's too bad we don't have a big enough condo for two cats..." which was our attitude during the previous kitty surfing.

I'm curious what it will be like to bring home a new kitty.  I hadn't lived with a cat, before Dusty, in almost 20 years, but I've always thought of myself as a cat person.  My parents had cats before and after I was born, and when they got divorced when I was 7 I stayed with my dad for a while, and he kept Coconut, who was pretty much my cat, though mom and dad liked him too.  My mom had a succession of cats for some years after that, though we never had very good luck with them surviving long term or being great pets, and since Coconut died when I was in my early teens I've lived catless.  Oh, I'd pet them and bond some when I visited someone who owned a kitty, but that's far from owning one yourself.

I had plenty of pets; a dozen lizards of various types, 2 snakes, hundreds of rats, mice for the lizards and snakes, and so on, but none of those are really "pets" in the same way a dog or a cat or other larger, longer-lived animals are.  Birds too, I suppose, though I've never seen any attraction to owning one, unless it's a raptor you can take out to hunt pigeons with, or perhaps a raven that I could teach to croak, "Nevermore."  I enjoy the rats, but they're sort of like a larger, furrier ant farm.  Individual rodents don't live long enough to really bond with, and I've always enjoyed keeping several of them to watch them interact with each other. They're pretty easy come, easy go.  They get sick or die, they get frozen and then thawed as snake chow.  If you don't take it to the vet or get it shots or anything like that, it's not really a pet.  And if it doesn't know you and have a personality, it's not a pet either.  Snakes and lizards and such aren't really pets.  They acknowledge your presence, but only barely, and they don't show affection or want to be held or anything.  They just do their little dim reptilian things, and if you derive some pleasure from observing that, you keep them as sort of moving sculpture.

So having established that we're actually leaning towards getting another cat, what sort of cat do we want?

Malaya assures me that Dusty gets along well with other cats; in her old apartment there was a front porch sort of thing, and while Dusty stayed on it and was basically an indoor cat (as he is now), other cats would come by and visit and Dusty was nice to them.  No huge hissing and fighting escapades of the sort I used to always hear outside my old apartment in La Mesa, but I think that sort of behavior is largely caused by mating urges, and since Dusty is ball-less, and any kitty we brought home would be equally de-balled/ovaried, it should be okay.

I picture Dusty beating up on a little kitty and throwing his (not inconsiderable) weight around, but Malaya assures me he is nice to other kitties.  It's just people he hates and hisses and claws at if they pet him in any way other than how he most wants to be petted, at any time other than when he most wants to be petted. *cough*

We have some idea of desired cat appearance, but mostly in terms of what we do not want.

We don't want a long haired kitty, since they shed too much and get too many hairballs. And no, brushing it daily isn't an option.  Plus kitty would be too hot in the summer.

We don't want a baby kitten since we can't deal with litter training, and we don't want one that's a full adult since we'd like its personality to be more malleable to our treatment.  So we're looking for post-kitten, but pre-adult.

We don't want a hyperactive kitty, but neither do we want a sleepyhead.  Dusty is sleepy (like all cats) but he does like to move around sometimes, and he plays fiercely when his mousie is dangled before him.

We want a male cat, since I don't care and since Malaya likes males better, but I think we're open to negotiations on this one, if we saw a really great female.

We don't have a real preference in terms of coat and coloration, but we do want an attractive cat. Dusty is black so we don't want another one just like him, but we also don't want one that's too lightly colored, since the shedding fur makes everything black or dark look cheesy.  Coconut was white, so I know this from experience.  The cats we saw Sunday were in virtually every color, other than the special pedigree breed colors that make for cats costing $500, and we liked a lot of them. So we're looking short fur, with some variety in tone and markings, that will look good next to Dusty, and not leave all of our clothing besmirched with unsightly sheddings.

Pretty picky, aren't we?

On the subject of colors, I did some research Sunday evening, starting with the indispensable RateMyKitten.com.  I think the cutest out of the whole top 20 is this one, but we probably wouldn't get it; it's too lightly colored.  Not that we'd see a pedigree seal point blue up for adoption anyway; they cost hundreds of bucks.  We saw several sort of like this little cutie, but I don't really want an orange cat.  Plus the ones we saw had patches of pure white as well.

Looking for other varieties, I checked out an official cat breeds site, and what I saw generally horrified me.  Here are links to some of the odder types.

• Balinese
• British Shorthair -- comes equipped with spooky, Halloween eyes.
• Colorpoint Shorthair
• Cornish Rex -- ugly and weird.
• Devon Rex -- competes in the "drowned rat" category.
• Oriental -- As the lower pictures reveal, this cat belongs in Notre Dame Cathedral.
• Persian -- There are about 9 variations in this breed, but I thought the pictures on the Bicolor Division page were the most creepy.  Wake up with one of those on your chest, staring into your eyes, and you'll scream like a little girlie.
• Scottish Fold -- Van Gogh's favorite.
• Selkirk Rex -- Left too long in the dryer.
• Sphynx -- We do not bite our kitty.  Not even a little.
• Tubcat -- Fear him.

There are lots more breeds that aren't yet officially accepted, but that look pretty.  Or not.  Cat Fancy Mag's website has a buncha them.

Fortunately, neither Malaya or I are so divorced from reality that we're even considering paying hundreds of dollars for some sort of weird inbreed pedigree cat.  We would prefer a mutt, or whatever you call that in cat terms.  Ours will compete in the American Shorthaired category, I suspect. But isn't like every cat an American Shorthair, you ask?  Don't be foolish! Let the sniffy cat pedigree website educate you.

By chance, a non-pedigreed shorthaired cat (or "Domestic Shorthair") might resemble an American Shorthair, just as another random-bred cat might look like a Siamese, Persian or Maine Coon. The difference, however, is that a pedigreed cat can consistently produce kittens of the same physical conformation, coat quality, and temperament, while a random-bred cat cannot. Years of selective breeding and the careful recording of many generations of cats guarantee that each litter of kittens will have specific qualities.

So what's the difference that makes for the typical "bought it spayed/neutered" cat owner?  Absolutely nothing.  Take your alley cat to a cat show and insist that it's a pedigree American Shorthair, and you can trace it back 57 generations to the Second Annual Cat Show at Madison Square Garden in 1896.  That outta piss them off.

While you're on that page, check out the top photo. I love that coat!  Silver tabby, or so it says.  We didn't see any like that today, though there were a few normal grey/brown tabbies that had a nice semi-jaguar coat that I liked.

We'll head out to look at the kitties next weekend, and may well return home with one. And you can bet that if we do we'll be burning through batteries in my digicam like cops go through Krispy Kremes.  And many of those shots will turn up on this site, of course.  The ones available for donation are all ready to be taken home; they're $80 for an adoption, but that gets you a cat that's already had vet visits, shots, is neutered, etc, which would cost you a lot more than $80 if you just picked up a kitten somewhere and did that yourself.  Not that I recommend that sort of thing.

To be continued next Monday?

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