LITTLE MISS BEADY EYES

A slightly out of focus phone shot of the Midge. Her white markings are symmetrical. She looks like she's wearing one of those colonial ruffled, lacey, neck thingies that I can't remember the name of right now. Her eyes look green here. But in some lights they are yellow green and sometimes? Heck I don't know for sure.

Little Miss Beady Eyes. She is a compact, almost by the book domestic shorthhair right down to the furry cheeks. Looks like a chipmunk sometimes. That bit of white looks like she got too close to a wall of wet, white paint.

NOW A CAT MOM

Once upon a time, years ago we had four cats. Not including the ones we fed on the porch. By the time we said good by to Springfield we were down to two. Bandit, the big fuzzball, lucked out. The couple that bought the house loved her and she got to stay.

Mom went into assisted living and took the little tuxedo, Midge. The less said about where I spent the last two years the better. However I am also in a decent facility, just not the same one. Mom has been having a lot of breathing problems and it was decided that allergy to the cat was probably one of the the problems. So. About five weeks ago I bacame mom 2. To be honest she has more free space to move in. And Midgie Swivle Ears is slowly learning which strange noises she needs to worry about and which can be ignored.

Which brought back a memory. Actually rereading old journal entries but what the heck. One. We used to watch a lot of war movies. Twelve O'Clock High, Band of Brothers, that sort of thing so a certain degree of explosions were common. Two. Springfield does not get very many thunder storms and most of them don't last very long. One evening we got one of the big ones. A few crashes and the cats are looking around. TV is off. Couple of good crashes overhead and they are getting nervous. "Whatever this is make it stop. You are the humans after all." Half hour after the storm stopped we still had laps full of cats.

Housekeeping was in during lunch. Midge is very tired. She takes her job of replacing the fur on the rug most seriously.

FREEDOM UPDATE

I originally wrote this journal entry back in 2007 not too long after the elections in 2006. Not much has chnged in the past twelve years. in fact some of it is worse. 

The Current Occupant of the White House (I refuse to call this man president) and his advisors continue to claim that we live in the freest country on the planet. Is that true? And what would our ancestors think of the freedom we do have? Who would have thought I'd look back at W and almost miss him. At least there were individuals he would listen to.

We do accept certain limitations on our actions. Most of us obey the speed limit (most of the time), keep most of our clothes on (most of the time and this time of year it’s a necessity) keep certain “recreational activities” indoors where they won’t upset the neighbors and scare the livestock and most of us accept that walking down the middle of a busy freeway at high noon in our birthday suits is probably Not A Good Idea.

But, what of the freedoms that we do seem to have?

The freedom to what the current administration attempt to politicize justice in this country. Claims of voter fraud seem to translate as try to make sure the other party doesn’t win. Competent US attorneys are forced out and replaced with yes men and party hacks. Now it isn't just the attorneys it's almost every appointment.

Voter lists in key states have been purged of minority voters under the guise of making sure that voters with felony records can’t cast a vote. Some states have added voter ID laws and then madd it almost impossible for minority voters to get ID's.

Precincts in at least one key state, Iowa, had more voting machines in suburban precincts than they needed and not enough in inner city precincts that were expected to vote democratic. And enough of the machines didn’t work that potential voters stood in line for hours only to be told to “go home, we’re closing the polls.” And discovering that voting machines and the compters that run them are ridiculously easy to hack into. And that the internet makes it way to easy to spread "fake news." Too many of us are too willing to take every meme at face value and not spend five minutes to see if it's true or when it actually happened. 

The freedom to be a minority voter in rural Texas and find a sheriffs’ cruiser parked near the polls on election day. That little tit bit was in one of Molly Ivins last columns. A hundred and forty years since the end of the Civil War and more than a generation since civil rights and voting rights bills were passed by Congress and signed by earlier presidents and there are still parts of the country where it isn’t safe for minority voters to exercise the most basic right of citizenship. Oregon’s vote by mail looks better all the time. And I just had a really nasty thought. There’s been talk of privatizing mail delivery. You can’t tell the race of a voter from the envelope the mail in ballot is in, but there are parts of the country where you can infer it from the mailing address. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

The freedom to watch contamination spread from the meat supply to farm produce. Those of us who have switched to a largely vegetable diet to avoid contaminated meat and fish get caught in a double bind. Just treat everything as if you’re in a third world country and either cook it or wash it very well. But what happens when one of our freedoms comes to include paying increasingly high prices for clean water? Or pay through the nose for water you know is contaminated and your state government doessn't do a damn thing to require a clean up. 

The freedom to pay low prices for products so poorly made you have to replace them twice as often.

The freedom to watch the contractors that produce these shoddy products move from country to country in search of increasingly cheaper workers while American workers who produced products you’d be proud to own lose their jobs.

The freedom to discover that certain corporations deliberately steer their low paid help to emergency rooms and Medicaid for their care while either offering no insurance or pricing it so high that their employees can’t afford. In other words, we’re subsidizing part of their labor costs with our taxes and insurance premiums while they reap the profit.

The freedom to be herded into “free speech” zones in the name of security whenever our elected hired help comes to town

The freedom to vote for whichever candidate the moneychangers figure they can get the best deal from.

The freedom to attend the church of your choice but discover that only certain groups appear to have a pipeline to the elected hired help.

The freedom to watch the religious right tail wag the political dog. Now the religious right is the dog. 

The freedom to vote for the Democrat or Republican of your choice. There wasn’t much the 2005 session of Oregon legislature could agree on, but they did agree on this, by the time they were done is was much harder for a third party or independent candidate to get on the ballot.

I guess I could go on until I ran out of room but I think I’ve drawn a pretty clear picture. I’m not feeling very free right now, is anyone else?

THE BATTLE ISN'T OVER

OK. The situation isn't as bad as it was when this song was originally released. Or I could be wrong. The Amazon is burning. Our current occupant wants to turn over the Tongass National forest to the strip mining logging companies. Protections for endangered species are being eroded and pollution in this country is actually increasing. Water quality in many areas is going down or is nonexistant.

You Say That the Battle Is Over

John Denver

And you say that the battle is over
And you say that the war is all done
Go tell it to those with the wind in their nose
Who run from the sound of the gun

And write it on the sides of the great whaling ships
Or on ice floes where conscience is tossed
With the wild in their eyes it is they who must die
And it's we who must measure the loss

And you say that the battle is over
And finally the world is at peace
You mean no one is dying and mothers don't weep
Or it's not in the papers at least

There are those who would deal in the darkness of life
There are those who would tear down the sun
And most men are ruthless but some will still weep
When the gifts we were given are gone

Now the blame cannot fall on the heads of a few
It's become such a part of the race
It's eternally tragic that which is magic
Be killed at the end of the glorious chase

From young seals to great whales from waters to wood
They will fall just like weeds in the wind
With fur coats and perfumes and trophies on walls
What a hell of a race to call men

And you say that the battle is over
And you say that the war is all done
Go tell it to those with the wind in their nose
Who run from the sound of the gun

And write it on the sides of the great whaling ships
Or on ice floes where conscience is tossed
With the wild in their eyes it is they who must die
And we who must measure the loss
With the wild in their eyes it is they who must die
And we who will measure the cost

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: David Mallett

You Say That the Battle Is Over lyrics © BMG Rights Management

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Post Katrina back in 2005 I had this little thought for the day.

"For any military types out there who still believe the US can survive even a limited nuclear war I have one word for you. Katrina."

Of the course the ranking military and politicos have bunkers where they believe than can survive, come out, and take up where they left off. Go read a Canticle for Liebowitz. Those politicians, military leaders, and scientists who were believed to have anything to do with what came to be known as, centuries later, the Flame Deluge didn't live very long to give orders about much of anything. The surviving civilians saw to that.

IS THERE REALLY A LION IN MY LIVING ROOM

More like one of these wild, almost look like house cats varieties.

I spotted a documentary on Amazon Prime titled the Lion in Your Living Room. Which I managed to watch for about five minutes. I bailed at the point when a talking head opined that if cats wanted to keep living with humans "they were going to have to change." Beh.

At the same time there was an article linked on FB on How Cats Domesticated Themselves. Humans started farming, grain attracts rodents and other scavengers. Critters that the small wild cats living in Egypt, the Middle East, and China were already hunting. Cats that may have looked like this.

A European wild cat.

A Chinese Mountain Cat.

A Persian Sand Cat.

A Pallas Cat range through Central Asia. Actually about the size of a house cat under all that fur. It gets cold in those mountains and winter lasts a long time. Also a stockier build and shorter legs. A body type found among many animals that have to endure long, cold winters.

Look awfully familar don't they? Except that ourS hang around the farmstead, house, whatever cats apparently didn't have the tabby markings until the fifteen to sixteen hundreds. Kind of funny actually since most of these wild breeds have tabby markings.

When you work down the genetics lions belong in the panthera family. Cheetas and cougars are in another offshoot. And you finally get to the smaller members of the cat family. The felines, that includes our semi domesticated house cats, are in a family by themselves. The Scots have a version of the mountain cat but apparently there has been interbreeding with domesticated cats and only a small portion of the population "pure" bred.

If our house, barn, field cats can interbreed with their wild cousins and produce viable offspring they are not a separate species. Just as dogs can interbreed with wolves.

 And how do housecats behave. Yes they like to cuddle. They also sneak, stalk, and like to find at least three places to hide out. All behaviors you would expect in a wild cat who has to sneak, stalk and find hidey holes where somebody bigger than they are can use them forllunch.

And can you imagine a lion stooping to eating a mouse?