Swimming in Cats

I am officially a crazy cat lady. Not only does Ty the kitten have a blog, and Ty and Tink are in residence in the basement (this is in addition to the five permanently ensconced cats upstairs, led by Turk, this blog's mascot), there are a number of cats who have taken up comfortable residence in the yard.

Pictured is PeeWee, an utterly charming 6-month-old who decided at some point that he loves me. He waits for me when I come home, walks at my heel to check the mailbox, purrs and cuddles in my lap at any opportunity. PeeWee has a shyer sibling name of Jackie (baseball fans will understand the name references)--Jackie will approach to sniff my fingers, but in general stays a couple feet away--but doesn't leave. PeeWee went to the vet (and purred and cuddled through the entire experience) for shots and is scheduled to get neutered this week.

Their mother, who is also the mother of Ty and Tink, is back, too, along with the rest of the litter. There were four, but I have only seen three--two black, two black-and-white. Mama has become quite affectionate, rubbing against my ankles and asking to be petted. One of the kittens, whose markings match Turk's (white spot on the chest, tiny bit of white in the armpits, bigger white spot on the underside between the rear legs), is very bold: comes out from under the bushes where they seem to be living and sniffs my feet and seeks attention. The others are shyer, but I have seen three of the four hanging out on our front stoop. I am hoping number four is just shy, not missing or hurt or worse.

Anyway, as winter approaches, all these critters need homes, because the yard is going to be too cold. My priority is homes for the cats currently outdoors for reasons of weather (all right, I confess: I am having a hard time with the notion of giving up Ty and Tink).

Which is all by way of saying that if you or anyone you know is in the market for a cat--AND WILL COMMIT TO GIVING THIS ANIMAL A GOOD HOME, PLENTY OF ATTENTION AND CARE, AND ADEQUATE VETERINARY CARE--I can hook you up. I might even be able to help with initial vet expenses.

There are lots of people and critters in the world in need of your help and love; these ones will give some love back.

UPDATE: It takes a village . . . or at least a neighborhood. Turns out the entire street has been feeding the outdoor kittens, and my yard has become an obligatory stopping-point for kids on the way home from school for kitten-viewing. Number four is indeed AWOL, but my next-door neighbor suspects one of the teens who wanted to adopt one did in fact do so. Meantime, the kids across the street made a kitten bed out of an old crib mattress, and have been coming to sit on my steps to play with the kittens after school (until my neighbor told them they should probably stay outside the fence unless I'm home). Apparently, the various moves Mama has made with the kittens include to the house across the street, and the boat of a neighbor. (Also learned that PeeWee and Jackie were born in the yard of the house on the next corner.) And it seems the daughter of the neighbor two doors down might be interested in one or two of the kittens, as her cat Cecily (who used to visit here regularly--we came to know her because she also has Turk markings, and would come look in our window at her doppelganger) apparently went out one day and failed to come home. (Very sad. We like Cecily a great deal.) Meanwhile, it seems that members of at least four households on the street have been stopping by regularly with food for the kittens; no wonder they look so healthy. Now if we can get people interested in the older cats as well . . .

Ancient Chinese Beauty Secret

I've not been around much, busy as I've been with the new kittens. But I am back, and this, from Antonius at Boring Diatribe, is worthy of note:

A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe.

And this from the whole story in the Guardian:

With European regulations to control cosmetic treatments such as collagen not expected for several years, doctors and politicians say the discovery highlights the dangers faced by the increasing number of Britons seeking to improve their looks. Apart from the ethical concerns, there is also the potential risk of infection.

Sadly, there are entirely too many people for whom the risk of infection is a larger worry than their looks profiting from state executions in a repressive regime. However, those people probably won't let the risk of infection stop them, either. Perhaps they weren't able to cut that picture-in-the-attic deal of Dorian Gray's.

Inescapable

I'm watching Viva Baseball on Spike TV, a documentary about the Latin-American influence in baseball. One theme that keeps recurring is not nationality or language but race. A few notable anecdotes:

A Cuban pitcher held the Cincinnati Reds scoreless for 25 innings in 1908 in exhibition play. This led American teams to consider bringing Cuban players into the major leagues. They didn't tap that pitcher, however, because he was black.

Vic Power (born Victor Pellot, but his name was changed when he came to the U.S.--much as Roberto Clemente was often referred to as "Bob" and Orestes Minoso found himself being called "Minnie") was the best player in the Yankees' minor league system, batting in the mid-.300s and gaining a reputation as one of the best-fielding first basemen in the game; but he wasn't brought up. He spent 7 years in the minors before being traded and brought up by Cleveland. One time, when travelling with the team, he was told in a restaurant that they didn't serve Negroes. "That's okay, I don't eat Negroes," Power replied.

Felipe Alou had only seen or heard of white Americans; when he came to the U.S. and saw black people speaking English, he was stunned.

The black Hispanic players were delighted when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. And in fact Branch Rickey did begin conversations with a Cuban black player. (Sorry, I don't know what his name was.) As with Robinson, Rickey was as concerned with the player having the personality to withstand the pressure as with his on-field prowess. He asked the potential call-up how he would react if a player came in spikes up intending to hurt him. The player calmly replied, "I would have to kill him." Needless to say, Rickey crossed him off the list.

Once players of color became commonplace in the game (and the overall race situation in the U.S. changed for the better), the issue of language and nationality finally became separate from the issue of skin color.

Could the Feds Possibly Screw Up Any More?

The answer is . . . yes.

If you managed to survive Hurricane Katrina and you are in need, you have to register with FEMA to get government help. To register with FEMA, you have to have either a computer (to register at their site) or a phone. Yeah, I'm sure all those people in the Astrodome are surfing the internet to kill time. And the people in the small towns that were being ignored (until today, when New Orleans apparently ceased to be dramatic enough, and World News Tonight and NPR and probably plenty of others discovered the rest of the disaster zone)--yeah, I'm sure they all have intact computer and telephone connections. No food, no water, no help (on Marketplace on public radio, I heard a report on one town in which the only contact they had with FEMA was when a FEMA contractor pulled in to check his map en route to somewhere else)--and the feds' answer is to pick up your nonfunctional phone or your nonexistent internet connection if you want their aid.

But wait, it's not even that simple.

As BoingBoing points out, if you do have the good fortune to have access to a computer, that isn't enough to register through FEMA's web site. You have to be using Internet Explorer 6 on Windows with Javascript enabled. All others need not apply.

Virtually every other web site on earth can be accessed with a wide variety of browsers and systems--that's sort of the point of the web. Once again, the feds missed the point.

Okay, maybe you're lucky enough to have the chosen browser on the annointed operating system (in addition to being lucky enough to have a computer, power to operate it, and working internet access). You better not be visually impaired, because it's one of those sites that shows you a squiggly word and makes you key it in to prove you're a human. What, are robots crying out for disaster assistance all of a sudden?

All right, you're saying, just use the darned phone number if the computer is a problem! Ha. No such luck. Calling the phone number just causes them to send you the forms that you would have filled out online. By mail. You are getting your mail during this disaster, right?

Once again, the hurricane isn't the only disaster.

Baghdad, Louisiana

This is what my friend Steve had to say about the administration's double standard on looting/taking things. Apparently freedom is only allowed to be messy somewhere else.

Have to echo the final line of Steve's post.

Black and White and Red Cross

During Sunday Night Baseball tonight on ESPN, there have been several ads for the Red Cross, many sponsored by Major League Baseball (and narrated by Bud Selig, whose voice--like most everything about him--is something less than compelling). The thing I couldn't help noticing is the proportion of white people to black in the ads: a lot more white people were depicted, both as victims and as volunteers. Most of the people of color were children or old people (harmless! nonthreatening!).

Do they really feel that people are more likely to donate if it looks like you're helping white people? That would be sad.

Are people more likely to donate if the victims appear to be white? That would be sadder.

Recipe for a Third World Nation

There is so much to be said about the aftermath of Katrina; fortunately a lot of other people have been saying it while I have been overwhelmed.

This hurricane and its aftermath has reduced a major city in the richest nation in the world to the conditions of a Third World nation: people are hungry, desperate, living in streets and cemeteries and public buildings, begging and stealing food to survive, facing violence from the uncontrolled worst element, health care reduced to the bare minimums that can be provided without electricity or sanitation. Now, as the survivors are finally being removed to somewhat better conditions (they still have no homes or belongings, but there's electricity and the chance of a meal for those who made it to Houston and elsewhere), there is still the problem of how you find shelter and work and other resources for a city-sized displaced population, a population that was, not incidentally, poorer overall (especially in the rural communities in Mississippi, which haven't gotten nearly the attention that the mayhem in New Orleans commanded) than much of the rest of this nation.

So how do you make a Third World society? Start with a natural disaster whose consequences were so much more severe than they might have been, thanks to denied requests for funding to improve the levees. How about an evacuation that didn't provide for the people who didn't have their own transportation, creating a de facto segregation by economic class. (Noticed that most of the people in the video of New Orleans are black, have you? Yes, race and class are inextricably intertwined in our nation, Condi Rice's expensive shoes notwithstanding.) Okay, so you've removed most of the wealthy and middle-class people; that's a good start on re-creating the Third World. Oh, and housing and the means to survive for the remaining poor people--that's gone, too. Okay, poor people: check. Lack of housing: check. Let's not bring in any civil authority to organize disaster relief until people have experienced severe privation, too, and then when the authorities show up, order them to shoot people who are taking things, thereby making them a source of fear rather than help. Yep, that sounds like a Third World nation. Especially when the hungry and desperate people at the convention center broke into the kitchen, where there was food, and were chased away by armed Guardsmen. If you heard about starving people trying to get to unused food, and the military driving them out, yeah, you'd think it was Darfur or somewhere. Voila. We have the Third World, right here at home.

Now maybe we'll solve these problems here, and if we're really lucky, learn enough from the experience to do the same in the other places in the world where these kind of conditions exist.

A girl can dream, right?