Book Review: Unfinished Business

Title: Unfinished Business

Author: Amy C. Yip

Date: 2023

Publisher: Publish Your Purpose

ISBN: 979-8-88797-087-6

Quote: "I'm grateful that the process of writing this book brought me closer to my parents."

Who can argue with that? I'm glad writing this book brought the author closer to her parents, too. Unfortunately, that's about all I can say in its favor, because what the author offered free of charge was the front and back matter and one chapter of the book. One of the eight chapters that discuss the topics promised in the subtitle, about conversations between US-born adult sons and daughters and their immigrant parents, especially if those parents are Asian, especially if they are Chinese. Because it's really, to some extent, a memoir about Amy Yip's growing away from and back toward her parents.

The chapter I read is certainly relatable, parent-affirming and adult-child-supportive. Here I stand to testify that the same dynamics are at work in families where the mother's ancestors have been here for ten generations and the father's for who knows how long before that. 

But, without knowing what else is in the book, how can I recommend it?

Fellow writers. Please. You need to sell copies of your book. Reviewers want to help you, if at all possible, because eventually, in between reviews, we will make time to write books you can help us sell...but we can't do much with one chapter from a full-sized book. If you want reviews, you must send us the whole thing. Is this fair? Is this right? Like many things in this world, it's neither. It is what it is. 

Should a Husband Ever Tell a Wife to Breastfeed?

The question actually came up in a blog post on Sunday. My answer outgrew the Link Log.

My answer is, of course, NO. Like starting the baby in the first place, feeding the baby naturally is a personal decision about which only the owner of the body involved has anything to say. 

In the blog post linked below, a young Christian, concerned for his baby's health, spirals into a panic he feels able to express only by trying to bark out orders to guide a process he's not even capable of understanding. His angry rant shows how scared, helpless, and shamed he really feels, and how, like a typical male, he thinks trying to turn his real emotions into anger and blaming someone else is "rational" and "manly." If it weren't so likely to lead to violence it would be funny. Manly? The whole post was written by a kicking, screaming inner infant.

https://toolsofrenewal.com/?p=21026

He thinks he can tell a woman to lactate? Well, every girl learns, as part of the process of growing up to be a woman, that most of the non-lactating half of humankind are incompetent most of the time. Just a peek at just a fraction of the body part that wields the power they don't have is usually enough to reduce them to drooling idiocy. Women have been pardoning displays of male irrationality, not to mention presumption, even blasphemy (only the Creator ever told anyone's milk to flow), for a long time. Perhaps we shouldn't pardon them so easily. At the very least a man needs to know, before there is any chance of his becoming a father, that since men are incapable of doing any of the actual feeding of a baby, that's an indication that they are meant to do all of the getting up at night to bring the baby to its mother, to return it to the cradle, to fetch clean diapers, and generally to do all the other housework unless, and until, the wife reclaims it. And what men have to say, as they bow in awe before the miracle that is motherhood, needs to be "Humble me, O Lord, so I can do Thy Will."

Reading the Bible as a whole, of course, quells the male fantasy that some of the apostles advised wives generally to submit to their own husbands because that was part of the natural order of things. It was not. It's what many of us actually want, bur, like sunshine, it's not naturally available to even half the people who want it.

Adam was rebuked for obeying his wife immediately after receiving instructions directly from God, and disobeying God. Though Adam's choice was wrong, God's response to it was compassionate, because Adam's obedience to his wife was part of the natural order of things. Abraham was not rebuked for obeying his wife, even though she seems to have been the only one in their family who did not receive guidance directly from God--and was that why she was the one who gave orders to other people? In front of strangers, at least, Sarah showed conventional courtesy to Abraham, addressing him by his title (of which she was no doubt very proud); this was how Jewish Christian wives were told to treat their husbands, though there were probably times when it seemed like mockery to Abraham, who, we are told, obeyed Sarah even when it caused him pain. Then there was Nabal, remembered as "The Fool," which is what the nickname "Nabal" meant, for bawling out bad ideas to servants who had learned that his wife's directions were the ones it was prudent to follow...

Paul advised the wives of Greek and Roman Pagans to submit to their husbands with the sort of "fear" that was proper to the authority their laws granted those husbands. Peter advised Jewish Christian wives to speak politely to their husbands in public, as Sarah did to Abraham. They were talking about how Christians could best approach different cultures, not about what every marriage is meant to be.

The idea that women's liberation from abusive marriage laws could wait is enough to offend some readers today. The idea that men generally are entitled to any position of authority is analogous to the idea that, because Moses was directed to speak to a rock and reveal a spring of water behind it, the general method of finding water should be to go out and talk to rocks. Most men are dumb animals who, if women didn't maintain control of relationships with them, would produce babies they'd never even help to feed. The minute we reposition your hands, boys, the game is over. A man who can represent Christ to his household maintains complete control of himself. No haggling for "more" before marriage. No suggestion of starting babies before the wife feels fully prepared for motherhood. No raising his voice or giving orders, ever. No talking back--a woman's No means No and, if the man thinks there is a chance that she didn't really mean it, he should back off and wait for her to realize that for herself. Men who want respect need to be respectable. Responsible. Honorable, even. And one little moment of Nabalite bluster destroys that; presents the man as no more of a godly leader than the screaming infant is. 

But is there some reason to blame a specific person, maybe someone like Gloria Steinem who never dared to be even a foster mother but sets herself up as a career mentor, for discouraging a woman from naturally feeding a baby who is failing to thrive on artificial food? There may be. Still, a godly leader does not squirm around in impotent rage, throwing blame at other people. He says things that are honest and self-respecting, like "Hearing that baby scream that way tears my feelings all to pieces. I know we need the money from your job but, if human milk can make the baby strong and healthy, I don't care what else we have to do without; I don't have to eat every single day," and "I never thought about the possibility that my baby might not live. I feel so helpless I don't know how I can bear it. I don't know what to do to save my son," and "I don't know whether there's a way to reconcile feeding the baby naturally with doing your job, but there ought to be. Maybe someone who knows more about natural child care can help."

If this poor frightened boy ever wants his wife to feel that Christian submission to the likes of him is possible, what he needs to do is exactly what he feels so afraid of doing. He must confess his sin. (Submission to a spirit of selfish egotism, as shown by anyone's demanding his or her own way over anyone else's, is a positive sin too. He sinned by telling her what to do, and she sinned if she gave his infantile bawling any more attention than she gave a bird singing outside the window.) He must confess his shame. (It is a shame for a grown man to demand his own way over anyone else's.) He must confess his helplessness, his confusion, and his fear. (He doesn't know that natural feeding will keep the baby alive, or that artificial food is what's making it sickly. Some children thrive on artificial food. He doesn't say whether his child has been exposed to, e.g., glyphosate vapor drift.) 

He must consciously look for ways to identify what he might want, what would be "his way," and to mortify his selfish ego by giving up that--whatever it may be. Months or years need to go by during which he can be seen to be guided entirely by Revelation, or in its absence by Reason, with no regard whatsoever for his preferences. That is the only way anyone can expect to be seen as a leader whom anyone of his own generation has any reason to follow. Christian men are indeed called to the "headship" of their households...and that is, as Lewis observed, the crown of thorns, because they can get it only by self-sacrifice. The husband and father who wants to channel Christ to his wife and children must love them "as Christ also loved us, and died for us." 

But why on Earth does the foolish boy imagine that "feminists" ever discouraged natural childbirth or natural childcare? Most people who rail about "feminists," these days, have no idea what they are talking about. A feminist is a person who believes that women are at least equally as valuable as men. That's pretty much a synonym for a rational human being. Needless to say, there is room for a lot of disagreement among feminists. 

There have been socialist feminists who thought all women needed to be employed in the service of a totalitarian state, yes. They did not have enough influence, in the United States, to get women strapped down and knocked out and, if possible, carved up by surgeons, to deliver healthy babies, nor to add the anti-lactation injections during the mandatory ten-day hospitalization. Who actually did that was the 1950s incarnation of Big Pharma. In the 1950s the sort of people who have more recently screamed that vaccines were the world's only hope of surviving COVID were screaming that women needed that utterly unnatural, male-directed approach to motherhood...to preserve their beauty! The focal point of 1950s fashion was the perky bosom. There are exactly two ways a woman can fit into 1950s fashions: exercise to maintain muscle tone in her upper body, or wearing 1950s lingerie. Neither of these things was affected by lactation, but apparently a critical mass of Americans, in the 1950s, were clueless enough to think they were, presumably because their mothers thought it wasn't nice to talk about such things with them. Anyway it was very profitable for the doctors and manufacturers concerned, though harmful to the babies.

I don't know whether any of the women who literally had to fight for the right to reclaim control of the natural processes of motherhood would have called themselves feminist activists in the early 1960s. I'm sure the women who were making the most noise, at the time, preferred not to think or talk about those women at all. Women like my mother surely would have made women like Gloria Steinem feel as inadequate as they made them look. Mother didn't need a political movement to "have it all" before that was what other women dared to dream of. She had her own business, with full support from her husband. She could bottle human milk for my brother and me and leave it at home, or take us to the shop, cradle and all, and nurse us in between appointments, as she saw fit. She could also, even as an undiagnosed Irish celiac, work Gloria into the ground before breakfast. She also naturally had the sort of figure poor old Gloria could only say, enviously, "seemed so vulnerable"...to someone who didn't have it. Mother was not asked to lecture to the consciousness-raising groups of that day. Not that she had time for them. She was a La Leche Leader. I think, in historical hindsight, she was a feminist activist.

(Mother, of course, was vulnerable--not in the sense Gloria Steinem had in mind, but as an undiagnosed celiac. After giving birth to my natural sister she was disabled by thyroid failure for the next fifteen years. But in youth, as in old age, she was a real storybook heroine...lovable, too.) 

Late baby-boomers grew up aware of our options and so, while choosing not to have babies of my own, I knew how to induce lactation when a friend was having difficulties feeding a baby who didn't tolerate Enfamil. I expected it to feel nice; it did. I expected it to have an effect on my metabolism; I didn't anticipate how dramatic the effect would be. I know firsthand that, while lactating women usually want to do other things besides lactate, nobody has any right to expect that they will. 

Women, too, can be deceived by our emotions into thinking we're speaking as wise mentors and elders when we're really venting our vulnerabilities. It can sound like "You're not a cow! This is what scientific progress is all about! You have a right to bottle-feed the baby. Never let anyone at the office notice that you have a baby. No baby stories, no baby pictures, no emergency calls from the person watching the baby, and never let the baby be visible from the office door! In order to deserve equal pay women need to be equally as neglectful of our families and ourselves as men do--to put their careers first."

More confident and competent women, however, say "Wrong. Both men and women need to put their and their families' physical needs ahead of any corporation. The traditional ideal for all parents to be self-employed, negotiating their own terms of employment directly with their customers, is still by far the best. People who want to make a career of being employees should think twice about having babies. Even so, employers need to work with employees as human beings, with bodies--finding work for employees whose physical abilities change, or finding ways to help employees put babies first for the short time that the future generation are babies."

Should Christian women who choose to give birth also choose to feed the baby naturally? It's hard to imagine why they wouldn't--if the choice is available. Human milk is the best food for human babies. Lactation is also the most efficient way for the body to get rid of the surplus fat pregnant women store in places where, if it's not converted into milk, that fat does nothing at all for the baby. Lactation also balances the hormones that, when  artificially altered, become involved in postpartum depression. It's empowering; it's a statement of independence from the whole wretched corporate universe. It's also a way of bonding with the baby. (And no, apart from a little temporary increase in top-heaviness, my figure didn't change. It lost its youthful perkiness only after age 50, when I was too sick to eat or exercise for two weeks. The key to a youthful figure is exercise.) And also, although there are no absolute guarantees, lactation is the closest thing we have to "immunization" for breast cancer. Nobody should wait for a baby's health to deteriorate on an artificial diet, or allow herself to be browbeaten by a foolish young husband, to choose natural food for a baby. 

In less technologically advanced societies, where men and women define their value to society in terms of hand-to-hand combat, digging coal, and felling trees, and so it's possible for rational people not to be feminists, the historical fact is that many, often most, babies don't survive. If people living in such conditions are able to keep records, their records will show how many more babies were born than children lived to grow up. Women in such societies have no alternative to natural feeding, but that in no way implies that all women produce enough milk or good enough milk to rear strong healthy babies. Many don't, because the usual thing in such societies is that parents are malnourished, themselves. For humans as for other animals, the absence of an overwhelming desire to keep, feed, and cherish babies is often an indication that the babies aren't going to live. (That's one of the reasons why calling abortion murder is so stupid;  the mother of a viable fetus will usually guard it with her life, so if a woman can say "I choose abortion" there's a high probability that the abortion is more like euthanasia.) Other family members should not blame a woman who is unwilling, and probably unable, to feed a baby naturally. Whether or not she wanted the baby as much as its father and grandparents did, wanting babies does not guarantee viable babies. 

In humans as in other animal families, the baby whose own mother can't feed it may be adopted by another female, may seem to thrive on the natural food for its species, and may then die, just the same, before or after it starts eating solid food. Malnutrition used to be the most common reason for this. Today it's unusual for anyone to be malnourished due to simple lack of food, but we're seeing more infant mortality, across species, where glyphosate and other chemicals interfere with babies' ability to digest food. Even in my cat family I've watched it happen; normal cats don't allow other adult cats to see their kittens for the first six weeks, but social cats often rear kittens communally, like lions; one cat's milk dries up while she waits for kittens to starve out enteritis, another cat feeds the kittens when they seem to be recovering, and then glyphosate vapors blow past them and the kittens die. The only difference for humans is that, because we're bigger, the process is likely to take longer. 

If I were the mother of a baby who was not doing well on artificial food, I'd do whatever I could to induce lactation. (It has to be induced, as if it never started, if the woman didn't feed the baby naturally from the beginning.) It would be an inconvenience but 

(1) human milk might save the baby, and 

(2) if lactation didn't save the baby it would at least give me some precious moments of hope and bonding, and

(3) if it didn't work at all, if I didn't produce anything the baby recognized as milk, at least I would know (and the rest of the family would know) I'd tried. 

But I'd be patient with myself, and move away from any family members who weren't patient with me, about the fact that that willingness to let the baby be artificially fed, on the day it was born, may have been an indication that the baby had no chance. I might need to find ways to become healthier, making better food choices, getting glyphosate and glufosinate banned, etc., before trying to have another baby; otherwise the second baby would probably be sicker and sadder than the first one.

Young women may want to keep this kind of discussion between themselves and their husbands, but they don't have to if they don't want to. Bleep is a young man in any position to know about the practicalities of mothering? An organized group of women who've nursed babies, and are willing to help younger women, currently has chapters in 89 countries. If your country is not listed at 

https://llli.org

...they can probably make a referral, even for you.

Web Log for 3.2-3.25

Bad and Good News 

The good news is that, for those who have memories or souvenirs of Mia Love (R-UT, Ret.), there's a place where you can e-mail to share them with her family. The bad news is that we're losing her. We the People of These United States.

https://pjmedia.com/sarah-anderson/2025/03/01/mia-love-is-dying-n4937470

I don't even remember which bill we supported that got this web site onto her mailing list. I may be old school, but I think it's sort of like cheating to correspond with other people's Congressmen. They're supposed to stay busy corresponding with their own constituents. If somebody like Mia Love (or her staff) gets a letter from someone at this web site she (or they) are supposed to reply with a polite little form, thanking us for the nice letter and reminding us that our Congressman, Morgan Griffith or Diana Harshbarger, is interested in our views. 

She was a good one, though, as politicians go. I didn't even know her family were Haitian immigrants. I am glad, not really surprised, to see that Rs were unprejudiced enough to appreciate a good fiscally conservative Haitian-American. 

I hate losing her. She still is so young. All of those raven waves may well be her own natural hair.

Christian 

Some people don't feel a real bond with their e-friends. Well...in cyberspace as in real life, there are friendly acquaintances, what Lewis called "the merely clubbable relationship" that can be the ore where Philia is the gold nuggets, and there are Friends. We rarely meet two new Friends in the same year. The social groups can be fun to hang out with, or a waste of time, depending on who's in them. But there's also a lot to be said for social groups (and for close capital-F Friends) who draw us away from the computer and out to the physical world, where moving about does our physical bodies so much good. I imagine a lot of churches could profit from this one's example.

https://pjmedia.com/chris-queen/2025/03/02/sunday-thoughts-the-fine-art-of-friendship-n4937028

Book Review: The Twisting Flame

Title: The Twisting Flame

Author: Tayvia Pierce

Date: 2021

ISBN: 978-1-09837-795-3

Quote: "If you do not stop, I will kill your sister and everyone else."

So saying, the loathsome enemy soldier Eilam drags the young heiress Carys back to his own country, where she learns some things about the history and politics of her world. Ben, a good friend on whom her little sister has a crush, was born Barak, a rival Eilam hates. Their semi-civilized nation see Carys's nation and its allies as oppressive invaders. Carys herself is a half-breed; her mother's nation don't think much of her father's nation either, and even after escaping from Eilam, Carys is still in danger from her own mother and uncle.

Trigger warnings: lots of violence, more deaths onstage than in A Single Spark; blood and broken bones and sword fights to the death, and multiple rapes. Sympathetic characters die from sword and axe wounds. Eilam forcibly impregnates Carys just to spite Barak; one of her mother's people forcibly aborts her in an attempt to kill her. Carys is a welcome improvement on all those fictional heroines who, even if they just crawled out of the wreck of a burned building, take time to find a mirror and assure us that they still look young and pretty; she doesn't take stock of herself in any mirrors but does acknowledge that, by the end of this book, she's not to be imagined as a young Hollywood type but as a scarred, limping veteran. Carys fails to kill Eilam, much as she says she wants him dead, but by the end of the book she's killed another man. And, as he was trying to kill a friend of hers, she's not sorry.

I don't know how intentional it is that I find Carys less likable than the heroines of some other fantasy fiction discussed here. Well, she's not trying to be like Tolkien's Eowyn or McCaffrey's Lessa or C. Gockel's Cherie. She seems to represent the British influence on her world, though Pierce never identifies any part of her world with any part of ours, while Barak's and Eilam's nation reminds one of Palestine. Carys has a frosty, frigid, self-contained temperament and, at twenty-one, seems a fairly heavy drinker. But I did like her decision, even after she's been shown a vision of a future war in which her and Eilam's son will slaughter other armies, not to abort the rapist's child. She doesn't expect to love the baby but, until the sword rips it out of her, she's prepared to do her duty by it. 

If you like violent fantasies, and series of novels that end in suspense, the series that begins with A Single Spark is for you. The Twisting Flame picks up where A Single Spark left off, and volume three will pick up where Flame stopped. Flame ends on a more natural note, with readers knowing more adventures lie ahead, but with a climax and resolution of one part of the overall story. 

Butterfly of the Week: Common Jay

In several Asian countries, Graphium doson is the Common Jay, the most common species in the group of species called Jays. It is common in India, Assam, Bangladesh, Bengal, in the Himalayan foothills, Sri Lanka, China, Indo-China, Malaysia, the Philippines, and some other islands. It is scarce and protected in Japan, where it's also called the Mikado Swallowtail, mikadoageha. 

Photo by Jessica Ko.

Well...the Jays have the body structure of the Swallowtail family. English names containing "Swallowtail" tend not to stick to species that don't actually have the tails on their hind wings. 

This species has gone through a few scientific names. The genus name was originally Papilio because scientists didn't always know how many different kinds of Swallowtails there are. Later the species was identified with a different genus, Zetides, and now some want to break up the genus Graphium into smaller groups and call this butterfly's genus Idaides. Additionally jason, now usually considered a subspecies of a different species, was sometimes used as the species name when it was thought to belong to this species at all. The subspecies eurypylides and evemonides reflect this species' being easily confused with Graphium eurypylus and G. evemon.

Swallowtails were traditionally named after characters in ancient literature; doson comes from history. Doson was the surname or nickname of King Antigonus of Macedon, who reigned a little more than 200 years BCE. 

The Common Jay is well enough documented that meretricious search engines, following a rule of "forcing traffic" to paying sponsors if they can, refuse to show much of what's been published about the living butterflies. The search engines have been paid to show people the most notorious sites of butterfly carcass traffickers, instead. Even science sites like the Inaturalist complex have been pushed down out of sight in Google searches to leave room for everybody trying to make a profit from dead butterflies' bodies. Of course butterflies die, often flying less than a fortnight, and their bodies can then be studied with no possible harm to anyone. Graphium doson is abundant in its habitat, pretty and "exotic" in Europe and America. The position of this web site is that physical collections of butterfly carcasses are obsolete, that unless people are scientifically studying butterflies' biochemistry or DNA they should collect photos of living butterflies rather than filling their homes with moldering corpses; still we can see why this pretty, showy species appeals to collectors. And there may be benefits from allowing search engines to mix carcass trafficking sites in with science sites on searches for lifeforms; it helps remind people that a web search for scientific information is only an introduction to a real study of the science, that an Internet with self-appointed "gatekeepers" is inherently corruptible and thus even less reliable than an Internet where sites and people stand on their merits. All the same, it would be useful if search engines were required to display all search results, and not allow the carcass traffickers to interfere with studies of living creatures.

Photo by Annabils. Nature resists urbanization...

One form of collecting this web site does encourage--collecting photos. Beautiful photos of this species are abundant on the Internet. You can choose which to print at which size, onto what; if you're designing only for personal use, or using photos you took with your own camera, you can print them on posters, signs, shirts, dishes, or ping-pong paddles at Zazzle. However, if at some future time Google gives up the despicable practice of suppressing non-paying sites from search results, then you might want to consider paying for prints of other people's butterfly photos. Currently Wal-Mart is showing one poster featuring Graphium doson for sale, and an independent artist is showing one.

Like the Green Jay, the Common Jay is a good-sized butterfly, not shy of humans, and capable of living and breeding in towns. Its natural habitat is forests where (stop me if you've heard this before) females spend most of their time finding suitable leaves on which to lay their eggs. Males and females look similar, but males are more often observed by humans. These butterflies are found at what Asians consider low altitudes, up to 4000 feet. Males like sunshine; females naturally tend to like deep woods, though they flit out into the sunshine when they choose to place their eggs on cultivated plants.

This species is capable of being a nuisance, even a pest, in gardens where people plant champak, an ornamental species in the magnolia family. In places where these flowers are not native the butterflies are even considered an invasive nuisance. In other places, where the butterflies are native and eat native wild plants, they are protected by law.

So the appearance of a male Graphium doson in Osaka, where the species had not been found before, made news. Had he blown north on a great gust of wind, or had he grown up in Osaka, where people are increasingly planting shrubs Graphium doson can eat? Did his move north have anything to do with global warming?

Common Jays have occasionally been purchased as pupae and allowed to fly in displays in indoor butterfly gardens, like the Reiman Garden, in the US. People licensed to import foreign butterflies into the US have to prove they can keep the butterflies from escaping and becoming pests. 

On the whole, however, in their natural habitat they are good pollinators of many plants. Most of their nectar sources don't have English names, but the list includes lantanas, woolly Bidens, and several kinds of Prunus including rosebushes and fruit trees. 

Males of this species are also composters. They can reuse water, first drinking, then excreting, then drinking the same liquid again. (They want to build up mineral salts, which they need in order to be able to reproduce.) They also like liquids excreted by larger animals. Female Swallowtails usually don't drink bitter, brackish, or salty liquids for themselves. They need mineral salts, too, but prefer to get them from their mates. Mineral salts are stored in the spermatophore transferred from males to females in the mating process, and part of the complex reproductive system allows the female to digest them, which is probably yet another part of butterfly life humans prefer not to think about. The butterfly body was designed to sort these things.  

Photo by Diopapillio. Yes, like most composter butterflies, males become quite friendly with humans in hot weather. Several sources document Graphium doson perching, even posing, on sweaty skin. 

The Common Jay's average wingspan is a little under three inches; some individuals measure 3.9 inches, some only 2.5. The wings are basically black above and dark brown below, with small spots bordering rows of larger spots that run together to form broad stripes. These spots are iridescent, often translucent as the wing scales that give them color are thin at best and can wear off; depending on the light they can look bright blue, pale blue, or white. 

Like many Swallowtails, Common Jays are full of energy during their short lifetimes, a bit of a challenge to photograph since they fan their wings even while sipping nectar or water. Successful photos usually show a male sipping alone, wings held vertically, but males don't seem to avoid "puddling" together and are also found in large mixed flocks.

Photo by Theintrovertstrail, taken in Thailand.

Like Graphium choredon, Graphium doson sips from white, pink, and yellow flowers but seems to be attracted to turquoise-colored surfaces. Inaturalist's collection of doson photos does not make this attraction overwhelmingly obvious, as its collection of choredon does, but does show doson checking out useless bits of plastic junk, and a street sign, that were vivid blue-green or turquoise blue. If you want to attract this species, as one Inaturalist photographer apparently did, a row of tall plants with small white, pink, and yellow blossoms below a turquoise blue wall may be a good strategy. 

Photo by Geechartier, who started a party for some G.d. axion by dropping his sweaty shirt on the ground when he changed.

Several subspecies have been named. Lists of subspecies don't always agree; several sources recognize subspecies that Wikipedia doesn't. This is typical of science in a healthy condition, where new information is always being considered and debated. Some people still think two butterflies are different enough to belong in two distinct subspecies; others think both should be regarded as belonging to one subspecies, perhaps with a name different from either of the older or newer names. Enough of the subspecies are recognized by people who live among these butterflies to justify considering the subspecies individually: 

Graphium doson actor is found in Burma/Myanmar, Cambodia, China, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. Actor or Aktor was the name of several minor characters in ancient Greek literature; in Greek it meant "one who leads or carries." Museum specimens of actor are photographed at:

https://yutaka.it-n.jp/pap/11800020.html

G.d. albidum is poorly documented; the name appears on only some lists. Albidum means "white" in Latin.

Photo identified as axion by Geechartier, taken in Cambodia.

G.d. axion is found from India to China, in Burma and Thailand. In the Iliad, Axion was a prince who was killed in battle. This Blogspot blog post has a gallery of lovely pictures of doson, presumably subspecies axion, since they were found in Vietnam.

http://butterfliesvietnam.blogspot.com/2015/08/89-graphium-doson-common-jay.html

G.d. axionides is found in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. It means "son of Axion" and was chosen for a subspecies very similar to G.d. axion.

Photo by Subhendu Khan, who asked to be e-mailed if people copied it from Wikimedia Commons, but Wikimedia Commons failed to show his e-mail address. 

G.d. aykut is a newly named subspecies mentioned by only a few sources. There is a place called Aykut in Turkey.

G.d. cleius is probably a misprint for eleius. "Cleius" is only half of various names of characters in ancient literature, but it is found as both a given name and a family name in real life.

G.d. doson, the "nominate subspecies," is found in Sri Lanka.

Photo identified as eleius by Gs5, at Inaturalist. This web site does not post videos but, if you go to 

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/69974192 ,

you can find a video that shows this little fellow excreting liquids. The video does not show whether he was thirsty enough to turn around and drink the drop he left on the leaf.

G.d. eleieus is found in India. Not all sources include this subspecies. In the legendary history of ancient Greece, Eleius was a prince who lived to become a king. This and some other subspecies were first described by Fruhsdorfer in German, in the 1880s, and don't seem to have been fully described in English since--at least not online.

G.d. eurypylides is found on Lombok and Sumbawa islands. It means "son of Eurypylus" or, in the case of butterflies, "It may be a subspecies of doson rather than eurypylus, but it looks like eurypylus." This subspecies was formerly classified as a subspecies of eurypylus or of jason, when jason was classified as a distinct species. Eurypylus was a minor character in the Iliad. Its differences from other subspecies include, in addition to slight variations in the spots on the underwings, the male scent folds being black rather than white. 

Photo identified as evemonides taken in Malaysia by SL Liew.

Photo of evemonides by Phonebutterfliesjx, documenting that they, too, check out turquoise blue things. This one seems to be inspecting, and possibly composting run-off from, some nasty plastic waste. The composters are wonderful animals.

G.d. evemonides is found on the Malay peninsula, Borneo, Java, Sumatra, and some Philippine islands, as well as southern Burma, Thailand, and Singapore. This beautiful photo essay from Singapore, explaining that the butterfly has been found there only recently, has clear photos of every stage in the life cycle:

https://butterflycircle.blogspot.com/2011/06/life-history-of-common-jay.html

Evemon or Euaemon was another minor character in the Iliad. The subspecies appulejus, autronicus, and vulso, described by Fruhstorfer in the nineteenth century, are now regarded as varying forms of evemonides. Rothschild later mentioned that this is one of the butterfly species, like our Zebra Swallowtail, that shows seasonal variations.

G.d. gelap is not mentioned on every list. Gelap is a Malay word meaning "dim, dark, obscure, secretive." 

Museum specimen of gyndes from Worldfieldguide.com.

G.d. gyndes is found in the Philippines, especially on Busuanga, Dumaran, and Palawan islands. Gyndes was not a human character, but a river mentioned in ancient legendary history; it may or may not have been the same river now called the Diyala, in Iraq.

G.d. hankuronis was described in 1929 as being found on Formosa.

G.d. kajanga is found on Pulau and Tioman islands. Kajang is a place in Selangor, Malaysia.

G.d. kuronis was described in 1929 as being found on Formosa. Matsumura, who included both in a book called Insecta Matsumurana (not available online), treated kuronis and hankuronis as two diferent subspecies.

Photo from Lifeinkochi.net, a students' collective blog, where the butterfly is described in ESL student English. 

G.d. mikado is found in Japan. Mikado was the title of a high-ranking official in the old Japanese government. A specimen of this subspecies was formally presented to one as a gift in the nineteenth century. Leech observed in 1887 that even males in this subspecies were larger and more likely to look brown-and-yellow than some other subspecies. Individuals vary within subspecies, and subspecies averages also vary, in size with wingspans typically between two and three inches; mikado's wingspan was said to be three and a half inches. Rothschild observed that mikado had yellow rather than red spots on the underwings.

G.d. nauta is found in the Philippines. Nauta means "sailor" in Greek. 

G.d. okibi is a new name found on only a few lists. Okibi means "bonfire" in Japanese, which seems irrelevant to the butterflies. Oki is the name of some islands off the coast of Japan.

Photo identified as perillus taken in Japan by Nakatada Wachi. 

G.d. perillus is found in Japan. According to Diodorus Siculus, Perillus or Perilaus was a sculptor in ancient Athens. 

Two photos of one butterfly identified as postianus, taken in Taipei by Lijin "Chinaberry" Huang, showing effects of light on the color.

G.d. postianus is found on Taiwan and Batanes island in the Philippines. Postianus means "of the Post" in Latin. Google says the word was first used in the seventeenth century, not as the name of a person, though someone might have thought it was, since the usual word for "of a post" would have been postis. This is the subspecies that was reported in a newspaper called the Post. 

Photo by Stevenson1002. All of these butterflies owe their color to iridescent scales on their wings that can look blue-green, white, or yellow depending on the light, but postianus seems to be more often photographed looking yellow and brown rather than black and white or blue. 

G.d. rubroplaga is found on Nias island. Rubroplaga means "scarlet fever" in Latin. Butterflies don't usually carry disease bacteria to humans, but people might have thought this composting, sweat-licking species did. Or the name may merely reflect the observation that the red spots on its underwings are as large as the white spots, or larger.

G.d. robinson is found in Vietnam and on Con Son island. It was named only in 2012, and Google doesn't know which Robinson it was named after, or why.

G.d. sangeanus or sangianus is found in some lists but not all. The name looks like an old European Latin reference to St. John, or some place dedicated to him, but search engines offer no explanation.

G.d. sankapura or sankapurum is found on Bawean island. Sankapura is an alternate spelling of Singapore.

G.d. tsushimanus is another recent name found on only a few lists. Tsushima is a chain of small islands off the coast of Japan.

On Sri Lanka the butterflies are considered migratory. 

This is one of rhe popular butterflies whose images have appeared on postage:

https://colnect.com/en/stamps/stamp/194556-Common_Jay_Mikado_Swallowtail_Graphium_doson-Nature_in_Japan-Japan

The life cycle has been neatly documented in this illustrated article, with details on each color change and how long each stage lasts:

https://www.entomoljournal.com/archives/2014/vol2issue2/PartB/24-213.pdf

Individual butterflies can hypothetically live up to 53 days, according to this simplified chart of how long each skin lasts found at bugs-alive.blogspot.com. Adults fly for 10 to 14 days. Most individual butterflies probably live about forty days. 

"

Life History:         egg   3-4 days       instar 1   2-4 days       instar 2    2-4 days       instar 3    3-4 days  instar 4    3-4 days     instar 5   4-5 days    pupa   9-14 days     Total egg to adult   26-39 days

"

Scientists have tried to identify a chemical that female butterflies use to select leaves on which to lay eggs. This chemical might be used to steer the butterflies away from garden plants, back into the forests where nobody objects to them. So far it's not been reported as a great success, but a chemical that seems to encourage egg-laying has been named, synthesized, and offered for sale as pinitol. Here is an abstract of the study of how pinitol works in nature.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31758292/

Eggs are little round beads, ripening from pale green to pale yellow, laid by ones on the undersides of leaves. They measure a little over a millimeter in diameter. 

Photo by School of Ecology and Conservation, University of Agricultural Sciences Bangalore.

Caterpillars have the humpbacked look typical of young Swallowtails, sometimes described as a "spindle" shape. Like several of the Jays, Kites, and Swordtails they hatch with several pairs of spines and bristles, which become shorter, simpler, and fewer in number as the caterpillars grow bigger. The bristles are not very sharp and don't contain venom, but add a rough abrasive quality to the skin that probably does not appeal to birds that try to swallow the caterpillars whole.

Photo by SKsiddhartthan. 

All Swallowtail caterpillars studied have had osmeteria, but some displayed them readily, even aggressively, and others were hard to induce to display the osmeteria. Graphium doson is one of the species that rarely shows its "stink horns." This may be partly because, especially in its early stages, the caterpillar has proportionately very large bristles at the front and backends.

Photo by Jayant M. Deshpande.

They are known to eat any of about a dozen plants in the custard-apple, laurel, and magnolia families, including plants whose fruits humans eat like soursop and avocado. They can be removed from the garden and set out near wild plants they can eat, instead. They like leaves that have a strong flavor and odor, produced by mildly toxic biochemicals--they like camphor trees.

Photo by Renjus Box.

Of the hatchlings' many bristles, one pair develop into little knobs that resemble eyes and can appear above a stripe that suggests a mouth...the mouth below which the osmeterium can appear as a tongue, the whole designed to allow a helpless caterpillar to look to hungry birds like a bird-eating snake.

Photo by Uma Vaijnath.

Caterpillars and pupae come in different colors--shades of green, brown, or amber. No source claims to know whether colors are determined by hereditary or environmental factors. Individual caterpillars' colors change as they grow and change skins. Typically they hatch with a translucent light brown color, quickly darken in the first instar, then go through brown or olive, brown or green, and green or orange skins as they mature; there are five instars, and fourth-instar caterpillars are longer and thinner than fifth-instar caterpillars. (See this photo essay:

https://pareshkale.blogspot.com/2012/06/common-jay-graphium-doson.html )

The head, however, is usually amber to orange throughout the caterpillar stage of life. The yellow, green, or brown skin can resemble a garment with ornamental slashes, broader rings of colored skin separated by narrower half-rings of gray, 

Photo by Geechartier. 

Pupae are camouflaged in considerable detail as dying leaves.

Photo by School of Ecology and Conservation, University of Agricultural Sciences Bangalore.

Photo from Inaturalist; supplied by somebody who spells per screen name with Chinese characters

Like the Green Jay, this species is subject to parasitization during pupation. Sometimes what emerges from a pupa is a long yellowish worm. 

Photo by Praveen Tangirala from Karnataka (India).

The life cycle is continuous throughout the year, with several generations completing the full cycle in a year. Here are time-lapse videos showing the transformations from caterpillar to pupa and from pupa to butterfly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH9-2rs88jo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBYqIZr9vVk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wID3iDlY6sM

Web Log for 2.28.25--3.1.25

Families 

It's probably inevitable: More people want to try to keep the "Social Security" pyramid scheme tottering along for just a few more years, rather than to preserve at least the disability pensions by opting out of retirement pensions unless, and until, disabled. I mean, even I wouldn't dare to bring up this topic if, as a brand aging by decades, I hadn't been fifty for more than five years by now. It is thinkable to say "I don't want to live on a pension while I am able to work." It's not thinkable to say "Other people's parents should keep working as long as they are able," though it is thinkable--and accurate--to say "People who keep working into their sixties, even into their nineties, are healthier and live longer than people who 'retire' at comparable ages and medical conditions." 

So we have confusion as documented by this Italian writer. He imagines that his child is actually lonely for child companions, though at that age children don't play together and his child's interest in other children is probably more curiosity than loneliness. He lets his thoughts be framed as having something to do with other people's recognition that there are too many humans on Earth right now, that all people should choose to have one child or none--"falling birth rate" sounds more alarming. But in fact what he's observing is a different trend altogether. Nuclear families are drawing into themselves and pushing other nuclear families away. Instead of letting their children go out and choose whether to join in a group game with the neighborhood kids, or play or think by themselves in their own yards, they're hovering over their children, allowing them to interact only if it's necessary to dump the children at the same day care place for hours on end. 

https://www.plough.com/en/topics/life/parenting/finding-playmates-in-a-country-with-few-children

One-year-old children don't seem to be much harmed by this sort of thing. What's crucial to their development is quality time spent with adults. Spending much time with other young children does retard learning and intellectual development, and the "social skills" gained in return often seem to have negative value. Seeing other young children seems to have little effect either way. 

Later on there will be sincere, long-term interest in the company of other children who can do the same things on the same level. By age eight or ten, children who watch baseball or football games on television usually want to organize neighborhood teams, even if that means dragging in kids who don't really want to play, or understand the game, and don't play well and feel traumatized for life when children mention, as children will, that they are liabilities to their teams. Teenagers are in a position to get real benefit from the sports, music, arts, laboratory, and trade school programs high school offers; unless the family are extraordinarily well connected I think teenagers with serious life goals are likely to gain more from going to high school than from being homeschooled. Up to age ten the advantages seem to be all on the side of homeschooling. 

"But children need social experiences!" A functional family is a healthy social experience. A crowded classroom full of children the same age who don't want to be there, whose only common interest is in increasing the distance between them, is an unhealthy social experience. Do parents really want to raise children who will think, and say, at thirteen, "It'll be fun--I know everyone who's going well enough to flatten any of them!" No? Then instead of wasting pious words on children who don't understand them, wait for the children to decide they want to join activities and make friends. Eventually they will.

Fortitude 

I suppose dangers always seem greater to those who haven't faced them yet. I was at the home of some people in town. It was dark outside. Things went bump outside the house. I thought about the Professional Bad Neighbor, wished I'd brought a weapon, and started to look around for something that would make an emergency weapon before I reminded myself that this family had the normal kind of neighbors who mind their own business, who had every right to be slamming car doors shut and stamping on steps. I hoped no one had noticed. Then I heard a big strong man say something like "I felt nervous in between the car and the house. I saw deer in the vacant lot and thought what might happen if one of them ran toward me." I tried not to look as if anything unusual had been said, while wondering if a deer ever had become urbanized enough to run toward a human. 

Though vegetarian, deer do fight, in self-defense and for status, and their sharp little hooves can break human bones. You can't just walk up and pet a deer--and if one lets you walk within five yards of it, either it's become dangerous by having been someone's pet, or it has rabies or chronic wasting disease and is really dangerous. They are timid prey animals, like horses; like horses, they are not exactly gentle. But they usually bound away from humans, even toddlers. Nature has provided most animals, even the ones who will eat us if they're hungry enough, with a deep feeling that we smell disgusting and should be avoided. If deer are a nuisance in an orchard the easiest way to discourage them is just for humans to spend time in the orchard, perhaps hanging a sweaty shirt on a fence post. 

Then someone mentioned a concern about packs of feral dogs reported here and there in the process of devolving into coyotes. Had I ever seen a pack of feral dogs, someone asked. I don't think one has ever approached the Cat Sanctuary. I've seen packs of dogs, Neighbor A's hounds or Neighbor B's, or sometimes a group of dumped-out dogs straggling up from the highway, not yet either feral or a pack. I have, like most people, gone out on the porch to shout at them, "Go home!" They've skedaddled. Deep down I love dogs, but I know it's not kind to encourage other people's pets to approach us or our homes without a command from their own humans.

"If you ever see two or three dogs chasing your cats," someone warned me, "don't go out. If they're hungry they'd attack you." 

Let's just say that, if I saw a dog, or dogs, chasing Serena, I would not go out unarmed. I'd take a long axe, or a pistol, or both. I don't like firearms, but it wouldn't be the first time that, for the sake of some relatives' peace of mind, I used one. You've not heard stories about the other times because there are no stories about them. It is not as if I were some hotheaded, impulsive, excitable boy. But I have regretted having had to starve a sick animal in a trap for lack of firearms.

Work, Home-Based 

When people work for ourselves, it's relatively easy to keep our work home-based and integrate it into our personal lives. When they do "remote" work for corporations, some of this benefit is lost. I'd say that, overall, the community still benefits from anything that prevents "rush-hour traffic." What would you say?

https://www.plough.com/en/topics/life/work/the-third-act-of-work

Writing 

It may be a bit like disputing the proper word for Kamala Harris's misspent youth--she wasn't glamorous or classy, but was she paid by the hour?--but I give thanks that, as a hack writer, I've never had to stoop to this kind of hack writing...A hack writer is someone who writes mostly anonymous work on topics of clients' choice, for mostly low wages. The phrase is neutral. Some hack writers write things they believe to be false and/or harmful. I don't.

https://www.plough.com/en/topics/life/work/confessions-of-a-former-hack 

Book Review: Just a Date

Title: Just a Date

Author: Emily Dana Botrous

Date: 2021

Quote: "It was just a date. He was over it. Obviously, she was the one with the problem."

And her problem was that another single man she knew from work did appreciate her. She only needed to look at the face behind his glasses. That's the extent to which her character grows, because this is only a short story. There's no time for more. Just a meet-cute lunch date with the potential for Romance ahead.

This is a Christian e-book in the sense that the characters' attending church is mentioned. It's not a full-length book; pre-Internet, it would have been published in a magazine or an anthology, because it doesn't fill enough pages to suit most publishers. It is clean, wholesome fiction that won't embarrass church ladies if found by their children, but it's not a traditional Sunday School book where somebody converts to Christianity. 

It's well written, short, and very very sweet. With chocolate ice cream. If you feel a need for a cool sweet mental treat, this e-book is for you.

Some Hope and Change for the Democrats

Democrats try to raise their spirits by observing, "See, some people hate Trump, or Musk." Musk is the ingredient in perfume that smells like sweat, an undertone perfume seems to need; in order for people to smell like gardenias the flower essence has to mingle with a hint of sweat but, when they smell it directly, most people do dislike musk. You have to give Elon M. some sympathy points just for going through life with that for a name. But, more seriously...for Ds reading this...please, please, please don't try to base another election on hate. Learn from past mistakes. 

Ds don't like to admit it but their voter base consists of people dependent on government funding, whether honorably, as mail carriers and public school teachers, or not, as women who prostitute themselves in order to get subsidized for being single mothers of more and more young children, or men who set out to drink their way to disability. Rs say, and quite rightly I might add, that putting the entire latter group on day labor sites all day, forcing them to sit up and be quiet and sober until they're led off to work and then work until they're brought back to the sites if they want their handouts, would do them the world of good. Rs have less to say when faced with people who have carried mail, or taught six-year-olds the alphabet, or pulled injured passengers out of burning cars for thirty years. But people can agree to blame any young person who's never worked for the government himself, who's told to start firing people and begins by firing people the public could actually miss. As a total outsider, not even an American, Musk is unimpeded by any sympathy for the likable time wasters who love to go to the office, look busy, hang out with each other, and barely manage, on their best days, for three of them to do what one real worker could get done before lunch, working from home. Huzza. But he's also clueless about who the time wasters are. Instead of saying, "Right--at this office it's Carol, Susan, Dave, Steve, and Olufemi," he's likely to be programming a computer to go down a list of names and fire the person named on every third line. 

And he's also well accustomed to  being disliked. Bright, funny-looking kids usually are disliked. They experience school as torture: being locked in a sensory deprivation chamber with twenty strangers who all hate them, for no reason. And what do they do about it? They learn to hate back. Pull up those memories if, and only if, you want to watch someone with no emotional attachment to you turn before your eyes into someone who sincerely hates you. 

We'd be stupid not to rely on Musk's genius for all things car, computer, and rocket-related so it would probably be a good idea to turn off the hate machine. Do we want him to build spacecraft that can rescue stranded astronauts, or spacecraft programmed to cut off astronauts' oxygen supply? To search government computers with our real names, home addresses, and medical records in them, detachedly, using an algorithm, or hostilely, going after people who try to sabotage his work? Musk has made some trans-humanist noises in public and, yes, if driven back into Cornered Rat Mode he probably would know how to manipulate enough computers to use DNA "therapies" to turn an enemy into a toad. 

There might be things Ds can do to reconnect with their voter base, besides training stupid people to be haters, which never works well. Consider, for example, something Robert Reich e-mailed this morning: 

"When oligarchs talk about free markets, they mean markets they're free to control." 

So, instead of those Marx-inspired ritual wails about "ooh, ooh, hate those oligarchs," meaning rich  people who are not big donors to their party...what about defining what public-spirited people mean when we talk about free markets? "We mean markets that are open to the public. We mean replacing handouts with licenses to operate small businesses, starting with a license and a box of pencils, or some other small item Wal-Mart agrees to let them sell in Wal-Mart parking lots, and continuing unimpeded for the first five years." Even Rs have to like that kind of idea so the Ds can reclaim the feeling of solidarity with Rs, which they so desperately need after these long ugly years of hate-based campaigning. Even the handout-dependent have to have, buried somewhere deep inside them, an inner child who always wanted to grow up, who will be thrilled to hear: "No food stamps for you this month. You're not an infant, nor even an addict, so you are now Wal-Mart's socks department. Go and earn a respectable living selling socks." 

All that Rs will be able to say against this idea is "We can do it better." Can one party do it better than the other? I have no idea, but I think finding out would be a total win-win.

Petfinder Post: Always Something to Learn

I think my outdoor cat Serena is slowly recovering from the effects of poisoning. It's been an experience I hope everyone else can avoid, but it did prod me to update what I learned about cat diseases many years ago. (When our Founding Queen Black Magic came here I read everything I could get about the care and feeding of cats.)

The effects of poisoning didn't look like enteritis or like what we usually call distemper. I'll admit they did look like panleukopenia, but (1) Serena had enteritis as a kitten--not a bad case--so she was immunized to panleukopenia, and (2) Serena's grandkitten Drudge, who has never had enteritis and would logically have been the first to die if panleukopenia were going around, but who didn't cross the property line between mine and a nicer neighbor's woodlots, has never sniffled, while his mother died and his aunt and grandmother were so ill. Almost anything that goes badly wrong with a cat's body can look like panleukopenia, because "panleukopenia" means "all the white blood cells are damaged," so when a cat is diagnosed with that, everything is going wrong. But what damaged the neighborhood cats' blood cells was not the natural infection to which they were immune. 

We lost Serena's daughter Pastel. We lost Pastel's mate, a long-haired stray I called Borowiec after googling "male model with long red hair." We apparently lost the father of Serena's kittens, to whom I never gave a name, and Serena's other daughter Silver. We may have lost the two possums Silver proudly presented to me as her pets. (Social cats often do have pets--normal cats, or other animals.) If the poison has reactivated any virus we'll probably lose Drudge and the Manx tomcat I call Trumpkin, because they are social cats; you could set out more dishes than you had social cats, and social cats would still rotate around, each taking a sip or a nibble from every dish. Trumpkin and Silver have been sniffly when I've seen them. Serena was merely sniffly while Pastel was dying, and then her temperature went up and her symptoms looked just like Pastel's.

For about a week I was sure Serena was dying, she was wasted and feverish and glassy-eyed and generally a mess, but I gave her water with and without powdered food-grade charcoal in it. I had some of those cans of chicken from Wal-Mart that are advertised as "white meat...may contain dark meat"; she ate them, sometimes cooked with corn, rice, beans, and/or tomatoes, sometimes straight out of the tin. Cats who have panleukopenia usually die of dehydration so, although there is no cure, vets recommend giving them as much water as they can drink and a little chicken broth to maintain electrolyte balance. If the immune system was strong and the disease hasn't destroyed too many white blood cells, cats can recover from panleukopenia.

Food-grade charcoal is also sold at Wal-Mart--they put it in with the "nutritional supplements," though it is not nutritious, in fact it can block the absorption of nutrients, and CVS does better, displaying charcoal in with the over-the-counter digestive medications. The function of charcoal in the body is to soak up chemicals, including most poisons, some infectious diseases, some of the acid-alkaline reactions that cause flatulence, and also some vitamins and minerals, so it should be used only when the patient is sick. When the patient is sick charcoal seems to be safe and helpful for all species. It might not be recommended for panleukopenia, because before going down with that disease the cat would probably have been malnourished, and because the disease would be in the blood. It is recommended for poisoning. I could not have afforded a veterinary hospital, but instinct and intuition happened to guide me to do what a veterinary hospital would have done for Serena.

So Serena took some charcoal, reluctantly, and her nose cleared. She smelled food and ate and drank, greedily, trying to restore lost weight. Her temperature dropped. She got up and went outside--one cold night she left a puddle on the porch, but although she scurried back inside right away she went all the way to the sand pit most of the time. For about ten days she clung to me as if for moral support; then she seemed to feel more confident and curled up in warmer or cooler places. Day by day she slept less and moved around more. This week, we've had a real February Thaw after all, and she's seemed to want to spend some time outdoors, in the sun. She will not be spending time outdoors when I'm not at home, moving in and out, until the poisoner is in the sort of hospital where he belongs.

I know who it is...and if my cats hadn't been harmed, I would have been pleased to have such clear evidence. I have known who was trying to ruin the neighborhood for years now. The problem has been getting clear evidence. 

Serena chose her name as a kitten. She should not in theory have been able to hear words when humans started thinking of names for her. She ignored other proposed names but squeaked as if answering to "Serenity," then accepted "Serena" as a short form. She did not embody serenity but her sturdy, tough body and rough, aggressive, yet affectionate and motherly personality reminded me of Serena Williams, so "Serena" was the name that stuck. Most people would probably not like her; she usually wants a good fast game, so, having matured and observed my behavior, she's gone from slapping and nipping to doing anything that I've been known to get up to stop her doing, just to have an excuse to run away, tail waving, enjoying being chased. I adore her. I chase her up and down the road about as often as she allows me to pet her, as a show of real affection.

The property is a Cat Sanctuary. The cats are never kept indoors or outdoors; the cellar is their part of the house; the resident cats come and go as they wish. There aren't a great number of homeless cats in the area, and sometimes I've arranged to keep a few and they've been adopted before they were delivered here, but there is a big roomy cage where cats who need to be confined can stretch and climb a bit. (I know people would expect the cage to contain at least one shelter foster cat at all times, but none of the humans in the house wants to have strangers coming up to meet the foster cats.) There are also a few little carrying cages, which the cats who listen to words know as boxes, for short-term confinement, and a few baskets and cartons for kittens, which the cats also hear being called boxes--one tends to simplify the language when talking to Listening Cats. While Pastel was dying she wanted to be in a warm place and was not inclined to move, so she lay in a carton lined with newspapers near the heat. 

When Serena became ill she also wanted to be in a warm place, but not in a carton like Pastel. (She was still hearing words, and showed an aversion to any suggestion that she was like Pastel.) I spend most of the winter in the warmest room in the house, which is the one with the Net-free computers in it. 

I sit on a low, wide bench. You may remember having been told that it was healthier to sit with your knees bent at a 90-degree angle, which means on a seat about as far off the floor as your knees are, and then noticing that your knees are 14 or 15 or 16 inches above the floor, while most chairs are 18 inches above the floor. You could buy one of those ugly chairs on wheels that don't fit into any part of the house, but if you have even minimal skills it's easier to make a nice little bench out of cheap, thick plywood. If you have any carpentry skills to speak of you can put storage drawers in it. If you don't you can get some  large sturdy stackable crates (heavy plastic or wood) with one side lower than the others, stack them in two columns, put a matching board across the top, and store things in your desk drawers. Guess which I did...desk drawers of course!

Anyway, the bench is wide enough that I usually just lean over and  sleep on it rather than go into an unheated bedroom. So it has blankets stacked at one end. While she was ill Serena lay on a folded-up blanket right beside me. As she grew stronger and sassier, when I lay down she'd curl up on top of me and my blanket. I think she went from twelve healthy pounds (she's a big-boned, broad-framed, British-type cat because one of her ancestors was Manx), to seven or eight emaciated dehydrated pounds, to ten skinny but well hydrated pounds, all in one week. 

Then the Big Freeze passed, and Serena, no longer feverish, no longer craved warmth. She started spending nights on a storage box, watching for mice and crickets. 

I woke up one morning this week. Serena had awakened me by knocking the cover off an unsealed storage box. For an encore she then climbed up on top of her water bottles.

Serena is a spokescat for Pure Life bottled water. One evening when Twitter was still Twitter I'd got into a discussion of brands. I had been selling books in an open-air market with bottled drinks "for a dollar or free with a purchase"; on hot days chilled drinks sold well, and enough people asked for chilled water that the cats and I had compared a few brands. I mentioned that Serena had grown up being offered the first spoonful or so from the bottle of water I opened on coming home from market, and become an adult cat who, if I didn't pour a little bottled water into her dish even on a cold wet day, would look at me as if to ask "What's wrong?" During the next week a lurker from a local store told me that the store had had a problem with the brand we liked best, but the store would supply our second choice, Pure Life, so that I could show affection to Serena every day. I've been doing so ever since. 

And Pure Life is a pretty good brand of bottled water if, for some reason, you distrust your regular water source, or don't have one. It's preserved with traces of magnesium chloride. I've felt less stiff, on the day after an unaccustomed exertion, since I started drinking it. People usually notice stiff muscles more as they grow older. I think it's possible that I'm actually getting some benefit from the magnesium. 

Anyway, the bottles were in the office so they wouldn't freeze during the Big Freeze; when Serena jumped onto the plastic wrapper that surrounded them, they all fell over sidewise. So I said, "Why, you've not gone out for six hours! You must want to go out right now!"

Serena refused to go out. Instead she curled up on the floor as if she wanted to take a nap.

I looked at her incredulously. She really did go to sleep--as deep a sleep as cats seem to achieve. Some say they never do sleep as deeply as humans, but Serena stayed on one spot, barely moving, for more than three hours.

I understood her to "say," nonverbally but clearly: "I watched over you while you slept. Now it's your turn to watch while I sleep. Then I'll want to go out to the sand pit."

For a "cat lady" I've not shared sleeping spaces with a lot of cats in my life. When I have, they've usually been sick kittens--heat-seeking Velcro. 

Or Buster, a friend's cat, who let me know that the guest bed was his because he escorted his humans' guests toward it and stayed on top of the quilt while they slept in it. shws 

Or Murphy, the old boardinghouse cat who liked to dump his seventeen years and almost as many pounds on top of soft sensitive parts of people until they made their feelings clear. Throwing Murphy across the room was not enough. He had to be kicked, harder than a decent human wants to kick a cat, to receive the hint. I was actually fond of Murphy, a dignified and sensible old soul, but, to be able to sleep in peace, I had to convince him that I hated him. In order to avoid rearing any cats like Murphy I've generally led kitttens, after they got big enough to leave their mother's nest, into the big roomy cage for the night. 

But it seems entirely congruent with Serena's life and behavior that she would think of sleeping indoors with a human as watching over her human at night. She still has symptoms of illness, but she feels better and thinks she's running the whole house.

She has been invited to sit on my lap and participate in selecting the cutest adoptable cat and dog pictures in the urban hubs of the Eastern States. So far she's not doing it, despite a background-sound video featuring live chickens and a few wild songbirds in the trees around the cameraperson's chicken yard. Well, she's old enough to know that any bird a cat can catch is unlikely to be fit to eat. She also completely ignored a Kiffness video where the man improvised a song around a video of an e-friend's cat meowing. She did, however, tell me to be quiet and not sing along with Danit's "Cuatro Vientos" earlier in the evening. I'm not sure whether that meant she thought Danit's voice should be savored and not interfered with by singing along, or she didn't like the song and wanted it to be over.

The only benefit Serena and I get from this photo contest is that, if you share a photo with people near where an adoptable animal is, the animal might find a good home. Please share! (We're hoping, though, that since Petfinder is sponsored by Purina and Serena's always liked Purina Kitten Chow, we might qualify for some sort of deal on kibble.) Each week we try to pick different types of pets; this week's picks have thick, dark coats in common.

Zipcode 10101: Topaz and Tourmaline from NYC 

Topaz's web page: http://petfinder.com/cat/topaz-75124015/ny/new-york/anjellicle-cats-rescue-ny488/

Tourmaline's web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/tourmaline-75097086/ny/new-york/anjellicle-cats-rescue-ny488/

Two web pages tell one story. Topaz is the darker sister. These two June kittens are looking for a home together. They like to snuggle and play together. (Why is a "wand toy" preferred? Probably because a human has to bring it to "life" for cats to chase. Cats' interest in objects lying on the floor is limited but their interest in things humans move about usually lasts well into middle age.) They've been in a shelter long enough to be accustomed to other cats and dogs. 

Zipcode 20202: Goody from DC 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/goody-74999849/dc/washington/lucky-dog-animal-rescue-dc20/

Goody is a small cat with a large coat. Her actual weight is seven pounds, and that's probably close to as much as it should ever be. I'm not sure whether it's possible for a cat to be a goody-goody, but presumably they mean that she's a good cat. She is available as a foster pet so you can find out for yourself. 

Zipcode 30303: Mirabel and Bruno from Atlanta

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/mirabel-57357649/ga/atlanta/southern-animal-rescue-ga653/

Together. He has his own web page, though: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/bruno-57357636/ga/atlanta/southern-animal-rescue-ga653/ .

"Mirabel or Bruno?" I wondered, looking at their photos side by side on the index page. "They're both appealing but I think I've picked a picture like his before." When I read Mirabel's web page I thought it couldn't have been the same cat, because this brother and sister are available for adoption together. Their story is the old shelter cat cliche. Spring kittens, growing past peak cuteness in the shelter, born to someone who didn't want kittens and didn't make the time to prevent kittens. 

("Should we use the Nag photo, Serena?" I thought at her, considering her behavior as conversation.

"Whatever that is."

"A Nag is an old, tired horse, or an old, tired reminder for someone to do something. Like prevent kittens."

"Why ever would anyone want to prevent kittens?"

"Maybe they live in town and their street is full of cats with nothing to hunt."

"Well, I want more kittens, actually. That's why I'm taking my main nap in the office now. I'm avoiding Trumpkin and hoping a real kitten-daddy will come here tomorrow." 

"Well, there you are, then. You hated Trumpkin with a passion until he'd been neutered. Maybe other cats show the strong form of a lethal gene, and other cats of the opposite sex hate those cats, and, being very social, those cats won't be happy until they've been fixed so that they can't produce kittens. In any case, if people don't want kittens, they need to get those cats in for surgery now."

"Some cats may have started kittens last week! Some of us start kittens in the February or even the January Thaw. But it's not too late for male cats.")

Anyway, Mirabel and Bruno will not be producing kittens, separately or together, and their adoption fee includes a substantial vet bill. 

DOGS

Zipcode 10101: Effie from Texas by way of NYC 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/effie-tx-75157812/ny/new-york/rescue-dogs-rock-nyc-ny1274/

I don't like the tone of her web page at all, but for the dog's sake I'll overlook it. Effie is a young poodle who's done well in her "rescue" environment and is expected to become a good pet. 

Zipcode 20202: Axel and Canada from Texas by way of DC 

Their web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/axel-and-canada-75028164/dc/washington/save-some-souls-tx2502/

Their story does raise some red flags. These dogs were "rescued from a backyard breeder"? Are we sure that this doesn't mean "stolen from their owners"? Local people usually have the information to know the difference, but when "rescued" animals are advertised far away from where they live, it's important to get both sides of the story. "Rescuing" does unfortunately have a certain built-in appeal to control freaks. Animals are not usually the ones who object to their being allowed to reproduce. When control freaks are told to go home and mind their own business, the world becomes a better place.

But when we know the facts, sometimes it is possible to adopt an "out-of-town pet" with a clear conscience. For example, huskies and malamutes tend to do better in cooler climates than Texas--or for that matter DC. When the "rescuer," now the dogs' "foster mom," says she'll deliver the dogs to other States or Canada, she may well be remembering them panting on the ground beside empty water dishes in last summer's heat. "Canada" is the black dog's name, but we associate sled dogs with a snowy country for valid reasons. 

There are other special considerations for adopting two untrained sled dogs. They weigh fifty and sixty pounds. Do you have experience wrangling large dogs who pull on leashes and don't want to visit vets? Axel, the white one, will lean his considerable weight against your feet and legs when he wants to be petted. Will that be fun for you, or painful, or even dangerous? They're strong, fast, and excitable--they need a strong, high fence around a yard big enough for them to race through. Do you have such a yard and fence? If you don't, their web page says, don't even ask. These dogs are not for anyone who once read Silver Chief or White Fang. They're expensive to adopt and will be expensive to keep. 

If you're accustomed to living with large dogs, and have the kind of time, space, and energy they need, please consider adopting them. Whatever they "have gone through" with the "backyard breeder," they're described as friendly, affectionate dogs with a lot to give the person who can meet their special needs.

Zipcode 30303: Kirby from Atlanta 

(If you don't see a photo, just click on the link. Chrome is msibehaving.)

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/kirby-75304395/ga/atlanta/carolina-german-shepherd-rescue-sc425/

He's one of a litter of Australian-Shepherd-mix puppies. All are cute babies, likely to become handsome dogs. They need someone who is patient and firm with puppies. "Aussies" are neither from Australia nor ideal sheep herding dogs; the breed was developed in the US by someone who fantasized about raising sheep in Australia. They're pretty, they often but not always have a distinctively mottled coat that is produced by an undesirable gene, and they tend to have lots of energy. Purebred Australian Shepherds are big enough to need strong, fit humans to run with, but this litter's ancestors had been crossbred down for smaller size and Kirby's healthy adult weight is expected to be under twenty pounds. His plain black and white coat should be taken as a good sign--he's likely to run up lower vet bills than the glamorously mottled Aussies. And will he "herd" people to the door when it's time for his trot around the block? Remains to be seen. But consider Barb Taub's Oh My Dog and how much fun she had being herded by her Peri.

The dog seems like a keeper. I wish I could say as much for the shelter. Both the price and the demands they want to make are ridiculous. They want, among other things, to be assured that this little dog will be kept indoors. Well, he's just a baby; how well he'll be able to control his body remains to be learned. You might try haggling.

Then again, you might decide that the thick dark coat theme of the week means nothing to you, and adopt a short-haired dog, and live happily ever after. It's always possible that visiting a shelter, in real life or on Petfinder, will bring to your attention an animal you consider even more adorable than the one whose photo I picked. All to the good.