Feline Friday: Cats and Mental Health

Time for another Cat Sanctuary Interview...animals' lines are "real" in the sense of being freely translated from the animals' observed behavior. I'm stone-cold sober when I write these things. I use my Irish gift for getting "high" enough to be whimsical, imaginative, and silly on words alone. 

Since this post is going into a new link-up, let's start with a bit of introduction. My home has been dedicated as a Cat Sanctuary, in memory of a fantastic cat, for about thirty years. For me that means almost the opposite of a shelter. I do have a few cages for transients and sick patients, but most of the time the cats here are purrmanent residents who live on and under the porch. There's no paved road within the quarter-mile radius female cats normally patrol, so they're safe outdoors. If they were bird hunters I'd be trying to relocate them into situations as indoor cats in town, but I don't believe that all or most animals need to be indoor pets in town. I don't believe that all or most humans need to live in town, either, actually.

The resident cats are a social cat family. Cat families, when they exist, basically consist of females who have learned that cooperation boosts their survival. Males may or may not be part of the main group and may or may not be allowed to interact with the young. Lions and cheetahs typically live in families. Our house cats' wild ancestors typically don't, but a minority of domestic cats do form cooperative family groups. 

The ancestors of my resident cat family attracted attention, and were rescued instead of being persecuted, because they were social cats living in an alley in a nearby town. Because social cat families are interesting, most of them have been allowed to reproduce naturally--no, they don't overpopulate. The current Queen Cat Serena represents the seventh generation of the family.

Serena never photographed well; this kitten picture is the first I ever snapped of her and the only one that came out well. Let's just say that she's more than twice that size, now, but her calico coat and imperious air haven't changed. 

Silver is also much bigger than she was in this kitten picture. Some social cats don't form a strict status hierarchy. Serena and her daughters have one. Silver definitely outranks her younger sisters, and Serena is definitely the boss.

There are no pictures of the junior cats Pastel and Crayola, a pale calico and a classic calico like Serena, respectively. There is no picture of Sommersburr, a neighbor's big old neutered tomcat whom the four females, especially Silver, love and pamper. 

Partly because it irritates the whimsy-challenged, I've formed a habit, or a blog tradition, of writing my cat observations in the form of dialogues, thusly:

PK: "Serena, our friends at the Purina company, who sponsor the Petfinder web site, just e-mailed about May being 'Mental Health Month.' What if anything does that mean to you?"

Serena: "My mind is healthy every month."

PK: "I don't have much to say about 'Mental Health Month' either. For a psychology major I think I have a fairly healthy mind. My original goal in studying psychology was to write about how we can use diet and exercise to regulate our moods. My original goal in life was to be a writer; since colleges wanted English majors to have a good solid minor, I considered a few other job-related courses, including my very first trade school course in word processing, and finally settled on psychology after observing how much a good meal and night's sleep did for desperate students' mental health. Since I never finished my degree it's nice to be able to report that people like Katherine Desmaisons have done the research and written the books I wanted to write when I was in college. Let's just say that I've never felt particularly interested in major learning disabilities or mood disorders. I was interested in the fact that there's a simple cure for many cases of anxiety, depression, and distractibility. I wanted to run with that, and I sort of did...with a trade school certificate in massage, not a BS or MS in psychology. I was thinking seriously about a dietitian's course, though, when both parents became ill at the same time and that distracted me from the whole idea of finishing a four- or five-year degree.

Nearly all the people I've ever liked are introverts. That means that when we were younger we used to be told that something was deeply wrong with our mental health, and deep down most of us always knew better. Now that we know that introversion is produced by a permanent physical trait, everyone is having to admit that it's a good trait, that it's looking more as if the absence of introversion may be the 'problem' for the poor souls who want to chatter at other people all the time and never want to go home and work on a project of their own. When I was a young psych major I didn't expect the scientific facts would have vindicated my friends and family and me the way they've done; that's been one of life's little bonuses."

Serena: "All cats are more like introvert humans than we are like extrovert humans, if we have to be compared with humans at all. Some of us are, however, more social than others. Some of us really want to stay in our own homes, with our own humans, all the time..."

PK: "Have you anything to say to an e-friend of mine..."

Serena: "E-friends again! You spend too much time petting that Lap Pooper when you ought to be outside doing useful things for me!"

PK: "The laptop computer brings in a fair bit of the kibble around here."

Serena: "Oh, well...I have no use for it, anyway."

PK: "Anyway, this e-friend knew some people who wanted to travel. They asked whether their cat could stay at her house with her cats. Their cat was a great pet, at home, and was friendly with the people it was sent to visit...but when its humans left it alone in their house, the cat immediately hid behind the biggest piece of furniture she saw, and wouldn't come out even for meals. When everyone else had left the room that cat would sneak out and nibble at the delicious food set out to entice her, but when people came downstairs for the day, she hid in her corner and tried to pretend she was dead. It was awfully uncomfortable for the humans. They like cats; they feel as if, when cats don't like humans, it means they must be bad humans! And here was this cat who had seemed like a friend, not liking them one little bit."

Serena: "Well-brought-up cats don't cozy up with other people's humans. You may notice that Silver has never purred and cuddled in your arms no matter how much you petted her. She endures your attention when she can't avoid it, leaps away from you when you release her, and stays a good healthy distance from you the rest of the time. That's not because she dislikes you, although she has learned that your caressing her is rude; it's because you're my human and I've taught her to let me give and withhold my affection as I see fit in order to train you as I thiink you need to be trained. Your e-friend has simply met an intelligent, courteous cat. From cats' point of view, staying in other cats' home is trespassing when they didn't take the initiative to invite her. The only thing she could do, when her clueless human forced her to trespass, was make it unmistakably clear to everyone that she didn't mean to encroach on anyone else's territory, that she wanted to go home and would be going home as soon as possible."

PK: "That may make sense to the cats, but it was hard on those humans' mental health,"

Serena: "From what I hear of human 'news,' your species' mental health is a very fragile thing, at best."

PK: "This is true. We complain of things like anxiety and depression, as if there were anything normal about pollution and war, rape and child abuse, or the idea that some humans ought to be in charge of making decisions for other humans. As a species we're all prone to the primal sin, or depravity, or insanity, called hubris--the delusion that we are God. Most of the stupid things we do can be considered as manifestations of this form of mental illness, though only a few of us are insane enough to think thoughts like 'There ought to be a global government and I ought to be part of it.' Most of us just unconsciously act out thoughts like 'My impulse to hurry out of the bathroom is more important than everyone else's disgust with having to share a bathroom with someone who leaves it dirty.' We are a, well, an interesting species. We think it's because, when sin entered the world, we had been made in God's image and had farthest to fall..."

Serena: "You would."

PK: "I suppose you think of God as a Great Cat?"

Serena: "God might choose to manifest as a Great Cat, without being limited to a cat form. We don't know." 

PK: "No. We don't. Some of us think of God as a Cosmic Man, a grumpy-looking old White man with a long white beard, but what our sacred scriptures teach us is that God is a spirit, not bound to the shape or gender or number of a body, or bodies. Because we believe God loves God's Creation as a father loves his children, and one of our greatest painters painted God in the image of the painter's father, we forget that God doesn't have to look like anyone or anything in particular. In any case we're told that God is willing to forgive our stupidity. We're told that God wants to forgive our stupidity. And the trouble with that is that, these days, too many of us want to imagine that forgiveness means thinking it's all right and no one needs to do any better. But no. Forgiveness begins when we know we did something wrong and ask for a chance to make it right, or do better. God wants to forgive us for imagining that we are God, and God can do that when we want to practice humility. That is the beginning of sanity, sense, and intelligence for us. Even if we're thinking only in terms of mathematical intelligence, it all begins with the beginner saying 'I don't understand, yet, what I want to understand,' thereby making it possible to begin to understand. Do cats understand mathematics, Serena?"

Serena: "I don't recognize that word."

PK: "Some people say that cats can't count because, when you move your kittens from one nest to another, you always go back to the old nest and inspect it after all your kittens are in the new nest."

Serena: "Well, of course. If I have kittens, Silver, Swimmer, Stache, and Felix, and I move them to another nest, the next thing I do is go back and see if we left anything behind us."

PK: "Yes, but do you understand the concepts of one, two, three, four kittens as distinct from the concepts of Silver, Swimmer, Stache, and Felix?"

Serena: "Should I?"

PK: "Maybe not. Maybe that's one of the ways convoluted human brains get humans into difficulties with our mental health. I don't know. I do know, though, that almost any other kind of animal can help humans who are feeling concerned about their own mental health. If we just take the time to stop worrying about ourselves--there's that primal hubris, thinking ourselves are the only important thing--and just relax and be with some other animal, we will usually feel better."

Serena: "Well, of course. That's what some of us have purr-boxes for."

PK: "It doesn't have to be cats. Some people are helped by watching fish swim around in glass tanks. The butterflies that are likely to sit on people's hands are nasty composters whose feet have probably been tasting garbage, if not worse, before they decided to taste human sweat, but it does wonderful things for humans' moods to sit still and watch a butterfly fanning its big black-and-yellow wings over their hand. Watching birds can do a lot for humans--I remember, when tiresome business used to take me to the courthouse in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, I used always to buy lunch in town and eat it at the duckpond near the courthouse, to let the ducks distract me from the tiresome business, before I boarded the bus to go home. But when cats purr, you add a whole new dimension to the mind-soothing business of watching other animals. We get a lot of relief just from thinking about something other than our stupid selves--but cats add that special healing vibration to the general effect."

So, here are the winners of the Adorable Adoptable Pet Photo contest for this week. The rules for the contest are very simple. Animal rescuers post pictures of homeless animals on Petfinder, and I go to the Petfinder page for the type of animals seeking homes near New York, Washington, and Atlanta, and choose the cutest pictures on those pages. Of course the photos don't tell us which arke the most adorable animals. If people call the shelter and meet some adoptable animals they may find themselves drawn to some other animal! All I do is choose a picture. Then it's up to readers to share the pictures with people who will actually adopt an animal. Most of my regular readers already belong to animals but they know people who don't.

Generally this web site alternates between cats and dogs each week. The Petfinder posts aren't always live on the same day each week, partly because I try to have them go live just a few hours after they're written so the information about the animals will be current. We feature different kinds of cats and dogs, and sometimes other animals. We try not to feature fancy breeds that cost extra. I'm generally biased in favor of American Shorthair cats and mised breed dogs...but sometimes I look at other types.

Manx cats, e.g. I don't like the idea of Manx cats. There's a horrible gene that causes a lethal mutation, producing deformities and sometimes disabilities in a percentage of cats who have the gene, death in the others. Serena's relatively wide frame and relatively short tail are symptoms of the least deadly form of the Manx gene. As long as the fathers of her kittens are healthy non-Manx cats she has normal healthy kittens. If sweet old Sommersburr were the father of her kittens they might not be born at all, or might be born with physical defects that would cause them to die young. What does it say about humans that we have deliberately encouraged, even forced, cats to breed this awful gene into the pool?

I think cats that have a real Manx look should be spayed and neutered to keep the lethal strong form of the gene out of the pool. Many shelters insist that all homeless cats you adopt from them be spayed or neutered, so we're on the same page there. 

But the undesirability of the gene says nothing about the desirability of the individual cats. Manx cats appeal to some people just because they're funny-looking animals with extra-thick coats, to other people because they can be especially lovable pets. Manx cats are usually calm, even-tempered, bland cats. Many of them choose one human to bond with for life; they'll act friendly with other humans if their human tells them to, while making it clear where their loyalty really lies. Apart from being flattering to the chosen human, this can make Manx cats good visiting cats in care homes/ They visit people who have chronic physical problems, from broken legs to senile dementia, and help keep those people from developing mental problems as well. 

We had a little Manx cat here called Inky, for a year or two, who was an excellent visiting cat. I left her in a retirement place for one day, in the apartment of a lady who liked young animals, while we tried to locate her original home. All day long other retired people walked and rolled into the lady's apartment to meet the cat, and Inky purred and cuddled with all of them. I couldn't keep Inky as a full-time therapy cat and don't know whether the people at her Purrmanent Home did, but she had a natural talent.

Of course, merely being Manx is no guarantee that a cat has the talent for being a professional visitor in care homes. Inky was calmer than the average cat. The day she showed her talent, I just picked her up in my arms and carried her about two miles along a road with motor traffic, past a railroad, and houses with dogs. Inky stiffened up and clung when she heard loud noises, but she just rode along, confident that we'd be safe. It's not actually normal for a cat to trust humans that much! 

Another consideration with Manx cats is that you can't tel by looking at the kittens which ones will reach a normal house cat size, and which ones will revert to their ancestral size, which can be three times as big as a normal house cat. Humans bred our pets toward the small end of their possible size range; in some breeds, of which Manx are the one that's common enough to be featured here, a substantial number of kittens are throwbacks that will grow to their original size, or close to it. A house cat usually weighs ten or fifteen pounds. It's normal for Manx cats to be closer to fifteen pounds than ten, but some of them keep growing to a healthy weight of twenty or thirty pounds. While the big ones can be intimidating to visitors, they're actually at greater than average risk if they stray out among people who don't recognize them as friends. They don't know when they need to fight or flee.

In addition to the pictures being cute, these cats also impress shelter staff as being calm and friendly, and not intimidating. And, despite my bias toward female cats, all three photo contest winners are male.

Zipcode 10101: Mittens from Churchville 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/mittens-58810584/pa/churchville/susans-cats-and-kittens-pa463/

He has a big fluffy tail, but, like Serena, he has known Manx ancestors. Mittens is described as friendly, easygoing, and good with other cats.

Zipcode 20202: Groot and Ollie from New Oxford 

Their web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/groot-ollie-61863110/pa/new-oxford/harlows-haven-cat-rescue-pa1213/

Classic tailless Manx, these brothers are on the small side and need to be kept indoors because they could easily be mistaken for rabbits. As shown, they're mellow, friendly, cuddly cats. 

Zipcode 30303: Denali from Sautee Nacoochee 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/denali-63506028/ga/sautee-nacoochee/charles-smithgall-humane-society-and-adoption-center-ga485/

He's one of a set of four black kittens, two with bobtails and two with complete tails. Three are male; one of the two with complete tails is female. They are described as playing with each other and with other young cats at the shelter in a friendly way, and liking to snuggle up with humans. Each kitten has been provided with its own web page but the text suggests that the shelter staff would be delighted if someone took all four kittens home. The cuteness overload is just too much for them, they say.

We note that, while the other Manx cats featured at tis web site have been adopted, the Georgia page shows that two Manx cats who won previous photo contests are still in the shelters. Well, technically one featured cat and one featured cat's accessory are. We featured two kittens, both called Bunny, a healthy and a sickly sister. Bunny 2 wasn't expected to live long but she's still alive, still blind, and still in the shelter. Someone really ought to adopt that no-longer-a-kitten, more-of-a-half-grown-cat Bunny 2.

Book Review: Rat Scabies and the Holy Grail

While lots of pre-written reviews of older books remain "in the can," I owe readers a book review for yesterday...I've wanted to leave room for all the lovely new books I've been getting, so I've not been popping reviews out of the can every day. Apologies. You'll get an extra review on Saturday morning. Meanwhile please enjoy a book for Generation X, review reclaimed from Blogjob...

Title: Rat Scabies and the Holy Grail

Author: Christopher Dawes

Date: 2005

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton / Thunders Mouth

ISBN: 1-50625-678-8

Length: 322 pages

Quote: “[T]he man who sits up there with Johnny Rotten and the ghost of Sid Vicious in the very highest of the high chairs of punk rock infamy was, quite literally, on my doorstep.”

Probably not altogether by accident, music journalist Christopher Dawes found himself living across the street from a semi-retired punker who became famous as "Rat Scabies." The two became friends, and one day Scabies proposed a treasure hunt in France. The real purpose of the hunt was to find out how an obscure, probably crooked, French priest had gone from poverty to extreme wealth about a hundred years ago. Some reasonable explanations are discovered but, because they find it interesting, Dawes and Scabies report at length on the little international community of people who believe the priest might have found ancient treasure—possibly the treasure of the Merovingian kings who were supposed to have possessed the Holy Grail.

References to the Indiana Jones movies, which I’ve managed to avoid seeing, are scattered thickly throughout this book. Whenever someone does something bizarre there seems to be an Indiana Jones tie-in. There are also coded texts in Latin, references to a wildly speculative historical study called The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, and lots of visits to the kind of obscure attractions of France—intermittent springs, natural and human-enhanced rock formations, mountain landscapes in which medieval minds traced mystic symbols—that interest me more than resorts and museums. Neither Dawes nor Scabies speaks French fluently, so there’s also the plausible detail that all the people they talk to are fellow English-speakers, that they’re never told as much about an attraction as they might have been told.

They don’t come home wealthy, but they have a book-worthy series of comic, scholarly, and sometimes dangerous adventures. And, along the way, those of us who’ve never liked punk rock get a look at a real punker. Behind the atonal music and grotesque makeup, Scabies turns out to have matured as a gentleman, a scholar, and apparently a decent husband…quite a surprise for those who’ve assumed that all the original punkers must have OD’d or committed suicide by now.

Do I believe even as much of this preposterous story as Dawes claims is true? I think, on the whole, I do…because I’ve read The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and talked to people who are into that kind of thing. They’re quirky, but real, and this is the sort of thing they get up to. They’re well worth knowing for about as long as it takes to read a 322-page account of some of their adventures.

Rat Scabies and the Holy Grail is recommended to those who like adventure, comedy, and/or medieval history.

Medieval French castle from NicH at Morguefile: www.morguefile.com/archive/display/185626

Posted on September 30, 2015 Categories A Fair Trade Book, HistoryTags humor, medieval Europe, punk rock music

Butterfly of the Week: Rose Windmill

As regular readers know by now, there are a lot of large butterflies that live in southern Asia and have at least partly red bodies and at least partly black wings. All of them are in the swallowtail family, so at first scientists put them in the genus Papilio. That genus became crowded, and these Asian butterflies share several special traits the other swallowtails don't have, so the genus name Atrophaneura was created just for them. As we've seen this winter, there were still a lot of species in the genus Atrophaneura, so recently some of them have been reassigned. The genus Byasa was created for butterflies in the Atrophaneura group that have long, thin hind wings that can be spread out into an x shape, in which position the butterflies reminded some people of windmills. Other butterflies in this group, because of their red to pink colors, were called Roses...and Byasa latreillei, as it is now officially called, has the English nickname of Rose Windmill. Its markings seem to mimic a more common species now classified as a Pachliopta or Rose.

Because it looks like other species the Rose Windmill has often been seen as a subspecies--of Atrophaneura philoxenus, or minereus--but it is now generally recognized as a distinct species. Its species name commemorates one of the old naturalists, Pierre Andre Latreille.

Photo donated to Wikipedia By Balakrishnan Valappil - NE_Pa_Rose Windmill Atrophaneura latreillei_13 April 2008_Namdapha, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67295248

As with the other butterflies in this family, the wings can look black or fade to drab with darker drab veins, and the body can look scarlet or crimson or fade to a pink or orange shade. Males and females look almost alike. On close observation, females have a few extra spots on the hind wings. Males, instead, have a fold in the inner edge of the hind wing from which they release a characteristic scent, sometimes noticeable by humans, that identifies this species. Despite their different wing shape, from a distance or in flight they look like some of the other black-winged, red-bodied swallowtails, the Common Rose (Pachliopta aristolochiae, previously discussed at this web site) or the Common Mormon. Since these species don't crossbreed, they use scent to recognize each other. Females in this group average slightly larger than males. All of them are large butterflies, with wingspans over four and often over five inches. 

Even living individuals can show this faded coloring.

The Rose Windmill is less common. It is widely distributed across Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Vietnam, but flies only in May and June, only at elevations between 5000 and 9000 feet. It is not usually considered especially rare or endangered, but at least one subspecies is protected by law in India, and Bimal Raj Shrestha identified it as potentially endangered in a document sold through Researchgate.net. The protected subspecies, Byasa latreillei kabrua, is most noticeably different from the more common subspecies because it is smaller, wingspans less than five inches. 

The black and faded-black wings of this group of butterflies suggested funeral attire to naturalists of past generations. However, unlike some of the bright-colored swallowtails, the butterflies are pollinators rather than composters, so they're not a typical part of woodland animal "funerals." They are attracted to flowers of sizes proportionate to their own size, lantanas and hibiscus and other semitropical forest specialties.

While the reproductive processes of moths and butterflies are one of the ways experts identify confusible species, they're not something normal humans want to think about. Suffice it to say that most of these insects mate in positions that protect their wings. If they embrace face to face, they cling to a twig while doing so. There is, however, a Youtube video documenting that at least some Byasa latreillei actually lie down on the ground, in a way few butterflies ever willingly do. The pair whose private moments were caught on video rolled about in the sand with little concern about possible wing damage.

After mating, large female butterflies usually do a lot of flying. Unlike some moths that lay all their eggs at once, swallowtails usually lay their eggs by ones, and look for a fresh new leaf, at least a few yards apart if not on completely separate plants, to ensure each caterpillar will find enough leaves to eat without harming its host plant. The person who documented Rose Windmills' mating process failed to document what the eggs look like or where they are laid. Swallowtail eggs are usually visible to the naked eye, shaped like tiny beads, but no one seems to have photographed or even described the eggs of this species.

The caterpillar is similar to others in this group. It can be described as aubergine or brownish purple, covered in bumps for maximum bird-repellent effect, with a white "belt." It eats plants in the genus Nepenthes perhaps more than the other swallowtails' favorite genus Aristolochia.

The pupa has an orange-ish color and that wide, flat, dead leaf shape that other Roses and Windmills have, and is said to squeak when disturbed, as some of the sphingid moth pupae do. Moths and butterflies have no vocal organs. They "talk" to one another mostly through scent, releasing subtly different odors (only a few of which humans notice) that announce which individuals are ready to mate and which food plants have been claimed. However, when they encounter possible predators, some of the larger ones can "scream." When they take a deep sharp breath, a hiss or squeak can be produced by air rushing through the breathing pores along their sides. 

In the past some "collectors" gave these butterflies reasons to scream when approached by humans. The primitive way of studying butterflies was to collect dead bodies, document where they'd been, and try to learn something by comparing size and colors before the colors faded and the bodies attracted the beetles that normally compost butterfly carcasses. This morbid and unhygienic approach to science often motivated naturalists to kill healthy butterflies, and they learned that, while pinching the thoracic segments of smaller butterflies usually kills them, pinching swallowtails without actually crushing their bodies only hurts them enough to immobilize them for a few minutes. Of course, now that we can learn more from live photographs of butterflies than from decaying bodies, no right-minded person wants to kill them. Butterflies live only a few weeks. Let them enjoy the time they have. Auction sites still list dead bodies of tropical butterflies for sale, but we should never pay for a dead butterfly. 

My Thoughts on "Small Talk"

"Small talk" is a kind of low-content chatter that introverts usually do for a few minutes before saying something more obviously useful, and that extroverts seem to enjoy doing all day long. Examples:

"Hello. How are you?"

"Fine, thanks. How are you?"

"Fine, thanks. Nice day, isn't it?"

"Beautiful! I hear it's going to rain again tomorrow."

Between introverts the amount of time spent on this kind of natter is an index of the discomfort people feel with what they really want to say. In a friendly, comfortable conversation the next line might be,

"Very likely. Anyway, I just came to bring back the wrench I borrowed, and to ask if you'd be interested in going to the lake with us this weekend."

But it might take a long time to work up to,

"...And oh, didn't it pour on this day in 1977! And by the way, I just happened to see what you and Tracy were doing yesterday."

So we see that, while it may seem like a waste of time, "small talk" serves a purpose. In fact, when people launch right into what they want to say without using at least one "conversation turn" to establish the level of attention they want to give the conversation, the important message may fall on inattentive ears. Within the family, the "small talk" that asks for and ensures attention may seem more directly related to its purpose--"I've heard news" or "Is this a good time to talk?" In more formal contexts, the "small talk" may smooth over the fact that it's not a good time to talk about anything private or momentous. 

Or, in some cases, the "small talk" may be more momentous for those doing it than a transcript of the words would suggest. Most of us remember adolescent social encounters where "small talk" was used to communicate large messages. 

Spoken message: "Hi." 

Unspoken content: "You are the most attractive person on Earth."

Spoken message: "Hey."

Unspoken content: "Is it possible? Finally? You're talking to me? I've only had a crush on you since..."

I've always been fascinated by the conversations where I'm not sure how the spoken and unspoken messages could possibly connect, but in fact they did.

A's spoken message: "I had to miss English class yesterday."

Unspoken content: "But I heard what you said about me, you parent-abusing liar."

B's spoken message: "Oh well, you didn't miss much."

Unspoken content: "I said I could beat the stuffing out of you. Why don't you take off your glasses and I'll start doing that now."

C's unspoken message: "I saw Tracy Jones today."

What A might say, but doesn't: "You see Jones every day, don't you, riding the same bus?"

What B might say, but doesn't: "So what? I don't like Jones. I don't like you. I have a sophomore to beat up. Go away."

Unspoken content, nevertheless: ???

-- "I'm watching. If you start fighting I'll have to fight one of you next."

-- "I happen to know that one of you is waiting for a reply from Jones's parents, which, for some reason, Jones chose to let me deliver."

-- "Both of you dislike me more than you dislike each other so let me distract you from fighting before the teacher comes around the corner."

-- "Jones and I happen to know something that would embarrass one or both of you if mentioned."

-- "You'd better make peace if you want to spend the long weekend at Jones's family's beach house."

Or what? ?????

"Small talk" can become very interesting, at least to me, when it accomplishes something beyond attracting attention and I wonder how that could possibly have worked

Unfortunately "small talk" is most often noticed when it only takes up time and space. There's something you'd like to say, or hear, or do, and the other person won't stop babbling. Because the content of the babble is so low, it's entirely possible that this person doesn't want to be talking to you, any more than you want to be talking to them, but person just doesn't want to be seen sitting or standing still and not talking. Talk is expected so the mouth keeps flapping just to reduce other people's anxiety.

I'm an introvert so I like to minimize small talk. I like to make sure it's leading into something that really needed to be said, preferably quickly. Neither the Bible nor the Constitution includes any specific limit on the amount of words about the weather a person may ask others to listen to, but if you want my attention...

(a) When nothing really needs to be said, being quiet together is a bonding experience. Why miss a chance to look at beautiful landscapes or listen to a good song together, just to babble?

(b) When something does need to be said, say it before I start to notice feeling bored. 

(c) If what you wanted to say feels hard to say, this may be an indicator that it's better not said. If, for example, it's something like "How can you be such a horrible person as not to want to sign over all national sovereignty and personal rights and personal property to our wonderful friends in Europe who promise us world peace," and you're thinking that I'm likely to cut you off short with "Europeans can't even stop fighting wars with each other," you're right. It would probably be better for our relationship if you say something less confrontational, something more emotionally honest, like "Dang, I wanted to believe world peace was possible, even if it's true that the people dreaming of global government wouldn't recognize peace if it walked up and bit them." 

Book Review: Althea

Title: Althea 

Author: Sally H. Jacobs

Date: 2023

Publisher: St Martin's

ISBN: 978-1-250-24656-1

Quote: "When Venus and Serena published a Black History Month newsletter in their high school years it was Althea who they put on the back cover,"

All tennis stars' biographies have one plot: Once upon a time there was a young person who played tennis better than all per friends did. Person was sponsored and encouraged, and per game got better. Person grew older and more interested in more adult pursuits; person retired and, if the story is written long enough after the person's birth, person died. The End. I find in this book much more than a tennis star's biography. For one thing it may shed some light on today's concerns about atrazine-damaged boys wanting to play girls' sports as "trans-women"...but read on.

Althea Gibson's story gains some additional drama from the extraordinary amount of bigotry she had to deal with. She caught hate on at least six different levels: as a Black athlete, as a woman athlete, as an underprivileged athlete, as the child of a dysfunctional family, as an introvert, and as a person who may have been genuinely gender-confused, though the few people who seem to have seen her wearing less than she wore in the photo above seem to have accepted her as female. 

She had a few other nicknames besides the predictable "Gib" and "Gipper," explained in the book, but the one that seems to have lasted longest was "Big Al." In a generation where the average woman's height was 5'2", Gibson was 5'10". At birth she was described as a boy, a "big fat one" though she wasn't fat for long, and was called Alger. Before she was a year old this had been dismissed as a mistake, and the name was changed to Althea. Her lanky build, low voice, and athletic carriage were often perceived as mannish. College dorm mates thought she was a lesbian, though no suspected girlfriends were ever named. As a teenager she was told by a doctor that she'd never have children. She had boyfriends; apparently there was the one on whom she had a crush, the one who was a lifelong good friend, the one she married later on for practical reasons, and possibly more. Jacobs seems to accept the claim that she was a lesbian while presenting evidence that seems more supportive of a claim that she was physically gender-confused. A female roommate said she talked about sex, presumably with men, though women of their vintage often tried to be so indirect and use so many euphemisms that it was hard to be sure. At least, neither the man with whom she reportedly spent days locked in a room, nor either of the men to whom she was married, reported any surprises or complaints. Some people who have male, or partly male ("chimeric"), DNA develop superficially complete but sterile female parts; Gibson might have been one of them.

 As a teenager she was more of a mess than average. Reports of her learning to fight by hitting her abusive father back, spending weeks on end on the streets, brawling and stealing and so on, may leave local readers with one really burning question: "She wasn't one of our Gibsons was she?" Apparently not. "Gibson" was a fairly common English name. Althea's family traced it to an English slavemaster in South Carolina, not the English freethinker from whom our Gibsons descend. Anyway tennis "saved" her from a life of crime, but she was seen as a wild child, a neglected brat from the ghetto, with neither manners nor morals, for a long time. 

But she was good at tennis. She went to FAMC, Florida's all-Black college, on a tennis scholarship and coached as her student labor job. She did well enough in the all-Black tennis league to be invited to play in the White league. The expectation apparently was that the presumed inferiority of the Black mind would keep a girl like Gibson from actually beating the likes of Margaret Dupont or Louise Brough. Gibson trounced them--and, luckily for her, they enjoyed the novelty of being challenged. The image of big, often Black, challengers mopping the floor with cute, naive rich kids who thought they were athletes was a thoroughly worn-out stereotype before it started being used against the Williams sisters; Gibson did more than anyone else to create it.

Her career may even have owed its peaks of success to a horse. In the early 1950s Maureen Connolly was the brightest star in the sky of women's tennis. Big Al had a five-inch height advantage, but Little Mo was Irish. As Jacob tells it, both athletes had actually been longing to meet someone who could give them a real game, so they liked and respected each other. Connolly won a good two-thirds of the time and looked adorable while doing it. Then she had that tiresome injury, riding her horse, and retired, leaving a clear path for her only real competitor to become the Queen of Tennis.

All through the 1950s and 1960s Gibson smashed one prestigious "amateur" title after another. She was sent on world tours to show the world how successful it was possible for Black Americans to be. She won Wimbledon. She curtsied to the Queen of England. She was given a ticker tape parade in New York City. She was barred by league rules from ever earning more than $75 per month from tennis, barred by her tennis schedule from having a better paid job, and, when she'd established that she owned the sport, barred from cashing in as a tennis "professional" by sponsors' reluctance to invest in promoting women's games. Her fellow athletes, some of whom were close friends, married and had children. Gibson didn't have children and didn't stay married long, and after reaching retirement age she felt "broke." 

For the next generation of tennis stars, the game was much more profitable. Arthur Ashe, Jimmy Connors, Billie Jean King, and their colleagues didn't have their incomes capped to maintain "amateur" status, and were free to earn what their talents were worth on the market while still being eligible for events like Wimbledon. Gibson seemed carefully to avoid directing resentment toward the young stars who admired her. When Chris Evert beat her, Gibson laughed. When invited to appear in public with Ashe, making some sort of public-spirited statement--apparently it happened often--Gibson did; she seemed partial to Ashe in a motherly way, more than resentful of the "class" difference. She blamed the "system," not the young athletes. She was, nevertheless, bitter about the fact that this younger generation of tennis stars were getting so much more money with so much less effort than she ever had. 

It wasn't only the income cap, or the stricter rules about dress codes and other aspects of "ladylike" conduct, Jacobs shows. Gibson was always given clearly to understand that her breaks and her sponsorship depended on her being a good sport about the state of race relations--in other words, her ability to deny that, at the time, the state of race relations was a sort of undeclared war. She was ghetto girl enough to look people in the eye and deny, deny, deny that she'd encountered any particular difficulties because she was Black. In historical fact, Jacobs documents, she had. Gibson did encounter friendly, supportive White people--probably more often than the other kind--and her early life in the ghetto had been so wretched that the close friends of her middle-class adult life were a mixed group, mostly White. Still, there were occasions when her affirmations of interracial good will must have felt like efforts to persuade herself, or like outright lies. If some White people made very large gestures of good will and respect for her, and they did, she still had to shrug off plenty of petty, tacky little gestures of White hostility.

By way of reward for denying large parts of her reality, after whippersnappers like Evert started beating her Gibson was employed by the federal government to deliver public-spirited messages to the world. She addressed, for example, seniors groups on the topic of exercise. Her wages were low, and her Social Security pension, when she qualified for one, unlivable. At one point she threatened suicide. Her better paid friends rallied around to set up a fund that raised her income to what she and they agreed would be modest comfort, in which she spent the rest of her life (1927-2003).

One way this book could have been improved would have been a recognition that. even if her way of communicating it was a product of her ghetto experience, Gibson's introvert personality was as much a permanent physical part of her as her height and color were. She was remarkably free from any need for "mental health care," heroically levelheaded about reality, even the reality that after reaching a certain level of age and illness she wasn't able to live on her income. No matter how many people, in the twentieth century, bought into Sigmund Freud's erroneous belief that all people suffered from extroversion, the medical fact is that many of us don't. What introverts need is respect. In Gibson's lifetime, respect for the personality that made it possible for a juvenile delinquent from the ghetto to mature into a gracious and lovable "self-made" adult, though obviously deserved, was as rare as appreciation for Gibson's kind of face and hair. (At least a similar historical coincidence allowed Gibson's shape to be described in the media as a "rangy" and "supple" "gazelle," in the 1950s, rather than the sort of "You're ugly!" reaction Alice Walker showed a thin young woman getting in the 1920s.) Gibson was wired to understand how much better it was to become a responsible, law-abiding adult, even if she had to lean heavily on denial to do that, rather than to flame out as the sort of "wild child" she'd been. 

Every year we seem to read another news story about another ghetto youth whose athletic or musical ability may be as promising as hers was, but who doesn't seem to understand what he (most of them are male) needs to give up in order to get the benefit of his talents. Getting Althea Gibson from the streets into a teacher training course required the school to cut her some slack (Gibson apparently romped over several college rules) and also required her to give up brawling and stealing, and she did. At the time social support for "Judeo-Christian morality" provided reinforcement for the improvement in teen Althea's behavior, even though popular culture blamed and hated her insistence on privacy and adherence to her contractual obligation not to become the sort of civil rights activist some wanted her to be. Today, with people in the school system openly preaching atheism and challenging our culture's "traditional morality," we badly need support for the physical structure in Gibson's brain that supplied that crucial sense that becoming a law-abiding adult would be better than remaining a delinquent. We badly need to understand that Gibson's insistence on privacy was a valuable aspect of that vital part of her brain, even more valuable than her talents for music and tennis.

Some of us may not yet be capable of recognizing that depression (a symptom more often than a separate disease) and thrill-seeking "suicidality," as discussed by Clancy Martin (probably a distinct disease) and a clearheaded, rational rather than emotional, sense of conditions with which we are and are not willing to live, are three separate things. Even if we want to focus on preventing suicide as an end in itself, we need to realize that when people think and talk about ending their lives because they're not willing to live with certain levels of illness, poverty, dependency, etc., handing them serotonin boosters for a quick emotional "high" is likely to make them feel happier and more decisive about suicide. Althea Gibson would not have lived nearly as long as she did if she'd suffered much from depression or thought of suicide as a response to depression/ She seems much more like the type of person who is, by nature, cheerful and confident enough to be able to feel, acknowledge, and recover from the unpleasant emotions that come and go. When Gibson called an old friend to say she'd decided to end her life, she was expressing a mature, detached consideration of her medical condition, her finances, and the value her presence had for other people. Fortunately for her (and, I believe, for her friend's prospects in the hereafter!), the people Gibson knew were intelligent enough to recognize that the only possible way to improve her situation was to demonstrate the value her presence had for them, specifically, by improving her finances. 

So, if young readers of this book don't want to pay their debts and live within their means, should they read this book as encouragement to threaten suicide whenever they could use some money? Of course not. No doubt it was helpful for Gibson's friends that, by the time Gibson decided her situation was unlivable, she'd been coping with reality quite well for at least the last fifty years, and her income was much lower and her medical expenses were higher than her friends'. What they should take away from this book is that her friends had enough sense not to leap to conclusions about her suffering from depression as a separate disease (she didn't) or needing to be punished with a clumsy, misguided, utterly irrelevant approach to "mental health." Gibson's mental health was fine. Even her physical health was better than many of her generation's. She just plain didn't have enough money to live on. In that case, and not in the cases of depressive or thrill-seeking suicide threateners, the one correct solution to her problem was a cash infusion. She got that, and lived fairly happily until some additional disease factor ended her life with a brief physical illness, diagnosed as blood poisoning, in her late seventies.

What I'd like to see older readers take away from this book is an appreciation of the fact that Gibson's friends also knew better than to babble about "help" coming from the federal government. In the late twentieth century, federal funding was allocated to "supplemental security" for retirees who couldn't live on their Social Security pensions. Bureaucrats prefered to subsidize various unhelpful boondoggles that promised direct relief of their agreed-upon "needs," such as slum "housing" and horrific nursing homes to address rent, mortgage, and housekeeping expenses, but in some cases, recognizing the morale-boosting benefits of making one's own budgetary decisions, they actually sent these retirees supplementary checks. This was not what Gibson wanted or needed, and her friends had enough sense to recognize the fact. There are retirees, like Carolyn Heilbrun, who--rationally, not emotionally--choose to end their lives rather than depend on large-scale handout "programs" for anything. Gibson fortunately didn't have to make that additional decision, because her friends knew that a big part of her decision was based on their affirmation of the value her individual life and work had for them. 

Telling people "There's a program that might meet your need for..." is, in fact, telling them "You have no worth; you are only a bundle of needs; your existence has no value to me." If you are concerned about someone you know, even if you feel tempted to rationalize that as long as what the person needs can be expressed in dollars and cents and the federal government just collected several dollars and cents from you last month, be very sure you don't mention handout programs or "needs." Never let that kind of thought cross your mind! If the people of concern to you are, like Gibson or Heilbrun, responsible competent adults whose reality problems involve money, bear in mind at all times that money becomes a reality problem for people to whom money represents the value other people set on their worth. They have no "needs." They have only worth--if you want to be heard as telling them anything other than "Choose suicide now." (They probably will not choose suicide now just because they hear you telling them to, but they will most certainly revise their opinions of you.) If these people wanted cash alone, they could be exploiting their credibility, as active and competent seniors, to set up all kinds of frauds and scams. If you want this type of person to be able to live with any level of disability, be sure you use the word "need" only in reference to yourself, as in "I need to show my appreciation of what you do and have done."

Cat Drama Status Update: Conclusion

Nowadays even herbalists recommend lab tests to verify the results of sniff tests, but several infectious diseases can be diagnosed fairly effectively by the nose. Large amounts of some kinds of virus and bacteria produce distinctive odors.

Measles and related virus have a slightly bitter, acrid smell. When I've smelled it my thought process has been "It's not walnuts...it's not that old hair oil men mostly stopped using in the 1960s...oh right, it's one of those virus the oldtimers used to call different kinds of measles." 

Norovirus smells like norovirus. If you've smelt it you've been dealt it and, if your resistance to this virus is as feeble as mine, within 48 hours you are going to feel completely useless until your digestive system is completely empty. You will recognize the odor if you smell it again. At least it can warn you to eat very lightly and drink lots of water. The best way to minimize the misery of norovirus is not to have much  solid material inside you when it hits.

Rhinovirus is described by some people as producing a sensation (sometimes of coldness) in the nostrils and sometimes as producing a lingering bitter smell that stays there. 

The common cold itself, the body's antibodies to many kinds of infection, is sometimes said to smell garlicky. People who choose to smell garlicky do so in order to boost resistance to infections. The connection may have been discovered because people who have not been eating garlic generate a faintly garlicky odor when fighting infections.

Coliform bacteria have an odor I associate with corroded metal, old coins and keys.

I'd heard that salmonella bacteria have an odor and thought, well, I didn't seem to smell it, until an unusually nasty infection brought the point home to me. Salmonella produces an odor that reminds people of hot yeast bread, possibly because of interaction with yeasts in the body--it's not noticeable in food, but it's noticeable in patients. I was like, "Oh is that what that is." Though it's different from the sugary, fruity, acetone odor of diabetes I had always associated it with diabetic patients, and as I liked some of the diabetic patients I knew early in life, I'd always thought it was a rather nice smell. Other than during a glyphosate reaction in 2021 I'd never noticed salmonella causing anything worse than a little irregularity. When the lethal strain of salmonella causes typhoid or "putrid fever," the yeasty odor gives way to a carrion odor caused by actual damage to body tissues. 

And strep bacteria have an odor I find easiest to explain as a nasty body odor minus the food and ammonia. Most people carry around a fair number of harmless streppy-bugs (they're considered friendly bacteria) so if we don't bathe, change clothes and sheets, or clean furniture regularly, we will start to smell streppy. It can literally be a sickening odor if the concentration of bacteria is strong and the person inhaling is not strong. The bacteria can produce usually mild infections in the throat or in open skin wounds. The odor of strep tells most people to do something so that they don't have to continue smelling it, like clean the house or wash some laundry or at least add an extra yard to the healthy distance we keep away from certain people, but in the 1960s there were some "Sick Greens" who claimed it was natural and earthy and good. I think most of them know better by now. I think more of the Sick Greens died from drug reactions and AIDS than from strep, but it couldn't have helped

Well...last week Cat Queen Serena gave birth to kittens, as noted in last week's status updates. Her showing me where the kittens were was normal. Her wanting me to look closely at them and not leave them was a warning of trouble.

I had learned, from past experience, about the primary cause of this trouble. When adult cats seem to be thriving on cheap food (and surviving glyphosate vapor drift), but either or both of these things is affecting them, perhaps more than the cats know...it is possible for a big strong healthy-looking cat to give birth to "wormy" kittens. Whether parasitized by intestinal worms or other things, these kittens' sickliness discourages the mother cat from cleaning them. Serena loved and fed her three tiny kittens but she was trying to tell me, as she succeeded in telling me a few hours later, that she wanted me to clean them. Kittens greatly prefer not to be cleaned by humans (with wet paper towels) and are healthier if cleaned by their mothers, but mother cats' instincts warn them not to clean sick kittens.

Vets recommend worm treatment for the mother cat, when this happens, and some vets recommend regular worm treatments for all outdoor cats on general principles, which sounds like the kind of overkill that's likely to breed super-parasites to me. All the Cat Sanctuary cats will be getting worm treatment, anyway, and it's to be hoped that they will be getting steady supplies of Purina Kitten Chow as distinct from the cheap, grain-based alternative. (The Dollar Store used to sell bags of Heartland Kitten Chow that were true generic equivalents of Purina Kitten Chow, but I've not seen those in a store for a long time.)

Sometimes parasite-infected kittens can be kept alive long enough to survive treatment and mature more or less normally, but permanent damage may have been done. More often they just didn't come into this world to stay. 

Additionally, the Bad Neighbor had sprayed, I could feel rather than smell, that unholy mix of dicamba and glyphosate people use when they've used glyphosate enough to produce crops of resistant "weeds." (All the nuisance plants my parents and I tried to extirpate all these years, Johnson grass and Bermuda grass and japonica honeysuckle and cinnamon vines and the native Bidens, plus the invasive Bidens called Spanish Needles, and even the loathsome datura or locoweed, thrive on glyphosate. So do molds and fungus infections of all sorts, except edible mushrooms, which can die out or can soak up high concentrations of glyphosate and become toxic to eat. Around this time of year people approach me wanting to buy morels, and if I have any I wouldn't dare sell them.) Maybe, Serena and I hoped, 48 hours of powdered charcoal mixed up in water would clean the poison out of them, and they'd be all right. I think Serena wanted to believe that. I know I did. So I tried.

Treatment completed, weather heavenly, I took the kittens out for Serena to inspect. She had concerns, but she was thrilled. She quivered all over. Serena is not what most people would call a "sweet," demonstrative cat. Quite the contrary. Normally she prefers rough games to cuddling, and if you get any ideas about cuddling her like a human baby she's apt to reply, nonverbally, with "No, let's play tag--or maybe war." But she gathered up those kittens and clung and purred and meowed. If cats shed tears, she would have done. Something was still wrong, but they had healthy appetites and at least she still had milk to give them...before she gave them back to me for cleaning, again.

And the Professional Bad Neighbor sprayed more poison, less than a city block away, over the curve of the hill, but upwind from us relative to the prevailing wind. This time I felt, rather than smelling, that it was glyphosate. "Roundup" sold for suburban lawn use is scented with an additional toxic chemical; the generic glyphosate and mix sold for farm use aren't scented. I can tell which one I'm breathing because the only reaction to dicamba vapors I notice is a scratchiness in the throat, and my glyphosate reactions are long elaborate affairs that start with a moment of acute grumpiness, may include sluggishness or even narcolepsy, always involve a spastic colon reaction with both constipation and diarrhea in turns, and usually feature enough inflammation along the entire digestive tract, from the mouth down, to produce small short-lived bleeding ulcers. The amount of vapor inhaled or contaminated food swallowed seems to determine whether the spastic colon effects will be easy to work through without being noticed by other people, or melodramatic. I've mentioned, in years when glyphosate was used more recklessly, seeing puddles of blood-flecked froth beside the road. Those puddles came from people who weren't accustomed to life with the celiac gene, and didn't know when to stay home. When I need to stay home, I stay home.

Why don't we have laws protecting people, and animals, from this kind of recurring torture? Last week I kept spitting out strips of dead tissue that had flaked off my inflamed lips and tongue. Once, a few years ago, I looked into a toilet bowl and saw a finger-sized piece of tripe floating around, and I hadn't eaten any tripe--that was dead tissue out of my own inflamed intestines. If I went to my neighbor's house and tore two or three inches of surface tissue off his face, the law would have something to say about that, we can be sure. But the law says nothing about his tearing two or three inches of surface tissue off a part of me where it's less easily spared...because some people make a lot of money off glyphosate and other poisons.

All of which poisons, I might add, are completely unnecessary. Glyphosate is supposed to kill plants, although it actually breeds bigger, more aggressive specimens of the most undesirable ones. You don't need poisons to kill plants. As a member of the animal kingdom, endowed with the sovereign power of rapid voluntary movement, you can do whatever you like to plants, and most of them have no defense against it. If you don't have the fortitude to cut back plants where you don't want them, you can enlist the help of creatures that eat the unwanted plants (most goats will ignore anything else when they can munch up poison ivy), or burn the unwanted plants, or wilt them with salt and vinegar, or--better yet, in places like road verges and railroads where you want bare gravel--kill them with boiling-hot water. There is no excuse for spraying poisons on plants. It is pure undiluted stupidity--in most cases. When it's done for the purpose of making neighbors unhappy on their own land, which has been in the family for at least seven generations, that has to be called evil. 

Glyphosate apologists keep throwing information my way about other things that produce similar effects to all the many different effects glyphosate has on different people. It's a fascinating study, in a gruesome way. For example, while some cats--Dusty the shelter cat was one--show internal bleeding as a primary glyphosate reaction, and young kittens often just drop dead after breathing glyphosate vapors, some female animals who show no consistent reaction themselves are apt to give birth to damaged or non-viable young. Serena's daughter Silver has reared only one kitten that lived to grow up; more years than not, she's never tried to rear kittens of her own at all. She has not been spayed. She is not sterile. She is very close to old sterile Sommersburr, but not to the extent that she doesn't accept help from other tomcats to produce kittens. She is a social cat whose kittens are positively wanted/ But she's given birth to some things that looked like premature kittens but weren't alive, at least one thing that belonged in a horror movie, and some kittens that grew weaker and finally died after successive glyphosate spray poisonings. There's actually a gene that causes that pattern of reaction; it's been studied at length in rodents. It seems to be more common in southern Europe, and parts of America where people and animals come from southern Europe, than in the rest of the world. Did Silver have an ancestor from Spain or Italy? All science is at least interesting...

Anyway, I have now read a fair bit about ways to replicate all the torments glyphosate sprayers have inflicted on people and animals who are more sensitive to this poison than they are. I used to think the way to show glyphosate sprayers what a celiac reaction is like would involve a coloscopy done with an immersion blender in the place where the camera ought to be, but that's inaccurate. Repeated injections with enough typhoid fever culture to overpower any vaccines they ever had would get a closer parallel effect. I'm not sure why glyphosate apologists want to give any celiac this kind of ideas.

But enough gross-outs. The kittens' condition wasn't gross--not, at least, to people who are familiar with the basic condition of newborn kittens. Kittens are not born with the ability to digest food completely. They can absorb nourishment only from cat's milk or a synthetic substitute for it; they absorb so little of the nourishment in this milk that their bodywastes are pure cat's-milk cheese, which, if the kittens are healthy, their mothers cheerfully recycle through their own digestive tracts. Rearing a kitten that is not being cleaned every few hours by an adult cat means gently stroking its hindquarters while holding a napkin to catch the white, almost odorless, curds and whey that come out. If the kitten is sick what comes out may contain blood, parasites, or in the best case traces of solid food it tried to eat, and thus seem more like the bodywastes of any other animal but a kitten. What these kittens left on paper napkins was just barely noticeably, or not noticeably, yellower than milk. I thought they might have a chance, I kept cleaning them, giving them charcoal mixed with bottled water, and letting them rest on a clean flannel shirt beside me.

Before their eyes open kittens can crawl a few yards at a time, and they will if they get chilled. They are heat-seeking mechanisms. They don't seek direct heat, as adult cats often do; they're not yet insulated in thick fur. They seek something close to the mother cat's body temperature A human's body warmth will do. Serena's kittens were obsessive snugglers. At first I tried to minimize direct contact with them, but if they sensed a hand near them, they wanted to crawl onto it and stretch out full-length on it. 

After the second meal of their lives was ruined the kittens lost ground; they cried more, and stopped crying when petted, and I didn't think it was likely to make so much difference. It'd be a miracle if the Professional Bad Neighbor didn't kill them before they were weaned anyway. Hours after the second meal and first subsequent cleaning-by-human, the first kitten gave two or three real shrieks of pain and went into a sort of spastic, rather than feverish, delirium. 

"That's how to tell it's parasites," a vet told me, years ago, looking at another kitten. "There's nothing to do for the kittens but put them to sleep, and give a good worm treatment to the mother cat." 

So, maybe the kittens owed some of their charm to illness. Some kittens cuddle because they're affectionate and sociable by nature, and some because a sickly "wormy" condition produces discomfort they want to relieve by snuggling. Maybe the evil the Professional Bad Neighbor meant to do them worked out, in the long run, for their good. Spray poisoning indisputably aggravated their suffering but they probably wouldn't have lived long anyway. I kept Traveller alive for most of two years, her adoptive family kept a long-ago "wormy" kitten called Graymina alive for a year and a half--that's above average. Usually "wormy" kittens live months, not years.

I still think live video coverage of his being fitted with a colostomy bag at the last possible moment, after a full three weeks of unrelieved typhoid fever, prior to the skin peels and gassing and all the other treatments that would replicate the other things this disgrace to humankind has done, would be a salutary way for the Professional Bad Neighbor to spend his last days. 

Anyway now the kittens swarmed over me, and the shirt and jeans that were due for a wash, and the shirt they were wrapped up in that was no longer clean, with any antibodies they might have been able to absorb from the milk being adsorbed by charcoal. While they were taking it the charcoal would also mop up the bacteria in their systems, and possibly some of the parasites. 

Then, in the order of their birth, they went through a few cramps and spasms into deep comas. The eldest seemed almost dead on Friday morning, the male went into a similar state late Friday night, and the youngest reached that state just before her midday meal on Saturday. Some reflexes persisted; the excretory reflexes stopped. (Sometimes a comatose kitten's digestive system is still functional.). They seemed completely...paralyzed. That's one of the less common glyphosate reactions, but it's known to occur in humans and other animals.

So they were no longer taking charcoal.

So, by Saturday afternoon, the office where they were resting in peace smelled septic. What does a septic wound smell like? Primarily like strep bacteria. Urgh urgh ick ick. Could the kittens smell themselves? Feel bacteria colonizing their bodies, without being able even to cough? Horrid thought.

Regular readers may remember the winter, early in the history of this web site, when another kitten had a strep infection that wouldn't go away. Everybody loved that kitten. Even when she became a streppy little stinker. Nobody else showed any reaction to the bacteria except that, after she'd been snuggled across my neck, breathing germs on my face all night, I warned people: "If you annoy me I may breathe on you." A little bad breath is not the end of the world...

...Except when it is. Some strains of strep are considered such "friendly" bacteria that they're used to ferment yogurt, sold as "probiotic supplements" for healthy people after antibiotic treatment--but immune-compromised people have developed pneumonia from exposure to probiotic supplements. 

Iris was Serena's great-great-great-grand-aunt. Their markings and purrsonalities were different, but their general colors and temperament come from the same genes. And what about their resistance to strep...if not Serena's, then the kittens'? 

A comatose cat assumes room temperature, but some strep bacteria can survive on rich cultures, like milk, egg, or blood, for more than two weeks at freezing temperatures; that's how yogurt, even frozen yogurt, keeps its probiotic benefits. In warm weather, dead or even dry surfaces may reduce streppy-bugs' rate of reproduction but, in the absence of other factors like a healthy animal's antibodies, a comatose cat's internal temperature is not going to kill strep.

On Saturday afternoon I made a dreaded decision. I buried the kittens under a pile of wood and trash in the trash barrel, and lighted it. If they felt anything, they wouldn't feel very much for very long. And few, if any, bacteria survive a fire.

And, knowing Serena, I'd guess that by July she will have either given birth to or adopted another batch of kittens. Not "wormy" ones, either. 

Rearing healthy kittens is not easy in a glyphosate-poisoned world but, if anyone can do it, Serena can.

Book Review: The Words We Lost

Title: The Words We Lost 

Author: Nicole Deese

Date: 2023

Publisher: Bethany House

ISBN: ISBN 978-1-4934-4071-9

Quote: "Every tap, tap, tap of my editorial director’s blood-red fingernail against her ceramic coffee mug feels like another second closer to the death of my career."

Ingrid's biggest current problem is a superordinate who sees her as competition. She's had bigger ones, though. The father who raised her alone, a heavy-drinking sea captain, died at sea while she was at school. Her only serious crush was on her best girl friend's cousin Joel; it was mutual, but they've been estranged because she blamed him for her father's death. And then, within the past year, her friend, Cece, died. /Cece was also a novelist whose work Ingrid had been editing; she'd written a five-volume series, the first four books of which had been bestsellers, and died without sending Ingrid the manuscript for volume five. Now Ingrid's hostile boss, who's started spelling her name "SaBrina" possibly in hopes of reducing references to Sabrina the Midlife Itch, is threatening to have Ingrid fired if Ingrid can't find or write volume five. She has two weeks.

Cece died of a brain tumor, which is ironic given the intelligence she put into making Ingrid's search for her last manuscript a treasure hunt that will bring Ingrid and Joel back together. That's even despite the fact that Cece's celebrity status had upset her widowed mother, Wendy, who Ingrid thinks has lost "forty or fifty pounds" as people don't leave her alone to mourn. 

It's a romance; it doesn't have to be plausible in real life. I'm not convinced that there are friends as good as Cece, nor that, if there were, they'd have mothers as weak as Wendy, nor that a prize like Joel would have been monogamous into their late twenties, but romance readers are stereotyped as willing to suspend disbelief. 

What you'll love, if you're the kind of romance reader who will like this book, are the vividly drawn background ("Fog Harbor," a fictionalized small town on the Pacific coast), the niceness of the three friends, the way everyone except possibly SaBrina is a serious Christian so nobody preaches at anybody, the wholesome pace of a romance that grows as the characters develop appreciation of each other's characters, and the tragic heroism that unfolds as Ingrid and Joel find out what Cece knew about Ingrid's father. 

What's not to love? "Romantic" has traditionally been an opposite to "realistic," in literary terms. Some people prefer realistic novels. 

Top Ten Reasons to Consider Vaccination

The position of this web site is not anti-vaccine. It is pro-choice. It respects people's right to be anti-vaccine because they believe all contact with other living creatures' blood makes them ritually impure, because they believe the use of animal cells to make vaccine exploits animals, or because they believe vaccine manufacturers don't do enough to prevent contamination from aluminum compounds or glyphosate or other toxic chemicals that have been found in certain vaccines. 

If, however, you eat meat, with all the ritual impurity, exploitation, and contamination guaranteed in every bite, the position of this web site is that you need either to have a specific R/BA for each vaccine decision you make, or to endure being accused of avoiding vaccines because you have a silly phobia of needles.

The position of this web site is that civilized human beings must respect other people's silly phobias, that private people may have some right to indulge their own silly phobias of unvaccinated visitors on their own private property but that governments have no right to discriminate against the unvaccinated in any way. If vaccines are at all effective, you can have the ones you believe you need and thenceforward have no fear of unvaccinated people. 

The position of this web site is that "herd immunity" to diseases like smallpox was not altogether bad for the rightful owners of our part of the world, because Europeans and Africans brought in good things along with the disease germs that allowed British immigrants to become the ethnic majority, but it can hardly be said to have served them well and it should not be made a goal. We want to keep breeding natural resistance to natural conditions into the population, rather than becoming dependent on unnatural conditions. If the majority of people are more concerned about avoiding pain than about ritual purity, egalitarian relationships with other species, or even avoiding contaminants that may cause disease conditions perceived as less serious, as in fact they are, then we will have a majority of people choosing to be vaccinated, as in fact we have, and we can afford to have a minority choosing to risk being the immune carriers who keep natural immunity from dying out. 

The position of this web site is that we can never rule out the possibility that, if the "most orthodox" followers of religious traditions sincerely believe they need to maintain ritual purity at the risk of having polio or tuberculosis, God may reward their good faith by giving them miraculous immunity, or even leading them to discover effective ways to boost specific immunities without vaccines. During the plague years a century ago, some people did in fact find effective ways to treat and prevent Spanish Influenza, typhoid fever, and tuberculosis. No arrogant little beagle-torturing pismire has a right to doubt that Orthodox Jews or Muslims or Cherokees or Latter-Day Hippies or Jains or any other sort of religious people may receive revelations that are withheld, for his sins, from him. No government should ever allow any human or group of humans to impose their medical choices on any other human or group of humans. We could use a constitutional amendment tot hat effect. And a clause about a ten-year ban on funding any organization associated with attempts to impose medical choices on anybody, anywhere, wouldn't hurt anything either.

Personally, I believe medical choices extend even to children. The reason for recommending dozens of vaccines for infants and toddlers, today, is an assumption that these children will be spending a lot of time in crowded conditions rather than living at home with parents or parent-surrogates. It takes determination, and perhaps a bit of "privilege" (at least enough to say no to welfare), to give children a healthy natural environment where they don't need all those vaccines, but it is still possible. The position of this web site is that people should be able to give children such an environment before they consider producing children.

Are there situations in which I'd want a small child to have a vaccine? There are. They'd be situations different from those prevailing in North America today, but not so different from those that have prevailed in most of the world during most of its history. In that kind of situation, I believe I would be able to persuade a child to have the vaccine I thought it needed. I would not force a vaccine on a child.

An unfortunate side effect of all the panic about coronavirus and coronavirus vaccine--HAVING AN EXPERIMENTAL VACCINE ALWAYS MEANS TAKING A CHANCE, PEOPLE!--is now reported to be that people are now concerned enough about contamination to be withholding polio vaccine from their children: 

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/bp-who-gates-foundation-seek-reverse-falling-childhood-vaccination-rates/

Well, doesn't your heart just ber-leeed for the corporations who are losing money on vaccines that may be valuable, but are not really necessary, in most of the world today. Here is a friendly suggestion for those corporations: Focus on the need to ban utterly unnecessary, highly toxic contaminants, such as glyphosate, glufosinate, and other "herbicides," worldwide. When there's no more glyphosate in the world, there'll be no risk of glyphosate contamination and all the myriad of unwanted side effects that will cost you money, and should cost you money, and must be required by law to cost you more money than they already do. If you inject glyphosate into babies you deserve to lose money. Your appeal to the public for renewed faith and support should begin with "We have allowed glyphosate-contaminated vaccines to be used. We are very, very sorry. We really do need to warn people that the risks of glyphosate contamination in a vaccine may be more serious than the risks of, say, measles, for as long as there is any possibility of glyphosate contamination. We are working to earn your trust again by building a glyphosate-free world." 

Before glyphosate, the Sabin polio vaccine was generally safe and effective, and kept polio from becoming an epidemic of the proportions typhoid fever and Spanish Influenza had reached. I had it and I'm glad. People who've survived both, like the author of the Ozarque blog, say that the pain of childbirth without an anesthetic was minor compared with the pain of polio.

So it occurs to me that this web site could use a Top Ten List of diseases for which I, personally, would consider vaccination--if and when vaccine manufacturers work with us to remove the unnecessary and very toxic contaminants, beginning with glyphosate, from the picture. The vaccines that generally get hyped and "marketed" are for things like flu, measles, and coronavirus, where the pain and damage caused by a contaminated vaccine can very easily outweigh the risks of the disease. Vacicnes that have not caused so much controversy or needed so much hype are for diseases that are still likely to be more dangerous than the vaccines are. People who are otherwise active and healthy and well supplied with vitamins do need to boost their natural immunity to these diseases.

This is my own personal list. I anticipate some disagreement from other people whose vaccine choices are based on risk/benefit analysis. That's natural; risks vary. I don't blame people for believing that they need vaccines against things like flu. 

1. Polio (since I've already mentioned it)

2. Rabies (usually recommended for four-legged animals, but in a situation that caused a doctor to recommend it for me, I'd want it; the disease is still 99.99% fatal, and a horrible way to die)

3. Diphtheria (a weird disease that used to cause surplus membranes to grow across the throat, creating the need for those melodramatic amateur tracheal operations that used to be staples of fiction, even good fiction like The Dollmaker; those who don't want to have to depend on having their throats cut by amateurs to save their lives should, if at risk, consider being vaccinated for diphtheria)

4. Tetanus (a.k.a. lockjaw, a vicious infection known for paralyzing the throat, causing death by choking; usually prevented by the same vaccine given for diphtheria)

5. Typhoid fever (caused by a human-specific strain of salmonella, but this is serious salmonella, steroidal salmonella, traditionally associated with three weeks of increasing misery culminating in death by the destruction of the colon--in other words, a way for non-celiacs to find out what continued glyphosate poisoning is likely to do to us celiacs, I think people who are still spraying glyphosate should be rounded up and forcibly injected with this disease, and be saved, at the last minute when they were screaming that they didn't want to be saved, by emergency colostomies so they could then go on to share all the other tortures they've inflicted on everyone else. Decent human beings should, if at risk, be allowed to have the vaccine intead.)

6. Yellow fever (a bizarre tropical disease; as with coronavirus, most people don't know whether they have it or not, but unlike coronavirus, there's no way to know ahead of time who's going to die two weeks after being bitten by an infected mosquito, and who's going to be disabled by liver and kidney damage for months afterward)

7. Encephalitis (literally means "inflammation of the brain," which can be caused by different things, none of which I want; no disease identified as encephalitis is at all common in North America, but some are common in other places)

8. Meningococcal disease (a tropical disease causing painful death in a few hours or permanent disability when it's not fatal)

9. Pneumococcal disease (I personally would probably decide against this one, because I inherited good resistance to streptococcus infections and because antibiotics are effective if a person does go down with any of the strep infections. However, people should know that the harmless little streppy-bugs that people deliberately swallow as probiotic immunity boosters have some not-so-harmless relatives. Some strains of streptococcus bacteria can cause pneumonia, meningitis, or rheumatic fever. People who were really ill when strep infections circulated at school could die, painfully, or be disabled, permanently, if they encountered the nastier kinds of streppy-bugs.)

10. Smallpox (This is another one on which I, personally, would pass, because I had chickenpox. What can be at least very tiresome for people who've had other "pox" virus infections is shingles, which is not life-threatening enough that I'd risk a vaccine for it. Smallpox, now almost unknown, used to be the nastiest virus in the Varicella group. It disfigured more people than it killed or disabled, but it killed and disabled many people. Vaccination was invented as a result of people's discovering that deliberately infecting themselves with cowpox or chickenpox would protect them from smallpox, then discovering ways to make this process more efficient. So those of us who've had chickenpox don't need further vaccines. But, if smallpox ever did break out again, I would recommend that people who've not had chickenpox consider the vaccine. The contraindication that kept me from having this vaccine was that, if you have any kind of open wound when vaccinated, the vaccine reaction is likely to produce ugly smallpox-type scarring. I had scratched-up legs from playing outside, and I had a humane pediatrician who did not recommend the smallpox vaccine for kids with scratched-up legs, because the incidence of smallpox was so low and the scars would ruin our chances in bikini beauty contests later in life. If you are at real risk for catching smallpox, who cares about beauty contests.)