Sunday, March 04, 2007

a very bad kitty indeed

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It’s hard to tell from this shot (click to enlarge), but Slink trashed yet another plant. It was hard to get it all in—the mess and the cat. We don’t have any solid evidence that he actually did this (rather than Twitch), but he looks pretty smug. It took Stanley a while to clean up this mess, too (thank you, Stanley). The spider plant had been limping along inside (it thrived on the porch), suffering mainly from having cats chewing the tips off. Now it’s a sorry, sorry bedraggled mess. I guess I’m going to have to put aluminum foil in all the plants. So far, he hasn’t tried to dig up any of the houseplants in the kitchen window or the living room—but I think it’s just a matter of time. I think we might have to go to Home Depot and get some of those rocks that cats don’t like to dig in. It would be too ugly to have aluminum foil in all the houseplants. He’d probably find a way around that, anyway. Slink is such a weird cat. He drinks milk out of Stanley’s glass and eats off Stanley’s plate. He doesn’t so much arrive as he explodes on the scene. And he disappears faster that I thought possible. So far, he hasn’t tried to get out the door when we let Ginger out—like Twitch does—but I give it a month ... CLIMATE CHANGE There is an article in the New York Times about how the maple syrup industry is in trouble in Vermont. I read this a couple of days ago. Then I watched the news about the tornados down south—arriving a few weeks earlier than “normal.” Then, last night I was looking over the latest issue of Consumer Reports, which lists all of the new cars, vans, trucks, and SUVs coming out. CR reported the miles per gallon of each vehicle. They’re going down rather than up, it appears. Even the smallest non-hybrid cars seem to be getting terrible gas mileage. The best is the Scion, which gets 30mpg. So, if you can’t afford a hybrid but you want to buy a new car that destroys the environment the least, you’re pretty much limited to the Scion. It also amazes me how people with kids are pretty clueless when it comes time to get the kid a car. Friends of ours bought their daughter a Jeep, I forget which model, but one the big honking low-mileage numbers—like a 17-year-old in Fairfield County really needs a big vehicle with 4-wheel drive. Or any vehicle, for that matter. They got her the kind of Jeep that sucks gas and rolls over easily. They worry about her getting into a good college so she has a good life but they don’t stop and think of how they’re contributing to her not being able to have a good life no matter how well educated she is because when she is older, the climate will be unbearable. Very short-sighted for such smart people. And yes, it is my business—it’s my planet too and I have nieces and nephews that deserve a chance to survive to a ripe old age as much as our friends’ daughter does. Maybe most people are still caught up in that “Americans can do anything once we set our minds to it” mindset. I used to believe that—if there was something that need to be done we would somehow step up to the plate. Lick global warming and all that. But I don’t believe that any longer. The ability might be there, but the will has disappeared and I doubt it’ll be found before we reach the tipping point. Then I start to worry about the ability still being there when I see that people who’ve gone through our educational system can’t even spell a four-letter word properly or master basic punctuation. I’m going to go play with my bad kitty.

posted by lee on 03/04/07 at 08:27 PM

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