My Cat

Norah is really my wife's and my cat, but she tends to favor me ... to my wife's eternal chagrin. When we first got this shelter kitten, she would sleep between our pillows in bed. But now that we, because of my recent back surgery, are sleeping in separate beds, the much older Norah bunks in with me. My wife, for a while, tried to alter this arrangement by kidnapping her and closing doors to preserve this nocturnal separation, but has since given up ... and now Norah is with me the whole night. (In case you are wondering, Norah was named for Norah Jones who was singing on the radio when our new kitten was being brought home.)

Anyhow there is a reason for this blog post ... and that is to try to understand the idiosyncrasies of life. One of the reasons Norah favors me is that I scratch under her chin and between her ears where she obviously can't groom herself. So multiple times a night I perform this ritual to a crescendo of her purring. However, occasionally, for reasons I have never been able to decipher, Norah will resist this favor and bite me. Not drawing blood, but a bite nevertheless ... which pisses me off to the point where I won't pet her again for quite a while. I also think that I am using Pavlovian conditioning to stop this annoying trait ... but no ... even after all these years she still occasionally does it.

I also equate this idiosyncrasy to that incident in Las Vegas where, after years of performing on stage, one of the tigers in Siegfred and Roy's act attacked and almost killed Roy.Why did this tiger do this? It is just one of the mysteries of life ... like why did a mother strap her two children inside a car and push it into a South Carolina lake? Perhaps this is all because civilization has not totally tamed the feral past of all animals ... even humans. This is certainly evident in some of the gruesome events seen daily in the Middle East.

So, back to Norah ... will she some night suddenly decide to rip my face off? This possibility keeps me on my toes.

Balti-less

Both the mayor and police chief of Baltimore, Maryland are black ... but this didn't mitigate the rioting that has occurred in this city after the funeral of Freddie Gray, a black youth who was killed in police custody last week ... see: UK Daily Mai Story. Even the feckless mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, handled similar rioting there better than did the mayor of Baltimore  ... who essentially gave the demonstrators there permission to riot and "space to destroy things." What was she thinking?

And so Baltimore has a black black eye ... and many businesses there will have to think twice about rebuilding and reopening.

The futility of such mayhem escapes me and most civilized people ... but apparently this Freddie Gray tragedy somehow gives license for feral behavior on the part of enough of the city's youths to besmirch this city for years to come. What a pity ...

The only real suggestion that I have is that there are enough cell-phone pictures and news coverage that dozens of rioters and looters can be identified and arrested. The justice system in Baltimore should be swift and tough on these miscreants. If the governance there were so inclined, perhaps ... just perhaps, this might assuage such future criminal behavior.

In the end, justice should be served ... else it will be subverted.

Afterward: There are some reasonable law-abiding parents in Baltimore ... see:ABC News Video. Good for her!

After Afterward: And here is a picture of the good Baltimore citizens lining up to protect their police force:

From reddit