Sucker for Felines

After a two-weeks without iced drinks and curry, I entered a mamak¹ eatery and got myself re-acquainted with fried noodles, curry and roti canai (with kaya, the local coconut custard). Not to mention the salty crispy fried chicken, gleaming yellow from the overpowering turmeric marinade. Who can resist the lure of a cheap and versatile staple that threatens the position of rice in my community?

Halfway through my fried noodles and chicken, I see a ball of fur. It saunters towards my table and sits down. It lets out a heart-rending meow every time I make eye contact. The humble cat may be a self-sufficient predator of the highest order, but in the city, it's not above scavenging or pan-handling. Anything to get by, I suppose.

I fall for it most of the time.

I donated some chicken, more afraid of the cat (which I named "Oliver") ignoring the morsels than the half-score or so vicious-looking floor staff in the vicinity. I finish my meal and go after my warm coffee. I take another look at the floor.

"Meow".

. . .

Darn cat.

I find myself picking whatever edible bits I could from the pile of bones on my plate and gathered them into a tiny mound. Fearful of the pinch of chicken-scraps falling all over the floor when I dropped it, I hesitate. Oliver encourages me with a swipe of his right paw. No worries about wastage here; he cleaned up whatever I dished out.

If the real Oliver had that much pluck, he could've taken Fagin on with only one arm.

The footnote of my catty day ends with the presence of another transient in the front yard. A black ball of fur that I assumed to be Cleo peeks out between the grills of the iron gate that shields the sliding glass doors. A careful peek behind the glass doors revealed a bigger, rounder face with equally bigger and rounder eyes, and a lot more fur. Not Cleo.

"Meow."

Good grief. The lair is becoming a cat hostel.


¹ The local tag for an Indian-Muslim, as opposed to Indian-Hindu. While all Indian-run restaurants look the same, you won't find beef in Indian-Hindu places.

The Impatient Nation

The results of a poll conducted by Associated Press seem to show that Americans are an impatient lot.

Americans are demanding, too. Half in the AP-Ipsos poll said they refuse to return to businesses that made them wait too long. Nearly one in five owned up to speaking rudely to someone in the last few months when they weren't served efficiently.

— Calvin Woodward, Associated Press Writer

In a way, that explains their attitude over Iraq, which wasn't as "instant" as the White House had hoped. It also explains the drop in Bush's approval ratings, now that Americans are finding that out too.

Names, And Links

What's this about naming or renaming airports after famous people? Can you imagine the hassle of informing numerous organisations about the impending name change every time a national hero dies, maybe once a decade? Or situations where you tell your associates: "I'm flying out of Dr M?" I'm so glad it's just called the "Kuala Lumpur International Airport".

Is it really necessary to have a URL to all your sources, especially when they will eventually expire? Do you have to clean them up or check them every now and then? What do you do about it?

Do Not Pet Snakes

The issues raised in the National Geographic Special America's Deadly Obsession: Snakes is nothing new; after all, it's just an extension of what my previous entry was all about: the average American's ignorance and hubris when it comes to dangerous wildlife. Both involved real snake experts who got careless, and both happened on September 11th, 2001. One died; the other lived. There's even a report of a guy who was strangled to death by his pet python.

Yet Americans continue to buy exotic and venomous pets, and release them into the wild when they get too tough to handle. Buying saw-scaled vipers from Pakistan. Baby cobras. Black and green mambas. Reticulated pythons. Gaboon vipers. King cobras. Taipans.

What strange, warped, heavily medicated or intoxicated mind would consider the above as pets? Playthings? Worst of all, these species aren't even native to North and South America, which already boast some lethal species like the eastern diamondback rattlesnake, cottonmouth, and lance-head vipers. Consider the following:

• King cobra: Possibly the largest venomous snake in the world. Neurotoxic venom, delivered in large doses, kills by paralysis. Can take down an elephant.
• Saw-scaled viper: Small, agile and bad-tempered - like most Middle Easterners it shares the environment with. Strikes very quickly. Probably used to kill Ramses III.
• Black mamba: From Africa. Fastest snake in the world. Aggressive; will stand its ground if cornered. Will bite multiple times. Its neurotoxic venom is deadly.
• Gaboon viper: One of the largest vipers in Africa. Haemotoxic venom that turns flesh into a soft Slurpee-like consistency is delivered via a pair of five centimetre fangs.
• Taipan: Native to Australia, and distant cousin of the cobra. Some species carry neurotoxic venom that is far more lethal than their cousins.

All this gives me the impression that the American attitude towards danger is pathological, extending all the way to the White House. I'm sure that Carter, Reagan and Bushes Sr and Jr thought that the two-bit dictators, warlords and extremists they used to coddle were cuddly and harmless too, until they grew too big and too dangerous.

Just Who Is King of The Jungle Here?

This is one of those cases where the American freedom of expression supports a cause borne of a warped sense of altruism: Keeping a pet lion.

This family's case is not unique in the US. Across the country, people buy and keep exotic pets: lions, tigers, bears, pythons, leopards, etc "out of love" and the "spirit of conservation". Most of these animals are rejects left behind after a zoo, circus or animal park goes under, and they go relatively cheap at exotic pet markets.

I won't doubt that some of these pet owners are really serious about their charges. However, all of this pales in comparison with the real significance of these animals in the wild. The big cats keep the number of grazing herd animals in check. That's what they were built for, and nothing else. Everything in the wild was hunky-dory until we humans came along. We found fire, invented the axe, and bred like viruses. We took over the job of hunter-killer, effectively firing the native predators from their jobs.

Keeping wild predators as pets is not an act of love or mercy on our part.

It's an insult.

A Cat Named Cleo

There is a cat that's quite fond of my corner of the neighbourhood. I'd take pictures, but since I'm too much of a tightwad to invest in a cheap digital camera, I'll write about it instead.

I have no clue as to the animal's gender. There's no trace of a nut sack, or any indication that it's been fixed. Therefore, being the sexist creature that I am, I'm going to assume it's a female and call it Cleo for the sake of this narrative.

Cleo was part of a litter born of a neighbour's cat. She and a feisty ginger-coloured kitten were left after her other siblings were given away. Unlike many pet owners in the country, this neighbour didn't believe in caging cats, so they were left to wander all over the place, though not too far away from their home. As time went by, only Cleo was left. I never knew what happened to the other one.

For a cat her age (about one year old), Cleo is small and scrawny. She's mostly black; there's a patch of white at the base of her throat. Her green eyes has a piercing gaze and there are times her claws never fully retract. She distinguished herself by sleeping in the most unusual places in our front yard: the empty shrine where the previous house owners burnt joss-sticks and left offerings, the narrow space between the front grill and sliding glass doors, and on top of either gate-post where there would be stone lions if we ever believed in feng shui.

Being a good tenant, she tries to pay the rent. Problem is, cats utilise a different kind of currency, which usually takes the form of dismembered body parts of small animals. On several occasions we've found half-eaten mice, geckoes and lizards on our front yard, which really freaks my younger sisters out. Sister #1 is scared of rats; Sister #2 has gecko phobia. Their unfortunate brother (me) has to assume the role of undertaker when Cleo brings home the bacon (which we respectfully decline).

Once, in broad daylight, we caught Cleo in the process of butchering an iguana-like lizard, thus confirming the identity of our mystery rent-payer. Nature-lover that I am, I knew that she has the right to kill anything she comes across - it's her nature. But nobody commits murder while I'm around, so I chased her away and grabbed the lizard, snake-wrangler style, and deposited it in some vegetation. I didn't think it would make it; a patch of red on one side showed that Cleo had already done some damage.

For weeks afterward, there were no body parts. I'm pretty sure I pissed Cleo off for spoiling her fun. But cats aren't dogs; they don't learn. Upon returning home yesterday, there was a dead lizard, a mouse with a missing midsection and the top half of a gecko.

And she still sleeps in the shrine (proof that cats are condescending to the point of demanding worship), or on either gate post. I don't know about the worship thing, but if it ever came to warding off evil forces, my money's on Cleo. No expensive, overcrafted paperweight endorsed by Lillian Too could ever match Cleo when it comes to personality, attitude and the lethal killing arts.

Duck!

Chicago Says Non! to Foie Gras
Score one for the animal welfare fundamentalists. I was disappointed that the ban had nothing to do with bird flu, although it could have been.

Chicago has banned the sale of foie gras in its restaurants because city officials think the French delicacy is cruel to ducks and geese.

— from Agence France-Presse, via Yahoo! News

Fundamentally, killing and eating animals is a form of cruelty. Snuffing out the life of a creature to consume it, especially when it's not a matter of life and death - what could be more wrong, from a moral standpoint? But we still do it. We encourage others to do it; for some of them it really is a matter of life or death.

Bans like that really won't make a difference. Once a duck's fate is sealed, whatever else done to it before or after it's killed is just procedure.