Beware of Cat

Another reason to respect cats:

Jack, a 15-pound orange and white cat, keeps a close vigil on his property, often chasing small animals, but his owners and neighbors say his latest escapade was surprising.

"We used to joke, 'Jack's on duty,' never knowing he'd go after a bear," owner Donna Dickey told The Star-Ledger of Newark for Friday's editions.

— via Yahoo! News

Note that only male cats are that territorial. The black bear in question is probably an adolescent or a newcomer in the neighbourhood. Either way, any creature that encounters a cat for the first time wouldn't have known what to make of a hissing furball with claws and teeth.

Had it been an orange and black cat, there'd be plenty of Garfield references.

Too Sexy For The Pitch

It has not been a good start for the Big Guns of football. Although I'm not following the competition, I'm happy to just skim the sports sections for the final scores and watch other people beat their brains out commenting on this millennium's most dismal World Cup. Watching the matches is as strenuous as playing them.

The most notable signs were Germany's hard-fought four/two win over Costa Rica and England's "victory" over Paraguay; if not for the own goal, the Poms might have been humbled in the penalty shoot-out.

"See? T'was roight t'get Rooney 'ere. 'E's good luck, 'e is."

And what's this I hear about hot weather being a factor in the teams' shoddy performance? That's rich, I tell you. Retreating ice caps. Megahurricanes. More frequent thunderstorms. Amphibian extinction. Degrading coral beds. Now it's under-performing football athletes. Too bad the countries allegedly responsible for global warming are also those that don't care or don't even have a chance in hell of reaching the quarter-finals.

Is it still about the game any more? Seems to me it's more for the money, product endorsements, and the chance to roll in the hay with a supermodel or a member of a hot all-girl band. When it's time to finally play ball, the catwalks, press conferences, photo shoots, filming, sex and booze have already taken their toll.

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.