Late Evening Cat Bleg: Orville and Wilbur Need a New Home!

by 10:42 pm. It has 37 Comments.

Commenter Matthew Reid Krell reached out on behalf of a friend of his with an urgent cat bleg for a pair of brothers in Louisville, Kentucky:

Okay, animal rescue friends: the lovely woman who adopted our two cats six years ago—who adored them—passed away on Monday. She was 10 years older than I am. Her husband called me today to ask if I could either take them or rehome them.

They are beautiful cats. Their names are Orville (the black one) and Wilbur (the grey). They are brothers. 14 years old. Birthday is April 19, 2005. We rescued them when we lived in Wisconsin and only rehomed them when they became horribly stressed in an apartment we were living in thanks to the landlord’s dog. We moved them in with Shari and David, a lovely childless couple who doted on them and cared for them. They have been really well-cared-for and loved.

With Stephen being on one leg and with my (now decidedly confirmed by the doctor) allergies, we really aren’t in a position to give them the home they deserve.

Who do you know? Who can I contact? I will pay all vet expenses to have them checked and have shots updated. I will transport them. I would pay sponsorship to a foster family for all upkeep.

I love these cats. I wish I could bring them home. I can be reached at mozergirl@gmail.com to start the process of getting Orville and Wilbur into a loving home for their twilight years.

Okay you lot of jackals, you know what to do. And here’s some more pictures of these handsome gentlemen as incentive!

As far as I know the baby is not up for adoption.

Open thread!

 





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Smart Money, Scared Money. Plus, Bonus Tikka

by 5:39 pm. It has 104 Comments.

First the reward (no sing-for-your-supper spiritual joylessness here!).

Here’s one fat cat that is Warren-curious:

 

Tikka has views on the e-book vs. book-books debate. E-books…nah.

Yup. Books it is!

(I find myself more and more on the opposite side of this divide; I spend more than half of my reading time on my Kindle these days.  But Tikka’s most definitely old school.)

Now to money.  Got my email update from Krugthulu today (Paul and I are like that, I tell you!).  While he notes, in effect, that the bond market and its economist watchers have correctly predicted eleven of the last three recessions, there’s no way to construe what’s happening in with US debt in any comforting fashion:

So the slump in long-term yields since last fall, from a peak of 3.2 percent to just 1.63 percent this morning, says that investors have grown drastically less sanguine about the economy. Long-term rates are now notably lower than short-term rates — and this kind of “yield curve inversion” has in the past consistently been the precursor to recession…

Why the long faces?

Krugman offers a few reasons why bond folks might be running scared.

For one, the ginormous, “self-financing” tax cut has failed; it hasn’t come close to stimulating enough economic activity to avoid blowing a hole in the deficit.

Trade wars, so easy to win, turn out to be a predictable idiocy, not just costly in themselves, but as they foment uncertainty, a deterrent to capital investment.  And last, he notes, economic troubles elsewhere, especially Europe, are beginning to affect us.

What might all this mean? Well, maybe a recession, maybe not:

The truth is that nobody is very good at calling turning points in the economy, and calling a recession before it’s really obvious in the data is much more likely to get you declared a Chicken Little than hailed as a prophet. (Believe me, I know all about it.) But the bond market, which doesn’t worry about such things, is looking remarkably grim.

And if the smart money here is also the correct money then, as Krugman writes…

I leave the possible political implications as an exercise for all of you.

Bonus Krugman — four key paragraphs from today’s column “Useful Idiots and Trumpist Billionaires”:

More to the point, Trumpism is about much more than tax cuts: It’s an attempt to end the rule of law and impose an authoritarian, white nationalist regime. And even billionaires should be terrified about what their lives will be like if that attempt succeeds.





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Sunday Morning Open Thread

by 5:58 am. It has 205 Comments.

Nobody sent me any garden photos, probably because everybody’s out keeping those gardens in picture-perfect shape. And I should most definitely spend this afternoon (several many afternoons, TBH) doing just that…

Stay positive, y’all!





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Happy Birthday, Samwise!

by 9:41 pm. It has 56 Comments.

This big galoot turned five today.

I had a terribly long day and just got back to the apartment. At least I’m working from home tomorrow, so I can spend some time playing Psychonauts, which I bought on sale for $2. I love Tim Schafer games but haven’t played this one before. Yay!

Let’s call this a respite thread; nothing that would upset the birthday boy too much, please.





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My Brother’s Kittens Update and Bruised Peaches

by 10:00 pm. It has 36 Comments.

So Seth was able to contact the rescue people, and they gave him a trap, which she ignored last night because he had fed the hell out of her, but this morning he put some chicken in it, came back a bit later, and had captured her. She and her kittens are now crated upstairs in his house:

There are also FIVE kittens and not three. Seth reports that the mother is not, in fact, feral, and has had human contact because now that she and the kittens are safe, she has been coming up to Seth and letting him pet her. Seth is already in love and it would not surprise me if he keeps the momma and several of the kittens. His working philosophy is you don’t go out and get cats, you just keep the ones that show up to you. He’s been dying to have a cat around since Speak and Whisper both died, so we are hoping things work out with his dog Boghan.

He also has given them amazing names already- he has named them “white feet” and “grey feet” and “white stripe” as featured here:

OMG WOULD YOU LOOK AT THOSE PINK TOES!

At any rate, I was giving him shit about the names and he just said they were temporary, and we both agreed that my stupid ass would have named them Gary and Fred and Agnes and never been able to tell them apart, so maybe short term descriptive names are for the best.

In other news, I went to the strip district in Pittsburgh to get some things for my dad and to pick up some olive oil (It’s cheaper for me to drive 30 miles to pick up a gallon of imported olive oil at 25 bucks than it is for me to drive 5 miles and get half that in whatever shit Bertolli is passing off as olive oil), and on the way home I stopped by a farm and orchard I had never been to called Simmons Farm. I had no intention of buying anything but then discovered that they were basically GIVING away bruised peaches for 35 bucks a bushel. That’s an absurd price. So, of course I bought them.

When I got home I discovered that much to my surprise, what they were passing off as bruised peaches are really just mostly oddly shapen or ugly peaches. Some were misshapen, some had some bruises, many were smaller than average (so I assume those fell prematurely when they were picking other ones and they just threw them in the shitty peach bin), etc. All told, there were only about 20 peaches that had portions of them that were unusable. I carved those up and threw the bad parts over the fence for the deer that come by every night and put the good parts in an 8 qt cambro and refrigerated them until tomorrow, and I will make jam with them. When the others ripen, I will can them. I might try to dehydrate some, too, for snacking.

Send money to my paypal account and buy stock in mason jars, I have a problem. In all seriousness, though, 35 dollars for a bushel is just ridiculous. Prepared, that’s like 300 bucks worth of product, and my parents want some more, my sister will want some, etc. And I like the activity and the thought of saving all that money and using something that might have been thrown away.

*** Update ***

Speaking of bruised peaches, my friend had his dog Zero fixed, and the vet told him to ice his sack five times a day for 20 minutes. I’ve never had to do this so I have no idea if the vet was just messing with him, but it’s happening and this picture is equal parts sweet and hysterical:





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