The cat featured here looks a wee bit like Potter did when she was just a kitten.

Respect Your Cat (Not That It Cares)

By ABIGAIL TUCKERMARCH 28, 2017

It seems as if there’s always some kind of feline holiday crouched around the corner, wriggling its bottom, ready to pounce. National Cat Day, National Feral Cat Day, National Hairball Awareness Day, Happy Mew Year — even the dog days of August are filled with feline jubilees.

A celebration on Tuesday stands out from the pride, however, because it promises to deliver our cats what they most deserve, which is not a Meowjito. It’s Respect Your Cat Day, an opportunity to pay homage to that mysterious silken life form beside you, which can hear the height of sounds and has beaten the evolutionary odds to occupy your lap.

Sadly, as cat lovers we don’t always fully grasp the formidable feline qualities we should be honoring. Respect Your Cat Day’s literature (mostly a news release put out by the folks at a website called National Today, who claim the source of the holiday dates back to an 1384 edict by Richard II of England forbidding the consumption of cats) highlights some impressive statistics about our “feline besties,” including the revelation from a survey that “64 percent of Americans” allegedly prefer their cat’s company to their significant other’s. (No comment, dear.)

But when it comes to how, exactly, people go about respecting their cats, the survey’s findings seem a little misguided, if not downright disrespectful: Give your cat verbal compliments? Please. Cats emphatically do not understand English and studiously disregard their owner’s calls. With their supersensitive hearing, some may dislike the volume of the human voice, especially in confined quarters. When speaking in the feline presence, you might even consider consulting a decibel meter to ensure your jibber-jabber does not irritate their ears. If you flatter your cat, do so in a reverent whisper.

Snuggle or hug your cat? Actually, cats may abhor the smell of our favorite perfumes and citrus-scented soaps, and some are allergic to human dandruff. Furthermore, while most pet cats appreciate caresses, their territoriality means they sometimes prefer solitude to squeezes, and a few even have a condition called “petting intolerance” — a prime cause of cat-on-human violence. Constantly invading a cat’s personal space can also inflict something like psychological trauma, leading to chronic litter box accidents.

Feed your cat treats? Thanks to precisely this sort of “respect,” veterinarians have devised feline obesity charts going all the way up to 70 percent body fat. Our cats’ jiggling physiques insult their arch-predator status.

Real respect requires something much more than babying; it requires overhauling our whole perspective on cat kind. It’s time to open our eyes — like really, really wide, the way my sister’s cat does when it spies the vacuum cleaner — and see this animal for what it really is: not a helpless furball to be patronized and mollycoddled, but an entity both fearsome and sublime, commanding respect in the manner of a mafia don, or the ocean.

For in truth, the humble house cat is one of the most stunning organisms on the planet. No creature is more exquisitely sensitive, and yet none is hardier. None beguiles us more but needs us less. There are more than 600 million domestic cats on the planet today, and we are hard-pressed to explain why. Humans apparently never tried to cultivate them (their abilities as ratters are overhyped). Rather, cats took the reins in our relationship, undergoing a novel process of self-domestication, tweaking their brain structures to better withstand the terrible stresses of human company and thereafter radiating out from the Middle East in determined furry battalions. In an era when lions, tigers and other types of felines flirt with extinction, house cats are themselves an intensifying menace to endangered species.

Our living rooms are among their final conquests, as indoor-only cats are a phenomenon of mostly the last 70 years or so. It hasn’t been an easy takeover. In fact, chaotic human homes, with their noises, stenches and overbearing occupants, may be the most radical and challenging environment that these little hunters, which flourish on deserted sub-Antarctic islands and the slopes of active volcanoes, have yet faced.

So on Tuesday — and I know, it’s hard — resist the urge to simply cuddle your cat with reckless abandon. Instead, consider this creature at arm’s length, study it. Skip the kitty co-nap and wake up to your cat’s magnificent natural history. Respect the fact that no animal has come further under its own power to meet us where we are.

Meanwhile, there are also a few simple tributes that your cat might actually appreciate. For starters, as Ohio State University’s Indoor Pet Initiative suggests, figure out your cat’s personal “prey preference” and buy anatomically appropriate toys. Create a cat-only household zone called a “refuge,” which is a bit like a panic room with extra-soft blankets. Avoid crowding too many cats into too few square feet (solitary by nature, cats don’t always relish one another’s companionship). And it never hurts to add an extra litter box, or three.

Some feline preferences are harder to honor: Cats loathe thunderstorms, for instance, house guests and disruptive human holidays not dedicated to them. Fully respecting cats’ aversion to human strangers could make it hard to, say, date or marry.

But then again, why would you bother, since you’ll just end up pining for your cat?

Abigail Tucker is the author of “The Lion in the Living Room: How House Cats Tamed Us and Took Over the World.”

Abigail Tucker is the author of “The Lion in the Living Room: How House Cats Tamed Us and Took Over the World.”

Old & new

Photos from a computer folder that has old & new images.

1425 N. Morrison, home of the Trautmann family 15.July.2017

One of the first photos I took with my new camera last year

Napping Mimsy

Sunbathing Mimsy

Waiting for my teeth cleaning in the Harvard U. dental clinic

More sunbathing - this time in the library

Side yard Blue Shadows 15.March.2017

Across the street - North-facing neighbors 26.March.2017

Side yard 26.March.2017 Ou sont les nieges d'antan?

You lookin' at me?

You might need to enlarge this to see the text

WRWJBT?

Or: What religion would Jesus belong to?

Thought you might be as interested in this as I was. I have long thought that the deeper one gets into dogma the further one is from religion.

ONE puzzle of the world is that religions often don’t resemble their founders.

Jesus never mentioned gays or abortion but focused on the sick and the poor, yet some Christian leaders have prospered by demonizing gays. Muhammad raised the status of women in his time, yet today some Islamic clerics bar women from driving, or cite religion as a reason to hack off the genitals of young girls. Buddha presumably would be aghast at the apartheid imposed on the Rohingya minority by Buddhists in Myanmar.

“Our religions often stand for the very opposite of what their founders stood for,” notes Brian D. McLaren, a former pastor, in a provocative and powerful new book, “The Great Spiritual Migration.”

Founders are typically bold and charismatic visionaries who inspire with their moral imagination, while their teachings sometimes evolve into ingrown, risk-averse bureaucracies obsessed with money and power. That tension is especially pronounced with Christianity, because Jesus was a radical who challenged the establishment, while Christianity has been so successful that in much of the world it is the establishment.

“No wonder more and more of us who are Christians by birth, by choice, or both find ourselves shaking our heads and asking, ‘What happened to Christianity?’” McLaren writes. “We feel as if our founder has been kidnapped and held hostage by extremists. His captors parade him in front of cameras to say, under duress, things he obviously doesn’t believe. As their blank-faced puppet, he often comes across as anti-poor, anti-environment, anti-gay, anti-intellectual, anti-immigrant and anti-science. That’s not the Jesus we met in the Gospels!”

This argument unfolds against a backdrop of religious ferment. The West has rapidly become more secular, with the “nones” — the religiously nonaffiliated, including atheists as well as those who feel spiritual but don’t identify with a particular religion — accounting for almost one-fourth of Americans today. The share is rising quickly: Among millennials, more than one-third are nones.

The rise of the nones seems to have been accompanied by a decline in public interest in doctrine. “One of the most religious countries on earth,” Stephen Prothero says in his book “Religious Literacy,” referring to the U.S., “is also a nation of religious illiterates.”

Only half of American Christians can name the four Gospels, only 41 percent are familiar with Job, and barely half of American Catholics understand Catholic teaching about the eucharist. Yet if Americans suspect that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife, or wonder if the epistles were female apostles, then maybe the solution is to fret less about doctrines and more about actions.

“What would it mean for Christians to rediscover their faith not as a problematic system of beliefs but as a just and generous way of life, rooted in contemplation and expressed in compassion?” McLaren asks in “The Great Spiritual Migration.” “Could Christians migrate from defining their faith as a system of beliefs to expressing it as a loving way of life?”

That would be a migration away from religious bureaucracy and back to the moral vision of the founder, and it would be an enormous challenge. But religion can and does migrate.

“Because I grew up in a very conservative Christian context, we were always warned about changing the essential message,” McLaren told me. “But at the same time, we often missed how much actually had changed over time.” Christianity at times approved of burning witches and massacring heretics; thank goodness it has evolved!

As society has modernized and people have grown more skeptical of accounts of virgin birth or resurrection, one response has been to retreat from religion. Yet there’s also a deep impulse for spiritual connections.

McLaren advises worrying less about whether biblical miracles are literally true and thinking more about their meaning: If Jesus is said to have healed a leper, put aside the question of whether this actually happened and focus on his outreach to the most stigmatized of outcasts.

It is not just Christianity, of course, that is grappling with these questions. Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said that he sees a desire for a social justice mission inspired and balanced by faith traditions.

“That’s where I see our path,” Jacobs said. “People have seen ritual as an obsession for the religious community, and they haven’t seen the courage and commitment to shaping a more just and compassionate world.”

If certain religious services were less about preening about one’s own virtue or pointing fingers at somebody else’s iniquity and more about tackling human needs around us, this would be a better world — and surely Jesus would applaud as well.

This may seem an unusual column for me to write, for I’m not a particularly religious Christian. But I do see religious faith as one of the most important forces, for good and ill, and I am inspired by the efforts of the faithful who run soup kitchens and homeless shelters.

Perhaps unfairly, the pompous hypocrites get the headlines and often shape public attitudes about religion, but there’s more to the picture. Remember that on average religious Americans donate far more to charity and volunteer more than secular Americans do.

It is not the bureaucracy that inspires me, or doctrine, or ancient rituals, or even the most glorious cathedral, temple or mosque, but rather a Catholic missionary doctor in Sudan treating bomb victims, an evangelical physician achieving the impossible in rural Angola, a rabbi battling for Palestinians’ human rights — they fill me with an almost holy sense of awe. Now, that’s religion.

Nicholas Kristof

Speaking of literacy, did you know that almost two thirds of Americans can't name a single Supreme Court justice?  What a world, what a world.

Ginger peach

In celebration of all things Irish, I'm sharing some ginger-related photos from another Ravelry friend (and one black & white photo that must have a redhead in it).

'' Gotta to warm up & have time for a wee nap before heading down to Franklin sometime shortly after noon for the two performances today. If all goes well I should be back around 11PM - and heading out again tomorrow around the same time for the final show. The good news: extra pennies & they feed us btwn. services. Free food. What could be bad?

Awwwsome

Last but not least: photo of the yellow lab that guarded the steps to Jan & Arie's place in Palmachim. Looks like he could use some more walks. Might have posted this before, but probably not this picture.

Blowing sideways

Not sure if you can see the snow or hear the wind, but here's what it looks like outside the guest room window now. (That little noise you hear @ the end is Mimsy complaining since I just set her down from our cuddle to take the picture.)

Kitty Beach: or Waiting for the snow

Cats in the Gannon Room, soaking up the sun in anticipation of tomorrow's blizzard.

Also thought you might be interested in this article from the Met Museum on van Gogh.

Taking today off from tootling. Pick it back up tomorrow as I watch the snow come down.

Jerusalem, 2016: day 2?

Photos I found today that I don't think I've posted. From our first outing, I think the day after I arrived in 2016. Includes some sweet wild cyclamen & a species tulip.

Stormy Mediterranean with bomb shelter

Already lagging behind

Here's one!

Near-Jerusalem countryside

Wild cyclamen

I'lorgue à la Candide

Wonder if mom ever imagined one of her students doing this:

Or more likely, she did dream of doing this (complete with assistants):

Laughter is the best medicine

I actually saw the lower interview last night.

News you might use

Fun (?) facts you might not know about me, thanks to a lovely trivet one of my Aunts Mary Lou made after my natal date (that I share with Quantz).

Sorry for the fuzziness

The cat's meow

And I saw this on CBS Sunday Morning this week (click on the previous link to see the video. Here's the text):

Many viewers wrote in asking for equal time following Conor Knighton’s report last September about adorable sled dog puppies. Felines have fans, too -- and our friend chef Bobby Flay is among them: 
From the time I was born there were always cats in my house. My mom was and still is obsessed with them. As an only child they were as close to my brothers as I had. I spent countless hours side by side with them and we kept each other company.

A younger Bobby Flay with a family pet.

Bobby Flay

My mother was very creative when it came to naming them (Yes, I’m being sarcastic). There was Marshmallow, with his single white paw; Smokey, Misty and Cocoa, who had beautiful brown points to their coats; and my very favorite, Pumpkin. You guessed it; he was an orange tabby. I wanted him because he matched my hair, and as a five-year-old boy, nothing could be cooler in my mind. Finally, a sibling!
Until I moved out of my Mom’s house at 19, these felines were part of my every day and night. I missed them when I was away, and I cherished the moment of opening the front door when they would all gather to welcome me home.
As an adult, I had a 30-year drought without a cat in my home life. It was easy for me to make the excuse that I was never home. But what I was really nervous about was handling the responsibility of taking care of a new kitten -- and making a 15-20 year commitment to a living, breathing creature.
Well, I’m back in.
If you have an Instagram account, there’s a chance you’ve met my current feline companion, Nacho (or as he’s known in social circles, NachoFlay).

Bobby Flay preparing nachos for Nacho.

Instagram

Nacho is a Maine Coon, a breed known mostly for their exceptional size. They are known as the “gentle giants” of domestic cats.
At just two years old, Nacho is approaching 20 pounds, and my guess is he’ll eventually eclipse that.
Here’s the thing: I’ve been disputing the aloof and uncaring reputations cats have versus my dog-owning friends for decades. But Maine Coons -- especially this one -- have so many canine traits. Nacho plays fetch, he opens every door in my house, he follows me from room to room, and is never out of ear shot. And neither am I!
He travels with me almost wherever I go and, most importantly, shows me his love and affection constantly.
Here’s the best part: it’s unconditional. Well, almost. He IS food-motivated.
I often wonder if I wasted three decades without a cat roaming my home, especially when I look into Nacho’s eyes and I can almost hear his thoughts. He knows when I’m feeling a little under the weather or I’m having a case of the blues. He makes me a softer and more understanding person just by his presence and affection.
The world has a way of giving you what you need, and sometimes a new best friend shows up when you need him the most.

The chef has rediscovered the joys of feline companionship with Nacho, a Maine Coon of exceptional size.

CBS News

Too kewt

Mimsy & a box.

This is right where I want to sun bathe. Hmm. can I fit?

Hmmm, guess so.

Nap time & sun bathing

Josie's bling

It was middle sister's wedding anniversary recently. Here's some bling & flowers (always like those bouquets @ the information desk) for the occasion.