One Year Later...

How things have changed! Well, that's what President Obama promised us, wasn't it?

If someone had told you a year ago that Teddy Kennedy would die within the year, and that a Republican would be elected to fill his seat, what would you have said? After you got up off the floor where you'd been rolling around laughing, of course. The Republicans were supposed to be dead, a tainted brand, doomed to wander in the political wilderness for a generation. And in one short year, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and their cronies have completely turned that around. One of the bluest states in the country, one that did not have a single Republican in its entire congressional delegation, just elected Scott Brown, a Republican, to fill a Senate seat that had been held by a Kennedy or one of their family retainers since 1953. To say that this is shocking is an understatement.

I turned on MSDNC... Oops, MSNBC, last night to see how people like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow were holding up. You never saw such long faces! I have to admit feeling a certain amount of schadenfreude.

So, anyway, it's morning in America again. Oh, what a beautiful morning, oh, what a beautiful day!

Help For Haiti

If you've seen those gut-wrenching images coming from earthquake-ravaged Port-au-Prince, Haiti, then you probably want to do something to help those poor people, if you haven't already. Last night, I read a blog post from Tony Woodlief's Sand in the Gears blog (via Instapundit) who told the story of the BRESMA orphanage in Port-au-Prince. There are about 150 orphans there, desperately in need of supplies. The orphanage is affiliated with Kentucky Adoption Services. There's a link on the blog post above if you feel moved to make a contribution by PayPal or credit card. You can't save all of Haiti, but you can help save those children. And of course, there are numerous other worthy charities trying to help the suffering people of Haiti. Do what you can.

Here is another blog which has information about the orphanage and the two young women who were running it and are trying to get the children to safety in the U.S.

Cold Enough For Ya?

If it's freezing here in southwest Florida, which it is, then you, dear reader, are probably even colder. It was 29 degrees in my driveway this morning when I got home from work. My car windows were covered in frost this morning, and since I don't own an ice scraper, I had to turn the heater all the way up and blow it full blast on the windshield to melt the ice. It only took a few minutes.

To put this into focus, we are looking at the possibility of tying or breaking some long-standing records. We set a record low in Fort Myers this morning at 35 degrees, and it's colder east of I-75 where I live.

Even more interesting, I saw on the local news yesterday that record for the longest number of days where the high temperature doesn't reach 70 degrees as 12 days. I think it happened twice, once in the 1910s and once in the 1930s. They showed a graphic of the longest stretches of nine days or longer, and there were only about eight or nine of them since the beginning of the 20th Century, with the most recent occurrences being three times in the 1970s.

Well, the high last Friday was 77 degrees. Since then, over the past four days, the highs haven't gotten out of the 60s, and the forecast for the next week, through next Tuesday, is for the temperatures to stay below 70. That would be 11 days, which is highly unusual. We normally get one or two blasts of cold air every winter that drop the temperatures down around freezing, but usually, it warms up in a couple of days or so. This time, it's been one cold front after another and it isn't warming up.

I know that most of you would take high temperatures in the 50s and 60s and lows around freezing with gratitude, but you probably don't live in a place with palm trees and other subtropical vegetation. We aren't used to this kind of extended cold, and to get an idea of how the weather feels to us, subtract 40 degrees or so.

I'm ready for spring now, please.

First Observation on 2010

It's cold. Yesterday's high of 52 degrees was 23 degrees below the normal average high for the date. It's in the 30s this morning, and will be down around freezing tomorrow morning. It's supposed to be colder than normal for at least the next week. Global warming, my foot. For all you people Up North who were expecting to have palm trees and hibiscus bushes in the near future, guess again. I'm not saying that we're facing the onset of an ice age, but then again, I can't say we aren't.

I hate winter.

Tiger By the Tail

So the real question as the women continue to flood out of the woodwork is, "How the hell did Tiger Woods still have the time and energy to play golf at all, much less play it so well?" The last I saw, the number of mistresses had risen to double-digit doxies. His stamina is impressive, even if his judgment isn't.

I read an amusing article on the Us magazine web site, when the number of mistresses was still at nine. This made for some hilarious double entendres in the comments, like: "That's a short course; everyone knows Tiger wouldn't stop after nine holes" and "First he played the front nine, then he played the back nine." And as some commentators on Fox News noted last night, this is a stunningly quick reversal of fortune for any celebrity, to go from respected athlete and pitchman to punchline and laughingstock in a matter of days.

Tiger Woods is not the first man to run into this kind of trouble, nor will he be the last. When you're rich and famous, you have to beat the women back with a stick, if you really want to. Tiger obviously didn't want to, and apparently he didn't have that club in his bag even if he had.

In other Tiger news, Gatorade is dropping their Tiger Woods-linked drink, "Tiger Focus," although they made the decision before Tiger's travails came to light. "Focus"? Was there supposed to be one U in that name or two?

Meanwhile, Tiger can just sing along with Buck Owens.

Climategate Stuff

On Thanksgiving, I sent a link to a hilarious video on YouTube called "Hide The Decline" by Minnesotans for Global Warming to most of the people on my mailing lists. If you haven't yet seen it, here it is:



If for some reason you haven't yet heard about the Climategate scandal (or Climaquiddick, as others are calling it, since the drive-by media seem to be doing their best to ignore it) and don't get the "hide the decline" reference, just google it. Suffice it to say, the global warming people have been fudging the numbers, conspiring to keep opposing views on AGW from being published, their computer code that generated the scary global warming models is a bug-ridden piece of junk, and they've been deleting inconvenient data and dodging Freedom Of Information requests on both sides of the Atlantic. Other than all of that, they're all strictly on the up-and-up. Like Bernie Madoff or Enron were.

Yeah, they want to wreck our economy and impoverish us for something that "science" cannot prove is actually a problem!

Update from yesterday's Washington Times:

Gore cancels climate conference event

Former Vice President Al Gore on Thursday abruptly canceled a Dec. 16 personal appearance that was to be staged during the United Nations' Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, which begins next week.

As described in The Washington Times' Inside the Beltway column Tuesday, the multimedia public event to promote Mr. Gore's new book, "Our Choice," included $1,209 VIP tickets that granted the holder a photo opportunity with Mr. Gore and a "light snack."

Berlingkse Media, a Danish group coordinating ticket sales and publicity for the event, said that "great annoyance" was a factor in the cancellation, along with unforeseen changes in Mr. Gore's program for the climate summit. The decision affected 3,000 ticket holders.

"We have had a clear-cut agreement, and it is unusual with great disappointment that we have to announce that Al Gore cancels. We had a huge expectation for the event. . . . We do not yet know the detailed reasons for the cancellation," said Lisbeth Knudsen, CEO of Berlingske Media, in a statement posted by the company.

The ClimateDepot,com, an online news aggregator that tracks global-warming news reports, referred to the situation as "Nopenhagen," and evidence that popular momentum for the Copenhagen conference "is fading."

Hmmm... I wonder if a dish of crow qualifies as a "light snack."

Mr. Gore may be greedy, vain, venal and hypocritical, but he's not a fool. I'm sure he understood the full impact of the released e-mails and data from the University of East Anglia, unlike President Obama and his "science" czar Carol Browner who are both "full speed ahead" with fighting climate change, never mind that the scientific underpinnings have been yanked away like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. Nope, this time they're gonna kick that climate change football and... "AAIIIEEEE!!!" THUMP! She did it again.

In the comments, one person noted that Gore canceling was like the Pope opting out of Christmas mass. Copenhagen was supposed to be Gore's victory lap, his moment to bask in the warm glow of his acolytes' adoration. And now... He's going to be as far away from Denmark as he can get, no doubt. I saw a clip last night of Jon Stewart mocking Gore and talking about the irony of him being undone by the Internet, which Gore claimed to have invented. When you've lost Jon Stewart... It's over. As one wag put it, climate change has assumed room temperature.

December 1st?

Whoa! How did that happen? I've been remiss in my blogging for the past few weeks. I blame Dragon Age: Origins, a very cool game that I got about three weeks ago that has been consuming most of my free time. Very addictive. But it has kept me from writing as much as I normally might have, especially about things like Climategate, which I hope that you have heard about. If not, I'll rectify that!

I will try to be a bit more accessible this month. More in the morning...

Twenty Years Ago Today

...The Berlin Wall came down. It hardly seems possible that it has been twenty years since that momentous event. For me, as a former resident of West Berlin for almost four years, it was a joyous occasion.

West Berlin was a huge city, and there were large areas of it where the Wall was not even visible. Still, it was always a looming presence. We knew that the Wall was there, and we knew that the people on the other side of it were not free. They were held on the other side by guards with machine guns and dogs, by barbed wire and concertina wire and tank traps and mines.

And then, almost miraculously, the Berlin Wall fell, the guards and their dogs and their guns disappeared, the wire was taken down, the mines disarmed. The Iron Curtain vanished in a cloud of rust. The people in the East, who had not known freedom in half a century, suddenly emerged to blink and bask in its bright light. It was a beautiful thing to see.

Today, even twenty years later, watching the dominoes symbolizing the Wall toppling, I can't help but smile.

Why I Like George W. Bush

Former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, secretly visited the hospital at Fort Hood, Texas, last night to comfort the wounded from the cowardly terrorist attack and their families, according to Fox News. They asked the base commander that there be no press coverage of their visit.

To me, this was a very classy act. They were there to do what they could to console the victims. They weren't there for a photo op to make themselves look good.

The Bushes have a ranch about thirty miles from Fort Hood, so it was a little easier for them to get there than for President Obama, who will be there Tuesday for the memorial service. Still, this wasn't something that they were duty-bound to do. They did it because they care about the members of our armed forces, just as they did when President Bush was in office. This is why he was so popular with most service members then, and I dare say that he remains so now. The Bushes are good people, who put up with a lot of calumny about them for eight years. And although I didn't agree with everything he did, I miss him.

A Muslim? I'm Shocked, Shocked!

Admit it: The first thing you thought to yourself when you heard about the atrocity at Fort Hood yesterday was, "Is it a Muslim terrorist attack?" The FBI quickly pooh-poohed that notion, saying, "No, no terrorism here, move along." But on Fox News, Shepard Smith was coy, refusing to name the murderer even after all of the other networks and the AP had already released the name. They got it wrong, of course; they named him as Major Malik Nadal Hasan, said that he had been killed, and rumored him as a convert to Islam. His actual name was Major Nidal Malik Hasan, he's a native-born American Muslim of Palestinian descent, an Army-educated psychiatrist and it turns out that he is still very much alive. As in most chaotic breaking news situations, the initial reporting was inaccurate.

Most of the news outlets are puzzled about why he might have committed such a heinous act, shooting 43 people and killing 13 of them (so far). All you need to do is look at the pictures of him in a local 7-11 yesterday morning and all is made clear. He looks like he just walked in from Peshawar. That is not the normal garb for an American military man. It IS the normal garb for a devout Muslim. Somebody dressed like that very well might have no problem murdering soldiers that he viewed as oppressing his co-religionists in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Of course, most of the media doesn't want to use that particular M-word, because it is politically incorrect to do so. The message they've been giving us since 9-11 is that Muslims are no different then we are and that it's just a coincidence that every time you turn around and hear about another terrorist plot being foiled or some immigrant doing an "honor killing" on his daughter or wife for becoming "too Westernized," it's a devout Muslim who is involved.

It's time to say something that is politically incorrect but true: If immigrants from ANY society do not accept the basic tenets of our society, that is, individual liberty and religious freedom, then THEY DO NOT BELONG HERE! And from everything we've seen in the news, both from here and in the U.K., France, Germany and other places in Europe, devout Islam is incompatible with Western civilization.

The Europeans are in a lot more trouble than we are, because they've allowed a lot more immigration from Muslim countries (often in their former empires) than we have. Now, many of those Muslims are law-abiding citizens, but it's apparent that the ones who are not are very, very dangerous people. The Europeans fought Crusades for several hundred years to keep the Muslims from conquering Europe. Now, in the space of the past few decades, those same Muslims are well on the way to accomplishing that ancient goal by peaceful immigration.

More importantly, any Muslim in our military or in any position where he can harm our society has to be considered suspect at this point. It's like having a python for a pet: 99% of pythons are perfectly good pets, if you like that sort of animal, but the 1% of the time when the python gets loose and strangles the baby that makes you think that you'd be better off if nobody kept pythons as pets and you just left the pythons back wherever it was that they came from. Our country could get along just fine without pet pythons or Muslim immigrants equally well.

An Interesting Election Day

Especially considering that there weren't any races locally affecting me. Republican-endorsed Conservative Doug Hoffman lost to Democrat Bill Owens in NY-23, by a margin of a few thousand votes, fewer than were cast for Dede Scozzafava, who was still on the ballot, although I'd guess that those six or seven thousand votes were mostly mail-in absentee ballots. That just shows the flaw in absentee voting: If things change on the ground at the last minute, your vote can be wasted, which is why I always show up at the polls in person on election day. The good news is that the RINO Scozzafava wasn't elected, and next year, perhaps the Republicans of the district can choose a candidate more to their liking than Scozzafava was.

The news elsewhere was good, however. Barack Obama's magic is gone. He personally campaigned for Democrat gubernatorial candidates Creigh Deeds in swing state Virginia and incumbent Jon Corzine in blue state New Jersey. Deeds was crushed by Republican Bob McDonnell in Virginia, and even the Democrat political machine in the Garden State could not save Gov. Corzine, who was defeated by Republican Chris Christie by a decisive margin.

Now, it is said that all politics is local, and of course local issues like high property taxes and poltical corruption in New Jersey came into play. However, given Obama's heavy personal involvement in the two big races, the defeats show that his support is not enough to get Democrats over the finish line, even in heavily Democrat states like New Jersey, if the people are angry about the economy, unemployment, extreme government spending by Congress, and Democrat schemes to ram through expensive agendas like health care reform and cap-and-tax global warming that will make our economic problems worse, not better.

My guess is that the Obama-Pelosi-Reid health care and cap-and-tax plans are dead in the water, because we are only a few months away from the 2010 congressional primaries. Any congresscritter from either party who votes for them is likely to see a strong challenge in the primaries in any district that is not mostly populated with far-left liberals. Those Blue Dog Democrats who were swept into power last year on Obama's coattails will be committing career suicide if they vote for those schemes, and they know it. This is why Obama and his minions were in such a hurry to ram things through. Now they're probably too late, which is a damn good thing.

Dogs and Cats, Living Together

Unless you're a political junkie, you've probably never heard of Dede Scozzafava, Bill Owens or Doug Hoffman. You probably have no idea what part of the state New York's 23rd congressional district is in. But since NY-23 is one of a handful of special elections on Tuesday that will serve as a referendum on Barack Obama's presidency so far, it's a story to keep an eye on. It's a traditionally Republican congressional district, although one that went for Barack Obama in 2008.

President Obama tapped the district's Republican congressman, John McHugh, to serve as Secretary of the Army, which opened up the seat for the special election. The law in New York is that local party bosses get to select the candidates in special elections like this one; there's no primary system or anything like that. The Democrats chose a liberal, Bill Owens. The Republicans also chose a liberal, Dede Scozzafava, whose positions on most issues would be at odds with most people who call themselves Republicans.

One peculiarity of New York politics is that there are a lot of different parties that have candidates on the ballot; sometimes, candidates run as members of more than one party. In any case, the Conservative party chose a Tea Party activist named Doug Hoffman, a fiscal conservative with an accounting background. God only knows that they could use an accountant in Washington!

Well, numerous Republican luminaries, starting with Sarah Palin, endorsed Hoffman over Scozzafava, saying that she was too liberal. Other Republicans, like Newt Gingrich, said that party loyalty was more important than ideology and threw their support behind Scozzafava.

The end result was that Scozzafava ended up running a distant third in the polls, with Hoffman and Owen running neck-and-neck. And so, on Saturday, Scozzafava apparently did the honorable thing and suspended her campaign, seemingly so that the Republican/conservative vote wouldn't be split and throw the election to the Democrat. Because, you know, Republican contributors had given her campaign some $900,000 and it wouldn't be right to help out their political opponents, right?

But yesterday, Scozzafava shattered any illusion of honor, and threw her support behind the Democrat! This was the biggest case of someone being a turncoat in New York since Benedict Arnold tried to betray West Point to the British. Scozzafava couldn't have been a bigger RINO (Republican In Name Only) if she'd had a horn growing out of her forehead!

She proved by her dishonorable action that people like Sarah Palin, Fred Thompson, etc., were exactly right about what kind of congressperson she would have been: Another liberal useful idiot that would go along with Obama's schemes to turn the country into a socialist paradise. Well, Dede, don't the the door hit ya where the Good Lord split ya on the way out. Good riddance to you!

And not to be gratuitously insulting, but I saw a picture of her on the sidebar of another blog, just over a picture of Hillary Clinton, who looked absolutely svelte by comparison. I think there's a new Cankle Queen in town!

The good news is that Doug Hoffman should get most of the Republican vote and hopefully will win NY-23 handily on Tuesday. Then the voters in that district will get the responsible representation that they deserve.

NFL Futility In the State of Misery

I was looking at the football standings this morning, and thinking how badly our Florida teams are playing this year. The Tampa Bay Bucs are 0-5, the Miami Dolphins are 1-3 (pending tonight's game), and the Jacksonville Jaguars are 2-3. 3-11 is a pretty bad aggregate record. But there is a state that is doing worse: Missouri, or Misery as they sometimes call it.

The Kansas City Chiefs and the St. Louis Rams are both 0-5 after yesterday's losses. Combine that with Nebraska beating Missouri in college football on Thursday night and the St. Louis Cardinals being ignominiously swept in three games by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Division Series, and it was a pretty bad weekend in the Show Me State.

I read somewhere that Rush Limbaugh wants to try to purchase the St. Louis Rams. I guess that's because last year's winless team, the Detroit Lions (who have won a game this year) were unavailable. I think that Rush could bring the Republicans back to a winning record before he could make the Rams winners.

Columbus Day

Today is Columbus Day, when we celebrate the European discovery of the New World in 1492. It is the most politically incorrect holiday on our calendar (yes, even more than Christmas!). I have to wonder how many more years it will be a holiday.

Christopher Columbus and his Spaniards, after all, showed a callous disregard for the natives, enslaving and torturing many of them in the search for gold, silver and other riches in the Americas. That narrative was pretty much disregarded when I was in elementary school and America was 80-90% white, but as the nation grows increasingly more multi-ethnic and our leaders dwell more on our historical faults rather than our national manifest destiny, Columbus has become symbolic of America's original sin, at least in the eyes of those on the political left.

The Italians would be unhappy if Columbus Day were to be dropped from the holiday list, but hey, how many of them are there? It's not like they're likely to become suicide bombers and start blowing stuff up, like certain other groups would if they were miffed.

Times change, and reality changes with the times. If Pluto can be dropped from planetary status, then Columbus Day could be demoted from legal holiday status to an ethnic festival like St. Patrick's Day. I figure it will happen about the same time as the Washington Redskins and the Cleveland Indians are forced to change their team names.

What would be likely to replace Columbus Day in the legal holiday pantheon? Well, like the Nobel Peace Prize, there's only The One logical choice: August 4th, in honor of Barack Obama.

Now, some might say, "Wait a minute! George Washington and Abe Lincoln have to share a holiday, and Barack Obama gets his own? What's up with that? And isn't he technically included in 'Presidents Day' anyway?"

Well, yes, but they were only presidents; Barack Obama is also our new Messiah! Consider this new holiday one to be awarded not for anything he's done, but for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." It's not like that would be unprecedented.

Perfect Picture

I couldn't resist...

You've Got To Be Kidding Me!

Apparently not. The Nobel Peace Prize, already awarded to reprobates like Jimmy Carter and Yassir Arafat, has hit a new low. The eggheads in Oslo have awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama, for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." Note that the deadline for the award nomination was February 1st, meaning that the fledgling president had been in office for a grand total of 11 days.

Don't you remember all of the totally awesome stuff he did in those 11 days? He brought peace to the Middle East and established a Palestinian state that now lives in harmony with Israel, he ended the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he got North Korea and Iran to end their nuclear programs, he persuaded China to end their occupation of Tibet and allow the Dalai Lama to return home, he convinced the Russians to pull out of Georgia and stop menacing their neighbors, and he got every nation in the world to give up all of their nuclear weapons and promise to use nuclear energy for only peaceful purposes from now on. Gosh, he did so much in those 11 days that he was the only possible choice for the...

Wait a minute! You mean to tell me that he didn't do ANY of those things? You mean to tell me that even almost nine months into his term, he still hasn't done any of those things? You mean those wacky Svensk fellows just gave him the award because of his complete and total awesomeness, not because of anything he actually DID?

You mean to tell me that they gave an empty award to an empty suit of a president for his empty accomplishments over 11 days? Yup, that's exactly what they did. How appropriate. But I guess that $1.4 million will spend the same either way, deserved or not.

If there was any justice in the world, Stevie Wonder would be at the award ceremony to sing "You Haven't Done Nothing."

Don't You Feel Better Now?

I saw this story in the news:

David Letterman Reveals Extortion Plot and Confesses to Sex With Staffers

And all I could think was "Thank God we had this paragon of virtue to defend us from immoral people like Sarah Palin's slutty daughter!"

But as Whoopi Goldberg would probably say, "It's not sexual harassment-sexual harassment!" Right? Notice that it was sex with female staffers, plural; women whose careers Letterman had considerable power to help or harm. So this wasn't a single incident of a boss boinking a subordinate, but an ongoing pattern of behavior. In your office or mine, the guy would be fired for cause.

I already thought Letterman was a schmuck. This just confirms it even more. But as Glenn Reynolds noted at Instapundit, the timing is excellent for Letterman; compared to Roman Polanski, he doesn't look like so much of a heel.

A Blast From The Past

A few people have already seen this, but for those who haven't, a little bit of back story.

This picture was taken in the summer of 1984 along the Yakima River in eastern Washington. There's a story behind it, known as Raiders of the Lost Rifles:

We (the 109th MI BN, 9th ID, Fort Lewis, WA) were doing a field training exercise at the Yakima Firing Center. The Ranger unit on Fort Lewis was doing a night waterborne insertion into the area of operations on the the Yakima River. Unfortunately, one of their rubber rafts turned over in the swift current, and a couple of M-16 semiautomatic rifles and a tactical radio ended up in the drink. This resulted in every able body in the area being sent to search along the banks of the river for the lost rifles. I don't know if they found the lost rifles and radio or not; I just know that we didn't find them. But it was a nice day for a walk along the river, even if the mosquitoes were heavy at times (note the unrolled sleeves). And so the Raiders of the Lost Rifles trudged along the Yakima River, looking at every glint in the water, although the radio was undoubtedly olive drab and the rifles were matte black.

Now, why was I wearing flowers in my helmet? Well, the wildflowers were in bloom along the river. Part of tactical camouflage is taking pains to blend into the background of your local environment. Note that these were the old steel pot helmets, whose liners were removable, allowing the helmet to double as a wash basin. The Kevlar helmets that came later had a built-in liner, which precluded other uses for the helmet other than protecting one's noggin.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, I was talking about this picture with a friend of mine and went and dug up the negatives from the set of pictures that this one came from. They were old 110 film, so when I took the negative to Wal-Mart for a print, they had to send it out to a lab rather than doing it on site. I was pleased with how well the picture came out, considering that the negative was 25 years old and hadn't always been under complete climate control (that week without power after Hurricane Wilma back in 2005, for instance). I sent the original to my Mom back in 1984, so this was the first time I had seen the picture in 25 years.

Knucksie Tales

Knucksie the cat was originally my stepdaughter Anjelica's kitten, which she got up in Orlando in late 1991. She named the cat Baby, but that didn't really seem an appropriate name for such a rambunctious kitten. I christened her Knucklehead, Knucksie for short, since it was more polite than Shithead.

Knucksie was always darting out the front door whenever it opened. She was the only cat who was allowed to go outside, primarily because it was impossible to keep her inside. She would go to the door and cry to be let out, then would go out and play for a while and return to the windowsill, where she would paw at the glass until let back into the house. She was a very polite cat; she would meow a "thank you" when I'd let her back in.

I would have preferred to have her stay inside, because I know that bad things can happen to a cat who goes outside: Cars, vicious dogs, mean kids. But for many years, she lived a charmed life. There was one day when she was out on the windowsill and a vicious dog came running up to her. You never heard such a commotion! I quickly ran out and chased the dog off and Knucksie, who had run around the side of the house, came back and sprinted into the house.

It wasn't uncommon for her to vanish for a day or two, then come home. One day she had disappeared and I went outside and found out that somehow she had ended up on the roof. When I came back from my New York trip last year, I looked around the inside of the house and couldn't find her. Then I looked in the spare bedroom which I use for storage, and where I had kept my luggage. There was Knucksie, hungry and a bit dehydrated after three days in the room. She meowed angrily at me for accidentally closing her in there, although it was partially her own fault for sneaking in there.

Knucksie was a great hunter in her younger days, keeping the yard clear of vermin and wildlife. Her victims included a rabbit, a squirrel, a mole, a snake, a few birds and several anole lizards. The mockingbirds in the tree outside knew her for the predator that she was, shrieking "Cat! Cat!" whenever they saw her outside. Sometimes they would divebomb her as well, but she was not impressed. She knew that if they got within paw range, they were meat.

She also was the one who found the baby opossum. I came home from work one morning and she was stalking in front of the trash cans next to the garage and growling. I looked behind one and spotting a tiny opossum which had gotten separated from its mother. We ended up calling the local wildlife rehabilitation facility and taking the opossum in to them to take care of.

Despite her ferocity with other animals, she was very gentle with people. She quickly learned the "no claws" rule and pretty much obeyed it. She acquired a habit for a while of jumping up on my computer chair and worming her way into the seat next to me so she could watch what I was doing.

A few months ago, her luck ran out. She had gone running out the door when I left for work, which wasn't uncommon. Usually, she would be waiting in the grass in the morning, ready to go inside. That morning, she wasn't around. She came home a couple of hours later, and I noticed that she was dragging her right hind leg. It turned out that she had a broken femur. I took her in to the veterinarian and they put a splint on her leg. She was too old and skinny for them to operate on her, so they had to just splint it and hope the bone would heal on its own. Fortunately, it did, although she was in the splint for eight weeks. She dragged it around behind her, and the weight was enough that it threw off her balance. Her outside cat days were over.

Finally, though, the splint came off for good, and she spent her last couple of months mostly hanging out in my bedroom as she readjusted to walking on the healed leg. She did make it outside one last time, though. I had the window open a few days ago, and she came running out and jumped up on the windowsill, then jumped outside.

"Oh, no you don't!" I yelled, running to the door, grabbing the wayward Knucksie and bringing her back inside. "You're an inside cat from now on," I told her.

And that was that.

I feel a little better now that I've had a chance to tell you a bit about her. She was a very good cat. I don't think I've ever had a better one.

Another Knucksie Picture

This one's a little better:



She was such a good cat! >sniff<