2003-02-01 - 5:17 a.m.

One Finicky Cat

My family's oldest pet is a grouchy bastard with a tendency to bite, but we love him anyway. He had a bad childhood, and I have a weakness for bad childhoods- I tend to excuse all sorts of nasty behavior from those who have enough pain in their pasts.

This is how it happened:

Once upon a time, when my family was living in Monterrey, NL, my brother found a kitten in the street. We lived in an area with many strays, where the walls between people's patios were invariably lined with broken glass and animals regularly ate things that were not what you'd call strictly edible. Halves of cockroaches, for example. The kitten was scrawny and orange and cute and claw-happy. My brother called him Milo, after the cat from Milo and Otis, a movie which at that point in our lives we had seen multiple times.

My parents said that we absolutely, positively could not keep him. Guess what?

We snuck him into the house, we fed him, we learned how to put betadine on the scratches, and when we moved back to the States we brought him with us.

Now, a good ten years since he joined us, Milo isn't doing so well. He hasn't been for a while, really. For a while he was fat, but now his ribs are rather too easy to feel. He's as irritable as ever, amybe even more, but at the same time he's rather lacking in energy. His color has faded over the years to a sort of dull khaki. He's also got a nasty reoccuring urinary tract infection which causes him to pee on things pretty regularly. We have never been so careful with laundry in my house. He's already had one expensive procedure to correct the problem, but the problem persists, and word around the house is that he won't be getting the treatment again.

I feel badly for him.

It doesn't help that Milo is the pickiest eater I know, and one of the main things he objects to is food with medication in it. Tuna, liver, even ice cream- somehow, he knows, and he won't eat it unless he's really hungry.

When I was home for Christmas break Milo destroyed my luggage. I thought it was safe under my shoes, but somehow he got to it and nothing we could do would get the smell out. I had to bring my stuff back to school in boxes and a giant black plastic garbage bag. Even aside from that, he's not the most pleasant of cats to spend time with. He's sullen, he's mean, he bites... but I don't want him to go. He's not a bad cat.

Maybe it's weird of me to be writing ths eulogy-like entry for a grouchy pet who's still around and being his usual pain-in-the-ass self about it, but I'm sorry and sad that Milo may not be with us for much longer. Strangely, I find myself missing him a bit, and wondering if Mom has figured out a surefire way to give him his pills yet.

Poor picky kitty cat.

*****

One of the more unfortunate difficulties of the government's anti-terrorism efforts is a sad lack of good Arabic-language translators. And yet last fall, seven fully competent Arabic translators were discharged from the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California.

Why would the Army kick out perfectly good translators who had just finished their elite training, especially at a time when Arabic-language speakers are desperately needed? What reason could they possibly have?

Well, it didn't really affect their linguistic abilities, but the fact is that all seven of the discharged translators were gay.

Source: The homosexual translator menace, by Charles Kaiser, from the January 21st issue of The Advocate.

And the United States loses several million points for sheer stupidity and bigotry. I love my country.