Carnival of the Cats: I have one in this week. It’s the post directly before this one.

Haveil Havalim: Y’know, I never submit, but they still put my posts in. They’re such mensches.

Shire Network News: This week, I tear into the British moron who couldn’t understand why Americans would want to take the WTC steel and put it into warships. Yeah, most people don’t understand us.

In the interest of helping society, we here at yourish.com have developed a list of questions about cats that would ordinarily not get answered, or at least, certainly not get answered the way we answer them. This is the first in a series. Feel free to send your questions to meryl -at- mylastname - dot - com if you’d like this series to continue.

Why do cats sleep in the sun?
Why do bears crap in the woods? Why do babies cry? Why is the sky blue? Come on, be honest. If you could spend 18-20 hours a day sleeping, you’d do it, too. Who wants to work?

Do cats get sunburn? Are they at risk for skin cancer from UV rays?
Yes, as a matter of fact, they do. Gracie and Tig were both black cats when I got them. Over the course of their lives, their habit of sleeping in the sun has burned their skin and fur to the orange color you see in recent pictures. (Gracie actually used to be a tuxedo, but is now orange-and-white.)

I found pawprints all over the hood of my car. Should I be worried?
Yes. While many cats merely like to sleep on the warm engine of a parked car, some have more nefarious schemes in mind. Lately, I’ve had to repeatedly check my brake lines. Tig is trying to blackmail me into giving him more tunafish, and he’s been slashing the brake lines from time to time. He thinks I haven’t got a clue, but my hidden camera caught him fleeing the scene only this morning.

Why do cats like tunafish so much, anyway?
It carries within it deep species memories, from the days when cats were cats and humans were humans, and when they met, it often ended in cats eating humans. Cats have what Jack London used to call “racial memories,” wherein they could remember prehistoric times. Back then, cats frolicked on the shorelines, waiting for the hapless tuna to crawl up onto the beaches to spawn, and then pounced, eating fresh tuna from the sea. Indeed, hidden deep within the vaults at Starkist are the fossil records of just such a scene, kept under lock and key for fear that the current generation of domestic kitties would never again obey their human masters if the evidence got out. There’s a rumor that it’s the subject of Dan Brown’s next novel, The Kitty Code.

Why don’t cats do tricks and come when they’re called? Dogs do!
Dogs are Communists. The dog is always too willing to follow the strongest leader, a.k.a. the alpha dog. Dogs are weak, cowardly, chicken-hearted collectivists, eager to please anyone and anything that is physically stronger. Cats, on the other hand, are red-white-and-blue Americans. They are individuals and individualists, fending for themselves if they must, but canny enough to trick humans into giving them food and cleaning up after them. The fact that the United States now has more cats than dogs per household is proof that a country is only as great as its pets. Even a crap artist like Andrew Lloyd-Weber recognized the superiority of cats. There have been exactly zero major Broadway hits about dogs.

Most American presidents had dogs in the White House. This is because in general, a president is unable to handle anything less than complete submission of his subordinates. Bill Clinton’s cat was a facade. He gave it to his secretary when he left office, thus proving that he never really liked cats to begin with.

Occasionally, you hear about cats being taught tricks, but this is generally a deliberate act on the part of Cat Nation. Some are sacrificed so that the many can save face.

Is it true that cats make good snipers?

Yes. They are taught how to handle firearms from a very early age. So watch your manners around cats. And if you can’t watch your manners, then watch your back. And have an up-to-date will.

The situation in northern Israel is escalating:

At approximately 3 p.m. Palestinians on the Lebanese side of the northern border opened fire toward the Kibbutz Manara area in northern Israel, and IDF soldiers manning a nearby outpost retaliated. Meanwhile a number of mortars were also fired toward Israel, apparently by a separate terror cell. In response IDF choppers launched a strike on Hizbullah bases in southern Lebanon, and army forces opened fire at the areas from which the mortar and rocket attacks emanated from.

Some residents think it’s about damned time to get rid of the missile batteries once and for all.

The secretary of Moshav Margaliot in the north told Ynet, “I think Defense Minister Amir Peretz now realizes that the restraint exhibited this morning did not pay off and that only a major strike on the Lebanese infrastructure will prove the severity of the situation to the Beirut government.

“I call on Peretz to let the IDF act with all means available to it,” he said.

Another northern border resident said, “If we want to put an end to the threats, then this is the chance.

“Send us to the bomb shelters, shut down the communities and put an end to Hizbullah and its partners once and for all; they are disrupting daily life for northern Israel residents.

Can’t argue with that. There is a UN resolution backing up Israel’s position. If the UN won’t disarm the terrorists, Israel should.

While looking for something else, I found this article on the 1982 air battle between Israel and Syria over the Bekaa Valley.

It gives you an idea why Hezbullah is aiming thousands of rockets at Israel: Because there is no Arab air force that can make its way into Israel without being utterly destroyed.

Of course, the big question is: In the event of an all-out battle, will the IAF manage to destroy the bulk of the rocket batteries before serious damage is done?

Terrorists in Lebanon, in violation of a binding UN Security Council resolution to disarm, fired katyusha rockets into Israel yesterday, wounding an Israeli soldier. In response, Israel bombed several terrorist bases, killing one and wounding five.

They should have sent out more bombers.

After three to eight Katyusha rockets were fired at northern Israel from Lebanon Sunday morning, the Israeli Air Force reprised with an air strike on two bases in southeast Lebanon, wounding six Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine operatives.

Some of the Katyushas hit in the residential section of the air control unit base in Mount Meron, some 10 km (6.25 miles) from the border. One soldier suffered from shock and was evacuated to the Ziv hospital in Safed in light condition, and one of the base’s buildings was lightly damaged.

Shortly after 10 a.m. the air force retaliated with missile strikes in the Lebanese valley. The first targeted the Popular Front general headquarters in Sultan Yaakov five kilometers from the Syrian border. Al Jazeera reported that eight missiles were fired at the base, wounding at least three operatives. Afterwards, the planes returned and fired at a Popular Front base in the Nueima area south of Beirut.

A senior PFLP member told al-Jazeera his group has the right to retaliate for the attack. Asked whether his group was behind the attack, he refused to answer and said: “Blessed be the hand that fired into Israel.”

The AP spin:

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