The vet wanted another bunch of bloodwork from Tig this week. In spite of the fact that Tig looks better than he has since he was first diagnosed with renal failure, and in spite of the fact that Tig is acting better than he has since he was first diagnosed with renal failure, the bloodwork keeps coming back worse and worse. The vet says it’s bizarre that Tig is acting like he’s feeling so well when he is getting sicker and sicker by the day. So I am forced to believe that Tig’s remaining time with me is not going to be very long.

Today, I took home a bag of fluid to be administered subcutaneously every other day. Sarah’s going to try to help me with the first one. I’ll do the scruffing, she’ll do the needle-sticking. Tig will do the hissing, no doubt, and the growling.

He’s not quite eleven. He and Gracie were born around March 15. They were part of two litters of ten-day-old kittens that were dumped at a shelter in a town in NJ, where I was living at the time. I had lost my original Tigger in January, and was obsessed with getting another orange cat. My downstairs neighbor’s daughter was a vet’s assistant at one of the local clinics that fostered the kittens. I had told everyone I knew that I wanted another orange cat to replace The Tig. He was such a great cat that yes, he had a title. My friends would ask me, “How’s the Tig?” during casual conversations. Tigger the Second had big, big paws to fill.

I met him on Easter Sunday, 1997, when my neighbor’s daughter brought Tig and Gracie over to meet me. With Tig, it was love at first sight. And as he grew, I fell more and more in love with him. I loved his long fur, and his great big paws, and his goofy charm. I loved his deep, loud, frequent purrs. I loved the way he had to always be near me, and follow me around the house. He made me laugh, always. As he got older, I started noticing that he looked an awfully lot like a Maine Coon cat. I’d always wanted one of those, but was never willing to pay $500 for a kitten. One afternoon, I chatted with a woman manning a table asking for donations for a local animal shelter. We started talking cats, and I started talking about how Tig hugs me, and how he won’t sit on my lap, but sort of would climb on my torso and roll down until he was lying upside down in my lap. Or he’d sit next to me on the sofa or on the arm of the chair, but never on my lap. Hers too, she told me, and hers was a Maine Coon. So I started looking at pictures online. Tufts of hair on the ears, check. Hair between his toes, check. Big, ringed, fluffy tail—markings, fur, check, check, check. I had, after all those years of wanting, a Maine Coon cat.

Tig is my great big goofball. I taught him how to stand up on command. I’ve never had a cat that would do that. He can still do it, sick as he is. He has never, ever failed to make me laugh or smile on a daily basis. Just this past Tuesday, I packed most of my clothes for a two-day business trip to Northern VA, then went downstairs to eat breakfast. Tig was sound asleep in his box when I left the room. I heard some strange noises from upstairs but didn’t have time to do more than wonder what he was doing. The picture above is what he was doing. Making me laugh, just by sleeping.

Tig used to sleep next to me every single night. On many nights, I wished he wouldn’t, because he also used to yowl in my ear at 3 a.m. when he was bored and wanted me to wake up and pet him. I once woke up and found four or five of his toys scattered around my hand. He’d dropped them near me while I was sleeping and waited for me to wake up and throw them. Lately, though, Tig avoids the bedroom. Something about it frightened him, and he stopped sleeping in the bed for a long, long time. That didn’t stop him from standing next to it at four a.m., yowling for me to get up and pet him. It’s gotten worse now, though. The second he sets foot in my room he starts licking himself compulsively. The last time he came in, he ran to the window. I opened the closet door and he dashed inside. I don’t know what it is about my room that scares him, but I do know that I miss having him on the pillow next to mine, purring himself to sleep. Or asking for a bellyrub last thing at night. He doesn’t want bellyrubs any more. He doesn’t lie on his back any more. And his belly, well, it’s not really there. Last time he got a bellyrub, I could feel his ribs. Now, Tig sleeps in a box in my office. I found him in it a week or so ago, and took it down from a pile of boxes so that he wouldn’t have to work too hard to get to it. And I filled it with towels. I check it first thing every morning, and last thing every night. Last week, when it was very cold out, I had a scare: I reached in to pet Tig, and he was cold to the touch, and he wouldn’t wake. It was just his fur in the cooler air of winter, and the lethargy from kidney disease, but I thought he was gone.

He’s going to be gone one day, and I’m afraid it’s going to be sooner rather than later. I hope he just passes in his sleep, frankly. I’ve already decided that I’m paying the extra for a housecall from the vet if it’s needed. I will not put him in the carrier that one last time. When he goes, he’s going here, preferably in my arms.

I do think there’s something for us after we’re gone. I really hope that our cats go wherever we go. I’ll be just fine with both Tigs, and all the other cats in my life.

But I wish I didn’t have to say goodbye to Tig this year. Really. I was hoping for another five years.

I am really going to miss my goofball.

Say thanks to the good folks at THAICOM, a satellite company in Thailand, who have picked up the Hizbollah propaganda station, Al-Manar.

THAICOM, a private satellite company in Thailand, has begun airing the broadcasts of Hizbullah’s Al-Manar TV. The satellite covers Asia, Australia, Africa, the Middle East, and most of Europe.

The Thai satellite has significantly boosted the resonance of Al-Manar’s propaganda messages around the world, said the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC) in Herzliya, Israel. “This is an outrage,” said ITIC head, Dr. Reuven Erlich. “Other satellites have stopped airing Al-Manar, so Hizbullah has found a way round it.”

Approached by The Media Line THAICOM said it is considering its response and will only offer a formal reaction over the weekend. However, company sources said the decision to transmit Al-Manar broadcasts was a “purely business decision, which had nothing to do with politics.”

THAICOM considers Al-Manar programming as “news and entertainment,” the sources said.

Sure. News and entertainment, with a terrorist, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, anti-American theme. And oh yeah, the Islamist point of view.

“It’s a war. Al-Manar is Hizbullah’s main communication tool, through which it spreads anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic, and anti-American incitement. It spreads Hizbullah and Iranian values of radical Islam,” Erlich explained. He added that the fact that Al-Manar can now be seen in south-east Asia, means that Indonesia and Malaysia, two countries with a large Muslim population, are open to its messages of hatred.

In the past few years since the European satellites stopped airing Al-Manar, the station could only be seen via two Arab satellites: Nilesat and Arabsat. The former is an Egyptian-owned satellite, which broadcasts to the Middle East, North Africa, and a few countries in southern Europe. The latter is a pan-Arab satellite, with approximately the same reach.

It is a war. It’s a propaganda war. And we just lost a major battle to the Islamists.

One of the most consistently interesting Israeli columnists, is Ari Shavit from Ha’aretz. Though a member of the Left and of the peace camp, he has consistently demonstrated an intellectual honest that makes him readable even if I don’t agree with everything he writes. But today’s “On a Divine Mission” is just about perfect. At first he sounds a bit condescending.

The man standing at the window this morning is a very lonely man. He is vilified in his own country and almost a leper in the international community. The America that he tried to save has turned against him, and the West that he wanted to defend is dismissive of him.

But Shavit comes back by dismissing that superficial judgment.

But George W. Bush is not deterred, nor does he bend to public opinion, to the media and to trendy thinging.Unlike some of his friends, he is not an opportunist who changes his stripes. He conducts his dialogue with history and with God. And since he is a man of moral clarity and simple principles and character, he does not tend to give in. Even when the current turns against him he remains faithful to his truth.

What must President Bush do?

The right formula is the Bush vision. To act with determination in order to create Palestinian capability before precisely defining the borders of the Palestinian territory. To promote Paris before devoting ourselves to Annapolis. To help the Palestinians bring about their conversion rather than pretending that the conversion has already taken place. In short: to return to George W. Bush’s fundamental truths.

The contrast between Shavit’s reading of the president and Bush recall 1998 trip to Israel by Michael Abramowitz in the Washington Post is stark.

Those close to Bush believe the trip made a very strong impression on the future president and would bond him to the future Israeli prime minister — and, in the view of Bush’s critics, would ultimately tilt the United States away from its role as a more independent broker of Middle East peace.

The Washington Post article portrays an easily convinced rube. The notion that Israel has legitimate security concerns is negated by the unchallenged comments of unspecified critics of the president.

Still it appears that the President is ignoring Shavit’s advice and pushing for a Palestinian state ready or not. Still that hasn’t exactly made him popular among the Palestinians.

Jericho, a relatively tranquil town of about 25,000 Palestinians north of the Dead Sea, was on the short list of West Bank Palestinian Authority destinations for the presidential visit, with Bethlehem and Ramallah, the site of the Palestinian authority headquarters. The governor of Jericho, Arif Jaabari, said that American security and diplomatic staff had been to his compound twice and checked the area where Yasir Arafat’s helicopter used to land.But Jericho was not included in the president’s final schedule, causing little disappointment among residents. “He’s the worst, Bush,” said a 64-year-old man who identified himself only by his nickname, Abu Muhammad. “He supports Israel and mocks and deceives us.”

What’s remarkable is how much aid - financial and political - the United States has given the Palestinians during the Bush administration and how little these contributions have helped. They haven’t made the Palestinians more receptive to Israel or even to fulfilling American conditions. Still the president pushes for them to have a state. And they keep demonizing him.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.