I’ve been giving Tig sub-q fluids at home, but I was worried about him the last couple of days. He seemed to be doing poorly again. So I brought him to the vet today. The vet did more bloodwork. Tig’s red blood cells are up, but all of his other numbers are worse. He says if I just showed him the numbers and he didn’t see Tig, he wouldn’t believe it was coming from the same cat. I get the impression that my vet thinks that Tig should be lying feet-up on the ground about now.

He told me that he doesn’t think Tig is going to make it through the next month. It’s highly unlikely he’s going to turn eleven on March 15th. I’m finding it hard to think of coming home to an apartment that has only one cat in it. Gracie is my Sweetness, but she isn’t Tig. She doesn’t come into my arms for a “snug.” She doesn’t sleep on the pillow next to me and irritate the hell out of me at 3 a.m. by deciding it’s time for me to wake up and pet her. She doesn’t do goofy things to make me laugh on a daily basis.

Come to think of it, there hasn’t been much laughter around here lately. Tig’s been sick, and grumpy, and growling, and swatting and hissing. I tried to get him interested in a wadded-up paper napkin last night, formerly his favorite toy, and I couldn’t get much more than a single swat when I tossed it to him. Tig used to fetch them. I’d throw them across the room, he’d pick them up in his mouth and bring them to me. Or he’d drop them in my sneaker, push them to the bottom, and then leap on the sneaker and stick in his paw to fish them out.

There haven’t been many bellyrubs lately. One, last week. He doesn’t like rolling on his back anymore. He’s lost too much weight. You can feel every single vertebrae in Tig’s spine when you pet him down his back.

Well, at least he still naps on me when I’m sitting in my chair. He doesn’t roll down my belly and land, upside-down, in my lap. Instead, he climbs on me, takes about five minutes to decide if he’s going to settle down, and sort of lies vertically across me. Or he rests his head on my shoulder, sometimes, if I get too annoyed waiting for him to make up his mind whether or not he’s going to sleep on me. He spends a lot of time lying on the bookshelf behind my chair. For some reason, he no longer cares for the ottoman or the sofa. Or my bed. Or the kitty condo. Or anything else that’s soft, except for me, apparently.

I can’t decide if I want him to go fast, or to hope against hope that he hangs on. We’re not in a good place right now. His quality of life sucks about half the time, and is okay the rest. But he’s a pale shadow of what he used to be. I can pick him up with one hand. One hand. That’s how skinny—and light—he got.

But he’s looking at me right now with that loving expression. He’s blinking at me as he falls asleep. I really don’t want to say goodbye to my Tig. I want him back.

Update: Check out the latest. There’s hope.

According to this detestable post (and letter to the editor that inspired it) we may conclude:
1) In 1941, the Jews of Warsaw were firing rockets from Warsaw at civilians in Danzig.
2) European Jews had a history of killing thousands of people by blowing themselves up in crowded public places.
3) Nazi doctors were saving hundreds of Jewish children.
4) The world stood by while Jews were being attacked by their enemies.

Well 4 is accurate anyway. The other 3 must have occurred in some parallel universe that I am unaware of.

OK, this isn’t misguided. This is antisemitism. It’s appalling that the editors of the Sydney Morning Herald saw fit to print such garbage.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

In order to pursue its policy of deterring rocket attacks on its civilians Israel has to justify the military actions with the legal authorities to determine What exactly is a humanitarian crisis?

The officer of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories is government’s eyes and ears on this matter.The office includes several departments responsible for doing the job. For example, one section maintains contacts with international aid organizations and other groups that monitor Gaza, while another is responsible for maintaining contacts with Palestinian officials in charge of infrastructure in the Strip, including electricity and water.

This is the body that provides the cabinet with the relevant data and carries out research on questions raised by the government.

For example, when Defense Minister Ehud Barak decided to reduce the Israeli supply of electricity to Gaza, Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz asked for details about which power lines supplied power to hospitals and other humanitarian facilities, to make sure their supply would not be harmed by the measure.

As long as Mazuz is satisfied that a specific government measure within a range of measures that he has approved will not damage these fundamental humanitarian requirements, he will okay them.

That, at least, is the theory.

There’s no word whether Meshaal and Haniyeh discuss at what point Qassams cause a humanitarian crisis in Sderot.

Interestingly a Saudi editor comes close to getting it right.

Abdel Rahman Rashed, a Saudi national serving as general manager of the pan-Arab Arabiya news channel, said Hamas was responsible for the suffering of some 1.5 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip.”Hamas committed a stupid act when it gave the Israelis an excuse to launch attacks in retaliation for a few antique rockets,” Rashed wrote in the London-based daily Asharq Al- Awsat.

“Prior to that, Hamas committed a big crime against the Palestinian people by overthrowing the Palestinian Authority [in the Gaza Strip]. The Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have suffered a lot because of Hamas’s actions. Hamas is bringing Israel back into the Gaza Strip after it was liberated by the Palestinian groups.”

Rashed questioned the wisdom of firing rockets and mortars at Israel which, he said, was only increasing the suffering of the Palestinians, let alone that they were not causing much harm to Israel. He pointed out that “only” 10 Israelis were wounded in the recent attacks as opposed to the “huge disaster” that has befallen the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Rashed is regarded by many Arab journalists as an unofficial spokesman for the Saudi royal family. He previously served as editor-in-chief of the Saudi-owned Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper and his writings regularly reflect the views of the Saudi establishment.

It would be nice if there was someone also acknowledging that the blackouts were staged. Still it’s true that if Hamas wasn’t attacking Sderot, Israel wouldn’t be restricting fuel shipments to Gaza.

Still, with the active complicity of the international media, Hamas is turning this episode into a PR victory. (H/T Backspin)

Some of PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s top aides were convinced that the countdown to Hamas’s collapse would begin immediately after large parts of the Gaza Strip were plunged into darkness Sunday night.But the PA leaders were in for an unpleasant surprise.

Instead of seeing anti-Hamas demonstrators, the PA officials in the Mukata presidential compound got televised footage of children and women holding candles in the dark streets of Gaza City.

Al-Jazeera and other Arab TV networks carried live coverage of the peaceful protesters, many of whom blamed not only Israel, but the PA government and the rest of the Arab countries for their plight.

The pictures coming out of the Gaza Strip were so damning for the PA that some of its representatives accused Al-Jazeera of serving Hamas’s interests and inciting against Abbas.

(No, it’s just Al-Jazeera, go to Google News and search on “Palestinians candles” - currently 520 results - and then search on “Sderot damage” - currently 299 results.)

According to the New York Times, Israel has now resumed allowing some necessities into Gaza.

As aid officials warned that Gaza, gripped by fuel and electricity shortages, was two or three days from a health and food crisis, international alarm mounted and criticism of Israel intensified.Israeli officials said they had made the decision after reviewing the situation in Gaza, which they had insisted they would not allow to become a relief crisis, and after seeing a reduction in rocket fire. They denied that international pressure was a factor.

Mr. Barak ordered the closing of border crossings into Gaza on Thursday night, halting all imports, in response to last week’s intense rocket fire against Israel by militant groups in the Gaza Strip, which is run by Hamas.

No goods have been allowed in since, and Gaza shut down its only power station on Sunday as the industrial diesel needed to fuel it ran out.

And when rocket fire intensifies again, will we see the same interest in the daily travails of the residents of Sderot. Probably when Haniyeh and Meshaal start considering the humanitarian crisis in Sderot.

More here.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Israel is sending in enough diesel and cooking gas to Gaza to keep Gazans in electricity for a week. As a thank-you note, Palestinians sent only nine kassams into southern Israel on Monday, and only four so far today. Reuters and the AP both buried and minimized the rocket attacks. And though Condi Rice called the Israelis and told them not to cause a “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, there is no word whether she mentioned the rocket attacks, which caused the blockade to begin with. As an extra added bonus, Palestinian snipers are firing at Israeli farmers today.

Palestinians opened fire Tuesday morning at farmers working in a field near Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha in southern Israel. There were no reports of injuries. An IDF force fired back at the shooters, and the farmers stopped their work and were removed from the field.

An Ecuadorian volunteer was murdered by a Palestinian simper in the same area last week.

Seven Qassam rockets and one mortar shells landed in Israel since the morning hours. There were no reports of injuries, but damage was caused to crops in a kibbutz at the Sdot Negev regional council.

Two barrages were fired shortly before 8 am, as Sderot’s children were making their way to school.

That’s a regular tactic of the Palestinians. They deliberately fire the rockets when they know Israeli children are walking to school, in the hopes of killing them. So far, they’ve missed. So far. The world thinks that this is a perfectly fine result. And so, apparently, do Israeli ministry spokesmen.

Despite protests from the international community and aid agencies against the lockdown, the Israeli government said the policy had been effective in halting rocket fire.

“What we see is that the number of Qassam rockets was decreased dramatically,” foreign ministry spokesman Mr Mekel told the BBC.

“Last week there were about 200 rockets altogether. And now there was two today, and four yesterday… So since we are monitoring it we decided that at this time we could ease this blockade,” he said.

And the very last paragraph of the BBC story?

However another rocket struck the nearby Israeli town of Sderot on Tuesday.

Even Israeli defense officials think they’ve achieved something:

A senior defense official told Ynet Monday evening that the sharp decrease in rocket attacks from Gaza in the last couple of days proves that “the Palestinians got the message,” conveyed by Israel through the closure on the Strip.

“We got the message across. Hamas understood the equation: A continuation of the rocket fire would lead to Israeli pressure against armed groups and civilians.

“We do not plan to cause a humanitarian catastrophe and we will transfer diesel fuel to the power plant, as well as medicines, but not fuel for cars or other commodities, but they now realize they will not get fuel or other luxuries as well.

This is the message that the Palestinians received:

Two Qassam rockets fired from northen Gaza Tuesday landed near the Sdot Negev Regional Council.

No injuries were reported, but some of the council’s crops were damaged.

And this:

A Qassam rocket fired from northern Gaza Tuesday landed south of Ashkelon.

No injuries or damage were reported.

And this:

Palestinians opened fire at IDF forces near the border fence in the southern Gaza Strip, in two separate incidents.

There were no reports of injuries or damage in both incidents.

The message: Israel will not follow through with measures needed to stop Palestinian terrorists in Gaza from trying to murder Israelis.

And the world got the message, too: Any time Israel tries to defend herself from terrorists, slap her down, hard. Israel will cave.

The UN Security Council was to meet in emergency session Tuesday on the humanitarian crisis triggered by Israel’s crippling blockade of the Gaza Strip, in response to the firing of rockets into the Jewish state.

The 15-member body was to meet at 10 am (1500 GMT) at the request of Arab UN ambassadors and the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference.

The decision to hold the emergency session was made during closed-door consultations late Monday amid a growing international outcry at what the European Union termed the “collective punishment” of Gaza’s 1.5 million residents.

The strong international reaction and warnings of a humanitarian crisis led Israel Monday to ease its blockade of Gaza, allowing in some fuel and medicine.

Watch for a condemnation of Israel’s actions. And the UN Human Wrongs Council will be meeting on this issue as well. And probably another statement from Condi telling Israel not to cause hardship—sorry, a “humanitarian crisis”—in Gaza.

Looks like I was dead wrong last night. Israel loses another one.

Hamas thanked Israel for allowing fuel into Gaza with another barrage of kassams and mortars.

Sderot residents found little solace in Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s call for Israel to exert “more and more pressure on the Gaza Strip” on Monday evening. Earlier in the day Barak consented to ease the near-complete closure imposed on the Hamas-controlled territory, authorizing the entry of humanitarian aid and a one-time shipment of diesel fuel to power Gaza’s electricity station less than a day after it was shut down.

Shortly after Barak’s pronouncements the relative respite in rocket attacks on southern Israel seemed over, with nine Qassam rockets and 13 mortar shells landing in and around communities in the western Negev.

I look forward to hearing the same people who have been whining about the “humanitarian crisis” for the past few days to come out against the rocket and mortars landing in southern Israel.

Mind you, I won’t hold my breath.