Well, Monday was his best day since he got really sick. He had a decent day Tuesday, and I can’t tell you much about Wednesday because I spent half the day at the hospital with a six-year-old while his mother was getting things done at the house and spending time with the other kids. I took him to the vet for sub-q fluids first thing this morning. He was lively enough to give the tech a hard time, and flash her a very nasty look before getting back into the carrier.

But he’s back to barely eating. I just watched him eat a few bites of his dry food again, but he’s not eating enough to maintain his weight. He’s down four-tenths of a pound from Monday. And the weight loss compounds the problems due to kidney failure. He’s on a downward spiral, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

That said, he seems to be relatively happy. I hate the boniness, but he’s no longer confined to four square feet of my kitchen. He goes upstairs to the office and sleeps in his new box-bed. He comes downstairs, or I bring him downstairs, and he spends the day in the sun. At night, he sits underneath my Jeep. Because it’s his, you see. Everything that’s mine is his.

I think I passed the point of no return last weekend. I know that when the end comes, it’s going to hit me hard, but for now, I’m just going to make Tig’s days as comfortable as possible.

The Independent Republic of Tiggerstan’s borders have shrunk, but the nation still remains. And it seems fairly content most of the time. This one was taken yesterday, before I left for the hospital. It was shorts and t-shirt weather, and Tig made the most of it.

The democratically-elected terrorist government of Gaza has just stolen truckloads of aid from the Palestinian Red Crescent.

Hamas policemen seized a convoy of humanitarian aid bound for the Palestinian Red Crescent on Thursday evening, the second convoy it has taken from the aid agency, aid employees said.

Policemen from Hamas halted 14 trucks filled with food and medicine at a checkpoint after it crossed an Israeli checkpoint into Gaza on Thursday, said employees of the Palestinian Red Crescent, who declined to be named, fearing reprisals from Hamas. A Hamas official said the aid was seized because the organization was distributing aid to former Fatah fighters and not to impoverished Palestinians.

Add this to the tally of criminal acts by the democratically-elected government of the Palestinians.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for the ICRC to condemn Hamas. They can only condemn Israel and the U.S. I think it may be in their charter.

The Russians are suddenly concerned that maybe, just maybe, Iran might possibly be exploring avenues to .

The rocket fire from Gaza, which is now being claimed proudly by the democratically-elected government of the Palestinians, has wounded more children in Israel, and nearly killed some on their way to school. Because that’s the tactic that the terrorists are most fond of these days: Firing rockets when they know Israeli children are walking to and from school, in the hopes of getting some.

They did.

Eleven Qassam rockets were fired at the western Negev Thursday morning. Three rockets landed in Sderot, causing several people to suffer shock and damaging a shed close to a residential house, as well as some vehicles.

Firefighters were called to the scene to extinguish a fire caused by the rockets.

Two rockets were fired at the Eshkol Regional Council and landed near a school.

They hurt two young girls.

Tchelet, the two-year-old, sustained shrapnel injuries to her leg, and her mother suffered from shock. Twelve-year-old Yardena was injured in the shoulder. They were both taken to the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon for treatment.

Gladis Za’arur-Fishbein, Tchelet’s mother, said she had just picked up her infant daughter from the children’s quarters in the kibbutz when the Qassam landed.

“We were walking on the road with the playground to our left; it’s usually packed with kids at this time of day,” she recounted. “Suddenly I heard a whistling sound followed by an explosion and fire. I was thrown back by the force of the blast. Tchelet was also thrown back and I heard her call for my help. I picked her up and noticed that she was injured in the leg; her shoe was filled with blood.”

These are the “crude, homemade rockets” that the news media likes to pretend “rarely kill or injure.” And the fact that the children of southern Israel have only 15 to 20 seconds to find shelter when the rockets are fired? Well, sometimes, you don’t even get that.

“There were times in the past when we heard the ‘Color Red’ alert system and then quickly ran for cover,” Gladis added, “but this time the rocket fell without warning; it just exploded right before my eyes.”

But here is the most despicable element to this story: The terrorists in Gaza are deliberately firing rockets during the times they know they have the greatest chance of hitting Israeli children on their way to and from school. An Israeli I know told me they fire the rockets around a quarter to eight, hoping to get the children.

Eshkol Regional Council head Haim Yalin, whose daughter attends the kibbutz’s kindergarten, told Ynet “the rocket landed at a time when all of the children usually play outside, especially on a beautiful day like today. This is also the time of day when some parents come to pick their children up.

Even the AP is finally acknowledging the rocket fire, although there was the inevitable “cycle of violence” angle to the story.

Hamas militants fired a rocket into an Israeli border village, wounding two young sisters as they played outside their home. The attack followed Israel airstrikes against Gaza militants and threats of an “all-front” war on the Islamic group.

The rapid-fire events threatened to escalate into large scale combat that could bury U.S.-led Mideast peace efforts.

Hamas stepped up its rocket barrages at southern Israel for a second day, retaliating for an Israeli strike that killed seven of its police officers. More than a dozen rockets rained down, one exploding at Kibbutz Beeri, a communal village about four miles from the border fence.

Because in AP-speak, firing rockets into civilian areas is “retaliation” for the IDF killing terrorists. The moral equivalency game of our times. But we’re used to it. We’ve been reading it since the bloody, bloody spring of 2002, when suicide bombs were going off sometimes two and three times a day—and the world told Israel to “show restraint” in the face of her children being blown apart on buses.

Israel is cutting Gaza’s power by 5% per line tonight. Watch for the world condemnation—of Israel, of course.

Here is the much-vaunted Mahmoud Abbas condemnation of rocket fire into civilian areas of Israel by terrorists in Gaza:

“These rockets that are being fired at Israel must stop. It’s pointless,” he said at a news conference with Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik. “At the same time, Israel should not use these rockets as a pretext for collective punishment on Palestinians in Gaza. Israel must always allow humanitarian supplies and other needs to be provided to Gaza.”

Show me where he has ever condemned the murder of Israelis because it is wrong. You won’t be able to, because he never has. Mahmoud Abbas is Arafat in a three-piece suit, and a less ugly face. Less power and appeal to the Palis, to be sure, but he is still the man who wrote his thesis denying that six million died in the Holocaust, and he is the man to whom Fatah—and its “loosely-connected” branch, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade—report. He is the man to whom the EU and UN are giving billions more, and yet, we’re not seeing an end to terrorism of any kind, not in the West Bank, where he putatively rules, and not in Gaza, where the rulers are terrorists who have said time and again that they intend to destroy Israel.

“Pretext.” Firing rockets at your civilians, wounding and murdering them, is a “pretext” for collective punishment of the people who are sheltering the terrorists and who have, in fact, elected their masters as their government.

Shyeah. “Pretext.”

Try “casus belli.”

(NOTE: This post was scheduled to go up yesterday. There have been many more attacks since then. There will be new posts about them.)

The democratically-elected government of Israel—the people that Jimmy Carter and the EU think Israel should negotiate with—fired rockets into Israeli towns for the past three days. One of the attacks injured a 14-year-old girl in Sderot. They also claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing that killed

Three Qassam rockets landed Tuesday night in southern Ashkelon. There were no reports of injuries or damage. Hamas claimed responsibility for firing the rockets.

At around 11:15 pm, the Color Red alert system was activated in the city’s southern industrial zone. According to police reports, several explosions were heard in the area.

More rockets fell today.

A Qassam rocket fired from the northern Gaza trip landed in an open field south of Ashkelon Wednesday morning. No injuries or damage were reported in the attack.

Five Qassam rockets landed in the Eshkol Regional Council since the morning hours. All the rockets fell in open areas, causing no injuries or damage.

I expect more will fall before the end of the day as well. I don’t expect the kind of outcry from the world that we heard when Israel shut down Gaza. And I don’t expect Israel to shut down Gaza again. Ehud Olmert is quite possibly the worst leader Israel has ever has. He is more concerned with his political survival than with his people’s well-being.

Israel needs a warrior to lead her through these dangerous times. The Iranian threat is growing, and the Bush government has lost the political will to stop it.

Now would be a good time for another King David. The anti-Israel side like to think that Israel is the Goliath. But that’s inaccurate. Israel is still David, and still fighting overwhelming odds. Only now, Goliath is pursuing nuclear weapons. No stone in the world will stop those.

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