So now I’ve had Tig3.0 for just over a week, and he’s already become a huge part of my life. He makes it a lot more difficult to work in my office. I’ve had to escape him by moving to the laptop downstairs for significant chunks of time. But it’s the only way to keep myself from getting accidentally mauled by a kitten who is too small to jump into my lap, but instead, leaps most of the way, digs in his claws, and climbs the remaining distance. My legs are simply covered with scratches. I will be unable to shave my legs for at least a week without requiring a blood transfusion afterward. Worse still, I’m allergic to my new kitten. I’m told it will take about two weeks for me to get acclimated to the new cat in my house, but in the meantime, I wash my hands a dozen times a day and try very hard not to scratch itchy eyes while I’m in my office.

We’re in the discovery phase. I tend to try cheap, ready-to-hand cat toys first, like rope (string is anathema; cats eat it—quarter-inch rope is a great toy) and paper wads. He loves them both. But I also found Tig and Gracie’s old stash of toys. They didn’t really play with them anymore, except for the metal chains (keychain-type chains), which happen to be Gracie’s all-time favorite toy, but which she likes to drag around at inconvenient hours of the day and night. I am a light sleeper. Cat toys that make any kind of noise have been banned from my home for decades. Anything with bells on will not be purchased; if received as gift, the bell is removed. And really: What non-cat-owning moron ever thought up putting noisy things on cat toys, anyway? Bells on collars? Please.

I bought a few cat toys while shopping last week. I have four soft sponge balls that Tig loves. And I have a poofy thing on a spring that he attacks sometimes. He liked it fine until he discovered things that really move across the floor, like the paper wads or ping pong balls (found those in Tig’s toy stash, too). He’s running around like a mad thing right now as I write this, going after a paper wad and picking it up in his little kitten mouth and trotting with it three feet then dropping, hopping, and attacking. Sometimes he plays quite happily by himself, requiring only my presence in the room. Sometimes he needs to attack me. I wear my winter boot-style slippers now to prevent slashes on my feet, and my thickest pair of jeans, and a long-sleeved shirt. I’m a living cat toy, apparently. My role in life has changed. I am also a cat-sitter. Tig is still confined to my office (Gracie is now boycotting the upstairs; I’m not sure what to do next), so when he yowls, I take a look inside and sit with him if I have the time. That’s all he wants, half the time—my presence in the room. Things will be much better when he has the run of the house. But I’m off to northern VA tomorrow, so there’s no point in letting him out for another few days.

Yesterday, Tig was introduced to the laser pointer. He loved it so much that he literally cried when I turned it off. I had to turn it back on and let him down gently. He ran around the room looking for it, even leaping at the hole in the wall for the cable that a previous tenant left. Today, I tried to see if I could get him to run in a figure eight with it. I didn’t close the eight, quite. Next time, maybe.

It is a rare thing when we actually get exactly what we want. I wanted a Maine Coon kitten mix that looked like my last Tig. I wanted a sweet, affectionate, goofy boy that would make me laugh, and bond to me the way that Tig bonded to me. I had resigned myself to not getting anything near what I wanted and was going to settle for a young adult orange Maine Coon. And now, running around my feet chasing a rolled-up piece of paper, is exactly what I wanted. Even moreso. Tig3.0 gives kisses. His predecessor did not. Right now, of course, every time Tig3 licks my chin he’s also giving me exactly what I’m allergic to: A huge dose of kitty saliva, which carries the allergens inside it. He’s injecting me with his venom, I tell Sarah. But then again, it’s helping me build up the antibodies even while it makes my chin itch.

My home is happy again. I have a Tig that makes me laugh, every day, just like I had for the past eleven years. Yesterday, while talking to Sarah on the phone, Tig leaped off my computer backpack into a spot between the box next to it and the wall. There was nowhere to go, so there was just a kitten-butt and tail sticking out of the hole, waving around while Tig mewed and tried to figure out what to do next. He finally backed out of the hole and went running around playing somewhere else. It took me a minute or two to stop laughing long enough to tell Sarah what I was laughing at.

Yes, I got what I wanted. Here’s hoping for two more decades of Tig.

Yes, this is a real headline:

Poop Predicament Has Los Angeles Horse Owners Raising a Stink

And it goes with an exclusive article on Bloomberg News:

April 25 (Bloomberg) — The poop hit the fan when the last manure mulcher in Los Angeles closed shop.

The price of poop disposal is breaking the budgets of Los Angeles horse owners, as stable owners pass along the expense of taking horse droppings to landfills.

“The cost to get rid of this stuff has just skyrocketed,” said Royan Herman, 65, who runs the Peacock Hill and J-Bar Ranch stables in the San Fernando Valley with her husband, Mark. “A lot of young families aren’t able to afford a horse anymore.”

You’ll simply have to click the link to find the fascinating details about the Los Angeles horse manure problem. Me, I’m just glad that my little pooper weighs in at two pounds (so far), and deposits his waste products in a litterbox.

Rocket attacks on Israel have increased in the last couple of days. What do you want to bet they’ve done so because Hamas is trying to force Israel into agreeing to that bogus truce?

A Qassam rocket fired from northern Gaza landed at the Sderot cemetery Sunday afternoon. Another rocket landed near a house in town, causing substantial damage to the building. Gas tanks nearby caught fire as a result of the rocket’s explosion.

Fortunately, the house’s residents were not there at the time of the attack.

A rocket fired from northern Gaza earlier Sunday landed near the local garage in a kibbutz south of Ashkelon. No injuries or damage were reported in the attack.

On Saturday, a Qassam rocket landed in an open field in the Sdot Negev Regional Council, causing no injuries or damage.

Four rockets were fired at Ashkelon on Friday morning, one of then landing in the city’s southern cemetery. Dozens of graves were damaged.

There was also a katyusha rocket attack on Ashkelon.

Palestinian terrorists fired a rocket towards Ashkelon Sunday morning, Israel Radio reported.

The rocket, likely a Grad type Katyusha, exploded before landing but caused serious damage to a garage in the city’s industrial zone. No one was hurt in the attack.

It astonishes me that Israel is under near-daily rocket attacks, and the world does nothing. Yet when the IDF goes into Gaza—as it will, this summer—to stop the rocket attacks, the world will rise up as one and condemn the country that is suffering from the rocket attacks.

Yes, it’s a day that ends with a “y,” so this means it’s Israeli Double Standard Time.

There were also more mortar attacks.

The World Bank issued a report today that effectively states the Israeli blockade of Hamas is working, but that Israel should lift the blockade, because it’s working.

Billions of aid dollars pledged to the Palestinians to bolster peace talks with Israel are having a muted economic impact because of Israeli restrictions on travel and trade, the World Bank said on Sunday.

The lending agency told donor nations in a report that per capita income in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 2008 would be static, if not lower, despite the $7.7 billion in aid pledged to the Palestinians in December.

Notice where the aid is actually working:

The World Bank said modest gains in economic growth in the occupied West Bank, where western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas’ government holds sway, were not sufficient to offset the “severe contraction” seen in Hamas-controlled Gaza.

Okay, so let’s parse this information. Fire rockets into Israel, launch terrorist attacks, murder Israelis, and your income level goes down. (Bear with me, we’re going to pretend that Fatah and the PA aren’t actively working for Israel’s demise, which is partly true because they’re rather weak at the moment). Don’t do the above, and your income level does not go down. Of course, that isn’t good enough for the World bank. They want Israel to let the Fatah terrorists have as free a hand to kill Israelis as Hamas lets the ones in Gaza.

“While the PA (Palestinian Authority) has moved ahead with its economic reforms, albeit slowly, there has been little progress on relaxing movement and access constraints,” the bank said in the report, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.

The World Bank said the impact of these restrictions, including hundreds of checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank, “cannot be overestimated.”

Yes, it can. Because the world thinks that if Israel removes the roadblocks, peace will suddenly spring up, in spite of the constant spate of attacks in and from the West Bank. The opposite has proven true: When Israel removes checkpoints, Israelis die.

To recap: The Gaza blockade, which everyone from Jimmy Carter to most media services to most (anti-)Israel pundits say cannot possibly work is … working. And it’s working well enough that Hamas is suing for a “truce” so they can regroup, re-arm, and attack Israel with greater strength later on.

The only conclusion I can take from this report is that the World Bank simply does not give a damn about Israeli deaths. No matter what, they are working for the Palestinian interests, even if those interests harm Israeli. Because really, what other conclusion can you reach when the IMF complains that a blockade that was put into effect to starve out a terrorist government is doing its job?

I get a lot of comments that never get approved because, well, I don’t believe in publishing hate on my blog.

But then sometimes, I get an email that makes me smile for the rest of the day.

I know the article of Black and Jewish relations is two years old, but I just came across it today. I just wanted to say thank you for telling the truth. I believe Jews and Blacks have a lot in common and I am fascinated and inspired by the diversity of the Jewish culture(s) in and outside of America.

Again, thank you for your insightful article.

Happy Passover
Steffannie

Steffannie, thank you.

My Christian readers will really appreciate that MySpace link. Steffannie writes and sings Christian music, and she has a wonderful voice. Check her out.

It’s gotten to the point where Hamas doesn’t even have to pretend that they’re possibly, maybe, kinda sorta if the right offer came along ready to deal with Israel. Not that they ever really did—it’s just that the media generally don’t publish the truth about Hamas as openly as this AP piece has done.

And by the way, color me shocked. I had to reread the source a dozen times to believe it.

Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal said Saturday that the group would accept an Egyptian-proposed ceasefire with Israel but it would be a “tactic” In the group’s struggle with the Jewish state.

The Damascus-based Mashaal said in an interview with al-Jazeera television that Egypt had proposed a six-month truce between the Hamas rulers of Gaza and Israel. He said his group was ready to cooperate but added: “It is a tactic in conducting the struggle. … It is normal for any resistance that operates in its people’s interest … to sometimes escalate, other times retreat a bit…the battle is to be run this way and Hamas is known for that,” he said. “In 2003, there was a cease-fire and then the operations were resumed.”

In other words, just as Israel has said, the Hamas truce is only so that Hamas can regroup and rebuild its army of terrorists. For some reason, this line is missing from the Ynet article. (It’s the third graf in the plain AP version. The Times also saw fit to change the quotes above, taking some direct quotes out of the quotes and making them seem like paraphrases.)

He warned of an explosion of violence in Gaza if Israel rejected the truce.

However, the Ynet version uses other information from previous Ynet articles that gives you far more background on Hamas’ deception.

Earlier Saturday, Mashaal said that Hamas is still waiting for Israel’s official response to the group’s sixtruce offer. During a press conference in Qatar, Mashaal said he had asked for a written commitment from Israel to open all of Gaza’s border crossings, including the one at Rafah.

Hamas Spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told London’s Al-Quds Al-Arabi that if a truce is not reached the region could see unprecedented violence.

Gee, you mean like the bloody spring of 2002, where Israel suffered multiple terrorist attacks—including multiple suicide bombings—on a daily basis?

On Thursday Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar called a press conference following his meeting with the head of intelligence in Egypt, in which he declared that Hamas would offer a six-month truce in exchange for the opening of all border crossings. “The ball is in Israel’s court now,” he said.

Yes, and on Wednesday, I called the truce offer bogus. And every other time Hamas has offered a “truce,” I’ve called bullshit on it. The only ones who seem to think that Hamas really means it are idiots like Jimmy Carter and the UN. And this is in spite of all proof to the contrary.

I’d love to hear what Carter has to say about Hamas openly admitting that the only reason they want a truce for six months is so they can continue fighting Israel six months from now. That’s some major spin he’s going to have to do to convince us that Hamas is interested at all in peace with Israel. Because his spin on his talks with Hamas was as follows:

“It’s very important that at least someone meet with the Hamas leaders to express their views, to ascertain what flexibility they have, to try to induce them to stop all attacks against innocent civilians in Israel and to cooperate with the Fatah as a group that unites the Palestinians,” Carter said in an exclusive interview with George Stephanopoulos on “This Week.”

“There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that, if Israel is ever going to find peace with justice concerning the relationship with their next-door neighbors, the Palestinians, that Hamas will have to be included in the process,” Carter added. “I think someone should be meeting with Hamas to see what we can do to encourage them to be cooperative and to find out what their attitude.”

Their point of view is simple: They want to destroy Israel. Now that they’ve come out and admitted it again, do you think Carter will stop blaming Israel for the lack of peace with the terrorists in Hamas?

Yeah, me neither. But perhaps there’s hope for the AP, after all.