Time to forget about our problems and think about the simpler things in life. Like, cats. And umbrellas. And cats and umbrellas.

Oh. No wonder my umbrella started leaking the last time I used it.

“Oh, were you looking for this?”

I’ve been saying for months: “Je suis un cat toy.” (Yeah, I know, my French is a little off, but then, the French are a little off, so we’re even.) Well, everything in my house is a cat toy. Tig was actually chewing on the wooden rods holding my bookshelves together. They’re an inch in diameter. I assume he was teething.

He is growing very quickly. I tried to measure him the other day, but he wouldn’t hold still for it. He wanted to play with the tape measure. But I think his tail is about eleven inches long right now. And it’s very fluffy. His ruff (the Maine Coon cat mane) is starting to come in, and he’s beginning to look very dignified.

Tig has also discovered Kitty Nirvana: Sleeping in my bed. I finally opened up the bedroom to him this week. He got thrown out two nights in a row until he finally figured out that if he stops attacking me every time I breathe, he can stay. Unfortunately, I’m still getting woken up at odd hours, but at least now he’s not yowling at the door. (He’s climbing on me and licking my nose instead.) During the daytime, he takes turns sleeping downstairs and upstairs. Since Gracie no longer sleeps upstairs (she gave it up completely to Tig), I’m getting to hear the big thunk of a cat jumping off my bed after a nap again. I’m looking forward to hearing the Tig-sized thunk I used to hear from Tig the Second. I could always tell which of my two cats was waking up. The difference was very noticeable. Tig3 makes a little thunk. He’s only five pounds, yet. But he’s showing promise to grow up bigger than his predecessor. And that tail… wow, that is one long, fuzzy tail. And he holds it upright most of the time.

I just counted eight weeks backwards from April 18th, when I got Tig. That would put his birthday at February 29th. I’ll call it March 1st. I hadn’t realized that until now. (Tig and Gracie were born on March 15th, 1997.) That makes Tig about a week past four months old. And he’s already hit the five-pound mark.

Yep. He’s gonna be big.

Yesterday, Boker Tov Boulder aptly observed that following a terror attack:

… there’s the attack by the media that inevitably follows. Then there’s the aftermath, in which we can see the results of the first two, usually along the lines of Israel being weakened and our enemies further emboldened.

The attack she referred to was by the BBC.

It didn’t take long elsewhere.

via memeorandum

The New York Time reported on yesterday’s terror attack. There’s nothing remarkable about the headline:

Palestinian Kills 3 With Construction Vehicle.

However that wasn’t the original headline, that read:

Construction Vehicle Kills 3 in Israel Attack

However as we all know construction vehicles don’t kill people, people kill people.

(h/t LGF’s link viewer)

Similarly Meryl observed that the AP headline used words as if:

… it was an accident, instead of a deliberate, murderous attack.

McClatchy’s Jerusalem correspondent showed his true colors with:

The video also shows a policeman shooting the lifeless man at point-blank range, a move that could spark questions from Israeli human rights groups about whether the officer’s shot was necessary and if he might have unnecessarily killed the man.

(Though, from the footage, it looks as if the first shots probably killed him.)

My first thoughts on observing this action would have been amazement at the heroism of the shooters; his first thought was of the possible human rights violation. The truth is that Israeli security forces follow a protocol of “confirming the kill.” This is especially important when terrorists may have explosives strapped to their bodies.

The Israelis intervening yesterday had no idea, of course, if the terrorist was indeed wearing explosives but it wasn’t a chance they could take. And given that he was at the controls of a construction vehicle, if he were still capable of controlling it he presented a danger.

Just for a reminder here’s what happened in Dimona a few months ago:

Shalom Bar Avi, a journalist speaking to Channel 10, said “I am here no longer as a journalist but as a simple citizen … I pray and hope my wife is okay.”

Bar Avi praised the police’s quick response to the attack, and said Mor, the officer who identified the second attacker shot “four or five times … he took no chances.”

Later Mor’s heroism was revealed in detail: He shot the terrorist in the head, and when the latter in his last breath still tried to press the detonator button, shot him four more times and killed him. Mor managed to kill the terrorist before he could explode and without hitting his explosive belt, thus preventing a much more devastating attack.

You don’t take chances. And while this isn’t the reason the terrorist was killed, Seraphic Secret notes:

Here’s the good news: this is one Muslim terrorist who will not be used in a disgraceful and damaging prisoner swap.

The reaction to terror against Israel is telling of the mindset of those reporting the news. Though it was reported that the terrorist yelled “Allahu Akbar” most press accounts still try to raise doubts that this was a terrorist attack rather than an accident or criminal act.

(There are those who complained that Al Jazeera’s coverage of the attack was too pro-Israel!)

Ha’aretz reports on the Israelis who stopped the attack.

“I approached the bus on my bicycle, and then began to run to the site, looking for a weapon to use against the terrorist,” he told reporters yesterday. The military censor imposed a gag order on his identity.

Near the bulldozer the young soldier found a civilian, Oron Ben-Shimon, 28, a regional manager of a security firm in Jerusalem, who was armed. “Together we tried to neutralize the terrorist, at least to lift his feet off the pedals.

“He shouted ‘Allah Akbar.’ At that moment I pulled the pistol that Oron carried and shot the terrorist three times in the head. After I verified that he was dead, I raised the pistol to make sure that passersby were not hurt,” he recounted.

“I went out on Jaffa Road,” says Oron, “and as I was driving I saw a crowd of people shouting ‘terrorist’ and ‘mad man.’ I put on a police hat, and took my pistol and ran toward the bulldozer.”

“I saw a policeman on the bulldozer with a drawn gun. I holstered my weapon and the policeman told me there was no need to shoot him because he passed out and we need to pull him out of the bulldozer.

“And then the terrorist woke up and grabbed the wheel and tried to run over more people. I was already on the bulldozer and I hit him with my fists in the face in an effort to take over the wheel. I shouted to the young man near me to shoot him. He drew my pistol from the holster and shot him three times in the head.”

Oron confirms that the terrorist was dead when shot by the policeman. Still even here, the terrorist apparently out of commission started his attack again.

Then there’s the heroism of a mother who saved her baby:

Seconds before being crushed to death by a bulldozer, 33-year-old Batsheva Unterman succeeded in unbuckling her 5-month-old baby from the car-seat and passing her out through the window to safety.

“Just as I took the baby out, he reversed on top of the car. The baby is okay, but not the mother,” Jeremy Aronson, the man who helped save the baby, told The Jerusalem Post quietly as he sat alone in the waiting room of Hadassah-University Hospital in Mount Scopus.

I am amazed by those who can act quickly at times of crisis. Unfortunately Mrs. Unterman didn’t survive.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Unbelievable. First, the lawyer says that the Israeli Arab who murdered three and wounded at least 66 should not have been shot. Then the family says it wasn’t a deliberate attack. It was a “road accident.”

The lawyer representing the family of bulldozer driver Hossam Dawyyat of east Jerusalem, who murdered three people and injured dozens during a killing spree in Jerusalem on Wednesday, said Thursday that had the police cuffed the terrorist’s hands and legs and removed him from the vehicle, the incident would have ended at once and “life would have been spared.”

[...] According to the brother, the incident may have been a road accident which had gone wrong. “Any person responsible for a road accident is alarmed and afraid. This can happen to anyone, and this could have been a road accident. It’s possible that my brother was scared when people started chasing him and shooting,” he told Ynet.

However, Issam did not rule out the possibility that his brother had lost control and gone on a rampage under the influence of drugs. “It was easy to irritate him. He had a criminal record for violence offenses and he was punished for this.”

Yeah. A “road accident.” Like this:

“I was trying to enter a parking lot when the bulldozer’s driver signaled me to move back. I moved my car, and then he began ramming into it over and over,” one of the women injured in Wednesday’s terror attack in Jerusalem recounted.

Or this:

“Then I saw the bulldozer heading in my direction; it gave me a little nudge. I opened the window to yell at the driver, but then he turned the bulldozer in its place, lifted the bus up and flipped it over.

“He slammed into the bus a few more times then continued on his way. I was knocked back to other side of the bus and then climbed out the window. A female officer then shattered another window and began pulling the passengers out of the bus,” he said.

Accidents. Things like that just happen when you’re scared, or irritated. You do this, too:

“At one point he yelled out, ‘Allahu Akbar,’ and stepped on the gas pedal,” M recalled. “I drew the weapon of the civilian who was with me and shot the driver three times in the head. I think I did what is expected from every soldier and citizen.”

The amount of denial in terrorist acts is pretty astonishing. I think this one falls into Robert Spencer’s Daniel Pipes’ “Sudden Jihadi Syndrome” category—one in which everyone seems surprised that the terror attack occurred, and yet, as always, it is Jews who wind up being the target.

But a “road accident”? That’s just beyond stupid. The rampage lasted for 500 meters, killed 3, and wounded 66. Try again. “Road accident” just doesn’t cut it.