5/31: Pampered Pets, Bomb Threats
8 p.m.
• This was an article about how we pamper out pets. It’s a long read, so I’m just highlighting all the things I admit to doing. Because I get a limited number of “quote” uses per entry, the article snippets will be in boldface.
Some 56 percent of dog owners and 42 percent of cat owners buy their pets Christmas presents.
*Raises hand.*
I should note that I don’t actually buy the toys, Mrs. kkk does. But I’ll cop to it anyway.
]Pets can listen to their own Internet radio station (Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog” is one of the more popular songs on DogCatRadio.com), post their pictures and make play dates on dogster.com and catster.com, and earn frequent flier miles on United. They even have cell phones now: PetsCell is a bone-shaped telephone that attaches to your dog’s collar and allows you to ring him up (sorry, incoming calls only). And there’s a new beer for dogs (from Amsterdam, no less), called Kwispelbier, which is Dutch for “waggy tail” brew.
OK, so all I do is post pics of the kids on-line. None of that other stuff.
The recent scare over tainted pet food has made feeding your animal a pricey proposition: I’ve switched Samantha to “holistic” kibble and wet food, hormone-free chicken strips and handmade cookies from a local dog bakery, along with the occasional whole-roasted chicken that we share for dinner.
Well, my three have special food, but Max needs his diet because of urinary problems. The other two get better food than Meow Mix and Friskies, but because this stuff has less filler they don’t eat as much, so I’m sure costs get evened out in the end.
But is all this coddling for our pets, or is it for us? A growing number of animal behaviorists, researchers and trainers think we’ve gone off the deep end, anthropomorphizing and infantilizing our pets to the point that we’ve forgotten an essential biological truth: at the level of basic instinct, Tabby is a wildcat and Fido is a wolf.
Yeah, look at these two.
Wildcats indeed (although I’m sure Dessa wouldn’t mind killing a bird. She’s lunged at a few before when out on the porch.)
Understand this, the experts say, and you will comprehend such mysteries of the universe as why your cat prefers to sharpen its nails on your favorite sofa and your dog insists on rolling in manure after getting a bath. Ignore the call of the wild in your pet, and you not only diminish the quality of its life; you open yourself to all sorts of bad behavior, from the merely annoying (your cat pees on the bed) to the potentially deadly (snarling pit bulls).
Well no shit. I hate people who bitch about their cats scratching furniture. What do you want them to do? Our two couches have been ruined for years. Big deal. That’s what happens when you own cats. Christ, if your kid runs around the house and knock something over you don’t break his legs. If your niece picks up something she shouldn’t have and drops it, you don’t chop off her fingertips. Why should animals be any different?
When it comes to the animals that share our homes and even our beds (63 percent of cat owners and 42 percent of dog owners sleep with their pets, according to the APPMA), we humans tend to have a tough time accepting biological reality.
Our cats, particularly Dessa, sleep with us, but I think she does it to stay away from the other two in the house. Its not like we call her – she just hops up, makes a nest and lays down.
Much of what we consider “bad” behavior is merely a pet’s acting out its basic needs. “People see the cat scratching on their beautiful couch, and they don’t want me to tell them it’s a normal behavior,” says feline behavior consultant Pam Johnson-Bennett, author of the book “Hiss and Tell: True Stories from the Files of a Cat Shrink.” “But you have to realize that scratching is a need a cat has. It’s rooted in their survival.” The trick, then, isn’t to get the cat to stop scratching, but to make it scratch something you don’t value. Johnson-Bennett suggests a scratching post wrapped with sisal or rope—she says the carpeted kind don’t allow the cat to dig its nails in deep enough to be satisfying. She’s also big on “cat trees”: a series of perches that allow felines to climb and leap as they would in the wild.
Doesn’t work. Buy them a $100+ play set to climb on and they’ll sit in the box it came in for weeks on end, not even acknowledging the feline jungle gym in the corner of the room. Years ago the better half built one of these godawful concoctions and NOBODY got near it. That was until we tore it down and suddenly the broken-down pieces became instant hits, much to Mrs. kkk’s chagrin.
Indeed, veterinarians say obesity is the greatest health threat facing America’s pets, with at least a quarter of the population overweight (that compares with a 30 percent obesity rate in American adults). Most pet owners don’t realize that when a pet is the correct weight, you can feel the outline of its ribs. “We’re so used to seeing overweight cats that when we see a healthy one, we think it’s too skinny.”
Eh, my opinion is there are enough starving kitties out there. If my three have a few pleasure pounds, I don’t really care. That’s why they get the special diet.
What can’t be bred out of dogs is the trait that makes them bond so well with humans: the pack instinct. What we call “loyalty” in our dogs may actually be a result of the wolf’s nature as a pack animal: the bonding and sociality that keep a wolf pack together are what drive the domesticated dog to stick with its owner. “The family unit here just happens to be cross-species,” says Samuel Gosling, a psychologist at University of Texas, Austin, who specializes in canine research. The fact that wolves are pack animals and wildcats aren’t may help explain why we perceive dogs as loving and needy, and cats as independent and aloof.
Interesting. I didn’t think about that.
7:30 p.m.
• Fucking asshole.
A bomb threat prompted authorities to shut down the Fort Pitt, Liberty and Squirrel Hill tunnels for nearly an hour this evening during rush hour.
A threat was called in to Allegheny County's 911 sometime around 5:30 p.m. and the tunnels were closed at 5:40 p.m. The Squirrel Hill tunnel reopened to inbound traffic at 6:20 p.m. and the outbound side reopened a few minutes later.
The Fort Pitt and Liberty tunnels were both reopened to traffic around 6:30 p.m.
State police said the tunnels were closed while officers checked them.
Whoever pulled that shit should be rounded up and beat to death. I take the Fort Pitt tunnels to and from work, and I also go through the Squirrel Hill tunnels if I'm not picking up the better half from her job. I leave at 3 p.m. so I missed all this action (or lack of action due to the tunnel closings). I can't imagine what the back-ups must have been like.
12 p.m.
• No wonder the Left loves Hugo Chavez. (LOL regarding the Carter Center.)
The Carter Center called for dialogue Thursday between President Hugo Chavez and opponents protesting his decision to force an opposition TV channel off the air, while calm returned to the streets after three days of demonstrations.
The Atlanta-based organization founded by former President Jimmy Carter expressed concern about the potential for escalating violence after the government halted broadcasts by Radio Caracas Television on Sunday. Police have repeatedly clashed with angry crowds hurling rocks and bottles since Chavez refused to renew the station's broadcast license.
"Healthy democracies require spaces for political dialogue and debate to allow divisions about the future direction of the country to be addressed in peaceful ways," the Carter Center said.
Once Hitlerly gets elected President, along with a Democrat Congress and Senate, in '08, say goodbye to RIGHT-WING RADIO!
It looks like I agreed with OwlGore for about minute this week when he criticized Americans' obsession with celebrity gossip. Well he is back to his liberal bit-government self again. This time he is joining the ranks of Fairness Doctrine supporters.
On CBS' "Early Show" with Harry Smith, Al Gore said, "the first concerns among defenders of democracy arose with radio. And that's why the equal time provision and the fairness doctrine and the public interest standard were put in place here. Those protections were almost completely removed during President Reagan's term."
There you have it. OwlGore feels that the government should set the "public interest standards" for radio shows like this one. Well, maybe I am a low man on the totem poll, but liberals loathe the conservative influence in talk radio. They just can't stand the fact that people like Hannity, Limbaugh, Ingraham, and even little old me can get up here and yap for hours and hours and they can't do a darned thing to limit what I talk about.
What is so different about what Hugo Chavez in doing in Venezuela? Weren't those pretty much the same words that Hugo used when he seized the nation's most popular television station, a station critical of his rule? Chavez said he was "democratizing" the public's airwaves? Gore excuses his desire to shut down talk radio by referring "defenders of democracy."
Al is losing his political touch here. Sure, there was no real secret that he, along with the rest of the left, wants to shut down talk radio. After all, every attempt at bringing a successful left-wing talk show to the airwaves has met with failure. So, the rule in government is if you can't beat 'em, shut 'em down. But just how stupid do you have to be to voice your threat to shut down talk radio just days after your leftist fellow traveler Hugh Chavez shut down an opposition television station in Venezuela? And then you use virtually the same language that Chavez used to justify your plans?
Poor Al Gore. Perhaps he was listening yesterday when I covered the news story about global warming on Neptune.
1 Comment
Recommended Comments