Feline Fillibuster
- Mike Dickey
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
"A 'scream' is always just that - a noise and not music."
Hey there. It's been a few weeks.
Anything happen while I was away?
Well, let's see. Starting at the macro, democracy died a little over two months ago in the United States, and we're living in an authoritarian orgy of vandalizing the last, best hope of humanity. News outlets are paying protection money. Lawyers are being detained by anti-terrorist units at our international airports for representing people and causes the Orange King finds unacceptable. Habeas corpus and procedural due process died when the administration discovered they could circumvent all that by flying the detainee to a foreign dungeon. And this week he turned to wrecking the economy with an erratic tariff policy meant to make everyone who hopes to retire turn on his every maniacal whim expressed on Truth Social.
Worse yet, this latest antic seems designed to bring the world economy to its knees, punishing the world for counting on our good word and good credit. This one gets a little complicated, but the short version is that the global economy relies increasingly on hedge funds for liquidity, hedge funds in turn run on leverage, uncertainty causes them to deleverage, and when that happens all the planet's central banks have historically turned to the Federal Reserve through credit swaps to prevent total collapse.
Here's a far more comprehensive explanation, that even brings the Fonz into the analysis by analogy:
Will DJT let the Fed play that role this time or, more likely, will he pressure them to blackmail our trading partners into doing whatever he wants? The Art of the Deal, indeed, if one approves the sorts of deals made by mafia dons.
And Congress actively enables all of this. Disgusting.
How does he still have a 41% approval rating this morning? What's wrong with a plurality of my neighbors? This may be the most disturbing part.
But let's talk instead about Slane, seen here resting peacefully in the living room just now.
I'm with you, buddy. Totally exhausted this morning. And not because of this crisis in the American experiment, but rather because of that white pawed little bastard in the photo.
You see, Slane is completely insane, and his madness manifests rather loudly sometime between one and two a.m. He hates condominiums, any condominium, whether he's here at 407 or up at Cliffside Drive on Canandaigua Lake. Slane chills while it's daylight, stares out the window or naps, but then in the middle of the night the yowling begins.
Frankly, I don't know how he does it without damaging his cat vocal cords, crying and howling at the very top of his lungs almost nonstop, until we crawl out of bed for work. It goes on all night.
" Yow Yow Yow Yow Yow Yow Yow . . . . YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW."
Rinse and repeat.
This week, with Peg getting up before six for work each morning, we've resorted to putting him in his cat carrier, shutting in in the home office here, and turning on both the bathroom fans to muffle the incessant complaining in the other room. Peg has trouble with the white noise, but it at least allows for some stretches of deep sleep, with the cries audible but not shaking the walls as he was doing when he stood next to the bed.
Of course, Slane's gotten wise to the game, and when he starts crying and sees one of us padding after him in the middle of the night, he runs and hides before being dragged into the little grey prison cell. I considered putting him in the outside storeroom, or putting his cat carrier out on the balcony, but fear neighbor complaints.
So here I am, bleary eyed and exhausted from several days of this ordeal.
Anyone interested in adopting a mentally ill cat?
Comments