Dear Abby . . .

Mike lost a dear friend yesterday, a lady named Abigail Van Buren, who died at the age of 94. M says her real name was Pauline Phillips and that he never actually met her, but he had breakfast with her almost every morning. I don't know how he pulled that off, but I'm sure he did. He says she gave him lots of valuable advice over the years, though in recent years, while she was in poor health, he's gotten pretty good advice from her daughter, Jeanne Phillips.

Here's a song that one of M's favorite folksinger/songwriters, John Prine,  made up about Ms. Van Buren. We post it in her honor (click on the little "x" in the Google ad to make it go away):



(For the full-size video on YouTube, click here.)

Feral Feline Follies - An Update

Jeannie has been busy in her quest to trap every feral cat in our area, so they can get to meet Doctor Klippensnip, at the Pet Vet Cruiser. Last Monday she scored her twenty-second catch, a tortie named Momma Girl. This morning, after spending two nights in our recovery room/garage, Momma Girl went back to her colony behind the Winn Dixie strip mall.

Sometimes J takes cats to the "bus" or picks them up after their surgery when she isn't even the one who caught them. Yesterday she picked up Rudy, a big orange tomcat from over in Daytona Beach who had a tumor on his naughty bits. J took Rudy to live at a cat shelter out in the country.

My adoptive sister Jenny, who enjoys theater productions, wrote a short play in honor of Rudy's rite of passage. The setting is a cat shelter out in the country:

TOMCAT: I went for a walk in the woods.

LADYCAT: Oh, that's good.

TOMCAT: No, that's bad. There was a crazy lady with a trap.

LADYCAT: Oh, that's bad.

TOMCAT: No, that's good. She was only trying to do what's best for me.

LADYCAT: Oh, that's good.

TOMCAT: No, that's bad. She took me to a doc-in-the-bus.

LADYCAT: Oh, that's bad.

TOMCAT: No, that's good. The doc gave me medicine that made me feel soooo relaaaxed.

LADYCAT: Oh, that's good.

TOMCAT: No, that's bad. The whole reason she gave me the medicine is that I had a tumor on my testicles.

LADYCAT: Oh, that's bad.

TOMCAT: No, that's good. She lopped off the tumor.

LADYCAT: Oh, that's good.

TOMCAT: No, that's bad. She lopped off the testicles.

I have an owie!

If you ever get a chance to eat a whole chicken leg with a shoestring wrapped around it--pass it by. Turns out the only safe way to get it out of you is something called surgery. And believe me, that is no box of Milk Bones!

I feel like I've been run over by a truck.

You might wonder how I came to be tempted, not by the leg of a succulent rotisserie chicken, which pretty much speaks for itself, but one that had a long shoelace tied to it and was lying unclaimed in a curled-up paper plate, in a bucket on our garage floor. Jeannie says it was leftover bait from one of her feral cat traps. But Mike says he believes she was practicing Voodoo, whatever that is. Guess it'll remain one of life's mysteries.

The True But Unfinished Story of a Deer and Her Dog

Mike showed me this article from The Kansas City Star, which he says is Bonnie's home-town newspaper, if you don't count The Fort Leavenworth Lamp. It was published on Tuesday, December 11th, the day M came home from his trip to Missouri and Kansas. (Or from outer space--the jury is still deliberating on that.)

Either way, it's a nice article. A little sad, maybe. But I think in the long run it could have a good ending. It's about a deer named Ella and a dog named ET who are best friends and who had been hanging out together in a cemetery. Some people who were aware of the situation--including those in charge of the cemetery--figured the deer would be okay living outdoors through the harsh winter. But they worried that the dog might have a hard time surviving. (I couldn't agree more!) So they decided to catch ET and take her* to Wayside Waifs, a no-kill animal shelter where she can stay warm and healthy while she waits for a permanent home. Here's the article, which we clipped from the paper (click on it to enlarge):

The story is a follow-up to an earlier piece by the same reporter. The day the second one appeared in print, television station KMBC covered it, too. In this video clip on the station's website, Bruce Mathews, one of the cemetery's trustees, says that whoever adopts ET is welcome to bring her to visit Ella whenever they want to.

That sounds pretty reasonable to me. I sure hope it all works out.

Happy New Year, Ella! Happy New Year, ET!

And Happy New Year to you, too!

*Note: Among the various news stories there has been some disagreement about ET's gender. M emailed Matt Campbell, the reporter whose article appears above, to find out for sure. Mr. Campbell responded that ET is a female.