Deceived by cats, raised by wolves, surrounded by cheapskates

Speaking of cats, Paul MacInnes of the Guardian.co.uk reports that

...Scientific American looks again at the history of feline domestication. It has long been held that cats were first tamed in ancient Egypt some 3,600 years ago. Thanks, however, to the discovery of a cat-shaped corpse buried some 9,500 years ago alongside their human associate in a shallow grave in Cyprus, the game has been changed. The new thinking is that wildcats of the type Felis silvestris lybica began to dwell alongside humans as farming developed in the fertile crescent of the Levant. Wildcats were tempted into human settlements by the prospects of scraps and, crucially, a ready supply of Mus musculus domesticus, aka the house mouse, an ancient Jerry to their pre-classical Tom. ¶ In other words, we didn't domesticate cats, they domesticated themselves….

I’m not sure, but I do believe that the Scientific American article also explains that, pre-domestication, cats cleaned their own litter boxes.

The truth slowly emerges.

Now: money. When I was an undergraduate, I was endlessly disgruntled about the portion of student fees devoted to competitive sports, about which I had no interest whatsoever. Of course, in those days, UCI’s teams were, well, shittay. I guess that's changed.


Evidently, increasingly, students are coming around to my former way of thinking. In yesterday’s New York Times, we read that

Since March, students at three California universities — Sacramento State, Long Beach State and Cal State Fullerton — have … voted down fee increases to help pay for athletics.
…
Already facing steep tuition costs, students seem to be growing more reluctant to pay additional fees for everything from athletics to health care to transportation, according to the United States Student Association, which is based in Washington…. (As Costs of Sports Rise, Students Balk at Fees)

Naturally, this development likely reflects the possibly transient fact that money is tight. Or maybe it reflects the possibly transient fact that students are tight. Dunno.


This reminds me of a childhood incident. I was raised in a German family guided by overprotective parents. These parents, being German, did not understand American football. It was, they said, a brutal and stupid sport.

They didn’t put it that way. They would see it played on TV, stare at it, and then declare something like, “Look! Those guys are fat and mean and stupid!” Once a thing received this Bauer family seal of disapproval, acknowledging anything whatsoever in its favor was regarded as betrayal of the family. This led to many an absurdity, including the infamous “Barbra Streisand” rhubarb of 1967. But never mind that.

So, anyway, I was discouraged from having anything to do with football, even in high school. As it turns out, during a PE flag-football game, I was injured via a pile-up upon my person. Off I went to the doctor’s office. “You have a hairline fracture,” said the doctor. He got out the plaster, wrapped on the cast. I loved it.

Later that day, my dad came home from work and saw the cast. He found out what was up.

He was not amused. Why were you playing football? he asked. And why did you (the “you” now included my mother—it is a Bauer family tradition [alas, to the present] to use pronouns with spectacular imprecision) go to the doctor? Hairline? What kind of break is that?!

He mightily disapproved of everything I and we had done.

After a few weeks, it seemed to me that it was time to remove my wonderful cast. We (i.e., my mother and I) didn’t dare go back to the doctor. So, one day, I went out to the garage and cut off the cast with a pair of tin-snips. I hid the pieces in the trash.


Nobody ever mentioned the injury again. Indeed, I once heard my dad declare that none of his kids had ever suffered a broken bone. He pointed at me: "This one has never missed a single day of school in nearly 12 years!" That was true. I shared this distinction with some other kid, a girl.

One day, at school, I was told to go to the principal's office, to meet her.

I arrived, sat down. There she was. We just stared at each other, uncomprehending.

She looked OK, I guess. Not me. I was sick with a cold.

First picture: three cats at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary near Kanab, Utah. The female kitty at left (Toby) has a condition which makes breathing laborious. The two other cats (Solomon and Tucker) always sleep with her, watch over her. Selfish bastards! The other cats are also at Best Friends. Took these pics three days ago.
P.S.:

A couple of days ago, our pal Gustavo Arellano of the OC Weekly (Lee-ving out crucial OC civil rights history in the Anaheim walk of stars) reported an incident that many would rather forget:

Legendary Olympian and longtime Orange County resident Sammy Lee was honored two days ago with a spot on the Anaheim Walk of Stars, and it was fascinating to see history in action…. The story in the Orange County Register mentioned his back-to-back gold medals in platform diving during the 1948 and 1952 Olympics, and that he served for years afterward as a coach. But it didn't even hint at Lee's involvement in one of the uglier moments in Orange County history.

In 1954, Lee—an Army vet, licensed doctor, two-time gold-medal winner and recent recipient of the Sullivan Award as the best amateur athlete in the United States—tried to buy a house in Garden Grove but was refused. Twice. All because he was Asian. Garbage Grove's racism was condemned worldwide for the obvious reasons, and even Ed Sullivan and then-veep Richard Nixon spoke publicly in favor of Lee, who eventually did buy a home…. His struggle to buy a house was an important step in the battle to end housing segregation in Orange County that ultimately culminated in the Mulkey v. Reitman Supreme Court case.

About 8 or 9 years after the unfortunate “Garden Grove” episode, my mother took Annie and me to swim classes at a place, if I recall correctly, near Collins and Tustin in the City of Orange. My memory tells me that it was a “Sammy Lee” facility. I seem to recall seeing his name emblazoned (in cursive) on the outside wall of the building. I’ll see if I can find evidence that my memory is correct.

See also biography and video of Sammy Lee

P.P.S.:

I found this at OC History Roundup:

Today's photo shows U.S. Olympic divers Sammy Lee and Vicki Manolo Draves at the London Olympic Games in August 1948. Dr. Lee won a gold medal that year, and again in 1952 at Helsinki. But much of Orange County knows him as the man who taught them how to swim. Lee's swim school was a fixture in Anaheim for many years, beginning in the 1950s. Today, he received the 11th star on the Anaheim/OC Walk of Stars, in front of Disneyland....

I also found a reference to one of Lee's schools in Santa Ana.