HIS Karate-Do

Where does the time go? It’s July already, and the 4th of July or Independence Day here in the United States of America. On this day, the average person is thinking about hot dogs, barbecues, beer, fireworks, holiday sales, picnics, the beach, and so on. The purpose of the day, as we all know, is to celebrate the birth of our nation, from its humble beginnings some 233 years ago, when we declared our independence as a collection of 13 colonial states on the eastern portion of North America from what was then, the most powerful nation on the earth, Great Britain. Each of us starts our life, totally dependent upon others, primarily our parents. Unlike so many other species, we’re rather weak and helpless when we enter this world. I used to watch my pet fish (guppies) giving birth, and no sooner had the little curled up ball of a fry (baby fish) dropped from its mother like an aircraft dropping bomb, when it would suddenly uncurl into a tiny version of its mother and immediately swim away. It did this so quickly, that the “fry-ball” hadn’t even had time to touch the bottom of the tank. Similarly, colts [...]

Well, these days I find myself a bit more inclined to writing my occasional note to you all… nope, not retired yet, but we did just upgrade to a new computer, which (until videos, photos, additional programs, and malware degraded its responsiveness) brings up the internet so fast, I don’t waste most of my time waiting and waiting, like in the TV commercials, haha. Anyways, I’m sitting here in the “CatRoom”, so called because it’s the cats’ home here on the second floor. They spend their evenings here and their days in the garage, feeling so secure that they often remain asleep even when I walk right past them, en route to the computer. Simba’s awake and lying next to my chair, mostly because I shooshed him off of his “throne” so I could access my email. We joke about the CatRoom, much as we used to joke about Batman and Robin’s BatCave, BatCar, Batphone, etc…and that we wanted to see how they decorated the BatRoom (bathroom, get it?…juvenile humor from the sixties). Anyways, as I look around me, I realize that this room not only contains the cats and their belongings; it serves as our office (with attendant computer, [...]

The other day, I was playing “cat and mouse” with our two rather aged cats, Nikki and Simba. In this case, I was the “mouse”, as I twisted, turned, thrust and pulled a foot-long metal wire (a good cat toy) with a feather at the end. I say “aged”, because they’re both 14 years old as of last March. When you calculate it out, if a cat lives to be roughly 17-20 years old (at least the ones that live in the relative safety of a nice home), then, the average year equates to roughly 5 cat-years. Hmmm…5 X 14 equals 70 cat-years. Yet, the brother and sister tabbies look pretty much like they always did, though they do spend an inordinate amount of time sleeping these days. I remember back in 1995, when they were two tiny kittens, marveling at the speed of their movements while they were “sparring” with each other. If you’ve ever watched two kittens playing in a blurr of fur, you know what I mean. And here, “70 years” later, these old felines still have “got it”, albeit with a little less flash and losing their interest in the “mouse” after a couple of minutes. [...]