Author: R J Adams

Oscar the cat has generated a lot of warm-hearted, “Oooh! Isn’t he wonderful?” type of responses over the last couple of days as his story appears to have invaded every TV newsroom from California to Timbuktu.

Now, cats are a favorite here at Sparrow Chat, but isn’t Oscar’s ability to seek out a dying human just a trifle spooky?

The cat was adopted by the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Rhode Island when he was a kitten, and has been there ever since. While generally shirking the attention of inmates, Oscar homes in on those at death’s door, curls up beside them on the bed, and waits patiently for the moment of passing.

Various explanations have been forthcoming from the so-called “experts”, ranging from the psychic to the biochemical. Personally, none of them appear very plausible.

There is another, somewhat less heart-warming explanation.

Domesticated carnivores are the descendants of wild animals, and while cats are basically hunter predators, they’ll not turn up there noses at scavenging for carrion, particularly when prey is in short supply. Just as vultures appear from nowhere when an animal is succumbing in the desert, a more logical possibility is that Oscar is simply responding to latent, ancient, instincts.

He can smell approaching death, and with it the possibility of a good meal.

Filed under: Survival instinct

A recent article in Sparrow Chat, “No Healthcare For Aussies”, stated:

“In it’s 1996 report “Buying A Movement”, the ultra-conservative organization “People for the American Way” describe the Manhattan Institute as…….”

Of course, as one commenter, “Matt”, rightly pointed out the organization “People for the American Way” is most certainly not ultra-conservative. It’s president, Ralph G Neas, states on their website:

“We’re fighting to maintain and expand 50 years of legal and social justice progress that right-wing leaders are trying to dismantle. We won’t let them turn back the clock on our rights and freedoms.”

Sparrow Chat apologizes to its readers for this inadvertent, but misleading mistake.

“Rebellion must have an unassailable base, something guarded not merely from attack, but from the fear of it: such a base as the Arab revolt had in the Red Sea ports, the desert, or in the minds of men converted to its creed. It must have a sophisticated alien enemy, in the form of a disciplined army of occupation too small to fulfil the doctrine of acreage: too few to adjust number to space, in order to dominate the whole area effectively from fortified posts. It must have a friendly population, not actively friendly, but sympathetic to the point of not betraying rebel movements to the enemy. Rebellions can be made by 2% active in a striking force, and 98% passively sympathetic. The few active rebels must have the qualities of speed and endurance, ubiquity and independence of arteries of supply. They must have the technical equipment to destroy or paralyze the enemy’s organized communications, for irregular war is fairly Willisen’s definition of strategy, “the study of communication,” in its extreme degree, of attack where the enemy is not. In 50 words: Granted mobility, security (in the form of denying targets to the enemy), time, and doctrine (the idea to convert every subject to friendliness), victory will rest with the insurgents, for the algebraical factors are in the end decisive, and against them perfections of means and spirit struggle quite in vain.” ~ T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) Encyclopaedia Britannica, Fourth Edition 1929.

It’s a shame Bush, Blair and cronies didn’t read Lawrence before they invaded Iraq. It might have saved 100,000 lives.

Filed under: Pathetically ignorant