The basis for a true education

Studying entomology gives you a full kit of tools necessary to do anything you want. It should be considered the core curriculum at all colleges and universities. Only when you have mastered the insects should you even begin to study anything else.

— R. Norman

South Dakota Building Codes

Q: What building codes do they use in South Dakota?
A: Zip codes and area codes.

A cat house across the road

No, not that kind of cat house. Whatever were you thinking; after all this is a family rated web site (for sufficiently dysfunctional families, of course). The cat house of which I speak is the residence of my neighbours to my East. Of late I have noticed several cats roaming around my grounds from time to time. More than once I have looked out the patio door and have seen a young feline stalking the bird feeder – an unexpected sight for a man without cats who lives in the country.

I believe that I have previously mentioned that Our Lady of the Large Black Dog also has a cat named Jimmy. Jimmy was a moderately feral cat before he adopted Our Lady’s family. Although he greatly appreciates being fed, being petted, and having a nice warm place to sleep he has not forgotten that at heart he is wild, and that civilization is an all too thin a veneer.

Because Jimmy did not acquire Our Lady when he was a kitten there is considerable doubt as to his precise age – fifteen years will do as an estimate. That would be one hundrend and five years in dog years; however Jimmy is a cat – I have no idea how many years old he is in cat years. It occurs to me that if cats have nine lives then maybe a human year is nine cat years. If so, Jimmy is a ripe old 135 and is a candidate for Guiness book of records. I suppose I haven’t quite got the right of it.

In any event Jimmy is quite venerable (this does not stop him from going out hunting or having unseemly discussions with the neighbouring cats) and is heir to the ailments of the aged. Recently he came down with a bad case of swollen anal glands. The precise details of this ailment may not be suitable for discussion in a family oriented website such as this, so I shall leave the details to the imaginations of my readers.

Without going into the details (did I mention that I am not going into the details?) it became necessary to take Jimmy to the local veterinarian to have his swollen anal glands treated. As a side note I do hope that none of my readers ever suffer from swollen anal glands – and that if they do, they won’t write me about their experiences with them.

The veterinarian prescribed a course of treatment that reduced the swelling. Our Lady insists that I made the more practical suggestion of changing his food. I don’t recall having ever done anything practical but I must have for she is never wrong in these matters. Be that as it may, the veterinarian let slip the information that my neighbours to the East are cat people. It seems that they have fifteen or so cats. This accounts for the stray cats showing up from time to time. Since there is a highway between us I would expect to see some showing up on the side of the road now and then. I haven’t noticed any so I suppose that these are particularly intelligent cats. No doubt this is because their humans are teachers. Why teachers, or indeed anyone, would live in a double wide trailer on a bit of prairie is quite beyone me, but, then, I am not a teacher.

Deborah and I had noticed that said neighbours had built an attachment of sorts to their double wide trailer. All is now explained. The attachment is where the cats are housed. It is literally a cat house across the road.

Old saws revisited

Someone, Harry Truman IIRC, said that if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. What I say is that if you can’t stand the smoke, stay out of my kitchen.

Outlaw County redux

Ken Huber, our former chief of police, has been formally indicted on a dual charge of first degree murder and alternatively first degree manslaughter for shooting his wife in the head while she lay sleeping. Currently he resides in the Pierre jail where he awaits trial. The trial is set to occur March 31.