Killing feral cats

The recent National Geographic recently published an online discussion about "solving the feral cat problem".  They highlighted a statement made by a former Audubon freelance editor promoting murdering all the wild cats.  It centres around the painful awareness by so many about the numbers of birds killed by "catus" domesticus.

This narrow focus fails to recognize the value of cats.  If all the feral cats were suddenly to disappear by any means, we would be overrun by with mice, rats and other rodents which are their preferred food.  

We live on an acreage more than 26 km from the nearest small town.  Before we acquired a house cat and two garage cats, there were mice running in the ceiling above our bed.  We'd find mouse droppings in the laundry room and even in the pantry!  Having one house cat wasn't enough.  The two garage cats catch the mice as they try to enter.  

The garage cats go out in the morning when the dog is let out.  We put them in again and feed them when the bird feeders are filled.  They spend the rest of the day going in and out - in warmer weather they'll be outside longer.  Birds are very difficult for cats to catch - in cold weather they won't even try - they have to devote enormous energy to endless patient stalking.  Our cats spend hours "tracking" birds and invariably eventually give up and find other amusement.  In the three years that we've had garage cats, we have found evidence of kills only twice.  Our cats stay close to the house, glued to watching their reality T-V, in the sun and sometimes sheltered by the house.  

As the snow disappears, there will be oodles of ground animals, leaves will come out on the trees and the cats won't be interested in climbing.  We think that our windows are a greater hazard to the birds than the cats - if hitting the window doesn't kill the bird, they become stunned and helpless on the ground.  It is actually surprising that we have found only two bundles of coarse wing feathers around the gardens, deck and walkways.

If the cities' feral cats were provided with food, they would continue to hunt their favourite delicacies, the rodents, and largely leave the birds alone.  If they are provided with food, we'd find little evidence of kills.  My recommendation doesn't mean that they should have a balanced diet but rather that they should be fed from restaurant waste, the amount of edible food thrown out by restaurants would be re-cycled!  What is not to like about this plan.

Disclaimer:  I am not opposed to catch, neuter, release programs which I think make a favourable impact on the populations - not only does do the numbers decrease but the remainder look healthier.  Those really skinny females with dugs hanging to the ground look so pitiful desperately hunting for their nursing babies.  You just know that their hormones have forced them to breed repeatedly - unlike housecats, a feral cat has an average lifespan of 3 years. A female will have produced at least 4 litters of 2 - 6 (sometimes more) kittens.  As a farm girl, our family had a cat population that was constantly growing in spite of my parents culling and barnyard life.  One year, a disease spread through our grossly overblown population of 37 cats.  We were all traumatized by it and resolved never to permit that to happen again.  We employed every tool - neutering males, drowning kittens, the occasional "lead poisoning", cyanide, carbon monoxide.  Cats cannot control their own population, like rabbits they increase exponentially.  No one ever considered becoming "catless" - we knew the value of cats.  If we had a barn, we'd have a barn cat.

"Damned Nations"

“Damned Nations - Greed, guns, armies and aid.”

This book is chaotic - it is written by a physician, Samantha Nutt, MD who has been working in the international fora for the last couple of decades.  It is a public debriefing and like one, it rambles a bit. Governments, aid organizations, private corporations and well-meaning individuals are all at fault in one way or another - and maybe all with just cause.  A few glimmers of hope trail through the narrative but become buried like her friend, Aquila, in some unnamed desert.

People are being killed, women are being raped, children are taught to kill or starve, and weapons manufacturers are only too happy with their ill-gotten gains. Aid undercuts local entrepreneurs and farmers - but it also tends to be initiated by surplus in the donor countries. Even entrepreneurial do-gooders like Madonna or Oprah find out the hard way that what they think they are doing isn't what is actually happening.

What a dismal world!

Samantha Nutt leaves no stones unturned. She doesn't hide from her own naivety, her own embarrassments or her frailty. This is her story, her story of international involvement, her experiences - what she has seen and done - and, as a narrative, it is a easy two-day read.  But it will stay with you.

(She forced me to remember the people with whom I have worked in Kurdistan, in Pakistan and in the Philippines. My work is entirely different - I am an educator - but there is a synergism. I could not do what she is doing - and perhaps she cannot do what I do - but both of these - and more - are needed if we are going to change this world's political agenda.)

The last chapter of Damned Nations is a gem. “A Just Cause” sets the scene for optimism. While describing activities and actions that further peace in the world, Sam weaves together little vignettes of successful ventures. To the solutions - narrow the gender gap and end poverty - she adds a third - “legal aid” illustrating the importance of having a due process all the way up to the International Court of Justice. Then she devotes a mere four pages to “here's what you should do” - and four pages is all she needs. She's laid the foundation.

Samanth Nutt's a small woman, she says (maybe we'll meet someday and compare sizes) but she is punching way above her class!

Nuclear industry fudges figures.......

“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride”

In the S-P, Nov. 30 Business section, Mr. Gitzel, CEO of Cameco Corp presents a report of the nuclear industry that is very much at odds with the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2012 and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). While he is well paid to sell the industry, being factual is unnecessary.

The authors of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report are not particularly friendly to the nuclear industry but neither are they a bunch of rabid anti-nuclear environmentalists - they simply “tell it like it is”. The IAEA promotes and licenses the nuclear industry world wide.

Mr. Gitzel says that there will be 80 new nuclear reactors on line in 2021. To make that a reality, there would need to be a lot more ground-breaking today. Of the 59 currently listed as being under construction, 9 have been on the list for over 20 years, 4 for 10 ten years and, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, 43 are not yet close to an official start-up date.

Some of Mr. Gitzel's figures are wishful thinking. He says that there are four new plants being built in the US; in fact, there are no new plants being built South of the border. In addition to US cancellation, Brazil, France, and India have cancelled their new builds and the Netherlands may follow suit. Mr. Gitzel and China may want to have 26 under construction but not a single construction site has yet been opened. Constructions in Bulgaria and Japan have been abandoned and the Finnish Okiiluoto 3 site is so delayed and so far over budget that it is in jeopardy.

The nuclear industry has been its own worst enemy. An industry born in the secrecy of the Manhattan project for the nuclear bomb in the 1940's, it has continued to operate largely behind closed doors. Power plant construction has been highly government subsidized, consistently subjected to lengthy technical delays and always massively over budget. Adding to this litany of faults is the failure of the industry to convince any insurance agency to cover its liabilities in the case of an accident.

When things go wrong - as they did at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima - they go really wrong. The toll to human lives and the environment is astronomical, clean-up impossible and financial costs beyond belief. The radiation that boils the water that creates the power is messy. It gradually destroys pipes, containment vessels and finally “clogs” up the fuel itself. Seventy years of wishing (and trying) has not “harnessed” the atom - it has not even come close. It cannot even be contained.  Furthermore, nuclear power is like building an outhouse without putting a hole under it - there is no place for the waste to go!

Each previous accident resulted from entirely different sequences of human and technical failures; accidents will continue to occur, especially as older plants are being refurbished. Costs are high, builds and repairs, refurbishment and refuelling cannot be completed within - or even close to - estimated times and accidents are devastating. What's to like about nuclear power?

Is it green? (S-P, Dec. 7, 2012) Those promoting nuclear as a rescue to global warming get mixed up about the proportion of the world's energy that is actually provided by nuclear power.  The fact is that nuclear powe represents less than 3% of the world's total energy use. Increasing its share of electricity production would not make a dent in preventing climate warming.

(Nuclear power accounts for only 11% of the world's total electrical production, down from its peak in 1995 of 17%. At the current rate of new builds vs old power plants reaching their end dates, the IAEA estimates a 2040 share of 6.7%.)

Factor in mining, transportation, carbon-costs of construction, security, waste management and decommissioning, all at the greatest cost of any source, nuclear power is only “green” at best when it is up and running at 90% or better - a figure rarely reached by most reactors.

Cost to our pocket books and to the environment is incredibly important. At a time when Saskatoon city council is trading off improved bicycle paths for fixing potholes in streets, doesn't it make sense to invest in conservation and sustainable energy sources?

Poundmaker on the way to CYM

In Cutknife, in West Central Saskatchewan, a museum and campground are laid out like an early settler town honouring homesteaders of more than a century ago. There is no mention of the historic site 17 km North of Cutknife, overlooking the Battle River. There, a deserted building and some attractive but sparse signage are connected by weedy, unkempt walkways. Here you can find the graves of Chief Poundmaker and one of the warriors who fought for their people and their land in 1885.

In March of that year, Chief Poundmaker with others approached the Fort at Battleford begging for food for their families. The buffalo had been relentlessly slaughtered, their hunting grounds privatized and parcelled out to homesteaders and their people were starving to death. Their request was refused.

Several weeks later, a group of young men raided the Fort supplies and invaded some homes of settlers – killing no one. Lt Col. Otter at Battleford gathered a militia with guns, ammunition and the early version of an machine gun, the “Gatling gun” to attack the Indians.

Chief Poundmaker's tribe was out-numbered and out-armed but they knew the land. Although the army surprised the Cree by attacking in the early morning, the soldiers were in retreat six hours later. Chief Poundmaker prevented his warriors from following the soldiers and thus a wholesale slaughter.

For defending his starving people and showing mercy, the Chief was sentenced to three years in Stony Mountain Prison. After his release, he walked to visit Chief Crowfoot in Alberta – where he died a year later at the age of 44.

Nothing about this story is fair. Nothing is just. The children of children of children of settlers now repeat a mantra of pride in the land - “our farm” through five generations, The children of children of children of the Cree are crowded onto a tract of land – beautiful, but far from enough land to sustain a community even if all could enter today's deformed notion of an economy.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is only a part of the way back for the settler and First Nation relationship. They offer a debriefing to those who suffered under the residential school system but do nothing to alter the settler sense of entitlement.

For thousands of years, people lived on this land and did not deplete its resources. While entire civilizations in Europe and Asia razed their forests, polluted the atmosphere and dirtied their rivers, the people of Turtle Island maintained stewardship and sustainability. The settlers called them “savages” but the land they claimed from them was still virgin.

The Conservative government's last onslaught on Indigenous populations has been to cut funding for housing on reserves; having never provided adequate housing for those from whom the land was stolen, the next step is privatization of the reserves.

Overlooking a vast valley of rich river bottom, Poundmaker's legacy is uncertain. The settler populations have polluted it with pesticides and herbicides, and cut down its trees. Mother Earth is being attacked, her blood and bones extracted, the excrement discharged into the atmosphere. On a continent where much was “commons” as recent as one hundred and fifty years ago, today, even our water is threatened.

A sad state of misplaced values.

The Only One I'll Ever Have

Back pain.  I cannot remember when I didn't have back pain. Maybe before an tobogganing accident at the age of 18. I was hospitalized and told that I had broken my sacrum.  I knew a lot of other people with back pain so it didn't seem to be a big deal.

I lived the life of taking over-the-counter pills and seeking distraction from pain; two aspirin sort of coped with pain when distraction didn't work.

When I was 36 years old, I was diagnosed with arthritis. Both of my knees had became hot, painful and swollen. I was told that it could be rheumatoid arthritis; all the symptoms settled on regular enteric coated aspirin and, given available treatments in 1976, I couldn't see any reason to investigate further. (Time has not confirmed the rheumatoid. My hand deformities are osteoarthritic.)

In 1988, my pills and distraction were no longer working. I was taking what I considered an inordinate amount of antiinflammatories and had progressed to using 292's (aspirin and codeine).  I was chronically grouchy because of the pain and the pills. Mainly back pain, but other “hot joints” were sometimes painful too. The pain was at the level of 3-4/10 where 10 (on my scale) is a broken bone.

A physiotherapist had recommended exercises in 1983 after the birth of my third child and I'd do them for a few weeks and decide that they “weren't working”.  I had never done focussed exercise over a length of time. A masseuse helped loosen up some of the stiff muscles and I started slowly, adding exercises from a Safeway check-out booklet called “exercises for your back”. When I sought her advice again in 1991, I could say, “I don't think that the exercises have altered my pain but I feel better.”

She examined me. Poked me in the belly and said, “what are you doing for your abdominals?” She described the layers of muscles and the exercises that built strength in each layer and left me with assortment of core strengthening exercises.

Nine months later, the second week in April 1992, I had a painfree week without pills. It was awesome.

I never stopped doing back exercises. The routine included 1 hr/day 5/7 days with back exercises and free weights plus about 12 minutes of yoga daily. When I could, I attended drop-in exercise and yoga classes. A few days are painfree, most days are tolerable at 2-3/10 and some days aspirin and naproxen came in handy. Twenty years of this routine.

November 2011, I slipped on ice and landed on my sit-bones (ischial tuberosities). My sacrum, the flat place at the bottom of the spine, propelled by gravity kept going and the SI joint ligaments were painfully injured; there was pain in my pubic symphsis (the bump just below the abdomen). I was practically bedridden.  It healed like ligamentous injuries, five days of excruciating pain, five days of severe pain and then four weeks of slow motion, massage, heat, physio, gentle exercise anti-inflammatories. Two chiropractic treatments at two months completed recovery.

Then, four months later, in Mali during a military coup, it was re-injured and the pain and disability were worse that previously. This time there was pain radiating into the thigh and across my butt muscles.  This was serious – twice laid up for weeks within the same twelve months. Time to quit being my own doctor.

When I got home, appointments were made with a mental health counsellor, physiotherapist, chiropractor, and a back specialist (xrays). In my absence, Bill had assembled a ten centimetre pile of reading material on backs from which two books spoke to my condition.

Two of the messages was consistent through all practitioners (and the written material) – 1. healing takes time and the November injury to ligaments was going to take at least a year to heal and 2.  focussed exercise was the mainstay of the healing process.

The physician. “We should look at that xray together” he said. “Oh no”, I thought, “this doesn't sound good.” What did we see? A fully compensated 60 degree scoliosis in the lower thoracic-lumbar region accompanied by “extensive severe osteoarthritis”; furthermore the bones appeared osteopenic (thinned).

I was stunned. All these years, my belief was that I was treating mechanical back pain, not structural chaos. For the next two weeks, every twinge bought the image to my inner eye. I felt old and deformed. I was depressed over the thought that “this is as good as it gets”. Visions of spontaneous vertebral fractures threatened my activities. The paraesthesias (sort of a numbness) of the lateral nerve of the right thigh (I had diagnosed it as idiopathic), the almost constant discomfort in my lateral quadriceps (I just thought that I wasn't “conditioned”) - both of these originated from the back.

Yet, there was no treatment other that what I was already doing. I was already taking calcium and vitamin D (in the winter), salmon oil and the occasional aspirin or naproxen (even with a stomach protector like omeprazol, my gut eventually hurts so they have to be stopped intermittently).

More exercises were recommended, increasing to two hours daily with more core involvement. I was drinking more than my share of alcohol (good for pain, bad for osteoporosis) – I stopped that. The chiropractor recommended glucosamine and increasing my salmon oil capsules; the physician gave me a prescription for a SI stabilizing belt for use in severe SI joint pain.

I could not get that awful xray out of my mind.  It haunted me – I woke my housemate in Ottawa screaming in a nightmare! Every twinge added to my depression. I had proven to myself time and again that going more than two days without “the routine” was never worth it – now it was two hours a day!! How was I ever going to find time to do this?

I needed an attitude change.  First, was the importance of exercise.  I realized that I had internalized the impression that my exercise routine was sort of an indulgence, like painting my toenails, when, clearly I had to think of exercises more like brushing teeth or washing armpits. Absolutely essential to my health.

Second eureka occurred in a Yin class of hot yoga (very slow stretches in a heated room).  I spontaneously envisioned my back as it was from the outside, what it could do and how well it had performed all these years in spite of its deformities. I could and would work on being thankful for the twenty years of routine – and for my advance planning.

In 1987 when we were building our house, I had the carpenter create a pair of raised garden boxes at the side of the deck so that I could garden in the event that I could no longer bend. They stand slightly higher than waist height, are arm-reach width and deep enough to hold the roots of most garden plants. Last year we began construction on a ramp for the entrance. Instead of walk-in closets, the master bedroom has a dedicated space for back exercises and yoga. My free weights are part of the living room furniture (if they are handy, they are more likely going to get used). For years, I have done exercises in public parks, stairwells in hotels and airports. Sometimes watching a video makes exercises more interesting.

In short, I have a crappy back bone but I am a lucky woman! There are many to whom even getting started is the biggest barrier.  I have cleared that hurdle by years!  

Encounter with Lenore. Rummage anyone?

Monday, April 9th.

Tomorrow, I'll have been home for a week. Healing mind, body and soul is taking longer than I expected. I planned to be back to normal today...either there's a great big NORMAL right around the bend, or I've been over-optimistic about my powers of regeneration. I had forgotten about Lenore's stuff. At the very time when we are trying to cut back on my flotsam and jetsam, we've inherited a entire other person's hoardings!

The heavy lifting was largely done by Beth and Shayna - clearing the clutter and lifting the dirt. They pioneered the sorting system that worked for us:

1. Stuff that had value: a) a known destination. Like the Keyser family Bible. b) monetary value, worth selling. Like her freezer or washer-dryer, futon, her bed, her electric chair. (offer first to family & friends). c) sentimental - check with person or persons.

2.      2.  Good rummage

3.      3.  Crap

4       4.  Stuff to Re-cycle

There is an odd scent that clings to her belongings – very unpleasant, like extremey rotten meat. Bill thought that it might have come from the freezer but that is now spick and span. The smell lingers on. Since it is particularly strong on blankets and towels, the washing machine is running steadily and the lines are filled outdoors.

We've found several lists with particular designations for her belongings. The only surprise is the dresser to Marilyn Gillis. She'd frequently told me that her blue and silver hand-thrown pottery set would become mine - lately she sounded resentful and I took special care not to look interested in them  (– yet I didn't want her to think that I disliked her offering). The carved chest from Mexico that no one was allowed to sit upon or to puts one's legs upon was Beth's. The U of T chair, Lenore was convinced, was just the thing for Bill - whether he wanted it or not!

We found a letter indicating that she intended to make us the beneficiaries in her will. We don't think that she ever got around to making the change but it was nice to know that she recognized the extra miles that we (especially Bill and Beth) did for her.

There are boxes of neatly labeled sewing supplies, enough zippers for a two dozen seamstresses, bags of quilting material – wool or cotton, triplicates of cleaning supplies – sheets, towels, pillows, kitchen tools, an extra table or three, washing/drying machine combo, microwave, file cabinets, old t-v set, CD/tape/radio stereo (small), and on and on. How about floor length cotton skirts – one size fits anyone? Scarves, gloves and toques?

Anyone need something? I'll look for it! (We'll be in both Saskatoon and Regina this week so we can offer delivery services!)

April 2 The Long Road Home

Leaving the cocoon of the hotel Tamana, I had forgotten 

- the thousands of motor cycles and scooters carrying assortments of burdens but often men in women in traditional dress

- the unmarked sand-paved streets - transporting surfaces smoothed daily by street sweepers

- the garbage strewn side-streets, burrows amongst deserted old cars, carts and tumbling down straw huts and buildings

- the line-ups of street and seething activity on and beside the road

- the half-destroyed buildings fronting the highway - as if their fronts were sacrificed for the higher good of transportation

All the reminder that Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world.

But also I had forgotten,

- traffic lights run by solar panels that are studiously obeyed

- concrete barricades both sides across the 1.6 km bridge across the Niger river bed that demarcate the motorcycle and bicycle lanes

- clean-up efforts of the rubble in the fields and the preservation of trees

- people bathing in the river and irrigated gardens along the riverside

At the one security check point close to the airport, the driver (the manager of the hotel) tells me to "put your camera away and don't take it out until you are away from Mali."  But he is also friends with one of the soldiers, makes a show of opening the trunk - my suitcase is in the back seat - and we are waved onwards.

At the airport, the first task is to enter the scrimmage of people who want something from me - money, change money for me, sell CDs, sell me something, carry my luggage.  By the time I'm next the building, I need a place to wait, settle my nerves, finish my water bottle and get my bearings.  Two long lines of heavily burdened luggage carts end at the entrance.  People pass the line-ups and are screened by security officers before entering.  The line moves very slowing.  I really wish that I could take a picture - the clothing is colourfully everything, children gussied up with braids of every variety and practically pasted to their parents clearly no place to play,  the shear numbers of people sitting, standing seemingly patiently, the constant rumble of voices.  A very few are taking their last drags before going cigarette free for their flights - in fact, very few Africans seem to smoke (in contradistinction to the Europeans and certainly not many are fat).

Does it ever feel good to have my boarding passes in hand!  By the time the plane is loaded, I will have had my luggage x-rayed three times and hand-searched twice - lost my "tweezerman" and the battery out of my little flashlight to their garbage.  They weren't picking on me, this happens to everyone.  

At 7:30 pm, 25 minutes late, the plane, an Airbus 330, was loaded.  We hear the luggage compartment open and close, open and close - the pilot goes down the aisle twice and just when he should (workshops in Risk Management aren't just for emergency room physicians and public health officials), he announces over the sound system that the baggage loading equipment is broken and that we are waiting for a tractor to tow it away!

Whew!  At almost 8:00 pm our engines are revving and we are moving, the pilot studiously following the yellow line on the tarmac as we turn onto the runway.  Suddenly from my window, I can see that all hell is breaking out on the ground.  There are ground crew with flashing lights, someone with the red flashlights swinging them into X's, a spotlight shone on the cockpit - even to my eyes, they want our pilot to stop the plane.  He does but when the bells and whistles seem to settle, revs up again.  If the ground wasn't frantic before, this is over the top!  There are people and machines moving everywhere.  A couple of trucks with flashing lights on their cabs park on the runway in front of us making clear that our plane is not going anywhere.

The coup?  A military intervention?  But no.

From my seat at the window, the left wing of our aircraft is poised to slice into the tail wing of a parked Air France plane!  The pilot announces the issue and the ground crew confers, people standing under the wings, an apparent supervisor arrives.  For the next thirty minutes, a tractor alternatively pushes and pulls our plane back and forth levering  us to the right until clearance is achieved.  What a potential disaster! Am I ever thankful to the sharp eyed ground crew!  (Also, how amazing that this doesn't happen more often on busier airports!)

In Brussels, my task becomes “Phoning Bill”. My Visa won't work in the telephones and the phones won't allow me to charge the call to my home number. OK. I'll find the business lounge and Skype him with the MacBook Air. But my “Air” won't sign on to the “Telehotspot” because it "says" it doesn't recognize the ip address!  My iPad isn't so fussy. Finally, almost two hours after arriving and after downloading the Skype app to the iPad, we're in touch!

At this point, I'm SOO looking forward to lying down on the plane – my back is holding up surprisingly, uncomfortable in either sitting or lying for any length of time but not reverting to the original injury. The Brussels – Toronto leg of the flight is delayed by an anxiety-producing two hours which means that I probably won't make the Toronto-Regina flight. The trans-Atlantic stops in Montreal where going through customs is a snap – (keep that in mind for future trips) but which also means that when we arrive in Toronto, we're on the domestic side close to connecting flights so there is still a chance. By now the crew know that I want to get home so they arrange for me to off load first.  But this adventure is not over!  The airport bridge won't attach to our plane - the pilot announces that it is broken and we are waiting for the GTA!!!

By the time every thing is moving again, the Toronto-Regina check-in was closed – but the desk staff is willing to check to see if the plane was still attached to the boarding gate!  Whew!

Made it to Regina (and Bill's arms) twenty minutes (and ten days) late!