Do you enjoy watching your dog or cat figure out things?

I love to see their thought processes in action. Recently, my 7 year old cat, Ember, tried to figure out the difference between a movie scene and the real world.

Like most cats, she looks out the window. She perks up in spring, when snow melts, more people are walking outdoors, and it's warm enough for me to open the window a crack for fresh air. More birds in the air, too.

When it snows, she bats the snowflakes at the window as if trying to chase winter away.

So the other night I was watching Day After Tomorrow. Ember came into the room at the opening scene, which shows 3 scientists in Antarctica, dressed in heavy winter clothing, standing on a field of ice and snow as far as the eye can see. She got alert, like doing a double take. She glanced at the window, looked at me, and back at the TV screen. Went to the windowsill to look outside, then looked back at the TV screen like WTF? No snow outside. Then she came back to the couch next to me, eyes glued to the Antarctic scene.

When the scene changed, she relaxed and wandered away.

She also reacts to helicopters in movies. I live a few blocks from a hospital in a small city. Their medical helicopter that transports people to Buffalo hospitals flies by her favorite window. When she sees a helicopter on TV, she checks the window.

I suspect that she thinks the TV is another type of window to the outside world.

Effective ways to tarnish the orange mobster in his campaign.

Feel free to come up with your own ideas, but while watching the mobster's interview with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press, a few ideas occurred to me on how Dems can define him in the campaign.

First rule is to use ridicule. He will turn any serious attempt at criticism around to make himself look good, so don't bother trying that. He is very good at twisting things because he has had a lifetime of experience. He never accepts facts and always creates a fantasy "reality" out of them.

So, don't engage him or his followers in serious discussions of facts. Make fun of him instead. Authoritarian blowhards always have overblown egos and take themselves too seriously. So ridicule him.

1. Rambling. He uses off topic rambling to avoid answering questions and to insert his own fantasy world into interviews and at rallies to his followers. So instead of serious criticism of him for that, just ridicule him as a doddering old fool who can't remember the topic or stay on track. Hammer him with it so that it sticks and defines him.

2. He keeps disparaging the cabinet members and former advisors that he fired. So paint him as someone with very poor judgment who is not competent enough to hire good people. Point out that other administrations did not have nearly as high of a turnover, so it has to be his own incompetence.

3. Each time he and his followers whine about being mistreated and the election and courts being rigged, just sigh and say, "It's always something, isn't it?" An eye roll goes well with that comment. Or, "There are meds for paranoia. You should get some."

4. When his followers tell you how great he is, just laugh and remind them that, in a July 4 public speech, he praised the Revolutionary War Army for protecting the airports. Also a good come back to anyone who criticizes Biden for stuttering or a gaff when speaking.

5. Akin to #4. When a MAGA says how great Trump is, remind them that he said at a rally that Biden would get us into WWII and at the same rally, Trump said that he won against Obama, whom he never ran against.

Add your own ridicule. The idea is to defineTrump with mocking ridicule as an incompetent fool that has no business trying to run the country when he does not know who his past opponents were, or that airplanes did not exist in 1776.

My healthcare provider on latest covid booster

I called my primary care office about availability for the latest covid shot. The woman that I spoke with said that they will have it sometime next week. My insurance is Medicare and United Healthcare. She said there is no charge, no copay. Totally covered.

They will call me for an appointment when they get the vaccine. It will be Moderna, the one that they (and I) prefer.

OMG. Just had weird conversation with anti vaxxer.

There's a clerk at a nearby convenience store that I sometimes chat with when she's not busy. Seems nice and average intelligence.

I just came home from the store. The subject of the latest vaccine came up. She said no way was she getting it and had never had any of the covid shots. I asked how many times she had covid and she said only once, and it was a mild case. Then she said that it probably was only the flu and not covid, so I asked if she tested for it. She said yes, she did the home test, so the positive result didn't really mean that she had covid because her doctor told her that the covid home test detects any virus.

I said that the covid test is designed specifically for covid in order to rule out other viruses like the flu, but she insisted that her doctor told her that covid tests do not distinguish between covid and any other virus. I said I'd get a second opinion from another doctor.

Then she said that the covid vaccines are not safe because you don't know what "they" put in the vaccines. She understood so little about DNA and RNA that I decided it was not worth trying to explain it to her. So I just said that, from my high school and college biology courses, I trust the vaccines and feel safe with them.

Then she said, "But what about the microchips that 'they' put into the vaccines? 'They' can track you wherever you go and everything you do." It was so off the wall and unexpected that I burst out laughing. She looked a bit sheepish so I said that I thought she was smarter than to believe something like that. I also said that I'd heard of people who believed that microchip nonsense but she was the first person that I'd actually heard say that face to face.

She got another customer then so the conversation ended. So much for me thinking that she had average intelligence.

Can't blame US schools for her lack of knowledge and critical reasoning. She was born in Canada and grew up there. Her father is American so she has dual citizenship but went to school in Ontario.

From Wikipedia, a timeline of events on 9/11

Dog and cat friendships

(Personally, I'd keep that puppy away from the tiger. No such thing as a tame wild cat.)

Covid variants and increase in cases

The new variants and increase in covid cases in the US and abroad are not surprising.

I'm thinking that the newer variants and their spread are likely a result of China dropping all of its covid restrictions in December, 2022.

After the initial covid infections in 2019 in China, the Chinese government imposed draconian control methods in a "zero covid policy." They forced isolation of infected people in groups at special housing for them. Consequently, a large part of the population was not exposed to covid. In addition, China refused the RNA vaccines and created their own, which is not as effective.

As protests against the isolation methods grew, China abruptly dropped all requirements for mandatory isolation and other restrictions. By January of this year, covid cases in China soared, causing deaths and hospitalizations like the rest of the world had in 2020.

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/no-more-lockdowns-chinas-new-covid-landscape#:~:text=After%20three%20years%20of%20implementing,to%20address%20the%20current%20surge.

With all those newly infected people and business interactions and travel into and out of China, new variations and a rise in infections outside of China were inevitable.

It will probably not get as bad as 2020 here in the US. Vaccines and previous infections have decreased the susceptibility for most people here.

But those of us who are seniors and everyone who has an underlying health condition will need to be extra cautious, as if it were 2020 again.

Cat logic video

This is part of an ad for Rachel Ray Nutrish, which I know nothing about. I am posting it for the cat behavior, not for the food.

Cats knocking things over

This might have been posted before, but here it is for anyone who missed it or whose cat loves doing this. Note how they either look down as if investigating the results of an experiment, or look at their human in proud defiance.

Cats doing the crab walk - compilation