The Cat's Meow

   dw spent most of last week enjoying some R and R visiting friends in Mountain View CA. (MV is a town south of San Francisco, north of San Jose). Kate and John G. have a house here in Portland and a condo in MV, where they spend half the year and where John is an anatomy professor of some distinction. (Here in Portland, among friends, he's just another old git)
    Before she left, dw called the G's and asked if there was anything they'd like her to bring down. Nothing was really needed, but dw did say she would stop at Zupan's (an upscale grocery store) and buy some particular French ham which isn't available in MV, and which Beaner sorely missed. (dw likes Beaner, and the French ham is the only ham Beaner will eat) "Beaner" (aka Victoria) isn't John's nickname as one might think -- given the special need for French ham -- Beaner is their cat. At this point you might think Beaner has a gold lined silver food bowl with matching charger, a bed lined with de-allergized dog fur (Take THAT Fifi -- I snooze on your grave!!) and a crystal water bowl filled with Evian water. But not so. In all other respects Beaner is a pleasant ordinary cat and treated as such. I don't know how Victoria came to merit such a special snack food, but there you are. I also don't know how Victoria came to be called Beaner, especially since it's Beaner and not Biner -- short for carabiner -- as John is a mountain/rock climber of 60 years standing. Another of life's mysteries. 

   The name "Beaner" reminds me of a cat my Uncle Percy owned some 60 years ago. Another seemingly ordinary cat (certainly amouldering in it's grave at this point) but in that case named "Stringbean". Stringbean got it's name for the cat's inordinate fondness for canned string beans -- fond to the point that string beans were about all Stringbean would eat -- the world's first and only vegan house cat. I was a child and didn't know Stringbean very well but I imagine, like all other cats, Stringbean loved hunting and pouncing -- so one can picture Stringbean catching a mouse, crunching it's tiny mouse skull, and then spending the next five minutes thinking: "Ooo, nasty -- mouse brains all over my mouth -- (spit, spit, spit) -- ooo, nasty -- (spit, spit)" -- sigh -- "Now I suppose I need to carry the nasty thing into the house and put it in the giant's shoe" -- sigh --

  If there's a moral to be drawn from this, I haven't thought of it, so if you want one you'll have to make it up yourself. 

Books:  "The Curse of the Labrador Duck" (Glen Chilton). Chilton is an ornithologist who developed an obsession with the Labrador duck -- extinct for 150 years -- and spent 10 years or so traveling around looking at and measuring all of the extant stuffed Labrador ducks. Another amusing science lite book, only in this case it's really lite since (according to Chilton) almost nothing is known about the Labrador duck. While I haven't traveled to see any of the stuffed ducks, having read this book I fancy I'm something of a world authority on the Labrador duck. Almost nothing is known, and I know almost nothing: Q.E.D. In a notable passage the author writes that one of the last of the ducks was shot by a Simon F. Cheney. I don't know if Simon is an ancestor of Dick, but people named Cheney seem to have a predilection for indiscriminate blasting away with a shotgun.  DA