Good Tuesday morning.
Those of you who have been here for a while know that I used to be a cat person – like hardcore.
I could not for the life of me understand how anyone would want to follow along behind a large, furry, sniffy, wiggling, and often smelly creature and pick up its poop in a bag, when one could have a nearly fully autonomous creature that would conveniently relieve itself in a box and could be left alone – provided it had adequate food and water – for a few days at a time.
Then I met Henry, and my whole worldview changed.
Henry, for those of you who haven’t been here for a while, is my first dog love. He is a mini, blonde Goldendoodle who I have described as my heart, having sprouted fur, gallivanting around outside my body.
I am routinely moved to tears – if not hysterics – at the mere suggestion that he might be injured or ailing or otherwise unhappy in the slightest manner. (I am a frequent flyer at the emergency vet, as my poor, long-suffering spouse can attest).
Just under two years ago, I met Manny (short for Mannix, which is the formal name I selected for our black double Doodle puppy that everyone hated and promptly shortened).
I did not think there was room enough in my Henry-dominated heart to love another dog. But as it turns out, I love Manny just as much – but for very different reasons. He is goofy and not terribly smart, whereas Henry is brilliant and even Machiavellian (for a dog). They are night and day, which is in keeping with their contrasting colors and sizes, and they are my whole world.
I do, from time to time, feel a little guilty about abandoning cats so fully. I mean, the very thought of emptying a litter box makes me a little queasy. And the unconditional love one receives from a dog doesn’t even compare to the aloof “I’ll tolerate you” sort of affection one tends to receive from a feline. (I say “tends to” because I do know there are some extremely lovable cats out there).
And so this post is dedicated to all the cats out there, whose affections and interest have been so unfairly and significantly usurped in my heart and mind by dogs – which is also the case with the majority of U.S. pet owners, as it turns out.
This day, according to the interwebs, was created just last year (2022) by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, which, according to its website, is a “a global non-profit helping animals and people thrive together.” It works in more than 40 countries around the world to rescue, rehabilitate, and release animals, and restore and protect their natural habitats.
The day was then taken over by the British-based group International Cat Care, which was established in 1958 to “do something about the dismal lack of information about cat health and welfare.” (It appears cats in the U.K. really are in need of champions, as they had a terrifying brush with mass eradication in the early days of the pandemic).
Even given my dog bias, I have to admit that cats are – generally speaking – easier to have as pets than dogs. They don’t really require extensive training, unless they have significant behavior issues, and are fairly independent. They’re also amazing hunters, which can cut both ways – to be sure, it’s healthier for your cat AND for small birds and mammals to keep your felines indoors.
Even so, some people who were in need of feline companionship during the Covid crisis are now finding their furry friends too much of a burden and are turning them over to shelters in record numbers, creating a mounting crisis. (This goes for dogs, too, sadly).
According to an estimate from the Ecology Global Network, there are somewhere between 600 million and 1 billion cats in the world, which seems like a pretty big range and a lot of room for error. That includes pets, strays, and feral cats on every continent except Antarctica. (The number of dogs: 900 million and rising, 470 million of which – give or take – are pets).
Cats and humans began their longstanding relationship centuries ago, but it wasn’t until fairly recently – about 70 years ago or so – that felines started living inside human homes. Love ’em or hate ’em, cats certainly have staying power. You could even say they have nine lives….or something.
At least two people died yesterday as a slew of storms swept through the eastern U.S., disrupting thousands of flights, knocking out power to more than 1.1 million, and sparking tornado watches or warnings from Tennessee to New York.
It will be cloudy (again) with occasional rain showers (again) and temperatures in the mid-to-high 70s.
In the headlines…
President Biden set out on a Western swing aimed at showcasing his work on conservation, clean energy and veterans’ benefits as he seeks to draw an implicit contrast between his administration’s accomplishments and former President Trump’s legal troubles.
Biden extended the Houston Astros a champions’ welcome yesterday, with the team’s trip from the baseball diamond to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to celebrate its 2022 World Series victory.
At 73, Dusty Baker became the oldest manager ever to win the World Series when the Houston Astros took the title last year. Yesterday, at a White House celebration for the team, Biden said he could relate.
“Dusty, it wasn’t easy. People counted you out, saying you were past your prime. Hell, I know something about that,” Biden said, drawing laughs from the crowd at the White House East Room gathered for the celebration ceremony.
Biden will announce a new national monument to preserve land around Grand Canyon National Park and limit it from mining, White House officials said.
Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed during a press gaggle aboard Air Force One that Biden will call for the designation during his visit to northern Arizona today, making it his fifth national monument.
Biden is visiting the Beehive State (Utah) this week to wrap up a three-day trip to the Southwest, after stops in Arizona and New Mexico. The White House announced new details of the presidential itinerary over the weekend.
The Supreme Court might have decided the fate of Biden’s first attempt at broad student-debt relief, but that doesn’t mean the lawsuits are over.
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida clearly stated in a new interview that Trump lost the 2020 election, diverging from the orthodoxy of most Republican voters, as the former president’s struggling G.O.P. rivals test out new lines of attack against him.
DeSantis said: “Whoever puts their hand on the Bible on 20 January every four years is the winner.”
DeSantis suggested that Trump’s legal woes may hinder Republicans’ chances in the next presidential election, saying the party will lose the general race if it becomes a “referendum” on Jan. 6, 2021 and classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump’s lawyers asked a judge to narrow the protective order federal prosecutors proposed last week to prohibit the former president from publicly disclosing certain evidence gathered in the special counsel’s 2020 election probe.
The filing argues for narrower limits on the protective order, which Trump’s attorneys say would protect sensitive materials while ensuring Trump’s right to free speech.
Security for the federal judge assigned to oversee the criminal case against Trump over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election has been increased in the federal courthouse in Washington, DC.
Trump’s expanding web of legal troubles is becoming ever more intertwined. Actions he takes in one case are coming back to haunt him in others. Potential trial schedules are starting to conflict.
Trump suffered another legal reversal yesterday, losing his counterclaim for defamation against E Jean Carroll, the writer against whom he was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation and fined, and who continues to pursue a separate defamation case.
A federal judge in New York dismissed Trump’s countersuit against Carroll, who won a $5 million verdict against the former president for battery and defamation this year.
There’s a clear culprit behind the shock ouster of the United States from the ongoing Women’s World Cup, at least in Trump’s mind: Joe Biden.
“Many of our players were openly hostile to America — No other country behaved in such a manner, or even close,” Trump wrote on his social media platform. “WOKE EQUALS FAILURE. Nice shot Megan, the USA is going to Hell!!! MAGA.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence yesterday crossed the threshold of 40,000 unique donors required to take part in the first Republican presidential primary debate, his campaign said.
Gov. Kathy Hochul has gotten significant flak for how the state has responded to the migrant crisis in New York City. But the state Legislature has taken a back seat to the governor, and it doesn’t appear lawmakers are planning a return to Albany to find solutions.
Hochul says she’s planning to convene a gathering of AI experts to help take the steps in utilizing and controlling artificial intelligence in New York State.
After 16 years of planning and construction, the ribbon was finally cut on a “transit-oriented development” in suburban Westchester.
Hochul announced that passenger rail service west of Albany has resumed following train derailment in Montgomery County.
State lawmakers are considering a pair of bills that would name the flesh-rotting animal sedative known as “tranq” a controlled substance in New York — even though similar efforts failed in the Legislature several years ago.
New York’s next major offshore wind projects will have to wait a little longer after the state’s Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) said it would allow developers to change their bids — but only if it’s cheaper than their initial proposal.
For nearly two years, Madeline Cuomo quietly worked with grass-roots activists to help smear her brother’s accusers. He was “seeing everything,” she told his defenders.
Madeline Cuomo, 58, repeatedly messaged a group of her brother’s supporters — most of them elderly women — and pushed them to promote “bimbo photos” of the “unsophisticated girls” who leveled harassment claims against her brother.
A judge has ordered New York regulators not to award any more cannabis licenses pending a decision on a lawsuit alleging officials favored convicted drug felons over disabled veterans to sell legal marijuana. A hearing on the case will be held Friday.
The man accused of attacking former Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin at a campaign event last year has been released from his court-ordered live-in treatment programs.
Mayor Eric Adams dubbed 2022 his “rookie year” after a bumpy first 12 months in office. He promised 2023 would be his “Aaron Judge year.” But Adams — not unlike the Yankees captain sidelined by a toe injury in June and July — has struggled all summer.
Adams announced that Randall’s Island in New York City will be the new spot to house the more than 57,000 illegal migrants living in the city that never sleeps.
The state will reimburse the city for the cost of operating a tent city for adult migrants on the island in the East River off the coast of Manhattan, where a migrant center was set up last year and then taken down weeks later, Adams said.
The city last built a shelter for migrants on the island in October — spending at least $625,000 — only to shut it down within a matter of weeks because of reported lack of use, given its relatively isolated location.
“We need more of the same from all levels of government,” Adams said. “We will continue to work with the governor and elected officials across the state to address this crisis as New York City continues to do more than any other level of government.”
Some residents of trendy Williamsburg are crying foul over the dozens of migrants being sheltered in the recreation center at its popular McCarren Park — claiming the city’s asylum crisis has left “chaos emerging everywhere.”
Leaders in the Town of Massena threw cold water on a Long Island castle-owning proprietor’s plan to convert his financially struggling hotel in the heart of their downtown into a migrant shelter.
Big Apple officials are bracing for “thousands and thousands” more migrants to soon arrive in what’s being described as one of the most challenging waves yet — because it will include a massive amount of kids, City Hall sources said.
The former head of Mayor de Blasio’s NYPD security detail has reportedly put in his retirement papers amid an investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.
Police Commissioner Edward Caban named 19-year NYPD veteran Tarik Sheppard as deputy commissioner of public information.
The city teachers union is directing a chapter of school therapists that rejected a tentative agreement with the city to take a revote — a move seen by some members as anti-democratic and that has prompted the resignation of a key union leader.
Staffing in New York City jails has dropped by about 25% from two years ago — and the correction officers’ union warned the embattled lockups will continue to struggle without a “robust workforce.”
Former city Comptroller Scott Stringer is planning to appeal a Manhattan Supreme Court justice’s dismissal of the defamation suit he filed against Jean Kim, the woman who accused him of sexual misconduct during his 2021 bid to become mayor.
The Traffic Mobility Review Board, whose recommendations will guide the MTA in setting the costs associated with congestion pricing, is scheduled to hold its second meeting at MTA headquarters in Manhattan at 3 p.m. on Aug. 17.
A lawsuit that Gov. Philip Murphy of New Jersey has filed against New York’s congestion pricing plan has reignited a border war and led to charges of hypocrisy.
The MTA has shelled out around $5 million in the past year for workers to patrol a Brooklyn bus depot on the lookout for open flames — because its sprinkler system isn’t working.
After months of delays, the city has finally launched a crackdown on overweight trucks that drive on a crumbling stretch of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
The killing of the dancer and choreographer O’Shae Sibley at a Brooklyn gas station is a stark reminder that some forms of expression are still seen as threatening.
If New York City officials feel any urgency about fixing the persistent problems at the Rikers Island jail complex, they are not showing it, according to a report filed yesterday by the federal official appointed to monitor the lockup.
A former senior F.B.I. official is in talks to resolve criminal charges in two separate indictments, including entering a possible guilty plea as early as next week in a case involving accusations that he worked for a Russian oligarch.
A rising New York City doctor was charged with drugging and sexually assaulting numerous women — including a patient — then filming their unconscious bodies as he violated them.
A woman was rushed to the hospital after what authorities said may have been a shark attack in the waters off of Rockaway Beach.
The Broadway revival of “Funny Girl” starring Lea Michele is now officially a hit: It has recouped its capitalization costs, completing a remarkable box office turnaround of the sort rarely seen in the commercial theater.
Shortly before 8 a.m. yesterday, police responded to yet another truck hitting the railroad overpass at Glenridge Road, forcing the closure of the thoroughfare for about two hours.
Albany Common Council President Corey Ellis is calling for the creation of a new program meant to integrate community health organizations and others into the city’s response to crime.
Dan Herzog, 82, a conservative Episcopal bishop of Albany, who left the church to join two others after the Episcopalians ordained a gay man, has died.
The group of apparent Proud Boys who gathered in downtown Saratoga Springs over the weekend stopped in at least two other Saratoga County municipalities Saturday, in what some residents described as an intimidating scene.
The Capital District YMCA is hiring 175 people to fill vacancies across four Capital Region counties.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation is alerting residents to an invasive pest species that is new on the scene in New York: the elm zigzag sawfly.
Albany’s Whitney M. Young Jr. Health Center will soon break ground on a pair of multi-million dollar capital projects that include a major upgrade to its headquarters and a renovation of its addiction treatment facility a few blocks away.
Union College’s nickname has changed, but the trophy awarded for its annual football game against rival RPI will stay the same, according to a Union spokesman.
Faced with habitat loss, pesticide, climate change and light pollution, one in three assessed North American fireflies may be at risk of extinction, according to invertebrate conservation group the Xerces Society.
Here’s one more thing to worry about: Binghamton’s iconic sandwich, the Spiedie, is in crisis.
