How very intelligent!

Just because you are a paranoid, said the philosopher, don’t think that they are not after you. Just because you can kill them with one swift swish of the swatter, don’t insects are not intelligent, says the scientist. Historians also say something, but I forgot what; anyway, let’s concentrate on the scientist. It began, for me, when I read a book called, Do Plants Have Feelings? Intrigued, I asked a rose bush nearby if I was sitting too close, and the plant said. "Yes, but I don’t mind." Having solved the plant feeling problem, I then moved on to the insect intelligence one.

It wasn’t easy initially to work out whether they were clever, or dumb or just pretending to be dumb, which is quite clever. The mosquito has a poor IQ, as we all know, the butterfly is rather more clever because it refuses to deal with human beings except those who carry nets it can’t get out of it. The lizard is the cleverest of all, because it has fooled scientists into believing it is no insect at all.
Some years ago, we had a bee hive near our house, and, in fact, we kept a bee as a family pet, feeding it at dinner time, and singing old Irish songs slightly off-key when it showed signs of coming down with clinical depression. Sometimes it was so sick, its buzz had only a single "z", and it would lie flat on its back, waiting for someone to tickle its stomach. Or, was that our dog? It was long ago and I am confused. Anyway, our dog refused to give us honey, and the bee refused to scare away thieves; that much I remember.

I was preparing for my exams when the event occurred, which proved (to me) once and for all that insects are, indeed, intelligent; if I had continued with my education I might have discovered that they have a high emotional quotient and a delightful line in Pat and Mikes jokes. But I digress. After a night of hard work I was so tired that I stretched out and, in doing so, knocked my papers to the floor. Gosh! If only our pet would pick them up, I said, with a telling glance at our bee, not thinking for a moment that it would do anything to help.

Next morning, I was pleasantly surprised to see the bee fast asleep, obviously tired out of the night’s exertions. My papers lay exactly where I had dropped them. Clearly this insect was too clever to waste its time putting my papers in order. I was overly impressed.

Ever since, I have had a healthy respect for the intelligence of insects.

Tom love

I was watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon with a young cousin recently when I realized, I was on Tom’s side – I wanted the cat to come out on top in every situation and swallow the mouse before the popcorn got over. Perhaps I have finally attained the maturity my parents and close friends thought I never would. Or, perhaps, I was rooting for the underlog, or in this case, the undercat. It is also possible that I am heartily sick of my resident mouse which eludes capture and lives off my collection of rare cheese, books, clothes … sigh!

My cousin hasn’t spoken to me since, and refuses to talk to me till I transfer my affection to Jerry again. I called up a few friends and discovered that nearly all of them are now Tom-friendly and Jerry-haters. How did this happen? How did a whole generation that thrilled to the adventures of a mouse suddenly switch sides? I think the answer has something to do with turning 25? There is nothing more tacky than a 25-year old mouse supporter who thinks its cute for a cat to get its head knocked off while chasing a rodent around the house, which the rodent might – if left unchecked – reduce to a shambles. One of the Tom-lovers told me that if you have a Papa mouse and a Mamma mouse in your house on January 1 of any year, by December 31 of the same year, you would have around 800 mice. They multiply faster than a computer.

In London (don’t stop me if you have heard of this one before, but you are never more than ten feet from a rat in that city), the friendly neighborhood shops are full of simple gadgets that use glue and get a passing mouse or two stuck in their folds. I saw many people pick up these gizmos and laugh their heads off because these said that once a mouse is trapped, it must be disposed off in a "humane" way. Humane? How? Sing songs while drowning them?

As far as I am concerned – and my thoughts are echoed by my hastily-surveyed friends – the only good mouse is a dead mouse or one that helps the cursor on your computer move. But how do you explain that to a young cousin? He thinks there is nothing more touching than a mouse that somehow manages to find its way into a cake baked for the family, for instance, or one that peeps out from behind a bookcase.

No wonder they say television is ruining the young generation. And our young cousins.

End of the line

This article might be monitored to ensure quality assurance. If you are using your left eye to read this, press 1. Else, press 2. If you are reading with your eyes closed, please hold so we can connect you with a customer service operator.
 
If you wish to read this article in English, press 1. Spanish, press 2, Italian, 3. Latin, you are out of luck.

If you would like to purchase this article, press 1. If not, what good are you? I mean, press 2. If you would like to speak to the person who wrote this article, jump up and down three times and press 1. If you would like the author of this article to press your clothes, press 2; scrub your bathtub, press 3; scratch your back, press 4. Thank you for waiting, your call is very important to us.

If you are having problems with your home life, press 1. If you are contemplating hurting yourself or others, please press 4 and wait for the next available operator. Please do not hang up as someone will be here shortly. Press 4 to see how many calls are in front of you and for an estimate of your wait time. Sorry that box is full. As you have reached our office at a particularly busy time, please try again later, when we have fewer callers. Or please leave a message and your call will be returned in the next 7 to 10 business days. Thank you for waiting, your call is very important to us.

To read this article, please enter your 27 digit express service code that can be found on the inside lid of your washing machine. Enter your address including zip code. For the letters in your address, please press the letters on the touch tone pad. Then please enter your passport number along with the balance of your checking and savings accounts.

When you have finished entering your account numbers, please enter your mother’s maiden name, then your dog’s name, including middle name. Thank you for waiting, your call is very important to us.

" Hello customer service."
"I am calling about this article I am reading. I have a complaint to make"
"Is this a home based complaint or a corporate based complaint?"
"Home based"
"I am sorry. You have reached our corporate complaint department. Please hang up and call ***SOMEONEWHOCARES" Thank you for calling, your call is very important to us.

Judging cats

For most of my life, the two most frightening words in the English language have always been "cat show", summoning images of a stuffy arena filled with primped and powdered cats parading in front of a torpid audience that is clapping politely so as to not fall asleep.

So I was more than a little surprised recently to receive an email inviting me to be a judge at a cat show.

Huh! Me? I could imagine all those cat people standing around waiting for Sonia Gandhi or some other famous person to be judging their cats, and then I walk in.

I emailed back something to the effect of "Oh, you don’t really want me. I am not much of a cat person, must regretfully decline, blah blah blah …"

And they emailed back: Look we know you don’t like cats (ughh … how did they know that? Must have seen me sometimes throwing small stones at the neighbor’s cat), but come anyway. "Just think of the new experience and ideas you can get from this one", they said. Basically everyone refused, so poor me!
 
So that’s how I recently ended up as a cat judge.

A very nice woman named Rachel Fernandes – "like the crime family", she said cheerfully – was the cat show manager. She explained that I would be judging 44 cats and selecting 10 finalists in the "household pets" category. This means, they were not fancy show cats, but a mix of purebred cats, mixed breeds, whatever.

At this point I felt compelled to point out what seemed to be a major flaw in my resume as a cat judge. I knew nothing about cats, their breeds and had no idea what to judge them on.

"Its totally subjective," she said. "It’s just whether you like the looks of the cats"
Rachel also explained that she would be taking the cats out of their cages and bring them up to the viewing stand for me. "We don’t want you to get hurt," she said.

"Umm hurt?"

"You know," Rachel continued, "scratched or bitten." This, ofcourse confirmed my worst fear on cats, which is that, you never really know what they are thinking.

You can look at a cat sitting on a couch, looking fairly content and you think he is thinking, yep, life is beautiful. But what he is actually thinking maybe, pal, I am going to lunge at your and scratch your fat little eyes out. Just for something to do.

Quite a spooky thought!

Shorting after this the judging began. Rachel would bring each cat up and two of us would study the cat, with me pretending to know what I was looking for.
She told me that if I want to pet any of the cats, I had to wash my hands with disinfectant each time, since petting could spread a cold or a virus from one cat to another.

Naturally I had absolutely no desire to pet any of the cats.

After 75 minutes or so, with the help of Rachel and Tony, a very nice man who was helping me and who has judged cat shows for 10 years (and perhaps bored and hence passing the buck to young, poor me), we were down to 10 cats.

Then we studied the 10 finalists again and ranked them in reverse order. When we announced the winner, an orange and white tabby, there were squeals and shrieks of joy from four or five people in the audience, who turned out to be the cat’s owner – a girl named Sonya – her mom and sisters.

I wanted to talk to Sonya and see how this momentous event might change her life, and her cat’s too, but she quickly disappeared into the crowd.

So, instead I spent the next few minutes signing the ribbons of the other finalists, which is a cat show tradition.

I should have signed them: Ms. Sonia Gandhi

How important I feel today!

Cool is as cool does

The hot news in my house is that, I am cool. Being cool means, I do not react with a "WHAT" or a "SHUCKS" or a "Oh My God" to my parent’s problems.
Right now, the biggest problem they are facing is their concern of getting arrested for breaking into a room in their own home! The concern has been weighing in their minds since I have put a lock on my bedroom door and I am pretty cool about it.

My parents find me to be a wonderful young woman: smart, funny, loving, enterprising, talented and beautiful, perhaps the only drawback in my character being that I am overly cool about everything.

I have been telling them (rather threatening them) since I was approximately nine years old to move out as soon as I reach adulthood. Now, I am 24, out of college and working. So, guess where I am living?

Not that they mind. They love having me home. Though they complain that they seldom see me, only the sound of my voice in a telephone conversation with my friends, roughly at around 2 AM assures them I am fine.

They wish they could say the same about my room.

Last summer my room, as they claim, was a "disaster area". It was so bad that they felt like calling both the Governor’s and the President’s office to see as if they could have it officially declared as a disaster area, so they would be eligible for state or federal funds to clean the place up.

Sounds pathetic? Well, I was pretty cool about it. Nothing to get so hyped about.
They changed the carpet of my room, because the old one was covered with some bits of stains from spilled make-up, soda, food … nothing alarming, but folks felt, it looked like a herd of goats had being living in there.

So when my mom recently saw a bunch of beauty and hair care products scattered over the brand new carpet, she waited until I had gone to work, and she picked them up and put them in my bathroom. I was cool about her intrusion to my room in my absence, but having majored in Political Science and Economics, and learning about the constitutional rights to privacy, I responded coolly, by putting a lock on the door. Why not?

Folks were concerned if I could have them arrested for breaking and entering. To find out, they called up their prominent attorney friend with a brilliant legal mind still intact, even though he has three daughters. He suggested that mom enters my room, and gets arrested cause its easier for daddy to bail her our, rather than bailing himself out. How brilliant!

A cop friend of theirs suggested that they would be within their rights if they removed the lock, since I do not pay rent and thus they have squatter’s rights of the house. Even more brilliant!

Even though they are aware of their rights, I just came to know that my dad has decided to plead insanity to avoid charges of breaking into his daughter’s room, if I press charges against him.

I am, as usual, cool.