it's like feeding cats

We have two cats, with drastically different dietary needs. Pandora is 16, lively, and consists of basically bones in a sack. Pippin is 9, sedentary, literally over three times her weight, and described by B. as "a slug with fur."

Despite her size, Pandora eats well, assuming we can find something she'll eat. Unlike many cats, who will only eat one thing all their lives, she grows bored with repeated diets. Of late we've settled down to packets of nuggets with gravy, which come in eight different flavor combos, which seems to be enough variety for her.

After lapping up the gravy (eventually she'll come back and nibble at some of the nuggets), Pandora heads across the kitchen to Pippin's food dish and eats some of his high-fiber dry food. We've always let her do that, though we've discovered in the past that if she eats only that, she loses weight drastically.

Pippin, however, though he only gets what Pandora leaves behind (he's a big wuss, and waits for her to finish before approaching the bowl), needs something more stringent. So at the vet visit yesterday (he got loose, squeezed under a cart, and could not be dislodged), we bought him a bag of prescription reducing diet.

Now, how to allocate this? We moved the high-fiber dish, which Pandora likes, to a new location, on the platform on top of a cat post that Pippin can't climb (we think), and put a dish with the reducing diet in the old location. Pandora, though previously alert to my putting out the high-fiber food, ignored these signs, until I grabbed her and plonked her on top of the post. She ate a few bites, jumped down. Then she went straight to the old spot and stuck her nose in the reducing diet dish. I picked up a strongly protesting Pandora and put her back on top of the post. Repeat. Repeat again. Then I sat down on the couch in the living room to watch events. Pippin was in his favorite resting spot, under the piano behind the couch. He might come out to eat while I'm sitting on the couch, but not if I'm about in the kitchen.

He didn't come out now, at least not immediately. Pandora went back to Pippin's dish. I think she likes the location. I really don't want her eating a reducing diet; that's the last thing she needs. I hissed at her. She ran away. Pippin still didn't emerge. I took the food dish and moved it to Pippin's favorite blanket by the piano. He ran away.

I gave up and went upstairs to write this post. Ten minutes later, I'll go back downstairs and see what's up.

If I'm not writing my urgently-due project, this is what I'm doing instead. That, and washing out the cat carrier that Pippin emitted in during his terror at going to the vet.

Libya

I've seen remarkably little comment, even in the heavier political blogs I read, about the fact that a coalition of the - well, I'm not sure exactly what auspices they're acting under, but it includes the US, the UK, and France, so it might be NATO, it might be the UN, or something else - is now bombing Libya.

Hard to avoid thinking, "Look, Gadhafi has been an international rogue madman for forty years; why spank him now?" On the other hand, I know why now. Of all the Middle Eastern dictators who've faced uprisings from their people lately, Gadhafi is the only one to take my advice and try wholeheartedly to crush it. That takes cold-blooded guts, and one of the reasons it takes that is because it might invite the rest of the world to take you out.

That makes this situation unlike the invasions of Afghanistan or Iraq, and more like that of Kosovo. I supported the intervention in Kosovo, with misgivings; I even supported the action in Afghanistan, with considerably more misgivings, mostly that I was afraid Bush would quickly forget why we were there and what our goal was, which he did, and now we're stuck in a morass; but even at the time I found the justifications offered for Iraq to be completely nonsensical.

The justification for Libya is the same as for Kosovo: a dictator has undertaken all-out war against his own people; we can't just sit by and waggle our fingers at him while he ignores us. So far, yes; but I claim no knowledge of what the most effective intervention might be. And most effective is not the same thing as strongest or most vehement. I fear the enactment of the following syllogism:

1. Something must be done.
2. This is something.
3. Therefore, we must do it.