Cats and Post Office Random Tuesday

And now, a bit of random discussion of topics or bits of news from around here, linking up with Stacy's Random Thoughts at Stacy Uncorked.  

Last Wednesday, on a Wordless Wednesday post about a neighbor's cat, Stephen Hayes asked a question about cats and how long they can live.  

The average feral cat, meaning a cat living on its own on the streets, lives about 2 years.  If it is part of a managed feral colony, it will be trapped, spayed/neutered and given a rabies shot, and some food provided to it, and it might live closer to five years.  Feral cats have it tough.

A well cared for house cat can live, on average, 12-16 years, and over 20 is not unheard of, especially if it is given high quality food and taken to the vet at least yearly.

Butch, the neighbor's cat, has been an indoor-outdoor cat his whole life.  He wears a collar, looks both ways before crossing streets, never gets in fights with other cats, and is a pure Siamese, a breed known for longevity.  He has lost some weight in the last year or so, but he still loves to make his daily rounds.  It's the exercise and the fact that he is fed good food and taken to the vet regularly that has kept him healthy and happy for so long.

Our cats, on the other hand, are mostly overweight.  We've had cats live to be in their late teens, but they were not nearly so healthy looking as Butch.

One reason our cats stay overweight is the cat food wars, which are raging right now.  When we have foster kittens, they need kitten food.  Our adult cats do not need the high fat/high calorie food kittens get, but you cannot convince them, and you cannot spend all day every day monitoring who is eating what.  The kittens will go to the shelter to be put up for adoption tomorrow, so there will be no more kitten food in the house, and peace will prevail as our adult cats have no choice but to return to their boring diet food.

No, i don't feel sorry for them, not one bit.

Our cats also only go outside under strict supervision, if at all.  Most of them were raised indoors and are not street smart enough to do what Butch does.  This limits their exercise, of course.

On a totally different topic, a friend of mine recently pointed out that the United States Postal Service will, if you sign up for it and prove you are who you say you are, send you a daily email showing you pictures of what mail you can expect to be in your box that day.  Because we sometimes don't get our mail until after 7pm, and we've had mail stolen from our box before, i decided to do this.  It eliminates the, "are we going to get anything today" game, as well as the "did we just not get mail today, or did someone take it" game.

First i had to register for an online account with the USPS.  Yes, i already had one, no i could not remember which email account it went to.  So i started a new one and signed up for Informed Delivery, as it is called.

At that point, you can try to prove your identity and right to have this information online, but i wish you much better luck than i had.  Instead, i had to choose to let them send me an email with a bar code, which i then had to take to a post office to have scanned, and show my ID.  The nice lady at the post office had no clue what i was talking about, she had to go in the back and get another worker, who showed her how to do it.

Since then, if we are getting any letters (they don't do it with circulars and large junk mail), i get a picture of them in an email by about 10am.  It's good to know what is supposed to show up, so that if it does not, we know it.  Much better than the old system whereby the USPS expected you to know and report if you didn't get mail, how they expected you to know what you didn't get i have yet to understand.

That's okay, i have yet to understand how it can take until after 7pm to get the mail to our house, too.

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

Today is:

Armed Forces Day -- Poland

Asuncion Foundation Day -- Paraguay

Assumption of Blessed Virgin Mary -- Catholic Christian Holy Day of Obligation

     Related Observances

          Coeur d'Alene Indian Pilgrimage -- Coeur d'Alene's Old Mission State Park, Cataldo, ID, US

          Dormition of the Theotokos -- Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Eastern Catholic Christian

          Ferragosto -- Italy (During the Roman Empire, a festival to Diana and a fertility and ripening celebration)

          Mother's Day -- Antwerp; Costa Rica

          National Acadians Day -- Acadians

          Virgin of Candelaria, patron of the Canary Islands -- Tenrife, Spain

          Irmandade da Nossa Senhora da Boa Morte Fiesta -- Bahia, Brazil (Festival of the Order of Our Lady of the Good Death)

          Festival of the Outremeuse -- Liege, Belgium

          Public Holiday or Publicly Observed -- Andorra; Austria; Belgium; Benin; Bosnia; Burkina Faso; Burundi; Cameroon; Cape Verde; Central African Republic; Chile; Colombia; Côte d'Ivoire; Croatia; Cyprus; East Timor; France; French Guiana; French Polynesia; Gabon; Gambia; Germany; Greece; Guadelupe; Guatemala; Guinea; Holy See; Hungary; Italy; Lebanon; Liechtenstein; Lithuania; Luxembourg; Macedonia; Madagascar; Malta; Martinique; Mauritius; Mayotte; Monaco; New Caledonia; Paraguay; Poland; Portugal; Reunion; Romania; Rwanda; Saint Barthelemy; Saint Martin; Saint Pierre et Miquelon; San Marino; Senegal; Seychelles; Slovenia; Spain; Switzerland; Togo; Vanuatu; Wallis and Fortuna     

Best Friend's Day -- sponsored by Thema Martin

Bon/Obon Festival -- Japan (biggest day of the festival in most parts of Japan)

Carnival Tuesday -- Granada

Chauvin Day -- observed on Napoleon's birthday because his is unknown, the day is named for Nicholas Chauvin, whose blind devotion to Napoleon was immortalized in his name's use for absurdly intense attachments to any cause

Check the Chip Day -- the American Veterinary Medical Association reminds you to check your pet's microchip and make sure it is still working correctly and that the registration information is up to date 

Defence Forces Day -- Zimbabwe

Dia de la Ley Fundamental -- Equatorial Guinea (Constitution Day)

Eleusinian Mysteries -- Ancient Greek Calendar (through the 18th, dates approximate)

Festival of Vesta -- Ancient Roman Calendar (goddess of the hearth)

Fete Nationale -- Republic of the Congo (National Day/Independence Day)

Fool's Dance -- Japan (part of the Awa Dance Festival)

Independence Day -- India(1947)

Liberation Day -- both Koreas

     Gwangbokjeol -- South Korea

     Jogukhaebangui nal -- North Korea

Maras Diena -- Ancient Latvian Calendar (celebration of the goddess Mara, cognate of Mary)

National Day -- Lichtenstein (a/k/a Liberation Day [1945])

National Failures Day -- some websites say the 16th, and may i suggest a book called "Fail Better", a small quotations book about how failure is just the beginning.

National Lemon Meringue Pie Day

National Mourning Day -- Bangladesh

National Relaxation Day -- sponsored by Sean Moeller of Clio, Michigan; if you call in sick to stay home and relax, blame him

Panama La Vieja Day -- Panama (Founding of Panama City)

Shoro Nagashi Nagasaki -- Nagasaki, Japan (floating lanterns are released into the harbor in honor of the ancestors)

Sproshinki -- Slavic Pagan Calendar (end of the hay harvest festival)

St. Tarcisius' Day (Patron of altar servers, first communicants)

Tuva Republic Day -- Tos-Bulak fields south of Kyzuk, Tuva, Russia (celebration of the Tuva Republic, a Naadam festival of Mongolian wrestling, horse racing, and archery; held by the Tuva people, the closest genetic relatives to the North and South American Native Peoples)

Wafaa El-Nil -- Egypt and Coptic Church ("Fidelity of the Nile", celebration of the annual of Flooding of the Nile)

Anniversaries Today:

Woodstock, 1969

Buddy Holly marries Maria Elena Santiago, 1958

Panama Canal opens, 1914

Transcontinental US railway is completed at Promontory Point, UT, US, 1870

Birthdays Today:

Joe Jonas, 1989

Kerri Walsh, 1978

Ben Affleck, 1972

Debra Messing, 1968

Melinda Gates, 1964

Zeljko Ivanek, 1957

Princess Anne, Princess Royal of the United Kingdom, 1950

Jimmy Webb, 1946

Kathryn Whitmire, 1946

Linda Ellerbee, 1944

Stephen G. Breyer, 1938

Vernon Jordan, Jr, 1935

Phyllis Stewart Schlafly, 1924

Mike Connors, 1925

Oscar Emmanuel Peterson, 1925

Rose Marie, 1925

Huntz Hall, 1919

Oscar Romero, 1917

Julia Child, 1912

Elizabeth Bolden, American Supercentenarian, 1890 (d. 2006)

Edna Ferber, 1885

Ethel Barrymore, 1879

Charles Albert "The Old Roman" Comiskey, 1859

E. Nesbit, 1858

Sir Walter Scott, 1771

Napoleon Bonaparte, 1769

Debuting/Premiering Today:

Mainz Psalter(Publication date; first book with the publication date printed on the colophon), 1457

Today in History:

Battle of Roncevaux Pass, the Basques defeat Charles the Great (Charlemagne) and Roland is killed, 778

Macbeth defeats his cousin and rival King Duncan I, who is killed in the battle, and becomes king of Scotland, 1040

Battle of Lumphanan, in which King Macbeth is killed by the forces of Mael Coluim MacDonnchada, 1057

The cave city of Vardzia is consecrated by Queen Tamar of Georgia, 1185

The foundation stone of Cologne Cathedral, built to house the relics of 

the Three Wise Men, is laid, 1248*

The "Mainz Psalter" is completed, the earliest dated book, 1457

Founding of Panama City, 1519

Jesuit priest St. Francis Xaverius land in Kagoshima, Japan, 1549

Joseph Haydn departs England, never to return, 1795

Country of Liberia is founded by freed American former slaves, 1824

Tivoli Gardens, one of the oldest still intact amusement parks in the world, opens in Copenhagen, Denmark, 1842

The Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace in Honolulu, Hawai'i, is dedicated; it is the oldest continuously used Roman Catholic Cathedral in the US, 1843

San Sebastian Church in Manila, the first all-steel church in Asia, is officially inaugurated and blessed, 1891

A male servant of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright sets fire to the living quarters of the architect's Wisconsin home, 1914

The Panama Canal opens to traffic with the transit of the cargo ship Ancon, 1914

Will Rogers and Wiley Post are killed in a plane crash, 1935

The birth of stadium rock:  The Beatles play Shae Stadium, 1965

President Richard Nixon completes the break from the gold standard, 1971

The "Wow! signal":  The Big Ear, a radio telescope operated by Ohio State University as part of the SETI project, receives a radio signal from deep space, 1977

An 8.0-magnitude earthquake off the Pacific coast devastates Ica and various regions of Peru killing 514 and injuring 1,090, 2007

The olinguito becomes the first mammal to be discovered in the past 35 years, 2013

*Yes, we just noted the other day the date of completion in 1880!