Accidental Blogger

Happy Holidays And A Blogging Hiatus

Season's Greetings to our readers and my co-bloggers. Hope everyone returns to A.B. refreshed and cheered after the holiday festivities are over and done with for the year. I am going on a short trip and won't be blogging for some time. Unless someone else finds the time to post, the front page will remain static for a few days. I will leave you with a potpourri of unrelated but interesting links to muse over if you find time to visit during the holiday rush.

Two thoughtful essays about the recent bombings in Mumbai and the tensions that tug at the national fabric of India - Ramachandra Guha in the WSJ and Badri Raina in ZNet.

TS Eliot on The Naming Of Cats.

An insect crime buster in Finland!

Enjoy the holidays!

Cat Quote

Seventy four adoring (and adorable) cat quotes by a mad poet - all of them apt!

My favorites:

19. For having consider'd God and himself he will consider his neighbour.
42. For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
70. For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.

Note: Brought to the front from the comments section of a previous post. (Link: Dean)

Cat Quote

Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose. - Garrison Keillor

Cat Quote

The scene of this chronicle is the town of Dawson's Landing, on the Missouri side of the Mississippi, half a day's journey, per steamboat, below St. Louis.

In 1830 it was a snug collection of modest one- and two- story frame dwellings, whose whitewashed exteriors were almost concealed from sight by climbing tangles of rose vines, honeysuckles, and morning glories. Each of these pretty homes had a garden in front fenced with white palings and opulently stocked with hollyhocks, marigolds, touch-me-nots, prince's-feathers, and other old-fashioned flowers; while on the windowsills of the houses stood wooden boxes containing moss rose plants and terra-cotta pots in which grew a breed of geranium whose spread of intensely red blossoms accented the prevailing pink tint of the rose-clad house-front like an explosion of flame. When there was room on the ledge outside of the pots and boxes for a cat, the cat was there-- in sunny weather--stretched at full length, asleep and blissful, with her furry belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose. Then that house was complete, and its contentment and peace were made manifest to the world by this symbol, whose testimony is infallible. A home without a cat--and a well-fed, well-petted, and properly revered cat-- may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?

Mark Twain (from the opening page of The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson)

Cat Quote

O little emperor with no orb,

conqueror without country, .....

tiny tiger of the living room,

posing four delicate feet on the ground

sniffing, mistrustful of everything on earth,

because everything is unclean

for the cat’s immaculate foot.

The above is an excerpt from Pablo Neruda's poem Ode to the Cat (Oda al Gato) which was sent to me by Narayan Acharya.  Despite a severe allergy to cats, fortified with anti-histamines, Narayan entertains his neighbor's cat Sammy in his home. The full poem below the fold. 

Cat Quote

He who dislikes the cat, was in his former life, a rat. 

                                                       Chinese Proverb

(This is the beginning of a regular series of cat quotes that will appear here)