Cavalcade of Randomness: The Sequel to the The Sequel!

"Propertius & Cynthia at Tivoli," by Auguste Jean Baptiste Vinchon

Without further ado:

• Beginning with a bit of a soccer story: A Croatian goalkeeper rescued a cat which wandered onto the pitch during a game. Whereupon he was given a yellow card. All-in-all, it has not been a banner week for soccer referees. However, on the plus side, this blog does now have a "Medjimurje Cakovec" label!
  
  
• I think Nefertiti is going to be an indoors cat indefinitely and probably for good. I am basing this on two things: first of all, although she loves to look out the window, she shows no interest in actually going outside. Secondly, when I stepped outside last night, there were what I would guess to be about four coyotes singing to each other in the ravine a whole two blocks away. I am all in favour of urban wildlife (indeed, I stood there for a time and listened to the coyotes), but I'd rather it didn't eat Nefertiti.
  
  
• Last week saw the first meeting of a little Latin reading group that a former student of mine has set up. Although I was only able to be there for the first part of this session, I think it has great potential to be good fun! It's mostly former students of mine, with some friends and family along as well. We're reading Propertius, at least for starters.
  
  
• Those of us who follow the Oilers may remember the whole Dany Heatley nastiness from this summer. Well, a couple of local businesses have got together to commemorate the trade-that-wasn't, and have found a way to make it into a charity event as well! It's actually quite a cool idea, and for a very good cause. And I think we are all happy that the Heatley deal, didn't actually happyen, in the end...
  
  
• Speaking of the end, I think we have reached it for this post!

Disturbing...

I am rather glad at this moment that Nefertiti is an indoor cat.

Many posts ago, I referred to my occasional habit of grabbing on-the-bus coffee at the local Quik-E-Mart, and I have in fact been doing that this week. Now, it is not at all unusual to find the odd "Missing Cat" poster taped up at the bus-stop outside the little convenience store, but I was a bit depressed to discover two of them yesterday. And then there was a third one up this morning.

There are, of course, all kinds of possible explanations for this sudden eruption of MIA cats. It could be simply coincidence. All three of the missing cats are young toms, so another possibility is that they simply chose the same week to head off on their travels. Or, on a grimmer note, it's possible that somebody in the neighbourhood is up to no good; they are out there, after all. However, I have my own suspicions, and they revolve around this fellow:

Canis Latrans

Apparently there several hundred of the critters dwelling in the city, which is one of very cool results (and I do mean that sincerely) of having an undeveloped river valley which serves as a wildlife corridor all the way to the Rocky Mountains, not to mention a significant rabbit population. Furthermore, the neighbourhood wherein these cats have gone missing is very close to the river valley, as well as to several wooded ravines. So I do rather wonder if there isn't a new den somewhere down there.

In any case, if I were the owner of an outdoors cat, I would think very hard about keeping it under supervision while it was out there!