Several weeks into kitten season, a granddaughter found a litter of kittens in a pile of leaves near my house in the yard of the home my husband uses for an office. The mother cat kept her away and moved them. I thought they were gone. A month later, three tabby kittens came around looking for food. One was grey and shy, one was black and tiny but brave, and one was big and orange. A grandson and I decided to start taming them. We got them to play with toys and come onto the back porch to eat. They were too afraid to be touched. I decided to leave them alone. This changed when the orange one showed up with a huge bite on his neck, growing goopier by the day. We lured them onto a back porch and shut the sliding glass door behind them. They leapt at the door and hid behind a desk back there. I called the local pound. Can you take them? No.

The shelter was overwhelmed with kittens.

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Above, three little kittens in the wild.

I was a little afraid of the kittens. Could they be harboring rabies or another disease? What about cat scratch fever or pathogenic cat bites? I called a vet and arranged for them to get the feral cat treatment which is spay/ neuter and basic shots, including rabies. I asked that the injured kitten get an injection of antibiotics. I bought some cat handing gloves. My grandson who works for a local vet caught them and one by one, he and I took them to get the feral treatment. Did I get them tagged with a cut on the ear to signify a treated feral cat? No, because I had and still have hope they can be pet cats for someone someday. Since the rabies vaccine doesn’t reach full effect for a month and because the orange one was hurt, they’ve been kept inside at my husband’s office in the house next door. They’ve passed the time limit. They could go outside. But they don’t seem to want to. And the office has had mice in the past. They have a job to do/

Now, my husband and I have three semi-gown kittens. The black one, Cobalt is friendly, likes to be petted and purrs for us. He ran outside once and ran right back in. I’ve declared him a pet. Probably my pet. The other two are still shy. They all use a litter box which dispels one of my many worries about having a cat—bad litter box behavior.

I always thought if I got a cat, which I wasn’t going to, I’d get a black female cat. Instead, I have this guy:

I really am not used to cats, especially not jittery cats. Cobalt was afraid when I simply moved a wastebasket in the office kitchen and started the dishwasher. Having no cat to look to for advice about humans, he hid for over an hour.

The point of this post is this: spay, neuter, and vaccinate your animals. A mom cat can have four kitten litters a year. Cats can be disease vectors. Outdoor cats suffer a variety of mishaps and a large number of shelter animals are euthanized. Feral cats are not just a country problem. I don’t even live in the country—I live in town right on Main Street. 

Feeding feral cats is not the best idea. They can fend for themselves. Feral cats can sometimes have colonies and territories. Their homes can be uprooted, leaving them even more vulnerable as is happening in this town in North Carolina. It’s difficult to tame a kitten once it is past the socialization stage, which occurs before they even leave their mother.  Some feral cats are genetically resistant to being tamed no matter how much human interaction they have. And I’m no expert on cats. This is why in general, I leave things to the experts. Jane Addams wrote extensively about the problems with charity which included the “rescuers” not understanding those they intended to help. I can see this applying to me and these cats. I have disrupted their possible colony formation and perhaps their genetic destiny to avoid humans.

Although there is a debate about if cats are wild animals or not, most wild animals find captivity stressful. However, there’s evidence that wild animals experience much stress and suffering. Cats, it seems, are only semi-domesticated. Most cats eventually tame up and as someone pointed out, “They like you a lot more when it’s cold outside.”

Meanwhile, I’m going to walk my highly domesticated dog, who doesn’t like cats. Cat advice welcome and needed.

Nearly 200 years ago, a group of men in the Netherlands were separatists. They wanted to reject the “rationalism of the enlightenment” that was creeping into religion in the Netherlands. As far as I can understand this, the Enlightenment values included liberty, progress, and separation of church and state. The latter was important to Europeans for things like abolishing wars and moving science forward without the dogma of a church looking over. But the Dutch Separatists rejected this.

The religious separatists wanted none of that Enlightenment nonsense. Starting in 1834, they began their movement to restore what might be called fervor and dogma of the Calvinists into religion. (For those not up on religion, Calvanists think God saves some and others are really sinful.) The Dutch Reformed Church had become far too liberal for them. When they were opposed by the government, the separatists decided to leave. They debated where to go and settled on the US in the farm belt. Not many in the Netherlands were sorry to see the Afscheiding—the Successionists– go.

The first band to set out was lead by Alburtus Van Raalte, a poor preacher’s kid who was last in his seminary class. His followers were also poor and never made it to the rich farmland they expected. They settled in the woods of Michigan and there they stayed, founding my hometown of Holland, on the shores of Lake Michigan which had frozen when they got there and was impossible to cross. His impoverished group was at home in the woods and saw the trees as a gift from God, ready to be exploited. More on how that worked out for some of the locals can be found here.

The other leader, Hendrick Scholte was delayed because his infant son sickened and died. He soon followed with a more wealthy group of settlers and Scholte himself had plenty of money. He didn’t want to join Alburtus, as he found the Michigan land too swampy and unhealthy. As family lore said, “the rich kept going” and founded Pella, Iowa, where I live today.

The two groups later vied for immigrants, causing some resentment. They parted further when Scholte, who was fond of trying new things, set up an independent church. He staunchly opposed any sort of Christian school because public school was vested in the “sovereignty of the people.” He even supported the anti-slavery movement and became friends with Lincoln! Van Raalte clung to the mantel of being God’s chosen and remained more orthodox in preaching. There was even a movement in the church at large to oust independent Scholte from the Reformed Church but it failed. Those who were mad about this had other grievances. These somewhat later immigrants even found the Van Raalte style church too liberal and Americanized with at least 800 hymns they didn’t like. Much to Van Raalte’s chagrin, the malcontents created a new church, the Christian Reformed Church.

The Christian Reformed Church might be best known to outsiders as giving us Betsy DeVos and her brother Erik Prince. Van Raalte came around to see the value in public education after this.

Being of Dutch decent, I have been aware of these things, but vaguely. My point is, ancient history is today’s history. People still fight over which church doctrine is the most pure, who is a heathen, which Enlightenment values to embrace or reject, and if school should be public or private. They even fight over hymns. And for us in Iowa, a former aide to Betsy DeVos is now Iowa’s education director.  If you don’t think this will influence public education in Iowa, you don’t know history. Or maybe now, you do.

More complete background can be found here and in the Van Raalte Institute in Holland, Michigan.

The Fall of the Rebel Angels by

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

1562

• Rights: Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussel

View in Augmented Reality

As the MAGA types warn that a Harris Administration could be a threat to plastic straws, I’d like to remind readers that the Iowa Republicans have been way ahead when it comes to plasticphelia. They love plastic so much that they brought back Styrofoam cups after the Democrats had replaced them with paper cups at the Statehouse in Des Moines. Styrofoam can leak styrene, a neurotoxin (brain poison), especially under hot conditions. It might explain a few things. It doesn’t have to be in a cup to give you a little zap of brain-kill—even those foam peanuts can cause anxiety, and not simply from the mess.

Later, the exalted Republicans took the bold move to save plastic bags from extinction. Consequently, you can have the delight of seeing plastic bags hanging from Iowa fence rows. I wrote about it here and later, even wrote a novel in which people living in exile wear clothes made from plastic bags.

Plastic is cheap. A little oil makes lots of plastic. And it has fueled our consumer culture. But of course, it’s clogging our bodies as well as our oceans. It even plugs up storm sewers and contributes to flooding.  In the US, 500 million plastic straws are used each day and while they are not the most prevalent plastic pollution, they are one of the most commonly visible types of plastic litter.

I have an above ground swimming pool with a plastic liner. We play in it with plastic toys. Recently, I noticed tiny plastic fibers floating in it. The raft was shedding. As much as I dislike straws and plastic bags, pool toys are also a problem since they are not recyclable. Even recyclable plastic rarely gets recycled. I used a sock over the skimmer to get the fine plastic fibers out of the pool because I didn’t want them to clog my filter system. The insoluble plastic coated the sock. I could only wonder what it would do to an intestine. Of course, scientists have been studying this. Not surprisingly, tiny plastic particles indeed do coat intestines and affect gut bacteria, decreasing some types such as Bifidobacterium, a probiotic, and increasing others associated with conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome. Straws warm or cool a drink slightly to make it more appealing to our taste buds. They are convenient, too. But is it worth the intestinal challenge to suck instead of sip?

Is it a given to use paper straws? Paper isn’t the cleanest material to produce. Trees are pulverized and cooked slowly (digested) with chemicals such as sulfite to break them down. Smelly sulfur containing gasses are released in the process.  It uses chlorine to bleach it and is the third largest source of pollution world-wide. Paper causes deforestation and paper straws also release the toxins known as PFAS.  These substances are used to coat paper food products to make them last longer. The good news here is that the Biden administration cracked down on PFAS in paper and other food packaging and soon to be safer products should be hitting the shelves. (more here) The best option is reusable straws, or maybe, as I decided, no straw at all, at least not for today, which is also my opinion of our conservative Iowa legislature. Not today.

Midyear 2024 science news

The US delayed acting on the Covid -19 virus, setting the vaccine development back. Are you one of those people who think the virus came from a lab? Scientists don’t agree with that.

Mounting evidence that pesticides, plastics, and other pollutants harm our bones & butterflies & cause heart problems.

Eclipse awes, unites. Thanks Mother Nature!

 Getting some new pavement, as I did? It causes 8% of the world carbon emissions. Climate friendly concrete will soon become available.

Unwashed men pose danger. You may have heard of VOCs, volatile organic compounds, which are released into the air from synthetic products such as carpet, gasoline engines, and paint. These compounds can cause health issues ranging from irritation, headaches, organ damage, and cancer. And, when men don’t wash, they emit them.

 Gun violence is declared a public health crisis.

Climate change caused 150 billion dollars in damage in 2023, yet few people in the US think they will be affected. Is weather becoming more severe? Yes, it appears so.

Bird flu marches on, with new testing done on milk to ensure safety and track the disease.

Speaking of tests, a blood test to supplement the more invasive colonoscopy has been approved. With colorectal rates skyrocketing, this test should make getting screened easier, although it will not entirely replace colonoscopies.

Project 2025, the sweeping right-wing blueprint for a new kind of U.S. presidency, would sabotage science-based policies that address climate change, the environment, abortion, health care access, technology and education...and even cancer research. The government funds 40% of basic science, science done to advance knowledge and improve health, and the research is shared with the public and other scientists.

Italian philosopher and political scientist Norberto Bobbio argues that attitudes towards equality are primarily what distinguish left-wing politics from right-wing politics on the political spectrum:  “the left considers the key inequalities between people to be artificial and negative, which should be overcome by an active state, whereas the right believes that inequalities between people are natural and positive, and should be either defended or left alone by the state.” (link)

In 2020, scientists performed an astonishing feat. In less than one year, they produced not one but several safe and effective vaccines against the novel coronavirus, sars-cov-2. Yet, by the summer of 2021, barely half of all Americans had been fully vaccinated, even though free vaccines were widely available. By the autumn of 2021, ten thousand deaths following vaccination had been reported, and only six positively attributed to the vaccine, with more than four hundred and fifty million vaccine doses administered. This is a vaccine-death rate of 0.00000001 percent.¹ Yet public health officials still struggled to persuade the remaining Americans to get vaccinated. Commentators have read this opposition as evidence of a crisis of public trust in science. (link)

Scientists and conservatives have not gotten along for a while and they aren’t getting along now. Although this may be seen as bias on the part of scientists, it is the conservatives who have turned away from science and encouraged the public to go with them.

Mistrust in science has been seeded for a while, lead by conservative business leaders in the US who do not want regulations. The environmental and public health movements scared them and they saw these ideals as eating into their profits. Conservative people hate the environment so much, they won’t even invest in it. They like science well enough when it is related to production of goods but otherwise, it and the government, are expected to get out of their way as they do what they please. Interestingly enough, the anti-science attitude is strongest in educated Republicans, who then use money and influence to infect other Republicans with this view, which is basically anti-government. The anti-government movement funded think tanks at The University of Chicago which basically didn’t believe in public good. They don’t believe in helping people. Is it any surprise that Iowa’s attorney general is a product of that?

Government is not supposed to help people with science problems because then, people might want to government to protect them from the maladies businesses have created. In fact, these conservative business leaders go out of their way to block government solutions because they want the government to look bad. They do not want government to lend a helping hand.

One mastermind in this conservative movement is the National Association of Manufactures. You can see their leaders here. You’ll note that the head of both Pella Corporation and Vermeer Manufacturing are on their board of directors. A former head of Vermeer Corporation received their award recently and dutifully repeated some of their anti-government talking points. You may recognize a business ally of Trump’s. NAM has flooded newspapers, radio, and television stations with their messaging—enterprising businessmen heroes fighting pesky environmentalists and socialist moralists who seek a fair and safe workplace. These companies donate to their favorite charities, advertise in local media, in effect silencing them from speaking out on issues. Our lips are sealed.

One recent result: In Iowa, the public harassed a local weather man to the point that he left the state. Read more here. His crime? He talked about climate change as being science. Which it is. We Midwesterners have lost our niceness and it’s no accident. We’re trusting the wrong people.

It’s important to realize that much of the anti-science, anti-regulation rhetoric is myth, a right-wing myth that enriches a few. For our own good, for our health and safety we need to see it as the PR stunt it is.

Recently, I asked Pella’s Planning and Zoning director about flooding in town. Climate change models predict extreme weather, including flooding over much of the US. He said we have regulations to prevent flooding from 100-year floods but to push these limits would be too expensive. Here in a self-proclaimed religious city, protecting each other is too expensive. Maybe we should care more about our neighbors. My property is not at much risk for flooding. How about yours?

You have the right, as a citizen, to expect your elected officials to listen to basic science and take the appropriate steps to protect you. One small step you can take will be to push “delete” if you get a voting guide from a member of NAM. Another is to adopt some skepticism. A friend once joined a pro-business group, because he had a small business, and received their newsletters. He noticed that every issue had a right-wing spin. He tossed his membership in the garbage.

There is nothing wrong with manufacturing. It’s been with us since the industrial revolution. But, like Botox, too much used carelessly in the wrong place will hurt you. It can even affect your empathy for others. There’s no reason to trust right-wing business leaders on matters of science. Regulation can slightly raise costs, but it does protect the community.  It also encourages innovation. The environmental costs of their neglect will be paid by the rest of us. Look through the PR stunt. Meanwhile, here comes the rain again.

Much of the information in this piece comes from this source (MIT Press)