Gaa. I'm sleeeepy. K just strolled by with cat on his shoulder. The other cat is on the couch where he was sitting on my lap. I pulled myself out from under him, leaving him apparently satisfied with the blanket.

David says he's going to write on his blog every day. And that it's fiction because if it weren't fiction he'd have to write about his friends and some of his friends are CIA hitmen so wouldn't appreciate having their habits exposed to the gleaming light of the world wide web. Then there are the prostitutes, the mafiosi, and various other liers-low. Naturally their names all escape me at the moment. Not that, I'm sure, D has introduced me to many of them. Or, if he has, he's faked me out by calling them software designers and waitresses and comic book artists and suchlike. But we know the truth now, eh? They are skulkers! Although perhaps they think of themselves as living in the plain light of day. The tiger doesn't think of himself as a murderer and he only takes to the shadows cuz otherwise he'd go hungry. Hungry is hungry and not comfortable! One can die of it certainly. And the pre-death wasting is unpleasant as well.

Sadly there are no more tigers. No more tigers in China. No wild ones. And the few in captivity have lost interest in humping so the Chinese zookeepers are going to be sneaking Viagra into their food. Did you know Viagra is a sanskrit word for Tiger? The poet and translator Andrew Schelling said he translated William Blake's "Tyger Tyger" into Sanskrit and got snickers when he declaimed, "Vee Ah Gra, Vee Ah Gra!" Chinese wildlife officials insist that there are tigers in China, really. That the thousands of dollars Japanese will pay for tiger penis has not removed said penis from said tigers in every single corner of China yet. Not really. The Chinese official charged with saving the tiger would be out of a job were there no tiger to save. On the other hand the article I was reading this morning (if it was in the New York Times it's not in the online version) says the Chinese govt is putting together big tracts of land for tiger-friendly parkland. Even if there aren't any tigers I'm sure there are other animals that will appreciate the gesture. Some people, too. And some who will be pissed off, relocated, etc etc.

You know what I wish? I wish every company, every sports team that had a tiger or wildcat as a mascot would tithe a tenth of their income to efforts to keep the animals they so admire and want to bask in the reflected glory of really actually alive and not really actually purely historical. Like the grizzly bear on the California flag. There were grizzlies in California! That's how one got on the flag. Now we all look blankly at the critter like it was a unicorn on an English earl's coat-of-arms. Exxon could pay back the poor tiger for putting him in your tank.