I found the story interesting because it discussed the Porter, which some called the “unluckiest ship in history.” Before it was sunk in the Pacific, the destroyer was assigned to help convoy the Iowa across the Atlantic with Roosevelt aboard.
As it left Norfolk, it made too sharp a turn from its berth and tore off a lifeboat along with its crane. During the trip, it took part in demonstration exercises for the president, and accidentally fired an armed Mark V at the battleship. It tried to warn the target with light signals, but they weren’t getting through, so it broke radio silence to tell them. Roosevelt insisted on being carried up on deck in his wheelchair to watch the torpedo approach. Fortunately, they managed to turn away from it and it passed the stern without incident. Some people thought there should have been courts martial over it, but Roosevelt pardoned the crew.
I cannot imagine having this problem. I wouldn’t change my lifestyle much; I’d put the money into my or others’ space ventures, and life extension. But this is one of the reasons that lottery winners often end up blowing the money; they have no apparent purpose in life.
I could see giving this as a sop to Boeing in exchange for accepting an end to SLS. It won’t last that long, because Starship will be flying people before most people realize.
I just mentioned it in passing in March. But he wasn’t able to keep food down. It turned out, when we got back from the funeral in Michigan, that he had a growth in his small intestine, which we had surgically removed (at non-trivial expense). He was fine for a while, but apparently he was metastasizing, something that is hard to diagnose in a cat, but in August, he started losing weight.
He’s down to about 12 pounds from his peak weight before he got sick, of 17. We’re giving him appetite stimulant, anti-nausea drugs, and prednisone, but he’s still not eating much, and still vomiting occasionally. We took him back to the oncologist last week, but the prognosis isn’t good. His and Ashe’s 8th birthday is in November, but it doesn’t look like he’s going to see it. Not that cats know what birthdays are, of course.
I don’t think he’s afraid to die because, like birthdays, cats probably don’t give much thought to such things. They fear predators, but death is probably an unknown concept to them in any philosophical sense. But I’m afraid all we can do for now is to love him, and try to discern when he’s suffering enough that it’s time to say goodbye.
Here is their picture when we first brought them home after adopting them. At the time, we thought that Ember (on the right) was a girl, but he later turned out to be a boy, and a very sweet one.
Here he was, at about one year of age:
By the way, here is the Christmas post from which the kitten picture was taken. I should note that we have more pictures of those cats than any others we’ve had. I have none of Stella, who died in (IIRC) 2005.
He’s lost a couple more pounds, and is getting lethargic. He’s also wandering down to the street, and going into the neighbors’ yard, things he never used to do. We’re thinking that perhaps it’s close to time to let him go.
[Bumped]
[Evening update]
He spent the day hiding under the bed. He’s probably miserable. We have an appointment for tomorrow morning at the oncologist in San Pedro. We’ll keep the ashes, and store them in our curio cabinet with Stella’s.
[Tuesday-afternoon update]
If there is a cat heaven, he’s there now. No obvious way to tell his sister that she’ll never see him again; all we can do is give her hugs.
