Inverted cogitation

 This morning my mind inevitably wandered to the recurring insect infestation in my apartment. I am truly sick of seeing so many butterflies of all colors flitting through the air. The monarchs were bad enough, now the swallowtails are starting to take over. They're disgusting!! If not for the beautiful shiny cockroaches I keep in my terrarium I'd be calling an exterminator. Gotta take the bad with the good.
These are the kind of thoughts I have during my yoga practice, especially the hourlong upside-down poses. I don't know why.

Should I warn you?

An old and familiar nightmare resurfaced last night, one I particularly dislike. I didn't scream fortunately, but this one was always disturbing to me for a rather strange reason: I used to believe it was real. It's the kind of belief that's possible only when other impossible things are believed, such as Satan, demons, the spirit realm and such. As a teen and young adult,  I thought this thing, this itinerant entity was real though I never told anyone else. When one of Jehovah's Witnesses believes in the existence of something so specific as this, and it's never been mentioned before by the Governing Body, that person could be suspected of having read unapproved outside material. I couldn't stand the thought of an  inquisition by the congregation elders- nobody can- so I kept this knowledge to myself. I don't at all remember how this wandering entity came about in my inner universe. It wasn't a fallen angel like the demons and Satan. I never knew where it came from, only that it was the spirit equivalent of a malicious animal, hunting for prey as it moved around the earth in its inscrutible orbit. It had a two-syllable name beginning with Na- something. I've forgotten. "Na****sh" or Na****esh" or "Na****azh" or whatever. I don't know, don't care.
But last night I awoke from that nightmare in a hazy, not-fully-conscious state of mind. I pondered over the three-meter long snake-like shadow that was Na****, sensing it's presence out there in the city, not knowing if it's going to make a little detour during its obscure journey by paying me a visit. Either to just taunt me like it has before or to take my life this time. My first thought was concern for my cats: it wouldn't kill them if it killed me, or it might kill them only just to torment me. Leaving one dead the others traumatized, "marked" for life is its modus operandi; it never chooses to take everyone in a household. Then I thought: what about the family I live with?
I was finally awake at this point, greatly relieved by the assurance that Na**** really is just a fictious shadow-being. But I thought this through nonetheless: If I had solid reason to believe this thing was real, should I warn the Tran family? It could only be passing through this region, unaware or unconcerned about my being here. Or it may pay me a visit only to scare me, furthering my trauma then leave. But if it did kill one or more of them, I would certainly have some share of guilt for not warning them to stay away for a night or two. But they would never have believed me if I did warn them, so the result would be the same, so what's the point of warning them?
A mandate imposed on every member of my former religion is to go out and warn as many people as each one can of the impending war of Armageddon. Whether worldly people choose to believe us or not (as if belief was a choice ( °~°)) was mostly irrelevant. If they died without us warning them, we're blood guilty, unqualified to live forever. If we did warn them and they died anyway, then we've done our duty and have a shot at living forever in paradise on earth. Believe me, I was never comfortable preaching this "Join us or die" message. So, In this make-believe situation I'm playing with, should I warn them of the possibility that maybe an evil shadow will slip into our home and kill one or more of us? Or at least inflict life-long trauma on one of the girls without killing anyone? Either way the outcome is the same.
I gotta tell you, the discovery that spirit-beings, a vengeful god and the rest are fiction is like the first bowel movement after a lifetime of constipation. Yes the process is agonizing, but when it's over, you feel so much lighter and totally relieved the nightmare is gone!

Intelligent Design of the "Kitten Pee Reflex," or KPR.

Intelligent Design of the "Kitten Pee Reflex," or KPR.

When my Easter gave birth, I'm sure it was her first time. Right off she didn't know what to do about the amnion membrane covering the firstborn. I had to unwrap the scissors (everything that might be needed to assist must be kept right beside Mum's nesting spot, the place you know she's going to birth), incise at the upper chest, then pull it off so the little guy can breathe. She caught on for the second and last. If I wasn't there poor little Dude might not be here. Maybe Snowball and Ladybug if Easter never caught on, I don't know.

Another thing she didn't catch on right away: making her babies pee. Some of you may not know this, but newborns cannot urinate without Mum's help. By 'help' I mean actually licking Baby's privates to stimulate urination. That's right, we're talking about a nasty method of recycling! So I had to demonstrate for her how to- not literally you perv!- I took a small piece of tissue, showed it to her, got her to sniff it. Nothing there, right? Then immediately I rubbed it on one of the babies' privates, squirt! then had her sniff it again. Got it? Not yet. I had to keep doing that for a bit until she finally caught on.

It makes you glad human infants don't require that service! Can you imagine the wife-husband arguments? Parents already fight over whose turn it is to change their diaper (some of them do, anyways). "Jeffrey's gotta pee again Bob..." "Why can't you do it?!" "I'm sick to my stomache!" "Ya shoulda asked me before I brushed my teeth..."

Jeez, why are they designed like that? I'm reasonably certain all living things were designed from the bottom-up by evolution, in this case through natural selection. Somewhere in their history the babies of ancestor feliforms that needed Mum to lick and swallow -ugh mental image go away!- had a better chance of growing up without nasty infections resulting from peeing all over themselves,  then passing on those behavioral traits through their offspring. Now, if all that was designed top-down by a creator-deity, I'd have to ask why that celestial being couldn't have thought of a better way. I mean, isn't there a risk to the mother of getting sick, dying, with no genetic heritage to pass on? Maybe, maybe not. I'm not aware of any research done in this area. How would those experiments be conducted anyways? One group of female cats compelled to drink kitty urine, the other not, see if there's any difference? That's one research proposal I'd never finance!

Anyways, what started this  was the thought I had of an alternative to this strategy. In the way my thoughts come out of nowhere when I first wake up I imagined Mum picking up her kittens by the scruff of their necks like they always do, turn and hold Baby just outside the nest area, and signal the peeing reflex by grunting. Baby feels that mommy-grip, hears Mum's voice, pees, gets put back. One by one Mum does this all day and night withought having to get up, just hold her kittens over there, say Hhrrrr!! and put them back.

But then whenever you use the mommy-grip to keep your cat still to clip their claws or whatever, make damn sure no one says a word. Everyone keep quiet or the peeing reflex'll be triggered, right in your lap. The thing that got me laughing was a cruel prank one could pull. Someone's holding their cat, cuddling, all sweet when some asshole graps the back of the cat's neck, says Hhrrrr!! and now you have a vengeful human with cat pee on them.

Tragic road towards a prosperous secular society

I have always maintained that the trend towards a secular America would have two causes: the lesser being the efforts of rational citizens in fighting religious imposition on society through education and legislation, and the greater being a massive, tragic disaster or sets of disasters that only religiously motivated governments, organizations and citizens can make possible.
Are we seeing the beginning of the massive tragedies that will convince most citizens that religion has no place in politics, starting with the Trump administration? I don't know. Right now I'm too shocked to think or talk about it.