Pin Human Formations

Last night both Colley and Gus decided they wanted to cuddle on the bed with us. In true cat fashion, they chose the Pin Human Formation for their sleeping placement. Colley slept in his normal spot between Erich and I at approximately my stomach. Gus decided to sleep on the opposite side of me down at my ankles.

So every time my body wanted to turn, I woke up.

In my experience, the Pin Human Formation occurs when the cats sense that something's wrong. I first experienced it when I had jaw surgery at age 16. Kelim usually slept with me with his head on the pillow. But Kashan rarely came up to me, preferring my younger brother as his human companion. Yet during the first 24 hours or so that I was home from the hospital, I had two large male cats in Pin Formation guarding me. Kelim in his usual spot with Kashan playing foot point.

It's uncanny how Gus and Colley seem to do the same thing. I'd say it was a male cat thing, except that Fizz has been known to get into the act, and my mom's female cats have done the formation, too.

So now I have this stupid paranoia that something's wrong that I'm not aware of...


Needless to say, I'm very tired today. I'm planning on making a lunchtime run over to Starbucks to get something entirely too caffeinated for my own good to handle the afternoon. And hopefully I'll go to bed early tonight, although I don't count on my brain agreeing to that idea.

******

Did anyone watch the South Park episode last night? (hence another reason why I'm tired). Most of the time, I think the show goes a bit too stupid to be funny, but last night was taking on the media circus that has become of the Shiavo case.

I haven't written about it, mostly because everyone else has. The entire circus makes me sick, and I want to smack all of the protestors and online pundits who are purposely driving this into the anti-abortionchoice movement, demonizing one side or the other.

The bottom line? The woman will not recover. Her brain is dead. She's breathing on her own because her brain stem is still intact, which continues the involuntary body functions such as breathing, but everything else is gone. The humane thing is to allow her still existing body to go in peace and let her soul go to rest. Her parents need to come to terms with it, and I see their constant fight as denial of the reality of the situation. For this, I give them condolences. They have lost a daughter. No parent should have to bury a child. But it does happen, and their refusal to see reality has led them into a horrid obsession that has become selfish. It's not about whether Terry should live-- it's that they can't let her go. Why do I say this? Because the parents have protested the medical staff giving her morphine to dull the pain-- because they're convinced that the staff wants to give her an overdose to speed her death.

Why, in any Divine Being's name, would you want your child to linger like that? Seriously. Considering the alternative, which is the current starvation. Why is the current solution being done, when a quiet morphine dosage could be used to release her peacefully?

It's selfish denial. I can only hope (although I doubt) that her parents will someday realize what they were doing. I could understand their fight if it had only been one year since she fell into this state. But we're talking fifteen years, folks. From my perspective, that's half of my lifetime.

The conservative Christians who protest this might actually want to take the surprising shred of truth from South Park last night-- maybe God has a plan for Terry in the afterlife. If these supposed morally right people accept God as omnipotent, they need to start listening. It was her time. There are some medical ailments from which people won't recover. And to keep their bodies going is attempting to play God.

Last time I checked, questioning God was against most of their faiths.

Anyway... that's my take. But really, the best post I've seen on the issue comes from Shandra.

~ Mel.