Lazy Caturday Reads: Mostly Good News and Military Cats
Posted: July 10, 2021 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, just because | Tags: Aly Raisman, Andrew Saul, Binx, caturday, David Black, GOP threat to democracy, Madison Cawthorn, marine wildlife, Miami condo collapse, military cats, Mylo, Social Security Administration, Trump child separation policies, Western heat wave, working cats |16 Comments
Sailors of the HMS Hermione in 1941 surrounding their sleeping cat, Convoy.
Good Afternoon!!
I’m going to begin with some good news today.
Binx, the cat who was trapped on the ninth floor of the collapsed Mami condo has been found!
Binx, a cat that lived on the ninth floor of Champlain Towers South Condo, was found safe two weeks after the building collapsed and has been reunited with its family, an animal rescue organization said. https://t.co/VW7FLphQva
— Miami Herald (@MiamiHerald) July 9, 2021
Source: “Binx” the cat, missing from Champlain Towers South unit #904 has been found & reunited with family. Cat somehow escaped building and was found near collapse site. #surfsidebuildingcollapse @wsvn pic.twitter.com/gOh0dMpRjY
— Jessica Holly (@JhollyW) July 9, 2021
The Miami Herald: Cat that lived in collapsed Surfside condo tower is found safe, reunited with family.
Binx, a cat that lived on the ninth floor of Champlain Towers South condo, was found safe two weeks after the building collapsed and has been reunited with his family.
The black cat was found near the rubble and was taken to Kitty Campus, an organization that cares for community cats in Miami Beach.
A volunteer feeding cats in the area was the one who found him, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said during a news conference late Friday. Binx was reunited with his family Friday.
“I’m glad that this small miracle could bring some light into the life of a hurting family today and provide a bright spot for our whole community in the midst of this terrible tragedy,” Levine Cava said.
Here’s another feel-good story from the Boston area. Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman dog went missing after being frightened by fireworks on the Fourth of July; but now, days later, he has been returned to her. WCVB ABC 5: After nearly a week missing, Massachusetts Olympic hero Aly Raisman finds her dog.
After nearly a week missing, Massachusetts native and two-time Olympian Aly Raisman says her missing dog has been found….
Raisman tweeted last Saturday night that her dog, Mylo, was terrified of the fireworks and ran off in the area of the Seaport District. She says the dog had a tag on, as well as a leash.
Raisman asked people not to actively search for Mylo — yelling his name or running around looking for him — because the organization Missing Dogs Mass advised her that scared dogs will make bad decisions if they are pressured.
The Needham native was a member of the 2012 and 2016 U.S. women’s Olympic gymnastics teams, both of which won the gold medal. With two team and four individual Olympic medals, Raisman is the second-most decorated Olympic gymnast in American history.
HEROES!!!! MYLO IS SAFE. I HAVE HIM 😊😊😊😊 THANK YOU Carla, Gayle & her sweet dog.
— Alexandra Raisman (@Aly_Raisman) July 10, 2021
Will share more soon… but for now going to snuggle with my everything 🤍🤍🤍 pic.twitter.com/dHmyCktprt
A bit more good news on the political front. Social Security activists have been pushing Biden to fire the two horrible men that Trump put in charge of the Social Security administration, and he has finally done it.
The Washington Post: Biden fires head of Social Security Administration, a Trump holdover who drew the ire of Democrats.
Allison Chinchar, CNN Meteorologist: Western states face possible all-time heat records this weekend.
Over 30 million people are under heat alerts across western states as temperatures are forecast to soar well into the triple digits this weekend.
Nearly the entire state of California will be impacted by this heat wave, in addition to major metro areas in the Southwest. Numerous daily temperature records will be broken and some all-time records may also be in jeopardy.
Simon, the ship’s cat on the HMS Amethyst, with Dickin Medal, awarded for catching rats in wartime.
“High pressure will continue to dominate the southern Great Basin and Mojave Desert, producing a major heat wave into early next week,” the National Weather Service (NWS) office in Las Vegas said. “All-time record high temperatures will be rivaled or exceeded in some areas.”
While the Southwest may be known for its hot temperatures, these numbers are extreme.
A “Very High” heat risk, the highest level (4 of 4), has been issued for much of California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah. This includes cities such as Sacramento, Bakersfield and Palm Springs, California, Las Vegas and Phoenix.
“Very High” simply means that the entire population, not just elderly or people who are ill, will be at a very high risk of heat-related illness due to the long duration of heat and the lack of overnight relief.
Utah’s current state temperature record is 117 degrees. The town of St George may meet or exceed that record on Saturday.
Las Vegas has the potential to set a new all-time high temperature record this weekend. The current all-time high is 117 degrees and the National Weather Service is forecasting at least that temperature for Saturday and Sunday.
Sacramento also has the chance to break their all-time high temperature of 114 degrees this weekend.
Death Valley, California, hit a high of 130 degrees on Friday, coming close to the hottest temperature ever recorded on the globe — 134 degrees at the same location in 1913.
The New York Times: Like in ‘Postapocalyptic Movies’: Heat Wave Killed Marine Wildlife en Masse.
Dead mussels and clams coated rocks in the Pacific Northwest, their shells gaping open as if they’d been boiled. Sea stars were baked to death. Sockeye salmon swam sluggishly in an overheated Washington river, prompting wildlife officials to truck them to cooler areas.
The combination of extraordinary heat and drought that hit the Western United States and Canada over the past two weeks has killed hundreds of millions of marine animals and continues to threaten untold species in freshwater, according to a preliminary estimate and interviews with scientists.
“It just feels like one of those postapocalyptic movies,” said Christopher Harley, a marine biologist at the University of British Columbia who studies the effects of climate change on coastal marine ecosystems.
To calculate the death toll, Dr. Harley first looked at how many blue mussels live on a particular shoreline, how much of the area is good habitat for mussels and what fraction of the mussels he observed died. He estimated losses for the mussels alone in the hundreds of millions. Factoring in the other creatures that live in the mussel beds and on the shore — barnacles, hermit crabs and other crustaceans, various worms, tiny sea cucumbers — puts the deaths at easily over a billion, he said.
Read the rest at the NYT.

Afghanistan 2009
The Washington Post: The Trump administration used an early, unreported program to separate migrant families along a remote stretch of the border.
Thanks to JJ for the military cats idea.
I love them!!!! So cute! And all those men cuddling them!
Great kitty pics!
Especially the Navy kitty hammock for Convoy!
Our Spunky and Smart Spelling Bee Champion has lots of scholarships being offered to her including this one to the Honors College at LSU where Dr Daughter! went!!!
Good for her!!
More than about time!
“Dickin Medal … for catching rats in wartime”
Now that really brought a smile to my face. Wonderful!
Glad that despicable marker was removed.
Amazing it stood there like that for so many years! Now, if they can get that other “artifact” to a museum! Then, put it into perspective with a good display case and discussion of the “lost cause”.
So good to see that Binx the cat and Mylo the dog are safe and back with their humans!