You’re welcome.

Sensible(-ish) blogging will resume here — at the latest — on Monday.

I’ve also re-started my entertaining* pollgame, The Great Game, with a new episode this evening. It’s an ongoing twice-weekly sci-fi/horror story where you choose what happens next at the end of every instalment, and I obediently go off and write about whichever path you’ve decided for me. I’m clearly a glutton for punishment. Anyway, you can find it here. Please do go have a look.

* it keeps me entertained, dammit!

If you appreciated this post, you should go have a quick look at SwitchFlipped by author Greg Stolze. It’s strangely heartwarming, for a thrilling tale of a normal guy swept up into the oddball world of the occult underground. I think you’ll like it.

An insanely cute little fluffy kitten, by Artolog. Awwwww.

A feral cat in Bartlett, Tennessee demonstrated truly remarkable powers of extreme survival that would even worry stage magicians like Criss Angel and David Blane. For several years, Tabitha Cain had been feeding the wary kitty, whom she calls Wild Oats. She considered switching the cat’s nickname to Survivor however, when the plucky feline lived through 19 days with a peanut butter jar jammed over her head.

According to Tabitha’s mother Doretha, the cat just isn’t prepared to let herself get caught. The family saw her with the jar on her head several times, but couldn’t get her to sit still long enough to help. “She kept running and hiding,” Doretha said.

When Wild Oats finally vanished for a week, the Cain family were scared that the cat had run out of lives. “I thought she was going to die with that jar on her head”, Tabitha said.

Eventually, after 19 days, they managed to find the cat. Wild Oats was now too weak to run off, so they used a fishing net to haul in the scared animal, and gently worked the jar off with oil. Then they looked after her, giving her plenty of access to food and water, until she regained some strength. Finally, two days after the end of her ordeal, she started eating again.

Doretha has little doubt that Wild Oats has been blessed to have survived such a horrible ordeal. “God will take care of animals just like people because that cat is really a miracle.”

The Survivor: Wild Oats.

Gary Rosheisen is wheelchair-bound, with brittle bone disease and a ruined sense of balance from a series of mini-strokes. When he fell out of his wheelchair near his bed in 2007, he wasn’t wearing his med-alert wireless necklace, and couldn’t reach any help cords. He feared the worst – that it might be days before someone found him there on the floor, possibly more days than he could last.

That night, police in Columbus, Ohio received a 911 call from Gary’s apartment. When they answered the phone, there was no response. They tried calling back to verify that everything was OK, but got no answer. Concerned, they dispatched Officer Patrick Daugherty to go and have a look.

When Officer Daugherty got to Gary’s apartment, he discovered Gary’s orange and tan striped cat, Tommy, lying next to the phone on the living room floor, and Gary himself in big trouble in the bedroom.

Tommy must have dialled 911.

Gary had owned Tommy for three years, having originally got him to help with his blood pressure. He did try to train Tommy to dial 911 in an emergency, but before this, had no idea if any of the training had actually sunk in. “He’s my hero,” Gary said. Even Officer Daugherty was unable to come up with any other explanation. “I know it sounds kinda weird,” he admitted.

Tommy the phone cat.

If you appreciated this post, you should go have a quick look at SwitchFlipped by author Greg Stolze. It’s strangely heartwarming, for a thrilling tale of a normal guy swept up into the oddball world of the occult underground. I think you’ll like it.