2centsworth.info

We had to put Sushi to sleep a few days ago and I suspect it will be quite a while until the heartache eases.

Sush’ had a good run for her money… No one ever knew her actual birthday but I know she was at least 18 years old and may have been a year or so older than that. She was half Siamese and half something else… She was purchased at a garage sale from an angry Siamese cat breeder… One gathers that Sushi’s “something else” father must have been quite the tomcat.

She had the Siamese coloring but a flatter, less angular face than a purebred Siamese. She was completely useless as a mouser. She only ever caught one and she just dropped it and let it run away. Sush’ didn’t inherit her father’s assertiveness and spent the first half of her life being bullied by Kitty and Little… I suppose she had the last laugh because she outlived both of them by a year or so. All she ever really wanted was to eat until she puked, sit in sun puddles, or sit in someone’s lap and get petted (we call that rummeling or murphling depending on which part of the family you are from).

Now that she’s gone, I take a lot of comfort from the fact that the last 6 years were probably her happiest. We’d moved to a house with a small walled garden in the back and Sush’ liked to sit under the flowers and sniff the breeze. And she got on reasonably well with the two younger cats, Milo and Billie. Billie could be a bit of trial but during the last few months of her life, Sush’ sometimes slept at the foot of my recliner in a heap with Milo. Milo and even Billie seem to be missing her.

So why do I like cats…

We don’t really need them for controlling rodents any more. The vet bills can be outrageous. Even outdoor cats insist on using the damn catpan. They scratch the furniture. Knock things off the shelves. Leave half dead chipmunks and birds around the house. They expect you to open doors to let them in… And then demand to be let out about 5 minutes later. Milo and Billie lose their collars and tags about 3 times a year. They yell for food and then turn their noses up a what you give them.

One reason I like them is that they are so damn independent (with the possible exception of Sush’ who really did seem to need people… Although I suspect if she’d ever got lost she would have simply charmed some other family into being her slaves) and straightforward. Cat’s do not pretend… If they don’t like you then “to hell with you and the horse you rode in on…”

And they purr… Sush’ wouldn’t catch mice but she was a champion at purring. And she was really good at being comfortable. She was an expert at finding the warmest, comfyest spots. Our current house has steam radiators and in the winter Sush’ would be wrapped so tightly around the steam inlet that I am amazed she didn’t get burned. And she loved sitting in your lap and getting rummeled. You could hear her purring across the room.

And they each have their own personality. Sush’ was sweet and mild and very gentle with children. We rescued Billie from very unfortunate circumstances and he is, not surprisingly, paranoid and uncoordinated and has a mean streak. Milo is wildly imaginative and loves the dramatic (we call it MiloDrama). Milo doesn’t “get” cat behavior. Neighborhood cats come into the backyard posturing, staring, growling and spoiling for a fight and Milo just swishes his tail, gives them a curious glance, and then floats effortlessly 6 feet in the air to the top of the fence. At which point the neighbor cats just slink away.

And the two cats from my childhood, Whiskey and Raffles (“Sir Stanford Raffles” to be exact) were brothers (Siamese, mainly Seal Point) but each had their own personality. Whiskey was the bold explorer and the most self-assured and friendly. Raffles was somewhat less confident and a bit more stand-offish with people. Whiskey disappeared when he was a couple of years old (I think he was hit by a car but Mother always thought he was killed by a fox) and Raffles got a good deal friendlier with us because he didn’t have his brother for company. Raffles may be the only cat ever to be acknowledged in an MIT thesis (mine ). Raffles and Sush’ are the longest-lived cats I have ever known. Both lived to be nearly twenty which is pretty remarkable for a cat.

Like a lot of other baby-boomers I have been helping my parents figure out the complexities of the Medicare Plan D drug program. So far it seems to be accomplishing its primary purpose… Channeling billions in tax dollars and subscriber premiums to the major pharmaceutical companies.

It would have been nice, however, if they had made at least some effort to serve the interests of the retired folks that are the supposed beneficiaries of this program.

• My Mother doesn’t currently need any prescription drugs but they have bullied her into signing up anyway with their policy of escalating the premiums for anyone who does not sign up right away. So now she pays a monthly premium to the program and gets nothing in return.
• Some months after they signed up, my parents received a coupon booklet and envelopes for sending in their monthly Plan D subscription fees. But last week they received a letter from the Social Security Administration saying that the Plan D fees were being deducted from their Social Security benefits. The letter said that they (my parents) had requested this. Since they had most definitely NOT requested this and since this meant that they were paying twice for their Plan D program, my Mother called up the Social Security Administration to ask what was going on… The bureaucrats at the local Social Security office said the letter had nothing to do with them (even though it said Social Security on the letterhead).Apparently any of the insurance companies administering a Medicare Plan D program (in this case AARP) can simply garnish a subscriber’s Social Security payments by simply typing something into a computer. My parents contacted AARP who admitted it was a mistake and promised to discontinue deducting the Plan D premiums from my Father’s Social Security paymets. That was in July, as of September, Social Security is still deducting the premiums and AARP is still cashing my parents premium checks (they continued to send them in the naive assumption that AARP was going to discontinue garnishing the SS payments). When contacted, an AARP supervisor agreed that the SS deductions were in error, and again promised to stop them in future. She indicated that AARP would not directly refund the overpayments. The best she could offer is a credit against future monthly premiums.

I see a very unfortunate trend in the US these days. Thanks to the huge influence of lobbyists on both the Federal and State legislatures, private companies are now able to directly interfere with, and benefit from, taxpayer financed programs and services. With Medicare Plan D we have over 40 private corporations that can directly access every citizen/taxpayer’s Social Security account. The Republicans talk about smaller government and privatization but what really seems to be happening is the wholesale diversion of tax dollars to politically well-connected corporations. The Medicare Plan D program is the domestic equivalent of Halliburton’s military support contracts in Iraq.