By DR. LARRY MOSES

No one asked me but… Smokey is a cat who lives in London. The amazing thing about Smokey is not that he purrs, but that his purr registers at 73 decibels. That is as noisy as busy traffic, a hair dryer, or a vacuum sweeper. What could be more irritating than a cat that can shatter glass with its purr?

Does a cat really have to have another ability to irritate? Aren’t cat’s irritating enough? The one redeeming factor of these feline nuisances is that they are generally quiet.

We have had a number of cats in our household. They seem to come and go with regularity. Where a dog leaves only when he or she dies, cats seem to come and go as they please. We had a cat that lived in our garage. We have had a cat that gave birth in our bedroom closet.

We had a cat that ran away and was gone for six months only to be found across town in another person’s garage. The cat had been injured and when the people called to tell me my cat was at their house and needed a vet, I denied I had a cat. I truly forgot that we had a cat; unfortunately, we had placed a collar on this cat with our phone number on it. That was the last time we collared a cat. We pick the cat up, paid an extensive vet bill only to have the cat killed by a German Shepherd a week or so later. I have no doubt the cat irritated the dog to a point that it had no choice but to take matters into his own jaws and end the irritation.

We have had dogs, cats, parakeets, cockatiels, hermit crabs, a rabbit, a guinea pig, an owl, and kids: I have a fond affection for my dogs and kids I have only toleration for the cats.

I have no idea why we named the cats, but we always did. The cats never seemed to recognize the fact they had a name. They might as well have been chickens, but they laid no eggs and could not be eaten so I am at a loss as to what earthly good they were.

The only cat I ever missed, when he was gone, was a renegade I named Big George. Big George was not my cat. I don’t believe he belonged to anyone. I guess that can be said for all cats but Big George was even more independent than most. When Big George suddenly showed up at my house, we had another cat named Shredder. That will give you some idea what that cat was like. At this time, Shredder lived in the garage, but when Big George would visit, Shedder would wisely disappear until Big George left. Big George would come to my back door and cry until I would come and scratch his head.

Now Big George was not a nice cat, if there is such a thing. He was a tomcat in every sense of the word. He was huge.

Big George was a polydactyl cat, he had extra toes on his front feet. I thought it would impress you to know I know what a polydactyl cat is. Actually, I looked it up on the internet.

His ears were notched and his faced scared from numerous battles with other cats. He sprayed his territory and was just generally unpleasant to most in the neighborhood. However, for some reason he took a fancy to me. This may speak more to my character than the character of the cat. I actually put food out for him, but he didn’t come by for the food; he came by for the companionship.

Big George lasted in the neighborhood a little less than a year. I like to think he went out of this world engaged in a battle with a coyote. I am not sure a coyote could have handled Big George. More likely than not one of my neighbors, rightly so, got tired of Big George spraying, yowling in the night, or beating up on their domesticated felines and did away with this old renegade.

All of these thoughts came to me as I read this article about Smokey who had found another way to irritate, which seems to be the major goal of all the cats in the world.

No one asked me but… The United States of America gives China about $65 million a year in foreign aid. China is a country that spends at least $100 billion a year on its military and holds over $1 trillion of loans to the United States and has more billionaires than any other country besides the United States. We borrow money from China so we can give them money they can use to buy American treasury notes putting us further in debt to them. How much sense does that make?

One might argue that the United States does not owe China anything since the Treasury Notes they buy really belong to the Federal Reserve. Since the Federal Reserve is not an American governmental agency but a private corporation, one might question who really owns the notes and bonds sold to China.

No one asked me but… Has anyone else notice the stock market is coming back? Unemployment across the country is down to eight percent. While inflation is setting in, the politicians are going to be able to claim the country has been saved and they are responsible for it.

Which reminds me the campaign for the 2012 election has begun and the Republicans still don’t have a viable Presidential candidate. It will be interesting to see who claims the high ground, the Republicans or the Democrats.

In the last election, the Democrats were successful in convincing the American people the economy was tanked and therefore it tanked. Now the same politicians are busy convincing the American people the economy has recovered. It will be interesting to see if they are as successful in convincing the American people all is now well.

President Obama is moving more to the center. He called for safe drilling of oil in America and his move in Libya is making him sound more like a tea party candidate than many in the tea party who have come out in opposition to involvement with rebels in Libya.

Thought of the week…It would be nice if something made sense for a change.

- Alice in Wonderland.