ENTIRELY NEW BREED OF CAT AND SOME LATIN and a geogaphy lesson

Yesterday I was watching Animal Planet and the program that was playing was "Too Cute".  They showed a cat named the Australian Mist.  A lady living in OZ wanted a cat that would not become feral and eat up all the small native fauna.  This was in the 1930's or so. She began with the sphynx and a stripy kitty and eventually she bred a docile, family friendly INSIDE kitty.  They are happiest lounging around the house and playing with the kids etc.  They have beautiful eyes and fur.  When they are born the coat is mostly very light, the striped bits come in at about age two.  There only about ten breeders in the UK and there are ZERO Australian Mist cats in the US.  I can't believe some pet snob doesn't have one snaffled up.  Matching pair of course.

 

And now for some Latin this morning.  I purchased a book called "Riding The Elephant" by Craig Ferguson, a Scottish Comedian who sobered up and has written several books.  Mr. Ferguson was being interviewed on NPR. 

The book came and  husband has been reading a chapter here, a chapter there.  He does not read voraciously.  But he does skip around a bit.  

This morning after the customary morning salutations, he was trying to remember the name of the chapter, it had the word decorum in it and the word est.  

I got on Google and by the time he came back with the title I was ready.  The title as best he could remember was "Dulce et decorum est".  Hmm I knew that dulce means sweet and decorum mean proper behavior I think, but you never know with Latin there are many cognates that look like words we are used to but the actual translation is way off yonder.

I Googled it and found references to a poem printed in the 1920's based on Horace's Odes and that Latin phrase is as follows:

Dulce et decorum est patria pro mori.  That much longer and more impressive phrase translates as "It is sweet to die for your country". I wasn't even CLOSE.   I had come up with "it is sweet to destroy behavior".  No gold star for me.

I just flunked Latin.  There was a single Latin teacher in Parkview Junior Highschool when I attended.  The language choices were Spanish and Latin.  The way things are going I think Mandarin would be a good language to learn.

On and on a completely different point.  I want to point out that it is to forget the sheer size of Africa.  Just look at a world map, it is a large continent, lots of countries.  

To give it some perspective, the Sahara dessert is as big as America. Canada would take up another Sahara sized chunk and that is still the bottom half to fill up with the Western hemisphere.  

That's a lot of sand box.  And the Austrian Misties would love it except it is all out doors.

Have a nice day everyone, enjoy that little chunk of instant classical education you just consumed.