smoking | Volesoft.com

IT’S INTERESTING that other mammals are prone to the same diseases humans are. Every mammal with a heart is subject to a coronary, whether or not it eats deep roasted Mars Bars or not. Or smokes. Cats don’t smoke.

One of our two Abyssinians has diabetes. She started to shrink in size earlier on this year and although she didn’t show any particular signs of unwellness, her fur definitely started to stare, so it was off to the vet with her to loud shriekings.

Blood tests showed she was diabetic, so she wa sput on one milliletre of insulin a day. The nice vet explined that unlike humanoids, if you got the blood sugar level down, these here cats might stop needing insulin.

There is a god then. Because the little bottle of insulin is very, very expensive and one bottle would last a little thing like her about three months. But because it is a protein, it degrades. Or so the drug companies tell the vets. We thought there was a GM diabetes thingie. In India, where I am half the time, there are very few cats – “billi”. I’m told that’s because cats are thankless creatures, unlike dogs. I wil keep you informed on this insulin stuff.

I can tell you the treatment is working and the cat is just as irritating as it was before it got sick. I have suggested it goes out to work. But do you know what is says when I suggest this? It goes for me eyes. Thankless creature! ξ

THERE’S A LOT about smoke on the Interweb this weekend. For example, according to Reuters, Buenos Aires, which must mean something like good air, is suffering its fifth day of being engulfed by fumes.

Columnist India Knight, over at the Sunday Times, here, opines that the English smoking ban is wiping out the art of conversation, closing hostelries, and forcing everyone back into their homes, which have become fugged up places. Ms Knight reckons that putative London mayor Boris Johnson will hold a referendum on smoking in the capital, if he wins on the 1st of May next. Johnson apparently got some dosh for speaking to something called the “Tobacco Association” last year. Nothing to do with the sweet smelling plants, presumably. Of which, more, later.

Meanwhile, it seems that the authorities in Beijing, home to the Olympics, have backed down from banning smoking in the capital – one of the most polluted in the world – because the citizens just won’t have it. And China isn’t even a Western style democracy.

In other emission related news, the UK Independent on Sunday is attempting to explain why flowers have lost their scent, here. It’s nothing to do with ciggies, apparently, and everything to do with motor cars. Actually, bees used to like tobacco plants, but that’s before the type that delivered lovely scents have been displaced by varieties that don’t give off scent at all. Weird.

Bee-keepers, like honey bees, apparently a dying breed like tobacco smokers plants, used to use smoke so they could get honey out of the hives. Because bees originally nested in trees, the smell of smoke used to make the bees gorge on honey, which quietened them down a lot so they wouldn’t sting (much), while the bee-keepers took advantage of the honey induced torpor to raid the hives and plunder the honey.

BOGGARDS Rhododendron honey is poisonous. Wasps are not evil. They don’t get nasty until their hives start to break down, and the grubs refuse to feed them sweet secretions in return for the fresh meat the workers have delivered. That’s because the Queen has stopped producing grubs, and there are no grubs to feed the workers. Nature isn’t half red in tooth and claw. ♦

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My Tabbysinian cat has diabetes

Buenos Aires gets smoked out

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