Kitten watch: day eight

On a day when news both bad and good swirled outside the Harris-Truscott manse, inside it was a different story. The litter of our rescued stray cat Graycie’s kittens, born on Thursday a week ago, have grown enough to look less like what Tracy called “zombie shamblers,” and more like little cats. And our 10-year-old rescue dog Ruby has begun to take a great deal of interest in Kitten World and Graycie’s role as a proud mother.

Photo: Tracy Harris

Back in what passes for our portion of the real world, our other rescue cat, Tazzy, continues to move around the house from box to box — there is one on the kitchen island, of course, put there to keep her from walking across cutting boards and the like, and there’s a box in the window behind my computer monitor, and one on the coffee table in the living room, and one in the window of the foyer, too. Her perambulations through Box World has gained her the nickname, Box Cat.

Photo: Tracy Harris

Meanwhile, out on the mean streets of the World At Large, Ukraine seems to be enjoying a victory of sorts in Bakhmut, with the withdrawal of troops from Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group to positions east of the town. The government of Ukraine has announced the arrival of British Storm Shadow mid-range cruise missiles, which are being deployed as we speak. The Storm Shadow is capable of putting a warhead precisely on targets which might include Russian fuel and ammunition depots 150 miles away. It’s very good news for Ukraine, which has wanted the U.S. to send its ATACMS mid-range missiles, capable of hitting targets 185 miles away, for some time. Maybe the arrival of the darkly-named Storm Shadow, pictured here, will goose the U.S. into supplying Ukraine with the ATACMS missile, which would put anywhere in Crimea within range, including the port of Sevastopol, used for resupplying Russian forces in Ukraine.

As you can see, the Storm Shadow is an animal of a very different sort.

Back to the political wars anon, with my bi-weekly Salon column due first thing in the morning, so stay tuned.