My cat was declawed today, and is now limping around my apartment on his hindquarters, holding his front paws out gingerly and flinching whenever they touch anything. I wasn't able to get a picture of him in motion, but when he's walking, he looks for all the world like a sad, furry velociraptor.
The vet told me to replace all the cat litter with shredded newspaper, so I surreptitiously grabbed pile of one of the free newspapers at HEB and ripped them up. While tearing through them, I glanced at the stories offhandedly - an interview with TV anchor James Brown, an Al Sharpton retrospective, a discussion of the exorbitant prison terms handed to black teenagers. "Man, there's a lot of black people in this issue." It was at this point that I paused and looked at the newspaper heading, and realized I was tearing up The Defender, a local African-American issues weekly. Which made me feel vaguelly racist, as if I'd subconciously grabbed the issue in order to destroy the newsletter out of spite. "Take that, James Brown, and your smoothly cheerful broadcasting style!"